A New Semester, A Fresh Start

It’s the start of my school semes­ter. When­ever I start back I try to reeval­u­ate my courses, where I am in my own work, and what’s going on in my per­sonal life. A chance for me to check in with where I am and where I am going in life.

Today I took a look at some of the stuff in my per­sonal life.

I real­ized when I looked in the mir­ror, catch­ing a full length image of myself, that I don’t think I can con­tinue to blame the extra pounds that are still hang­ing around solely on being post­par­tum. Mostly because D-man is almost 6 months old & my eat­ing habits have left A LOT to be desired lately. Breast­feed­ing doesn’t melt the pounds off for me & cer­tainly NOT if I eat junk or snack late at night or am NOT as active I could be. Sim­ply put the extra calo­ries being burnt by being D-man’s sole source of food aren’t going to coun­ter­bal­ance treat­ing my body poorly. My body reflects what’s been going on the inside.

Because I was hav­ing a hard time (A REALLY FREAKIN’ HARD TIME) I just didn’t take the time to make my health or car­ing for myself over­all a pri­or­ity. I pushed myself off to the side. I made sure the kids got lots of healthy items, plenty of rest, and took in sun­shine while play­ing. That they were able to relax and have time to con­nect with who they are, quiet time is so impor­tant for kids. I tried to make sure Hubby got time for him­self & the abil­ity to recon­nect with self.

Me not so much, even when out­side I wasn’t being active or tak­ing the time to relax. To just take in nature and recon­nect with myself. Same with the quiet time, until recently I wasn’t tak­ing it in like I use to. Hubby would try to get me to go out, get time to myself, and take time for me but I wasn’t ready to do that. I got back to work & have been get­ting work done (revis­ing, revis­ing, revis­ing, Oh MY!!), but not back to really car­ing for the whole pack­age of me. That’s not good.

I am the first to tell some­one else that a healthy Mommy is a healthy fam­ily, same goes for Daddy. Kids watch what we par­ents do, how we care for our­selves, and what we put into our bod­ies. If we aren’t being healthy or car­ing for our­selves like we should then the role model we are giv­ing them is that being healthy isn’t impor­tant. And by being healthy I mean over­all, not just eat­ing whole foods but tak­ing care of mind, body, & soul. Even if I change my eat­ing habits, I will still need to change my ori­en­ta­tion toward life. Mak­ing myself a pri­or­ity.

What am I get­ting at?

I guess that I am ready to start doing all of that again. Because only doing one piece of the puz­zle isn’t enough. I need to really focus on the the whole kit & caboo­dle. Look­ing back over the years, it’s not just after D-man that I started to put myself on the back burner. I’ve real­ized that I haven’t taken time to care for me like I should have for years. The last few months just brought that to a head with every­thing else. I NEED to feed my whole self with good things as I start to feel like me again. The more I am myself, the more I am able to give to my chil­dren, my hus­band, my fam­ily & friends, and my work.

This is a good thing, a good start to my school semes­ter. With a fresh semes­ter I’m look­ing at a fresh start. Just like my kids are look­ing at school, first grade & preschool, as a new adven­ture and jour­ney ahead I’m look­ing at my semes­ter the same way. A new adven­ture in the jour­ney of life.

What new steps are you going to take for your­self this fall?

Tagged as: caring for self, health, school