Posts Tagged "community"
Refreshed Resolutions
Every year at this time when I hear people asking about and making New Year’s Resolutions, I do something different. In general, I see Resolutions as a self-inflicted attempt to make myself feel shitty by March. In my early 20’s I used to make Resolutions and it was too easy to lose momentum by Spring. Life gets busy. I would fall off the wagon and it seemed to take even more effort to get back on. It’s harder to make that effort half way through the year when I wasn’t coming off the high of Holidays and New Year’s Eve revelry. I also realised that I wasn’t making realistic goals. New Year’s Resolutions often seem to lack real goal setting features like being specific, measurable and achievable. If your goal is to procrastinate less, how do you decide if you’ve actually met that goal? (I guess you’ll decide later?) I am not a personal coach or goal setting expert but even a layperson can see the difference between that and something more like “I will lose 20 Lbs by June 1 and another 25 Lbs by Dec 31” or “I will create a filing system for my office by March 1 and plan meals weekly before grocery shopping.” Resolutions fell by the wayside. In their place came Reflection and Looking Forward. For about 7 years now, I’ve spent the last week of December going through the process of reflecting on the closing year and looking forward to the next year as a whole. I examine all areas of my life: individual, work, family, friendships, creativity, spiritual and I try to ask questions that allow me to see the big picture rather than focusing on individual goals. Reflection: What were the prevailing themes of the last year? What were the successes? The challenges? What was I happy with? What would I have changed? If I could boil down the year into one word, what would it be? How did this year fit in the continuum from the year before and the year ahead? Looking Ahead: What are my hopes and dreams for the next year? Where do I want to focus my energies? What word would I like to predominate the new year? How would I like this year to differ from the last year? What positive things from this past year would I like to carry forward into the new year? What things do I anticipate for the upcoming year (this question relates to things that may be out of my control or have been pre-planned, like expecting a baby or moving)? What can I do to make those things successes or less challenging? What goals would I like to achieve this year? How do I see this next year contributing to the years that will follow? What do I want to build on? Some of this process occurs at the back of my mind as I go about my daily duties but I always make time to sit down and either write it out or talk it out. In the past I have done this by emailing back and forth with a friend, posting to a message board or having a quiet cup of tea with my husband while the kids napped. I think it’s important to have both aspects: the free-form brainstorming on the periphery without looking right at it and the dedicated time spent solely on the task. I’ve been doing this for so long that I end up beginning the process around Boxing Day without even realizing it. The questions just start bubbling up and I don’t shy away from them in the same way I eventually shied away from the idea of a Resolution. This process doesn’t seem tinged with potential failure from the beginning. It allows me to close the year feeling positive rather than unhappy that I didn’t reach my unattainable goals. I will post my finished product on Monday January 3. Feel free to join me. Answer the questions that speak to you. Make up your own. Focus on a theme...
Read MoreMy birth stories
I believe that a lot of good can come from people who find the positive in their birth experience and share it with, well, anyone who will listen. This is an age where between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 births occur by cesarean. Most women never experience birth before they find themselves in labour. Our society has very little practical experience with normal birth and we are afraid. But there is a rising tide of people who know that birth needn’t be treated like a disease or a medical emergency waiting to happen. There is a growing movement that is shouting and stomping feet and demanding maternity care reform. Change is coming and I sincerely believe that the day will come when we have the best of both worlds: the safety of modern medicine and the sanctity of trust in our bodies and the birth process. That change starts every time someone tells a positive birth story that empowers women to learn more and fear less. I was born at home in the Yukon in the 1970’s. I am so thankful to my parents for this gift: opening my eyes to the beauty of home both that very first time, and again when I birthed my son into my home as an adult. I am grateful for my mother’s dutch doctor who, at my older brother’s birth, showed her that maternity care didn’t have to look like the standard North American medical model, a man who brought new ideas to a prairie town on a new continent and changed the course of birth in my family. Both of my children were born at home with midwives in attendance. Neither birth went exactly as I’d hoped it would. My first resulted in a hospital transfer for retained placenta. My second caught us unprepared three weeks early and ended up being a neighbourhood event. I had envisioned quiet and intimate, not neighbours in the kitchen eating pizza. But when a 10 year old boy who had just seen my hour old daughter exclaimed “This is the best birthday party I’ve ever been to!” I saw the power of sharing positive experiences with everyone around us. Maybe when this boy becomes a father he will remember, just as I remember my mother’s dutch...
Read MoreSix Week Check-Up
Do you have new first time parents in your life? You’ve probably gotten them a gift and visited to meet the new wee one. You’ve probably puzzled over what a new family needs and how to help out. There are lots of great ideas out there. Here’s one I particularly liked as it really rang true for my experience as a new parent. To take it one step further, I’d like to challenge everyone out there to do the Six Week Check-up. That is, make a point of checking in with the new mom as her baby nears the six week mark. Why Six Weeks? Do you remember the six week check up after you had your first baby? Do you remember what else was going on for you then? Maybe you haven’t had kids yet or maybe your kids are older and now that you’ve left the sleep-deprived haze, those early days are all a blur. Let me remind you: The first few weeks were all bliss, staring at baby in awe, proudly presenting her to family and friends, feeling totally bonded to your partner for producing this perfect little angel. But now? Dad has gone back to work. The whirlwind of out-of-town visitors is slowing or they’ve all come and gone. Friends and family have all met baby and are back to their regular lives: working, house renos, family vacation. The new baby celebrations have all ended: the baby shower or meet the baby party was a few weeks ago. Friends are no longer dropping in with a cute onesie or yet another handmade blanket. The email congratulations have tapered off. In short, everyone else’s excitement has worn off. For them, now it’s business as usual. For mom? She’s home alone with baby and the reality of her new life is finally starting to hit her. This likely means getting used to the isolation of maternity leave. The first few weeks felt like a well-deserved vacation, especially after the aches and pains and fatigue of working while pregnant. But now, she’s kind of bored. She’s surprised by how much she misses talking to adults when she’s staring at the four walls and nursing AGAIN. She’s surprised by how much she misses the noise of the office (or the restaurant or the store or wherever it was for her) when she realises how quiet it is at home alone while her friends and partner are at work. When she sees her friends, she realizes she has surprisingly little to talk about now that she can’t talk about her work. She wonders what to do with herself and she misses that productive self, that woman who excelled at her work. It’s lonely and she feels a little lost in a culture that defines people by the work they do. After the standard first few weeks rest and recovery, she was feeling great and tried to get back to her normal routine, only to find that she’s still exhausted. Mama’s beginning to realise that her plans of continuing life as before with baby in tow might be a little unrealistic. Her thoughts of tackling some of those crafting projects gathering dust during her “year off” seem laughable now as she struggles to sleep enough, keep the house clean, shower and eat lunch. By 6 weeks, the new family is likely out of the extra freezer food they prepared before the birth and friends are no longer dropping off casseroles. Offers to throw a load of laundry in or pick up groceries while new mom grabs a nap have petered out. Mom’s learning to navigate the grocery store with baby (and all the baby gear) now. Every day is a list of laundry, nursing, diapers, nursing, napping, nursing, dishes, nursing, more laundry, more nursing, more diapers. She’s surprised at how little she accomplishes and she might be starting to get run down around the 6 week mark because she’s trying to do too much. Back to regular life? Not exactly. At 6 weeks, baby often goes through a growth spurt (also...
Read MoreConnecting with your Community
Parenting can be lonely. Your lifestyle changes drastically. Perhaps you are the first in your circle of friends to have children. Perhaps you are surprised by the isolation of maternity leave. Perhaps you long for a real connection with other parents rather than those conversations where you pretend it’s not as hard as it is. Perhaps you find the playground intimidating. Most parents agree that parenting is both the hardest and most fulfilling job they’ve ever held. You can try your hardest to prepare yourself but no amount of reading, observing and talking to other parents can prepare you for it. Parenting transforms your life to the place where you can’t imagine your life before children. And suddenly you find yourself relishing conversations about the minutiae of raising children. It just isn’t the same without a community to share it with. So what can you do to foster that need for community? Check out these articles on community: Finding Your Tribe: Feed Your Soul while Feeding Your Kids – an article from Mothering Magazine on creating a parenting community for yourself. Longing For Community – Natural Parenting guru and former Mothering Magazine editor Peggy O’Mara’s thoughts on community. Create a Date Night Group Join up with 3 other families and start babysitting each others’ kids. Each week one family watches all the kids. The other 3 couples get date night. So 1 Friday per month you might have a mad-house full of kids—the other 3 Fridays you get to be alone with your partner! And as the years pass, the kids will entertain each other and all you’ll have to do is make sure they are safe. Start a Book Club or a Knitting Night Find a group of parents and read parenting books to discuss at a potluck. Have older kids? Start a book club and invite the kids like the Mother/Daughter book club The Page Turners in the November/December 2008 issue of Mothering Magazine. Always knitting? Start a knit night with other moms. Rotate meetings so each family takes a turn hosting. Team Up Commit to regular check ins with another mom so you can encourage and support each other with your parenting challenges and triumphs. Agree to call each other once a week just to see how it’s going. Find a parent with older kids who is willing to act as a mentor to you. Check in regularly (once a week or once a month). Read the book The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal and if you’re in BC join a Mama Renew...
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