Do you ever feel as though you receive messages at the exact moment that you need to?
I have been feeling the rage returning recently and it was getting me really down. I felt ashamed, but not because anybody had witnessed it. Simply ashamed, internally, which I think may be worse than any embarrassment I have experienced.
I couldn’t seem to shake the fog that had been constantly surrounding me. No matter how many times I silently had a word with myself about keeping calm, and not losing my temper as quickly, it seemed to be getting worse instead of better.
I then listened to the Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast, and Giovanna had Dr Rangan Chatterjee as a guest (I’d started right back at episode 1, so am still not quite up to date yet) Some of the information he discussed and things that he said have completely altered my outlook and helped me start to ease up on myself a little.
He touched on the fact that in many other nations, as we know, ‘it takes a village’ to bring up a child, and in the UK, we are much more ‘nuclear’ families. Coping on our own, too proud, or stubborn to ask for help. Or simply too far away from our families. We also have jobs to juggle alongside and whether that is a few hours a week, or over the 40-hour threshold, it is impossible to give your all to both at the same time. One of the big subjects he spoke about, which has made me immediately put his book on my Amazon wish list, is looking after your ‘core happiness’. He says that happiness is a skill and that you can train and develop once you know how. He explains that if your core happiness was a three-legged stool, each leg is separate, but essential, if one is not there, the stool will fall over. One leg being alignment (your values and your actions are aligned), one is contentment (the things in life that give you a sense of peace), and the last is control (not controlling every situation but feeling like you have a sense of control by forming habits etc).
That last one in particular really hit home.
I get frustrated when I feel out of control of a situation. I need to switch that and really hammer down on the fact that toddlers cannot be completely controlled and shouldn’t be. 99% of what they do is through the want and need to explore, investigate, or pure naivety. But more than that, I need to look a lot deeper inside myself. I need to discover one or two key things that make me truly happy, that I can do more of, as well as building in habits that will eventually become a routine in all our days.
I don’t know if I am fully aware of what my core values are. I’m excited to find out.
I just really felt like the entire episode had been sent to me at a time when I most needed to hear it.
After this, two episodes later, I have just started one with Anna Mathur, a psychotherapist (and luckily an author, of another book I have added to the ever-growing list!) I’m only halfway through and already I know it has made a difference.
She talked about ‘the rage’. She has 3 children and described a situation where she was cooking dinner and all three were winding her up to the point that she could feel herself starting to boil. She had text her husband, who was upstairs on a conference call, to come down and tap in. He did not see the message and within 10-15 minutes she flipped and turned in to The Hulk. She let out what she described as a roar, not the usual shouting that had happened before. Luckily her husband then came flying down and took over. Hearing this made me cry. Mainly because I had experienced this exact scenario on Sunday.
Aurora asked me to read her her ‘Pick a Pine Tree’ book, as we have just got the Christmas books down from the loft, and it was lovely. She literally never asks me to read to her during the day (just continually at bedtime!) so I was savouring the moment as best I could.
Now the mistake I made, was that I had a full cup of coffee in my hand as I was reading. Luna was fidgeting around on the sofa next to me, repeatedly climbing up and back down, and I almost watched the scene play out in my mind before the actual events. Lo and behold, Luna launches at me, knocking my cup of coffee up into the air and it all came pouring down on to Aurora, me and largely, the book.
I. Was. Livid.
I let out the loudest, most guttural roar I have ever made. I didn’t know where to start. Everyone, understandably, looked stunned and didn’t make a sound. This is not normal behaviour and not a normal reaction to something that quite honestly isn’t that bad. We all got cleaned up and the book did dry pretty well so no real casualties.
I think it is safe to say that it was not the spilling of the coffee that was the real issue. There is clearly something deeper.
I have since had a couple of thoughts on the matter and firstly have made the decision that every day, without fail, the girls and I are going to get out of the house and do something. We had had a few weeks of staying in almost every day. I always say that I am happy to do that as it is my little sanctuary and I feel most comfortable there, but it doesn’t do us any good. We need to take it back to basics and start enjoying the little things again. I was feeling as though I was running out of inspiration and motivation for activities at home, and that is probably no surprise as I have been getting no external inspiration.
Saying that, Aurora and I have had some lovely afternoons over the weekend making different crafts, she has been practising her cutting and letter matching, and I showed her how to paint a symmetrical butterfly by applying the colours to one side only and then folding it over. But still.
It doesn’t matter what we do, it doesn’t have to cost money, but I do not want to waste this last year of having Aurora at home more before she goes to school.
So today, we were all up, dressed, and ready to leave the house by the time the plumbers were in and settled.
I took the girls to the local Country Park. Aurora had specifically requested it as I had asked where she would like to go. She calls it the sand park as the playground is in one big sand pit. It wasn’t due to rain, so we wrapped up in our coats and hats and set off. We got a cake and a hot chocolate and sat on a bench under the trees, watching the leaves fall and the birds fly overhead. It was truly wholesome, and I kicked myself for not doing this more often. Parking there is only 80p for 1 hour, and if we took our own snack and drink next time then that is one of the most affordable trips I can think of, that’s more exciting than walking to our local park.
We then started walking towards the park. The path follows the edge of the lake and there are plenty of ducks to see, as well as a few moorhens and we even saw a heron! As soon as we got to the waters edge, Aurora stopped and started jumping excitedly. She then said, ‘I love walking by the water SO MUCH, it makes me SOO HAPPY!’ and I won’t lie, I cried. I pulled her close and gave her the biggest hug, and really sobbed. It was exactly what I needed to hear.
Unfortunately, as we approached the ‘sand park’ I could see that it was all fenced off and there was a lot of building work going on inside. Aurora was really disappointed but didn’t get upset and did except my explanation. We decided to carry on walking to see what else we could find, but not too long after she decided that actually she would like to turn back. We had been stood amongst the ducks by the entrance to the park, and she had been calling them her friends and telling me that her friends were very busy today. So, she expressed that she wanted to go back and see her friends. We spent quite a while with them, watching them nibble at things on the ground all around us. Some of them starting fights with each other and I loved watching the girls watching them. Again, it felt really wholesome and something that I would like to do a lot more of.
One point I have already raised with Luke is the want to get showered and ready before he goes to work each morning, but to also get enough time together as a family before he leaves. If we get up at 7am, on average, and have 45 mins to an hour with the girls having their breakfast, us having our coffee, listening to some music, and talking about the day ahead. Putting the phones down as well, this is something I really want to actively try and do more. In fact, that was another thing that Dr Rangan Chatterjee said he and his wife do, if they have time together in the evenings, but want to go on their phones, they have a loose rule that before they do so, they grab a cup of tea or something each, and ‘catch up for 5 minutes’. Sometimes it is just 5 minutes, and then they go and do what they wanted to do on their phones, whether that is work related, or purely social. But more times than not, that conversation bleeds over the 5-minute mark, maybe reaching 20 minutes, 45 minutes, or over an hour, because they realise that a) they have a lot to talk to each other about and b) whatever they wanted to do on their phone was most likely out of habit or boredom. I like this approach.
Going back to the point above, I believe that if I can be showered and dressed, preferably completely ready but not necessarily, then that will be an easier and more positive start to the day. Otherwise, I have one if not both children upstairs with me, usually arguing and crying over something, or getting every single item out of every cupboard and draw while I’m trying to get ready around them. It damn near takes the whole morning. I think this is a good week to start this habit as a) the plumbers will be here early each day so I would want to be dressed and ready by then anyway, and b) we don’t have a shower right now, so it is currently a little quicker anyway! Hopefully the bath will be up and running by Friday, so we can then get back to some sort of routine before the room is completely finished.
Another epiphany that I have had over the last day or so, is to why I put so much pressure on myself to have my house organised and tidy. It’s not normal, the way I feel about it. On Monday, knowing that the plumbers would be coming into our house on Tuesday to start work on our bathroom (currently a completely empty room other than the new bath has been put in place, covered in cardboard, some wall panels have gone up and the lights are in) I was feeling a sense of panic to get the kitchen spotless, especially as I would be at work that day. I cleaned and tidied it to a level that I have never reached before. They probably won’t even go in there, and even if they do, will they notice that we have a bottle on the side that should be in the Utility Room? Of course not! Even when I think it is disorganised, I’m sure most people would still think it looked tidy. Or simply not care either way.
Part of it is understandably having a sense of pride. Of course, I would prefer things to look nice rather than not. But having a little bit of clutter is not the end of the world. I do feel as though living this way, with not that many possessions and knowing where everything ‘lives’ does mean that I very rarely lose anything. This is why if I DO lose something, it sends me in to a bit of a spin, as it’s almost impossible that I would have misplaced it. To be fair, it isn’t usually me that has…
My friends always make a point of mentioning how their own houses are messy or disorganised, so I don’t have any unrealistic expectations coming from them, it is just me.
But it suddenly hit me while I was at work yesterday (re-organising the new shelving that was too chaotic for my nerves to cope with). I realised that whenever a friend has described me, the word organised is always within the list. If I look at any information to do with my star sign, organisation is top of the page. Even Luke would probably put it in his first 5 words when describing me. No other descriptions appear as much, and there aren’t really any other attributes that get repeated by numerous sources. So, I therefore feel as though it is my one and only positive trait. That is why I put so much pressure on it, if I don’t have that, what do I have?!
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