I Wrote This Over 2 Years Ago

I’m deep in the throes of planning our only daughter’s high school graduation party, which takes me back to just a few years ago when I was doing the exact same thing for our oldest son. I wrote this short story one day when I needed a few hours of alone time, but I never published it anywhere. It reminds me of how far we all have come, yet there’s still so much work to do. Nevertheless—the message remains the same for all of us Moms out there. In Glennon Doyle’s famed words “We can do hard things” and truly I know that we can.

Here’s what I wrote a few years ago:

Covid-19 has halted life around the world. As I scroll Facebook, I see the streets of NYC, LA, Las Vegas and Seattle are empty. People are afraid to go to the store for groceries. Birthday, anniversary, and engagement parties are not being celebrated. My yoga studio is empty. School is closed and my kids miss their friends and spring sports. All non-essential businesses are closed—which means no restaurants or bars are open for customers, except for take-out only. Everyone is wearing masks on their faces and are generally down in the dumps except for all the doggies of the world appear to be loving having people around all the time.

Everyone is staying home, to help stop the spread of this virus and it’s hard for some people to do. But being an introvert has served me well over the last 18 years of our marriage; I’m alone a lot. Darrin’s hardly ever home because he’s always in the barn, in a field, or at a meeting somewhere trying to make the agriculture industry better for our future.

But there is too much togetherness right now. Everyone and everything is in need of my attention. The doggies want to sit on my lap. The kids have funny videos they want to show me. Darrin has an email to send and needs help spelling big words. The dishes and laundry and garbage pile up so much that half of our house stinks. The dust bunnies float around the corners of the rooms until a doggie decides to tackle and eat it. The mail needs sorting, and bills need paying. And the never-ending ultimate question of all time, “What’s for dinner?” keeps interrupting my thoughts. I just cannot focus here.

So, I leave.

Not my family, marriage, or life. No-I’m not that silly. I need and love them all way too much.

But I leave for the day. Or maybe only a few hours. And I go to my sacred space—my empty studio.

Last year, we bought an old historical building in our small downtown so I could teach fitness classes. After a major depressive disorder diagnosis a few years ago, we decided it would be good for me to keep focused on something productive outside of our home and children and moving my body was a great idea and business opportunity, so I became a fitness instructor. We had heard that the building for sale had been a bank, a post office, a newspaper, and several hardware stores. Now we decided to give it a new life as a yoga studio.

Yoga has served me well. I’ve been practicing yoga at home for years because I’m super flexible and don’t enjoy running, jogging, or really any sports at all. But yoga I can do. I can get into and hold poses for long periods of time. I can flow through a sequence of poses with ease. I can describe my posture and movements in detail. I do love yoga and teaching it to other people has filled up a bucket of self-worth for me over this last year. Though my classes have always been small, like 5-8 students, I have embraced the fact that yoga isn’t for everyone and I will continue to serve those in my tiny town that feel it is.

But since Covid hit, the studio has been closed. Due to social-distancing measures and our governor’s “stay home, stay safe” executive order my business is closed. I haven’t taught any fitness classes since beginning of March.

So, I go to my studio today. I stand in the middle of the floor and look up at my crystal chandeliers and notice cobwebs. I play music loudly over my stereo system and sing as if I can actually carry a tune. I dance and watch myself in the mirrors, imagining that I know what I’m doing, like a professional dancer on a stage.

It is my sacred space. And it’s all mine. Nobody else is coming here today, or any day for that matter.

And I actually don’t mind that at all.

I’ve realized that quarantine was a huge gift. Though I love yoga, and my students, I really don’t love teaching it more than doing it. I should have known this already because many years ago I became a high school English teacher. I graduated from Michigan State University with an English degree and Teaching Certificate from Saginaw Valley State University because I loved reading and writing and analyzing literature, but after 3 years of teaching realized I didn’t love teaching it to other people’s kids.

Loving something and teaching it to others are two different things!

And so Covid was a gift for me. It forced me to slow down, stay home, and get quiet. To feel deep inside of myself what it is that I truly want. To bring me back to that which my soul is here to do: write.

The irony of this revelation is that it’s not new at all. I’ve known I want to be a writer since I was a little girl reading and collecting the Berenstain Bears books. Even as an 8-year old, I began my own “library” and imagined my name was on the cover of those books. A day trip to Barnes and Noble was more exciting to me than ever stopping at a candy or toy store.

But life gets in the way of youthful dreams.

As a teen, getting and keeping my Dad’s attention was my main focus. In college, fertility issues presented the desire to have babies as soon as possible.

Once we got the rings, babies, and lots of debt, the new distractions were endless. There’s always a butt to wipe and a bill to pay. There’s a party to go to, groceries to buy, dinner to make, and laundry to wash.

And so here I am, deep into quarantine and I’m nurturing a bum knee as well, which is constantly irritated by overuse. I’m embracing this sacred space to be my new writing place. This aloneness is heavenly.

So, I sit in the waiting room of my studio. It is decorated in brilliant teal, grey, white, and black. The sofa is comfy, the chairs are regal and inviting, and the end tables adorned with inspirational books. Right now the fireplace hosts a meditating Jesus statue, a few candles, a sand-filled hourglass, and an essential oil diffuser. Sometimes it holds an arrangement of pumpkins or a Christmas tree. The crystal chandelier overhead reminds me to keep looking up. The ceiling has magnificent detailed crown molding and every time I look up, I wonder how the heck someone was so talented to create it over a hundred years ago.

I extend my legs and let my heels rest on the coffee table. I stretch and yawn and then open my thermos of lunch. I’m listening to the angelic Jai Jagdeesh sing sweet mantras as I lovingly and slowly feed myself a hearty vegetable soup. Next, I’ll listen to a guided meditation by Gabby Bernstein. The music is slow, soft, mesmerizing. Her voice is dreamily inviting me into another realm of consciousness where I can access my higher thoughts.

And then I open my laptop and know what I’m about to write is as much for me as it is for you. This is what I want us to know:

This life is tough but we are tougher. We are the dreamers of our dreams, the authors of our stories, and the choosers of our choices. We can believe ourselves to be the victims or the victors of our circumstances. It’s all just a shift in perspective. We can grow where we are planted because as human beings—not human doings—we create our own reality wherever we are. And as mothers we are tasked with the hardest job on Earth…creating and raising the next generation of people.

My reality is that I’m a 40 something mother of 3 and farm wife. I’ve struggled with past trauma, cptsd, and physical pain for so long that I entertained suicidal thoughts a few years ago. I was depressed and anxious, which is much like being Eeyore and Tigger at the same time—exhausting and not fun at all. I’ve had and quit, a multitude of unsatisfying jobs all while watching my husband break his back every day working on our farm to provide for our family and the families of our employees. I’ve hidden and harbored guilt, shame, resentment, and rage for too many years at too many people.

But we can change our lives at any moment.

Not long ago I decided I was going to make huge changes in my life. I call this process UNSUBSCRIBING. Think of it like this: when you subscribe to something you’re opting in…likewise, when you unsubscribe you’re opting out. The thing is most of us don’t realize we were subscribed to things in our youth without even realizing it. And we continue to live in, and play out, these beliefs throughout all of our lives without necessarily being conscious of it. As a life coach, all I do is ask my clients if a belief that they have feels right and true for them, or is it simply an unconscious replay of a childhood programmed belief?

Whenever someone or something is no longer in alignment with us, we can get rid of it or them. Nothing is permanent. The only constant is change. And the truth is, our souls came to Earth to learn a lesson, much like school. We are all in Earth school right now. The people in our lives are our classmates and each passing year is the next grade we conquer. The ultimate final exam comes moments before we pass over, when we reconcile whether we lived a good life that fulfilled our soul purpose or not. It all is our responsibility, no matter what our childhood was like, to make a great life for ourselves. Truly, we can create a heaven or a hell for ourselves. Or, as I like to think of it, an Eden because we are on Earth.

So welcome to Eden! Whoever you are, wherever you are, you have the option to create inside of you and around yourself the most beautiful place your limited human mind can conjure up. No, this isn’t a religious or biblical place at all. I’m not getting into that conversation. But rather, for me the word Eden sums up an ultimate beauty that can’t accurately be expressed.

I firmly believe that we all can create an Eden inside of and around ourselves at any moment. When you are living with total inner beauty, anything and everyone outside of you can’t help but be affected. Much like being the thermostat of the house, Mom controls the heat of everyone’s emotions.

Have you ever thought about that? Mom is the thermostat of the house.

Do you notice when you are stressed that the children are more cranky and needy? If you’re giving your partner the silent treatment, are they not as helpful with household chores? What is the cause and effect of the day to day interactions of your home?

It’s time to pause. Time to find balance, belonging, and a new beginning. Get ready to heal the past, love yourself, and use your voice for good. The soil is ready. It’s time to plant, grow, and harvest our better selves for our children.

And so I close my laptop and drive 10 minutes home without seeing a single vehicle on the road. It’s eerily empty, even in this rural farming community. Even though I know the dishes and laundry aren’t going to be done, and undoubtedly there’s a new TikTok trending dance the kids will want me to watch, I walk into the house with the biggest smile on my face. I once heard Oprah say that children want to know “Does your face light up when you see me?” and so I walk into the house and look at my three children sitting in the living room showing love all over my face.

Being away in my studio for a few hours has renewed me enough to endure the harshness of this lockdown. I have my husband, my children, my doggies, food, and water. The house is warm and so is my heart. I have made the temperature of our family so pleasant that no one wants to leave even if they could. And so I’m thankful in this moment for the too-much-togetherness that I was feeling just a few hours ago, because it has reminded me of how much I enjoy it after all.

Moms are tasked with the hardest job on Earth, to create and raise the next generation of people to take care of this planet. Are we doing it with joy on our faces? With a feeling of bliss in our hearts? I invite you to pause for a bit, and ponder upon whether or not your home is its own Eden. And if it’s not, what can you do to make it better, warmer, and more loving?