12 Months of Self Care, Being Enough

12 Months of Self Care: The Plan

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My plan for creating 12 months of self care.

I previously told the story of how my ambitious plan of a year long journey came to be. What I didn’t tell you was the actual plan. What was this year of self discovery going to entail? Well, welcome to 12 months of self care: the plan! I’ve broken the year down into 12 months and each month gets a new focus. Every focus falls into a more general category of improving myself either physically or mentally, with some doing both. It’s important to note that in order for this crazy plan to work I had to write down why I wanted to do this and exactly what I had hoped to accomplish. So, what do I want to accomplish?

  1. To discover a sense of who I am, outside of motherhood. I love being a mother and I love being a wife, but I am so much more than that as a person. Yet, lately, it’s hard to see myself as anything but Mother or Wife.
  2. Create and achieve more happiness in my life. I understand that you cannot just simply wish for happiness, you need to seek it out and reign it in.
  3. Become physically and mentally healthier by challenging and pushing myself.
  4. Find, appreciate, and cultivate new sources of joy. This goal sounds similar to the previous goal of creating more happiness in my life, but when I think of cultivating joy I think on a smaller scale. I think appreciation, thankfulness, and attentiveness to the small everyday things that we tend to rush through or overlook.
  5. And finally, with every continuing month, I hope to decrease my overall anxieties and self doubt, while increasing my self worth and confidence.

In order to pursue the goals I outlined above I created 12 areas of improvement to focus on. Each month will be concentrating on one of the 12 focuses. I hope that with every subsequent month I don’t simply abandon the previous month’s focus but rather shift to the new focus, while keeping the things that worked well from the previous months’. Is this making sense at all? If you’re following me, you’re amazing, if not, don’t worry about it because I can sometimes barely comprehend it myself.

The 12 categories of focus are (in no particular order – as I do them I will edit this post into the correct order):

  1. Medical compliance
  2. Exercise
  3. Create order/ decrease clutter both physically and mentally
  4. Gratitude & acceptance of things I cannot change
  5. A month of doctor appointments that I usually put off
  6. Relationships
  7. Create
  8. Self confidence & self worth
  9. Learn something new
  10. Take a risk
  11. Physical appearance
  12. Limiting screen time & technology influences

You may be reading these ideas thinking, “What does that even mean?” and that’s okay! They are very general statements and I cannot wait to expand on what each idea means and what each month entails. I hope you will follow along for this journey I’m taking. But more importantly, I hope it will inspire you to make time for self improvement and self care.

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12 Months of Self Care, Being Enough, Motherhood

12 Months of Self Care: A Journey to finding myself

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Maybe it was the addition of a second child. Or maybe it was the fact that said second child refused bottles, demanded to nurse every 2 hours, and disinterested her sister almost to a point of loathing. Maybe the chronic sleep deprivation was just the tip of the iceberg and it led to the resurfacing of old emotions, old worries, and new fears.

I remember riding in the passenger seat of the car, both girls’ in the back seat, when I told Kyle I was having a hard time coming to terms that Vera would be our last baby. I confessed that I had no idea who I was outside of being a mother. I mothered other people’s children before I had my own children, for crying out loud! I talked about how self conscious I had become when meeting new people because short of talking about my girl’s, I felt like I had nothing of interest to contribute. Not to mention the fact that I mostly spent my days talking to a 3 year old and a newborn so my conversation skills were left lacking. By this point tears were flowing freely. I loved our girls and I love being a mother but I felt incredibly lost as a person.

A few more months go by and I was taking a shower, trying to detangle the mess that was my post-partum hair. Mattes, tangles and precious time spent detangling this mass of dead cells all because it was the one things I was holding onto as a person. If I didn’t know who I was outside of motherhood I was at least going to have kick-ass long hair. Beth with the long hair. And it was that thought that made me put down the comb. I rinsed the remaining globs of conditioner, got out of the shower and grabbed my hair scissors. I proceeded to cut off about 6 inches of hair. I wanted to go shorter, bolder, but I lacked the confidence. I even tried to pep talk myself “It’s just hair, it will grow back, why are you holding onto this?” but even my pep talk lacked the authority to really seal the deal. I felt lighter, not because I chopped a good pound of hair off, but because I felt like it was a step in the right direction. I needed to break out of these weird confines I put myself in. I didn’t want to just be “Beth, that mom with the long hair,” I want to be “Beth: that creative, adventurous , funny and interesting woman.” You know, that Beth.

And so I sat down at my desk later that night, hair softly hitting the tops of my shoulders, and pushed myself to think outside of the box. The new year was coming up and I was going to make the most of it. I was going to use this next year to find myself. I wanted to discover things I never knew about myself, push myself to be more, do more and give more. I wanted to create more joy, happiness and laughter in my life. I wanted to relieve my heavy chest and mind of it’s anxieties and imaginary burdens. I want to become that person I’ve always dreamed of being.

After an hour or so I looked back at my notebook and I felt a sense of relief. I had a plan. The hardest part was over. A few weeks later coming towards the end of December I chopped my hair another 8 inches and it felt amazing. I felt amazing. 2018 was going to be the year of self care, and I was finally going to work on finding myself.

 

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