decompress

Oh motherhood! It's a lot like going to work at times. There's good days, there's not so good days, there's a fair share of really, really bad days. The main difference, to me, is not the fact that you don't get paid monetarily for the job you do as a mother. It's the fact, that you really do take your work home with you around the clock. Unlike the 9-5 workday where you can leave your workplace and join your colleagues for happy hour, those happy "hours" have been replaced with dinner, bathtime and bedtime and none of those activities is about you.

Most days that is fine, because this is what you signed up for, right? But just like work, there is always that day. The day, where you'll tell your kids they don't need to take a bath today because they smell, "fine", you'll tell them they played too long so there is no time for a bedtime story because it's already late, or you look forward to 8:00pm because you know that's when they're supposed to be asleep Now that I'm a mother, I can remember times when the Colonel was just too darn exhausted from her day and would shut her door for the night. I've been guilty of quite of a few of these kinds of days in my "career" but have figured out that in order to stay "inspired and motivated", I must find make the time to decompress.

My favorite method of decompressing may not be for everybody. But I've realized that I enjoy silence and that I'm a bit of an introvert. I take 5 minutes after the girls are completely asleep (snoring asleep, not I just put them to bed and they're settling down asleep). I go to my living room, turn off the lights and just sit in silence on the couch. The sitting is very important because with all the lights out I have a higher chance of falling asleep if I lay down. So I sit, just perfectly still, listening to my breathing, the humming of the refrigerator in the kitchen or playing some classical piano on the iPod. Either way, I try to focus on just one sound to get centered and let the decompressing begin. Some like to call it meditation but for me decompressing just fits. Ever since I've incorporated this practice, I've found it easier to decompress on demand. Through the motherhood experience, you learn really fast to be flexible. If I don't have the space (my living room) nor the time (evenings) to decompress, I can easily find a few seconds of breathing at the playground, car, grocery store that make a world of difference when everything seems so chaotic and noisy.

What's your favorite way to decompress? How do you fit it into your schedule?