Tuesday 29 September 2015

The only way out is through

Everything happens to you and for you. Milk it.

With the recent neck injury, my body went into a downward spiral of inflammation. Immune response slowed down. I picked up a cold. Day by day I was getting stiffer and weaker. Came to a point that I couldn't go through the first 15 minutes of my usual workout. I started reacting defensively to people, tried to control the kids.

Once again my body has left me no other choice but to figure this out. So, I started with neck stretches and hip openers. Both were too tight to stretch out. I took a deep breath and got the dowel from under the couch. If you are not familiar with dowelling (self massage, here is the link http://www.yogaworlds.net/10528/), it's similar to foam rolling, but done with a rounded piece of wood, hence making it more precise, going through deeper tissues, and waaaay more painful. 3 hours and numerous moans and thoughts of suicide later, I was knots free. All of me. It felt almost unnatural. I slept like a baby for the first time in a month.
The next day I went to the gym. Weights felt like feather, routine barelly broke my sweat. Why was I avoiding the stick for so long? Well, I did what I did. Now that it's done, what can I learn from it?

You gain courage and strength by every experience that makes you stop and look fear in the face.

If adversity would not present itself, I would not get the courage to take the steps to better a bearable.

Silence is better than bullshit

The other day I went internal. Barely spoke to anyone or made eye contact. Kinda hard to do when you have to make dinner, feed kids, give them bath, do homework, cleanup, put PJs on, take them to bed, all preferably without crying and arguing. Amazing thing happened - they were cooperating. Yuri made sure Alissa had her snack and gave her the watter for painting, she shared iPad with him.
They took bath on their own. They put on PJs I layed out for them.

Before bed, Yuri came to hug me and said "Mommy, thank you for taking care of yourself."
You never know how influential you will become if only you listen to what you really want to do, instead of pleasing everyone around you.
I could've stepped over my need to be quiet and play a happy mom, participate in the activities, but would I see them care for each other when I can't? Would I get overwhelmed and humbled by my son's wisdom?

Being true to who you are serves everyone.
Keeping yourself silently unhappy because you are afraid of not being liked harms everyone.