Rest Got Me Here
My blogging has taken a hit lately. My last post was February 3rd. That’s a long time.
Blog hiatuses are a pattern with me. Tax season, kids, summer, Kits Pool, biking, hiking, life in general- they all get in the way.
In the past, guilt would have made that list too. I’ve learned guilt doesn’t actually do anything for me except drag me down and eat up time I don’t have. Its voice still shows up, but I face it down and send it away now. That takes about thirty seconds these days. It used to take weeks.
Self-blame used to eat up even more time. I’d spend hours arguing with myself over why I wasn’t blogging. It went something like: you spent every night this week watching Netflix after the kids went to bed; you could’ve been working, or blogging, or exercising. And my answer: I was so tired I probably would have made mistakes, written badly, or hurt myself. Then I’d eat some chocolate chips to feel better, and pass out.
None of that guilt or self-blame ever actually brought me back to blogging.
What did was taking time for myself.
Last week I was at camp with my kids. Someone else cooked every meal. No laundry. Tax season was finally over. My kids are at the age where they disappear with friends, and I only see them for our daily hour together and at bedtime. I had time. I read a book. I swam every day. I actually got to talk to other moms.
Five days of real rest, and here I am blogging again, from a place of calm instead of guilt. It’s so much easier this way. This post took me an hour. The guilt-and-self-blame ones used to take days.
This theme keeps circling back for me: rest leading to everything else working better, and I see the opposite of it constantly in my work with people navigating separation and divorce. So much angst and blame gets wrapped up in that process.
I understand it firsthand. The years around my own separation and divorce were brutal. I used to sit on the couch wondering if I was having a heart attack. I felt guilty any time I took time for myself, so I kept pushing through, certain things would get better eventually. I blamed myself, my co-parent, probably my parents too, for the state of things. I took almost no time for myself, and my life was hard because of it. Arguments with my co-parent could drag on for weeks. Nothing worked.
Things got better once I started actually resting. That took time. It’s been four years since my separation, and rest still isn’t a permanent fixture in my life, but it’s getting closer because I can feel what it does when it’s there. Blame is mostly gone too. Mostly. It’s a sneaky one.
When I’m not in emotional upheaval, everything runs more smoothly. Simple to say. Not simple to live.
I’ll come back to this theme again. It’s the kind of thing that needs repeating.
