Press PLAY button on your life

When you’ve had your first baby, you’ve felt like your world as you know it has just flipped upside down. Your whole routine and habits have changed and your life (if you still have a life) is unrecognizable since then. And now, after a few years (or 13!) you stay there by the window with dirty dishes in your sink thinking “but I want to have a life!”.

After your child is born you have a lot of energy and enthusiasm. You are amazed every day with this beautiful creature, spending all the moments with joy mixed with fear of the unknown focusing only on this little treasure of yours. But life with a newborn is so intensive that you don’t even notice that you forget yourself every single day to the point you stop even thinking of you. You don’t listen to your tired body, you don’t recognize yourself in the mirror, you ignore the emotions that hit you more and more.

When you catch those signals on rare occasions, you count on the situation to change at some point without you doing anything for yourself. The child will be sleeping through the night finally and it will be easier for you, and you will naturally feel better, right? Anyway, you are too tired to even think of adding something else to your already busy days.

So time goes by, your children are a bit older now, walking, talking, eating more things so it’s easier to manage their needs. Or that’s what it seems. And you feel like it’s time to have a life finally. And you’re feeling that you might need to take care of YOU. Because, you maybe can (sometimes) sleep at night but it’s not enough and doesn’t change mch about how you feel inside. Empty..

More and more you need to take care of yourself because your body and soul sends you stronger signals everyday but you don’t have time and feel even worse because you have no idea how to even start. It’s hard to change your habits (and your children's habits) now and release yourself from your chores to focus on your needs. And you even tried a little, but it felt awful, you came back to your kids feeling guilty of abandoning them and feeling even worse because of it. Saying: “Bad mommy, left her children, mommy will never leave you again!” - yes, you do that to yourself.

When you are not with them, you miss them, when you are with them you cannot wait till their bedtime to have a moment to yourself. And then you are too exhausted to even start and go to bed.

Then your children are much older, you hope to take a bigger breath now as they become more independent every day. You hope to finally unpause your life and they start their teen-age years and are challenged more than ever in ways you didn’t expect and didn’t anticipate. And you don’t even know what you need to recharge your batteries, keep your mind strong and resilient and you are resentful because you have no habit to take care of your needs and you are fully spent at the same time.

Your children don’t realize you need to take care of yourself, they were never taught to think of you as a person and they are naturally focused on their changing bodies, moods and emotions, and they have no space and habits to ask Hey, Mom, what do you need right now? So they can be surprised or even say NO when they hear from you for the first time (times): “Mommy needs a moment to herself now, I’ll be with you in a few minutes”.

But it needs to happen, they need to hear it, you need to say it and you need to make it happen for yourself. Take a moment and be with you as you are, a person, a woman, not just a mother for a change. And listen and observe and ask questions to get to know you, reconnect with you and help yourself like you help anyone else around you.

Don’t wait for that magical moment when you will have time for yourself, it will never come unless YOU START. Start your life now and see how your motherhood is only your role in life and how happy you can be beyond motherhood.

When is the best time for a mother to finally start thinking about herself?