How can you summarize a decade?
Ten years can seem like such a huge amount of time when we are standing in front of it, but looking back now it also seems to have went so fast.
In this last decade I have lived in a hotel, a basement, my childhood bedroom (again) and within six different homes in two different provinces. I have changed positions in my career four times and moved to a new Province to follow it. I’ve lost close friends and made new ones. I have broken hearts, had my heart broken and even broke my own heart. I have been divorced and found love again. I’ve found new passions and outgrew old ones. I’ve travelled and explored and I’ve stayed put and hibernated. I’ve stood by my mothers side while she fought cancer, and then by my dad’s; grateful they both won their fights. I mourned the loss of my grandfather and many other friends and family members along the way. I’ve witness beautiful love stories from countless friends and family members as I attended their wedding celebrations. I’ve gained new family members with the birth all kinds of beautiful babies. (Including a nephew!)
Of all the ups and downs, the struggles and triumphs, the failures and achievements; Nothing stands out more to me as the most defining moment of my decade than becoming a mother myself.
Although its only been less than 3 years in the last ten, it’s the most defining by far. Its changed me in ways I could not imagine and it has set the stage for the person I want to become moving forward in my life. Becoming a mother has cracked my heart wide open. The amount of love I feel for my babies is indescribable; its just infinite. It’s completely drained me and completely filled me up, often both at the same time. Its been the most challenging and most rewarding experience of my life. For nearly all of 2017 and 2018 and a solid chunk of 2019 I focused my whole heart and soul into my babies. For me, that was what fulfilled me most in every way. I gave them everything I had to give, and I took great joy in that. For that season of their lives and for mine, the most important thing for us was that loving bond we created and the foundation my partner and I built for them in those first years of their lives. My whole world was about them.
Last year something started to grow in my heart from a small seed that was planted at a Mother’s retreat I attended nearly a year before. The retreat was about having it all, balance in life and motherhood. At the time of the retreat my babies were so little and I wasn’t ready to receive what that grand vision was really offering. I wanted nothing more than a bubble around me and my babies and that was perfectly just fine for us then. As my babies grew over those couples of years, their dependency on me slightly decreased and I was ready to let more into my bubble again.
Over this time I started to put more focus into ME again. This concept didn’t come easy at first. The mom guilt was overwhelming, NEXT LEVEL even. I probably should have started slow, BUT If you know me, that’s not ever how I do things. So I jumped into the Life Coaching program with The Mind Rebel Academy and spent two hours twice a week taking this class. To go from zero hours away from my babies to two hours twice a week may not seem challenging to read now, but my heart had a hard time.
However, I eventually started to realize that taking some time solely dedicated to my own growth, not only filled my own heart, but also left me with even more to give back. The grand vision of life balance became one I now had for myself. The more personal development I did, the more and more clear to me it was that my babies can be still be the center of my universe while at the same time fulfilling all the other pieces in my wheel of life.
I began to put effort back into my relationship that was taking a toll from the big changes from no children to two babies in two years. I put focus on my health and fitness again. I started reaching out to my friends again and making plans. I began building a business from the training I was taking, and writing this blog. Balance was just starting to come back into my life and it felt really good. Just as I was getting really comfortable with that, my maternity leave ended and I was knocked down HARD.
The mom guilt came back ten fold. The daycare drop offs left the babies and me in tears every morning. All the routines and good habits fell away with the huge chunk of time now consumed by work hours. Those two hours twice a week for my course on top of my work hours became painfully difficult to set aside. I cried at my desk, I cried in my car, I cried in the shower, I cried myself to sleep, I cried and cried and cried.
Then I surrendered to my new reality and eventually, the babies didn’t cry at drop off anymore. My inbox was filled with pictures of them playing outside with new friends, taking field trips and creating beautiful pieces of art with HUGE smiles on their faces. It was ok, they were ok, they were more than ok. I took longer than they did, but eventually I was ok too. I applied everything I learned so far and leaned on some of the amazing women I met on that same coaching path as me to get my ass back onto the path I was in the middle of creating for myself.
What I discovered was that it had to be hard for me. It was an opportunity to grow and growth can hurt. My biggest fear was that bubble with my babies bursting, to challenge that was never going to be easy. To be able to REALLY concur my biggest fear and trust that my babies would not only be ok, but thrive outside of the bubble I created for them, was the scariest thing I think I’ve ever done. I asked for balance, I asked for more in my wheel of life, but I was never going to let go of the safety of that bubble unless I had to. It was the final hurdle I needed to get past to truly ALLOW that balance into my life. It’s prepared me for this next chapter as I build this business, build up my relationship with my partner and continue to be the best mother I can for them. Its opened a possibility for a space I wasn’t going to open on my own.
So here I am at the start of a new decade. I’ve done a lot of ground work and learned many lessons the hard way. Although my baby bubble season will always be one of my most cherished memories in time, I am ready to step out of the bubble and into the next big vision I have for myself and my family. I’ve been cracked open and finally allowed the balance back into my life and now I am ready for a greater vision. A vision not just of balance; but a vision for a decade filled with abundance. Abundance of QUALITY time together as a FAMILY. Abundance of SUCCESS and both personal and spiritual GROWTH. Abundance of HEALTH and family focused indoor and outdoor ways to keep ACTIVE. Above all, abundance of LOVE for my babies, my partner and myself.
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