Medicine for the body and soul

This is something that I sometimes (okay, often) neglect to do. In the busyness that is my life - parenting, working, taking care of a house, renovations, bills, obligations, and on top of everything else, a relocation - it is really easy to just neglect the things that make me feel good, because they seem like they aren't an efficient use of my time. 

I know I'm not alone in doing this. I think many mothers (particularly if they are also juggling work and other obligations) can attest that they often feel they have emptied their tanks in giving and taking care of others to the detriment of themselves. You see them at the supermarkets, the parks, the pre-schools, looking harassed and tired, hair scraped back into a ponytail, wearing whatever was the closest thing to hand in the morning. 

I have always been glad I chose to become a parent, even during the darkest hours of parenting (and some of them were, frankly, pretty dark in the toddler years). Admittedly I never had it in the original life plan to be a single parent, but even that has turned out pretty well, all things considered. But let's face it, parenting can be a real juggle, and often the ball that gets dropped is our own self-care.

Those things that make life good sometimes get put to one side. The simple good things like eating good, tasty, healthy food, having a friend over, reading a really good quality book, exercising. You know, the stuff that you need to put a bit of effort into and feel better for afterwards. But somehow in all the busyness those things can get put aside for convenience food, television, rubbish magazines, surfing the net instead of the waves. Easy, no-brainer stuff that doesn't require any real effort and leaves you feeling kind of tired and depleted, even a bit annoyed, not to mention with a nagging feeling that this isn't the right way to live.

I paid the price for neglecting myself recently. I've been working hard, stressing, living on junk, and it all caught up with me. On a recent trip I caught something icky. I spent the entire trip feeling lousy, and very depressed, came home and felt even worse. The weather was awful, I was sick, and my battery just ran out of juice. I didn't have the energy to go to the supermarket so I ate a lot of convenience food and takeaways. Even while I was eating them I knew they would make me feel a whole lot worse, and they did. I just got totally overwhelmed and wanted to crawl under the covers and not come out. Obviously, for a mother, that wasn't actually an option.

Finally after a week of wallowing and feeling like crap physically and mentally, I decided I needed to do something to help myself. I strongly believe in the power of good food as medicine, so I went to the supermarket and got lots of healthy food. Then I went to the health food shop and got a vitamin D supplement (to make up for the woeful lack of sun lately) and an Iron supplement. I'd been tired and craving meat, which is unusual for me, a vegetarian, so that was the clue I probably was low in iron. I also bought myself a new book, The Time Traveler's Wife (which looks really good), and rented a DVD I wanted to watch. My ex had my daughter for the day, so I spent the day and evening just looking after myself.

After only two days of eating good food and taking time to do things that I really like, I already feel so much better. Way, way better, even though I still have the tail end of the flu. I don't know why I let things slip, when it really does only take a little extra effort for the rewards. I've been doing all the normal things I do - parenting, working, taking care of the house - but just changing a few small things has made a big positive difference to my energy levels.

So although I still have (as always) a full in-tray of things to do, and could easily spend my entire evening doing chores or work, or mindlessly surfing the net, now I'm going to switch off the computer, switch off the TV, make a nice cup of tea and a healthy snack, put my feet up and start reading The Time Traveler's Wife and actually relax mindfully.

I think it will be just what the doctor ordered.