Creating Joy

My husband called me "joyless" recently.  It is a fairly startling thing to hear coming from the mouth of your beloved, but I really did nothing more than continue to be joyless that my husband found me joyless.  I continued on with the frantic, frenetic, freaked out pace of the full-time working mom.  My feet hit the floor in the morning and I moved through my days blind to my emotions and needs, these things not even registering on my constantly circling radar.  A radar that focused on:

• What needs to be done next?
• Now what needs to be done?
• Is my child happy?
• Does my child have everything she needs?
• Can I give her more?
• Am I keeping my husband happy?
• Am I going to meet that deadline or do I have to work tonight?
• Do we need milk?

By the time my feet came off the floor and I fell into sheets that had hopefully been washed within the last week, I would be so exhausted, yet wired that I needed medication to help me turn off the radar and fall asleep for a few hours.  Then it all began again.

My husband and family continued to express concern here and there in ways that I know they thought were loud and clear.  But they were not aware of the narrow-mindedness, the ultra-focused mind of the triple F (frantic, frenetic, freaked out) working mom.  Our radars are not built to catch concern for US.  Concern for our child: absolutely number one, concern for work: yes, concern for our husbands: sure, but for ourselves?  No.

Shortly after the "joyless" comment I was taking our daughter to daycare on less than favorable roads and a semi hit us.  I was driving very cautiously as I must keep my daughter safe and the semi tried to pass me as I was going too slow.  He lost control and the cab of his semi smashed into the driver side of my car sending my daughter and I spinning out of control on a major highway during morning rush hour.  We landed backwards in the ditch with a thud, completely stuck and in need of help.  I soon discovered a metaphor for my state of being; completely stuck and in need of help.

My daughter, Abigail, 22 months, was completely fine after being checked out by EMTs and her pediatrician and as I was calling for help she even asked me to, "put on some music?"  I on the other hand, I turned out to be not okay.  I didn't even bother to have myself checked out by the EMTs and wouldn't allow a check out for myself at the hospital.  I felt fine.  And I really did.  It wasn't until a couple days later that the creeping, horrible pain began to settle into my neck and travel around my  back.  What was this?  My body was forcing me to think about it.  Blast.  The last thing I can fit into my triple F working mom life.

I tried chiropractic care and didn't have much success.  I really liked her and felt she wanted to help me be well, so of course my friend, and I think the friend of a lot of working moms, guilt kept kicking me when I stopped going and tried to carry on with my working mom life through the pain.  My body will not let me continue on, though.  I have to believe that this accident happened for a reason.  I cannot continue in pain and I cannot continue to be joyless.

I have just had an evaluation with a physical therapist who specializes in neck and back problems and I feel very hopeful at this point.  He told me that he doesn't know how I get out of bed every morning and live the life I live with the state my body is in.  He doesn't even know the state my mind is in most of the time!  But I think working moms feel very much the way I responded to his comment on this.  I said, "I have to.  I don't really have much of a choice."

But we do.  We do have a choice.  A choice to stop with the crazy pace of the typical working mom life and to find the joy or create the joy that we have lost from our lives or perhaps never had in our lives.  I am going to make the choice to commit to getting physically and mentally well.  To me that means the crazy pace of the "working mom" life has to end.  Sure, I'm still going to be a working mom, I just have to do it a different way.  I need to do it in a way that creates joy in my life instead of crushing it to the point where I emit a cloud of joylessness and despair.  I never chose to do that, I think it just happens to so many of us that try to do too much and think that there is no alternative.  We build our own personal jails with walls of tasks that MUST be done otherwise we have failed, we are bad moms, wives, employees.  This must stop, at least in my life.  I'm hoping that choosing to knock down those walls of rigid responsibility will open up a whole new world and let sunlight come streaming back into my life.

Starting this blog is one of the first steps on my list of how to create more joy in my life.  I love to write, I always have.  Since I was a little girl I would have notebooks full of stories and thoughts and then it just stopped.  I realize that I've "just stopped" a lot of things that have brought me joy, but I'm taking things one step at a time. Step One: I'm going to bring the joy of writing back into my life through this blog.  Please continue to check back and share your thoughts and experiences as well.  I know there are others out there who feel the bonds of the triple F (frantic, frenetic and freaked out) working mom life.  Let's break them together!