“I feel crummy”
“Feel better Mom. Can I make ya something?”
“A cup of tea.”
“Which type?”
“Ginger. It scares the germs.”
“They’ll send Gmail to their friends…to stay away”
Sometimes, mamas have to be redirected, caused to move clear of the fullness and foibles of everyday goings on. During such occasions, we must willingly slow down; we must willingly take a respite from dynamic existing. No matter the degree to which our children might protest our making time for our personal quiet, it is essential that we fulfill our basic needs. “Basics” even now include the requirement to rest when we are ill or injured.
Not only is it important for our wellbeing that we gather the temporal resources for healing, but it is likewise important for our children that we do so. Our little and not-so-little ones need to see that grown women, when subdued by life’s caprices, engaged in self-care. We want our sons to respect the integrity of their wives and we want our daughters to respect their own worth.
As for ourselves, despite even decades of practices to the contrary, we remain capable of developing self-nurturing habits. As primary care providers, as domestic divas, as professionals, and as humans, whose worth is derived, in part, from the reality that we are essential to creation, we are obliged to take care of ourselves.
Our “down time” needn’t be hours spent sleeping or emerging in restorative baths, though those states of affairs are encouraged. Rather, our “down time” can be spent indulging in take away food, in place of crafting meals; watching our spouses and children house clean rather than marshalling nonexistent strength to chase still one more dust bunny; taking half of a day off from the office as an alternative to waiting until we are so beaten down as to necessitate taking off a full week; walking as a substitute for running; sleeping seven hours instead of “getting by” with five, and so forth.
Our holidays need not be extreme in nature or duration in order for them to have the potential to refuel us. Our holidays, though, need to be integrated into our lives.
Further, as concerns our children, vacationing from our pressures immediately recompensates us. Even while yet youths, our boys and girls benefit from witnessing we mums nap, sip, stroll or relax under a pile of blankets.
I’m convinced that my adolescent sons would not have grasped the utility of eupatorium, of milk thistle and of violets, for instance, had they not seen me use those herbal wonders in my recovery from various ailments. My children would not have learned the benefits of heating pads, of hot water bottle, and of sweats, and would not have sought to apply them, unaided, to their afflictions, had they not seen me apply those remedies to mine.
At least as importantly, my boys would not have known to offer pillows upon which to prop injured appendage, cups of tea, from which to sooth angry tummies and throats, or stuffed animal, with which to allay bad or sad moods, had they not experienced me gathering such items for myself. Those lads, as well, would have failed to realize that caring for compromised others is a boon.
As for my girls, like their brothers, it was insufficient for them to simply be nursed on fairy tales centering on healing potions or teethed on speculative fictions featuring otherworldly flora with singularly mystical restorative powers. It was and continues to be important for those missies to understand that the chief catalyst in most mending is the self and that persons negligent of their own repairs are also persons constrained in their ability to respond to others.
To wit, my girls have gained the knowledge that it is important to honor the fact that at times, circumstances will, at best, compel them to negotiate their chores, to bargain over homework deadlines, and to reach a deal, with employers, about demands. Those lasses understand that if they do not succeed in advocating for themselves when they are hurt or sick, no one else will necessarily know that they must be tucked into bed early, given soup, or encouraged to take an afternoon to explore shops or meander through rose gardens.
In the course of this education about the prudence of investing in self-care, my girls have discovered, too, the merits of employing friends for emotional catharsis, of giving over stymied feelings to visual art, of now and again following a vegan food plan, of yogi breathing, of herbal rubs and of spreading a towel on the porch in order to lay upon it motionless. They have, additionally, learned to cheer up unwell siblings by means of cookies, puppet shows, music and foot rubs.
Similar to my sons, my daughters would not have been empowered to care for themselves or for their loved ones if they had not experienced Mom caring for her laid up self. The limits I built around the sidelined me have taught my teens to operate as critical thinkers rather than as autonotoms.
My boundaries instructed them, in a critical thinking mode, that sometimes the usual heuristics for behaviors are ill-fitting and that new rules for generating choices sometimes need to be used. More exactingly, since they grasped that not all circumstances call for the same response, my children grew in their ability to produce new sets of responses. It follows that they grew in their ability to cope with more of life’s challenges than their own or others’ bad health.
“You mean we can do that?” many mothers are apt to question.
Yes, we can take care of ourselves. Yes, for our sake and for the sake of the actualizing our children’s potential, both as they relate to themselves and as they relate to others, and both as they respond to disease and as they respond to others of life’s problems, we must make time for self care.
I’m not sure if the germs ever received their electronic notice. Those nasties, however, did, for a span, at least, stay away from our home. Whereas the substances in the ginger helped to promote my healing, it was at least as important that my young ones saw me drink that stuff. In doing so, more than hot tea was served.
