What has happened during my week off of Facebook.

A week ago I signed off from Facebook and deleted my shortcuts and bookmarks. It was kind of a mental health break for myself, I'd started to not like the person I was turning into as I peeked into other people's lives on Facebook and almost started to judge myself through the perspective of other people in other situations.

Now, a week later, I'm looking at a lot of things from a much more balanced and healthy perspective. It's been a busy week in many ways, and stressful things have happened, but without having the crutch of being able to vent about my stress on Facebook, I've been getting back in touch with some of my favorite (and healthier) ways to regain balance and peace when things get chaotic. Even just little things like a nice cup of herbal tea or reading a couple of paragraphs in a good book. Things that feel REAL, instead of that kind of creepy feeling of living vicariously through other people's experiences.

Here are some of the things that have happened in my life over the past week.

• I've read a LOT of books. Mostly to my kids, but I've been turning to my books more and more, which is nice because I've always been a bookworm and I've come to believe that I "don't have time" to read. But even just sitting down to read with my kids more often has been really nice, for all of us.
• My phone has needed to be charged every day. This is new to me! Normally I charge it every 3 or 4 days. It's getting a lot more use, since being off Facebook means a lot more texting and calling to keep in touch with people! And there are still more people I'm wanting to check in with.
• I've written. Not blog posts, in particular, but actual work. Chapters of books I started months ago that have been sitting untouched, and very early work (outlines, mostly) of articles that I plan to finish writing and actually try to sell. Like a real grown up writer. It's been over two years since I had any paid writing work, so it feels a little awkward as I ease back into it but I'll get there.
• We've done a lot with organizing the house to be baby safe, because our little Baby Bear started crawling and hasn't stopped moving since then. She took a few tentative paces forward, and then did it again, and then woke up the next morning crawling EVERYWHERE. Nothing holds this little girl back. So we've been working on setting up "baby stations" all around the house, while getting things that are unsafe up and out of her reach. The boys are so protective of her, so this is a project they've helped with very willingly.
• We've had some unexpected days off from school for Bug. It was for a scary reason (wildfires, near our part of the county but thankfully still some distance from our town) but it was still nice to have him home and have that time with him. This mama is so ready for summer break to start!!
• I've spent a lot more time being in touch with a good friend of mine here in town, an absolutely wonderful woman whom I've known since our oldest kids were in kindergarten, but who has more recently become a very dear friend of mine. Words can't even express how much she has meant to me! When I was struggling with depression on and off over the past few months, leading up to this time when I've decided to sort of hit the "reset" button and step back into my bubble, she has always been there reaching out to me and offering friendship and a helping hand and love, and that has helped so much!
• Cooking! So much cooking!! I've taken away the temptation for myself to go "grumble grumble grumble, I just made dinner last night for these people and I've cooked them meals all day and I've got to feed them again?? Hey, what's your family having for dinner? Oh that looks good. Hey, you get to eat shrimp and I've had a craving for shrimp for weeks but it hasn't gone on sale, now I'm kind of jealous that you get to eat what I want. Hey, why do YOU get to have takeout? I want to have takeout. Grumble grumble grumble." You know?? I know you feel me, we've all been there on some level. I hope. Please tell me I'm not the only one. Anyway, so much cooking! I've made a lot of yummy dinners lately and I've been proud of the way I've been stretching food, using leftovers, planning several meals at once, budget shopping and so on. Amazing what I can accomplish when I put my full energy into our meals, instead of putting half of that energy towards procrastinating and wishing I was eating other people's food!
• We've spent a LOT of time hashing out this car situation and trying to make a decision. Something needs to happen, because our old Subaru has so many things going on with it that it either needs to be retired or have an enormous amount of work put into it, and one of those things needs to happen NOW. We got an incredibly generous offer from my dad, who said that he wants to add to our car budget. He thinks that the plan that makes the most sense is to get a second vehicle, so that we can stop this terrifying juggling of one old and very tired car that is threatening to die completely, and he said that he wants to help make that happen for us. We were shocked and surprised and overjoyed, because this is something that will make a HUGE difference for our family. So we're back to shopping for a second car, with the plan that as soon as we find one, we'll start looking for another one so we can retire this poor old Subaru. It's going to be a big year for cars in our household! And I'll be honest, shopping for two new cars back to back and all of the change that is going to bring about, is kind of wreaking havoc with my anxiety. But I feel like I'm managing it much better than I have for a long time.
• Baby Bear and I went up together to tell the "Time for all ages" story during the church service this morning. It was so sweet to talk to all the kids as they gathered around us, and it really touched my heart how many people told me afterward that they love watching her and our older kids growing up in the congregation. The connections we're making at our church really make it feel like home, and from my own perspective of remembering how much my high school youth group and the rest of the congregation meant to me, and how influential some of them were in my life, it makes me feel deeply thankful to have found this kind of spiritual home for our family.

I think that's about it, as far as major events. I'm missing the friends I keep in touch with only on Facebook, so definitely planning to sign on to go through my notifications soon and see what people are up to, but I have to be careful because it still feels too easy to get back into the habit of being on there way too much. It snuck up on me, I used to be much busier outside of the house and I don't have a "smart phone" so naturally I wasn't online as much, but since we've moved farther away from town and I'm spending much more time at home than I used to, it's been too easy for me to keep going back to the screen. Just to see that picture, just to check that notification, just to see the latest things in the news feed - well, it all adds up, not only in terms of time in a day but also in terms of my personal energy. It had become an energy drain, so that I had less to give to other areas of my life.

Some time soon I'll get a better sense of balance and I'll be on there more often again. But for now I'm giving much needed attention to many other areas of my life, and I'm feeling pretty good about that choice.

Period of introspection.

For almost the past week I've been taking a break from Facebook. It's been refreshing in a surprising kind of way. Since I'm cut off from being able to distract myself by peeking in on other peoples lives via my news feed, I've had to do some very real work looking at myself and my life and my own beliefs and priorities.

Six months ago we moved to a new home, and in almost every way it was a very positive move for our family. We're now in a much safer and more family friendly neighborhood, the children are growing up surrounded by animals and gardens and nature instead of pavement and dead grass, and they can run and play and use their imaginations and roam outside and do all of the wonderful things that little boys can do, without being limited by the restrictions where we used to live. Today while talking with a friend, I suddenly realized that here we feel comfortable sleeping with the windows open after a hot day, while at our old place I couldn't sleep without checking that they were all locked. So it's been a very positive thing for our family. But we have been a one car family for the past five years, and moving farther out from town to a nice rural area meant that I lost the ability to just load up the kids into the stroller and walk down Main Street to do whatever we felt like doing.

I'm a Sagittarius. I'm a wanderer, I can't help it, it's just who I am. I get terribly restless and require changes of scenery to keep my brain and my body active. A great deal of the support system I'd built for myself, building up our new home and new life out here in California, was based on what I was able to walk to, so within a mile and a half or so from where we lived. Not only was I the fittest I've been in my adult life, with all the walking, but I had a steady stream of stuff to keep us busy. Play dates at the playground, story and craft groups and children's yoga at the library, iced coffee and conversation at my favorite coffee shop, cheap produce-of-the-day at the little corner grocery store. You get the idea, it wasn't anything super exciting or elaborate, but it was what I kept myself and the kids busy with every day.

But out here at our new place, I've been busy for the past couple of months throwing myself a giant pity party. It's very quiet and peaceful out here, and there are gorgeous walks around the neighborhood and horses and dogs to visit and lots of wildlife to see, but I've let myself get stir crazy out of regret for what I don't have anymore. I miss the things that I used to do, but it's gotten to the point where that has interfered with my ability to be peaceful and present right here and now. So a few days ago I decided that I've had enough, and I cut myself off. I posted a status saying that I was taking a break, it was nothing personal to do with anybody, just something I needed to do, and I signed off. I deleted my shortcuts and deleted it from my frequent pages list. And it's been good for me.

Over the past few days I've been realizing that I often use negative words such as "boring" or "slow" or "same old" to describe my life and the things I do, but that's not true at all. However, when I spend my free time scrolling through my Facebook feed and seeing posts about people traveling to interesting places, dining out at places that don't have a children's menu, or - to be perfectly honest - even just being able to load up in the car and go run errands without needing to wait for their significant other to get home, I can't help but start to compare what I'm doing with what they're doing. And it's not right, and not fair to myself or to my family and friends, so while I do miss seeing the updates about what my loved ones are doing, and all the beautiful photos of babies and special moments and loved ones, I realize that I truly needed this time to get myself in check.

This is MY journey, this is not anybody else's journey, and I can't compare myself to anyone else because this story is only our own. A year ago it was still a struggle to keep enough food in the house and we were still visiting the food pantry from time to time for some extra help, so to spend so much time feeling sorry for myself for not having a second car was unreasonable. We're finally in a position where, for the first time, all of The Man's income covers all of our expenses. We still have to be more tight in the grocery budget than I particularly care for, but we can feed ourselves without help. We don't have the fastest speed of internet available but we don't have to choose between paying the internet and paying the phones anymore. A couple of people I have great love and respect for have told me that I'm pushing too hard for something that's not ready to happen, and it's true. So even though on some level I truly believed that I needed to check in on Facebook every day to see all of the latest updates, I've discovered that life has gone on just fine without me knowing what's going on.

It's not permanent, but I'm not sure when I'll go back on and start reading my news feed and sharing posts again. There's not really a particular goal I'm striving for or any concrete way to measure the results of my Facebook hiatus, but I figure that as long as I'm content and able to distract myself out of the desire to sit and scroll through the latest posts, I'll just stick with it for another day. That's really where I am with it at this point, one day at a time. I'm remembering that my life isn't "boring" or "slow" or "same old" at all, and there are very important reasons why we've made the choices we've made along the way. Why we've decided that me being here with our kids right now is more important than having vacations or expensive dinners or new cars. And my wonderful husband has been here, while I've been in my funk feeling sorry for myself, pointing out that the things our kids have learned in their lives, they've learned from me. The way they are proud and confident, kind to animals and to other people, trusting, intelligent (and lots of questioning authority, does that sound like anyone you know?) And he's been reminding me that even though they haven't gotten to their playgroups or the playground for a few months now, they're still here with me and getting all of the care and love and nurturing in all of the ways that are very important to our family.

So this is me, retreating into my little bubble, focusing on my beautiful children and our home and my close circle of friends and family outside of Facebook. And our part of the state has been scorching with an intense and early start to wildfire season, so it's been tempting to go on there as an easy source for local news, but then at the same time I realize that my anxiety peaks during intense and scary situations where I keep on reading stories from other people who are freaked out. The hysteria builds easily, and just because it's over a social networking site doesn't make it any less of a crowd mentality situation. I've been getting my information about the fires directly from the Cal Fire website and sometimes going directly to the CBS website for news summaries, and keeping in touch by phone with local friends. My anxiety, after spending the past couple of months slowly building up as I spun around in frustration, is finally melting away and I'm finding my peaceful place again, so being aware of Facebook being a possible trigger for that is a huge deal for me.

This time has been helping me regain some much needed balance and grounding in my life. So while I am sending love to all of my friends and family, I'm still not quite in a place where I'm ready to get back into it, and I'm finding each day that I have plenty to do to keep myself very busy. This time has been good for me and it's been good for my kids, and at the end of the day, in my own life on my own journey, those are the things that matter the most.

Plus, I'm taking the time to work on my writing. Real writing, several different projects, and I'm feeling very fulfilled by that. And I had a great time organizing my Pinterest boards! You can't go wrong with productive writing sessions and Pinterest.

Hmm, we need an accountant and a lawyer.

As I plug away working on the business plan for the holistic health center we're dreaming of, and study the rules for becoming a non-profit organization, I'm realizing two things - we need an accountant, and we need a lawyer. Handling money (and pretty much anything to do with numbers) is not my strong suit, so while I have the best of intentions and a clear vision for how this whole thing needs to be set up, somebody who is specifically trained in handling money should give their professional insight before we get started. Same thing goes for the lawyer. I want to make sure we're following the law along the way so we don't run into problems later, and especially where health care is concerned I just want to make sure we're doing everything the way we are required to. There will be a lot of legal documents along the way and I want to have someone who speaks that language on our team.

So just to put this out there, if you or someone you know has financial or legal expertise and an interest in holistic, natural health care, and would be willing to collaborate and share your insight on this project, we would be so very appreciative. It would have to be pro bono at this point but when we are up and functioning and have a budget to work with these will be available as paid positions! Nobody wants to work for free but maybe there are a couple of people out there with these qualifications who can share our vision for a beautiful, rural setting with several small, quaint office buildings where natural health practitioners such as naturopaths, massage therapists, midwives, counselors, and more can meet with their clients in a peaceful environment that is far from the typical medical office atmosphere. Surrounded by community gardens and areas for group events, where clients pay one low monthly co-op fee and have access to a wide variety of holistic practitioners, to promote a lifestyle of wellness and disease prevention, using more natural options when some kind of treatment is necessary. A birth center with full-time midwives and on-staff doulas, a center for pregnancy care, natural birth, and postpartum care for the mothers of Ramona and the surrounding communities. Sliding scale payment options to make natural health care an affordable choice for low income people, as well as a full time on-site case manager to help coordinate services and support for individuals and families who need it. If this is something you believe our community would benefit from, something you have an interest in and would like to help make it a reality, please take a moment to fill out this form and let us know how you'd like to help. Even if you don't know the first thing about accounting or legal documents, if you have an idea for how you can help with this, we'd really love to hear it.

Click here for the form where you can enter your contact info and what you want to help with. So far everyone we've talked to about this idea has been very supportive and positive, and I truly believe that we can make this happen!

My dream - a health care and birth co-operative.

For years now, since my pregnancy with our second child, I have had this little idea in the back of my brain that has grown and taken different shapes and forms, and sometimes I haven't thought much of it for long stretches of time but it's always there. It's a combination of some of my biggest passions - holistic health, natural birth, community-style living and work, family support, good quality health care available to ALL people - and the best part is that my husband is fully on board and supportive of this plan. So after a great deal of discussion and brainstorming, we've decided that it's time to put one foot in front of the other and start moving forward towards this plan, even if it's at a snails pace. We have a name and a vision and even a pretty solid plan that we've talked out, so I don't feel like we're flying blind. I'm not fooling myself into thinking it will be easy - in fact I think it will be a ton of very hard work. But we're ready to try!

What I'm envisioning is a large piece of land where we can set up multiple buildings, where we can live and also where we can have office space to rent out. My main vision is of a health center with a focus on pregnancy and birth, but I'd love to be able to offer whole life services if we can get enough interest and participation from providers. We would provide a beautiful space - complete with community vegetable gardens, workshops, and other activities to get people together and helping each other - where natural health care providers can come together to serve clients, outside of the standard idea of a hospital or clinic. A place where we can come together to promote wellness and good health, and take a holistic approach to managing health care by making it easy for the entire team to come together to help the ENTIRE client. Are you feeling me? I'm very excited about this, and I'm even more excited about how into it my husband is! I can see this being something our whole family would work together on.

One place for your natural health care. This plan originated when I learned about The Farm in Tennessee, the midwifery center which was started by the wonderful Ina May Gaskin, a pioneer in modern midwifery in the US. As soon as I learned about what she does, I wanted to create a place similar to that where women and their families could come to ease into a comfortable and safe place for birth, a haven where they would have access to midwives, doulas, maybe aromatherapists, massage therapists, counselors, and more. And yes, recently I've gotten into the show Private Practice (late to the party, as usual!) and I love the idea of a health care co-operative. Expanding beyond pregnancy and birth services and offering options to all age ranges - pediatrics, family practice, in my wildest dreams even hospice services, because I believe that we all deserve a peaceful birth and a peaceful death.

Services to support the entire life span. Workshops, not only about health and wellness related topics, but also about good old fashioned life skills. Community gardens, and workshops where we can learn how to work in the gardens and what to do with the food we harvest from them. Cottage style homes so that we could offer the different practitioners an on-site place to live, or at least a comfortable place to stay while waiting on a laboring mama. Birthing rooms, or birthing cottages, where the entire family can be comfortable for the whole duration of labor, where supportive and safe people are on premises to help care for the older children while the parents work through labor and birth together. The ability to have sliding scale payments or bartering services so that low income families can have access to the same good quality health services. 

This is an enormous plan and feels overwhelming, but we'll never get anywhere by sitting and thinking about it, so after a great deal of discussion we've decided to go for it. And it still feels overwhelming, and I'm still not quite sure how to get it going, but we've been gathering lots of information about how to create a nonprofit organization and we're slowly heading down that path.

What we need now is to know who will be enthusiastic and supportive of this plan with us. Who will our supporters be? Anyone who would want to be involved with a project like this. A practitioner, a client, a lawyer, an activist, or "just" a caring community member. And ultimately we'll need to start fundraising. It will be slow going because I will be carefully looking into laws and regulations at each step along the way to make sure that we're doing things properly right from the start. But I believe in this plan. I believe that this is something that will fulfill a major need, and I believe that it is possible to make this happen. I believe that it will be a TON of work, but that it will be well worth it when we see it take shape.

Connecting with our kids.

After a long and harrowing week I was browsing around on Pinterest looking for inspiring blogs and fantastic quotes about parenting mindfully and peacefully. This fantastic series is one that I came across, and I will link to it here.

The series is called 10 simple ways to connect with your child. It was originally posted as a weekly series but all of the posts are up so you can see the whole set now. It still seems like it might be worth it to do the exercise one week at a time, though, to really focus on each one. Each of these concepts is so simple but makes such a big difference to kids - or, really, to anybody we know and love. <3

(From the Human Rights for Human Children Facebook page, which shares a lot of fantastic quotes and information, by the way)

Feeling beautiful.

At the risk of showing how insecure and shallow I can really be ;-) I have been struggling with my postpartum body this time around. Before getting pregnant with Baby Girl I was, for the first time, at my pre-kids weight, the same weight and clothing size I was when my husband and I got married 8 years ago when I was 23. After so much work to get so far, losing 80 pounds from my heaviest recorded weight, I feel set back and a little frustrated about having to put away those small, cute clothes.

In a confusing twist, though, at the same time I feel beautiful, and today I realized that I feel more beautiful than I did after either of my older two kids were born.

Is it because of the weight? I don't know, it might be. After my oldest was born I had major body issues in general, having had an unplanned c-section and having to process feelings about my body "failing" in childbirth. My postpartum depression was intense and as quickly as I lost the pregnancy weight after he was born, I gained it back by scarfing down starchy comfort food. After my second was born I felt fantastic, in comparison - no PPD, I healed very well from his birth, got right back into my routine. But I was heavy when I got pregnant with him, so of course I was still heavy after he was born, and I wasn't particularly happy with my hair, and was having some random skin issues at the time, and so on and so forth. I felt pretty good but wasn't feeling particularly beautiful.

This time I don't know what it is. I'm around 160 pounds and around a size 12. Quite a bit larger than the 140 and size 6 to 8 a little over a year ago. But that's okay, I'm fine with it, so I don't know if it's really about the weight. Maybe it's in the hair, I'm quite a bit happier with my hair these days. But I don't think it's really as shallow as that. Maybe it's the self-confidence I got from delivering Baby Girl at home with nobody but my husband and I. (Long story short, labor was looooooong long long, but then when things finally progressed it was FAST and she was born before my midwife arrived!) I think most of what is beautiful comes from underneath, from things that are unseen, things like self-confidence, inner strength, kindness and generosity.

For the past couple of years I've been on a journey of natural healing and wellness, working on myself emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually as well as physically. Maybe all of that under the surface of my skin and my hair and my weight and everything else that is visible on the outside is what shines in me and makes me feel like I've got some of that beautiful earthy mama vibe going on. Whatever it is, I love it and I vow to make a conscious effort to hold onto this feeling, and remind myself of it when I am feeling rather lumpy and dumpy about my appearance.