Susan Senator
All happy families are not alike...
All happy families are not alike...
Enough About Me, Let’s Hear About You
Wow. Here I am, thinking I’m done with the book, getting to chapter 6, combing through it for problems, and I realize I did not ask anyone about their self image!!!!
How do you think you look? How do you feel about your own self-care routines, as parents? I have already asked a lot of you what do you do for fun, but now I need to know: how do you take care of yourself? What is your physical self-image like? How do you make yourself feel good about who you are? There are so many (moms especially, of autistic and non-autistic kids) who have told me that it’s a miracle if they even manage to take a shower, they have so much going on. So what do you do? If you are one of the Infrequent Showerers, or if you take three a day; if you haven’t had a haircut in a year (that’s me, until recently) or if your highlights are the one thing you will not compromise — I want to know. Or the other, accompanying issues: exercise, diet, buying clothes, wearing makeup, dressing up? Any special routines or rituals that you have given up or that you have instituted, for yourself?
Comments right here are fine, but if you are willing to have a conversation, email me so I can call you. I am going to record your answers, so you have to be willing to be quoted. I don’t mention last names and I don’t have to mention your kids’ names, I only need your state/country.
This is your chance to brag, complain, shrug, whatever it is you do about that person in the mirror.
Thank you!
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I don’t spend alot of time on myself. The other day my teenage daughter saw the lipstick I use..there was like nothing left to it, shes like mom go get new lipstick!!! That struck me so funny, that I let my lipstick get like that, a concave glimpse of pink, without it even occurring to me to go get a new one. In my life right now that seems way too self indulgant! The biggest thing I do for myself is eat right,watch my figure and stay slim…I get my haircut and highlighted twice a year…thats about it!
Glad you asked.
I go to yoga once a week. I go to a zen meditation class once a week. I go religiously! In addition I try to meditate daily for at least 20 minutes and do yoga 3x a week at home. I mostly fail at this because of time contraints and/or laziness. The two classes, though, truly save my sanity.
We as a family eat pretty well, no junk food at all, very little packaged food, no sodas or even juices. Pretty much whole foods and water/milk. Would love to eat all organic, but who can afford that?! We eat out maybe 3x year.
Skin care and hair care – very minimal. Just water and moisturizer for face and drugstore shampoo/conditioner for hair. Haircut maybe once a year – slowly going gray but so far it looks pretty good!
Pretty active with walking/yard work/bike riding.
(I rarely rarely buy new clothes and my old ones are getting pretty ratty. This makes me sad but the $ is just not there!)
Thanks, guys. I used them both, but Susan, I need to know where you are from (state?)
It took me a couple of years after my autie was born to start taking care of myself again. Those first 3 years, I was just in a tailspin of sleep deprivation and a flurry of doctor and therapy appointments. I finally got a membership at a really great gym, and treated myself to going for 2 hours 2-3 times a week. Then I got pregnant. Then the preterm labor started. Sigh. The baby is 14 months old now. I am begging my husband to let me renew my gym membership (it’s not cheap), as I am slowly morphing into a fire breathing dragon (personality-wise).
I was doing pretty well for a few months, managing to shower daily and style my hair and put on makeup and even (gasp!) jewelry. Lately, though, I’m just not able to. I feel myself sliding back into that black hole of depression (the baby is having health problems, I’m worried sick), and I need a lifeline.
I NEED to go back to the gym, and it hasn’t got a damned thing to do with losing weight (although I could stand to lose 100lbs. or so…). It has EVERYTHING to do with needing some peace and quiet, with needing to take care of my body and my soul.
I felt happy and content when I was able to go to that stupid gym. It sounds insane, but that place was like an oasis for me. Yes, I was still fat, but I felt relaxed and calm and in control and HEALTHY. I am a shell of that person now. I feel anxious, fat, ugly, and mean, and it’s showing in my mothering. It’s sad.
My two luxuries are: being able to get the gray professionally treated. Coloring is expensive and time consuming, but worth it in my opinion. I will turn 50 in about a month and went gray early. I still have children in elementary school and got tired of everyone assuming they were my grandchildren. My other indulgence is pedicures. Since I live on the coast it rarely gets cold and everyone here wears sandals year round. So, I try to get a pedicure once a month. I gave up on the exercise/workout routine. With a full time job and three children (one with autism) I just could never find the time.
From Rhode Island, right next to you!
Susan