The Recovery Taboo

I'm in recovery mode this week, and I'm proud to admit it.




Well, that's not entirely true. Let's try it again.



I'm in recovery mode this week, and I feel really guilty to admit it. I will admit it, if you push me hard enough, but I feel extremely guilty about it. I've been talking to friends this week, most of them other moms, and I've found one general similarity amongst us: we all lay much more guilt on ourselves than anyone else.

We blame ourselves for everything. The kitchen isn't clean? It's because WE didn't get around to cleaning it. (Just forget about the fact that most of us do not live alone and therefore, we have OTHER PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE WHO CAN CLEAN). This is not a dig on significant others - I'm not going that route with this post. (Breathe, Mike, this isn't about you...). But we, as women, seem to want to do it all. We want to make things so easy on everyone else that we care for - and so we take on too much.

Everyone who knows me in real life is probably giggling to themselves right now. I am the Queen of Saying Yes. If you need something done, just ask Heidi to do it - she can't say no! I find myself saying yes to something, even while my whole body is screaming no. My brain is yelling at me to "Abort! Abort!" but my mouth just doesn't get the message.

And sometimes, we have to admit that we can't do it all. We need recovery time. So right now, I am in recovery and am trying hard to overcome the guilt that I feel for taking a few days (or a week) to let myself recover from doing too much.

Last weekend, we were sick. Violently ill was my favourite phrase for the experience - we were the sickest we've been in a long time. Somehow, I was the first to recover from the puking....and so on Sunday, merely 48 hours after being too sick to move off of the bathroom floor (as I sobbed on the phone to my mother, who lives 5 states away, trying to get her to drive through a snowstorm to rescue me), I was back to running errands, doing the bazillion loads of laundry that had accumulated during the illness, and letting everyone else nap as I washed the dishes, mopped the floor, restocked our groceries, and cooked bland meals for us to attempt to eat.

I didn't let myself recover enough - Monday and Tuesday are blurs for me. I was exhausted, barely staying awake as I jumped back into the school and home routine.

That is why now, I am in recovery. I am letting my body rest - workouts have been few and far between, and when I do get up the energy to work out, they're very mild. I'm concentrating more on choosing healthy foods to eat, and catching up on much-needed sleep (and reading).

I'm not sure how this will effect my weigh-in on Saturday, but you know what? The mental sanity that I'm keeping, and the excitement of starting up again when I'm rested, are worth it to me. I did cheat, and weigh myself this morning, and I'm still the same - no more, no less.

And you know what? I'm okay with that. We moms need to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves - our WHOLE selves.

That's why I'm in recovery, and proud of it.