Life is crazy, I’m not going to lie. Last year we were so busy traveling that I never really had a chance to stop and think. This year is still the same busy-ness that so many of you live: work, kids, dog(s), grad school, family, house care… The list goes on and on and on. The biggest change has been moving, of course. I left my single-mama home, a space that Colby and I had to ourselves, with the luxury of not having to accommodate the needs of others. I left my support network of friends and family. I am no big fan of change, and it’s no secret that I would usually prefer to stick with “the Devil I know” than to enter into a new situation.
I wasn’t nice to my kid. I wasn’t nice to my partner. I reserved all my kindness and spent it at school, and some days I didn’t even have enough for them. I stomped through life, demanding that everyone Follow Me! Right now! Hurry up, I’m going to be late! The furrows in my forehead were dangerously close to becoming a permanent fixture on my face. This shit was not good. 
I knew this was not the kind of parent, or person, I had set out to be. I’m the first to embrace the humanity of mistakes, but I needed to make some changes. Thinking back to my early years of parenting, and how I made peace with the incredibly difficult situation I was in, I remembered. I ran, I cooked, I went to yoga.
I’ve been running for over a year now. That was a step.
I moved through three rounds of purposely clean eating to re-center how I needed food and family to converge.
Then, I went to yoga. Which, judging by the length of this post, is another story (Matt says I tend to talk too much, get distracted too easily, but who cannot see that this all is a story about the exact same thing!? Sheesh). But anyway. After a mad dash down Central Street, I finally made it.
I want to stay there forever. People tell me what to do, when to breathe in, and out. It smells like Nag Champa. It’s sunny and warm. No one cares if have pigtails.
Do any of you feel like somehow, some way, you resemble one of those dollar-store puzzles where all of the tiles are there, but you have to use your fingernails to pry the tiles apart and move them back into alignment, only to realize that you’re never actually going to be able to finish the puzzle? That’ where I am. And while I’ll never get the perfect balance, and I’ll probably break a nail along the way, at least I have the edges finished.
from midnight oil 