Family Time

Family time….

I just got back from family vacation in Mexico… it was such a beautiful, fun, relaxing wonderful time. It also came with its challenges. The vacation was for family to spend time together with grandma. Grandma’s health has been deteriorating the past year and half and we all wanted to spend some quality time with her. I live far from my family and I haven’t seen them in a year. It was very challenging to see my grandmother’s functioning having deteriorated so much.

It was such a blessing to see her sitting there watching us all interact and having the biggest smile on her face. Her moments of clarity brought tears to our eyes and lifted our spirits. Everything was worth just one smile from her. She seemed so happy to be surrounded by family even if all she could do was sit and watch. I think we tired her out just by having her do that.

This was a new experience for me, one in which I’ll take away many lessons. Every second with her on vacation was precious, I tried to soak it all in. I also wished that it didn’t take a vacation to make this happen.

I hope that you can take some extra time soon to really spend a day or few hours with a loved one, soaking in their presence, appreciating the looks they give you, the love in their eyes, their touch, and voice. Let yourself be in the moment. Sometimes the time we spend with others were distracted by other things and it’s like we didn’t spend time with them at all. We’re thinking of our to-do list, we have an agenda, were thinking about stress. I challenge you to be more present with those your with… don’t pick up the phone. I hope that you can have some time soon like I had with grandma to just BE with them.

God’s peace,

Cherie

Self-Care

Goodness gracious where has this summer gone. I can’t believe we are already in September. These past few months I’ve been working with PiYo and love it. It’s a great feeling to see in our challenge groups people making noticeable progress. A topic has been coming up a lot for me in regards to self-care. What is self-care? How do you get self-care? Does it have to cost money?

Let’s face it especially for the mom’s out there self-care seems absolutely impossible but it’s what is needed most in order for us to get through the stress and overload of everyday life. Self-care could be a glass of wine at night, reading a good book for 10 minutes before bed, locking yourself in the bathroom for fifteen minutes, playing golf, for me it’s dancing, or maybe your self-care is calling someone who makes you feel better about you. What you should know is that YOU are IMPORTANT and deserve self-care. Please take some time to think about what self-care looks like for you and do one thing for yourself this week. Sometimes we consider work out as self-care, which it is definitely needed as self-care to boost our mood, increase our energy and help us feel good about ourselves, but getting in that work out can almost become a stress in itself. So please do yourself a BIG favor and make you a priority.

I have to plan out my self-care and I don’t always get it in. Sometimes I plan, tonight I’m going to have a glass of wine, Saturday I’m going to watch Pride and Prejudice, my husband and I are going to have a date night, I’m going to take a bath with a glass of wine, I’m going to have a jam session with my favorite music on my way home from work. These are just some ideas of what I do for self-care.