This is a post I started working on a few months ago. And it seems right to finish it now, so I am. :) And finishing it without editing much, if anything, of what I wrote before. :)
It's been a long time since I wrote last. I've had a lot of internal stuff going on, we had about two months of illness, and so many swirling thoughts that there was no way to get out something coherent. Or more I felt like it needed to be coherent, , to be a story with a beginning, middle, end. A "yeah it sucked but this is what we got out of it in the end" or, I don't know. I've had a lot of wrestling with the idea that I have nothing to offer, nothing anyone would want to read.
Lately there has been a shift. I realized it first around food- I have spent a lot of time and stress agonizing over what to cook for meals, what to buy, what to serve, etc. And I've noticed that, without realizing it, my focus has been on making healthy foods that I think everyone will want to eat. Which of course there is nothing wrong with, just that, since *I* can only control *myself*, and know what *I* want to eat, by trying to only make things that I think my kids will like, I'm cutting myself off from the wisdom that I DO have access to, which is the wisdom of my own body. I can't know what their bodies want, because I'm not them. So when I try to guess that, and the whole experience of preparing and serving food is centered around guessing what their bodies want and what they will like, I am in a totally powerless position, and I am at their mercy because I have made "success" in the experience dependent on having guessed correctly. And once again I am totally ignoring my own needs/wants in the situation. And if I make eating all about other people and not about following my own body's wisdom, how are my kids supposed to learn how to listen to their own bodies around food? They certainly aren't seeing me do it! So I have shifted that- I am choosing (more often at least ;) ) to prepare what feels good to ME, that I can tell MY body wants and is excited about. And I am making sure there are things available for them to eat if their bodies don't feel the same. And I am continuing to ask their input and give them the opportunities to choose and help prepare foods that their bodies ARE saying that they want. Which has led to a new breakfast- breakfast pizza. Basically an omlette with cheese melted on it, cut into triangles. Which came soon after my own shift around food. I think I had been putting so much pressure on them to like what I was making (and therefore make it a success) that I wasn't giving them the freedom to explore other things. It has actually been a very subtle shift, it's not like I ordered them to eat food before, they always had the option to eat or not eat what was prepared, but I think they could FEEL how much was riding on their opinion of the food and it was making it hard for them to feel what their bodies were saying.
It's been a long time since I wrote last. I've had a lot of internal stuff going on, we had about two months of illness, and so many swirling thoughts that there was no way to get out something coherent. Or more I felt like it needed to be coherent, , to be a story with a beginning, middle, end. A "yeah it sucked but this is what we got out of it in the end" or, I don't know. I've had a lot of wrestling with the idea that I have nothing to offer, nothing anyone would want to read.
Lately there has been a shift. I realized it first around food- I have spent a lot of time and stress agonizing over what to cook for meals, what to buy, what to serve, etc. And I've noticed that, without realizing it, my focus has been on making healthy foods that I think everyone will want to eat. Which of course there is nothing wrong with, just that, since *I* can only control *myself*, and know what *I* want to eat, by trying to only make things that I think my kids will like, I'm cutting myself off from the wisdom that I DO have access to, which is the wisdom of my own body. I can't know what their bodies want, because I'm not them. So when I try to guess that, and the whole experience of preparing and serving food is centered around guessing what their bodies want and what they will like, I am in a totally powerless position, and I am at their mercy because I have made "success" in the experience dependent on having guessed correctly. And once again I am totally ignoring my own needs/wants in the situation. And if I make eating all about other people and not about following my own body's wisdom, how are my kids supposed to learn how to listen to their own bodies around food? They certainly aren't seeing me do it! So I have shifted that- I am choosing (more often at least ;) ) to prepare what feels good to ME, that I can tell MY body wants and is excited about. And I am making sure there are things available for them to eat if their bodies don't feel the same. And I am continuing to ask their input and give them the opportunities to choose and help prepare foods that their bodies ARE saying that they want. Which has led to a new breakfast- breakfast pizza. Basically an omlette with cheese melted on it, cut into triangles. Which came soon after my own shift around food. I think I had been putting so much pressure on them to like what I was making (and therefore make it a success) that I wasn't giving them the freedom to explore other things. It has actually been a very subtle shift, it's not like I ordered them to eat food before, they always had the option to eat or not eat what was prepared, but I think they could FEEL how much was riding on their opinion of the food and it was making it hard for them to feel what their bodies were saying.
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