Sharing recipes, crafts and frugal living, the challenges and triumphs of parenting a neurotypical child and a child on the Autism Spectrum. Yoga Instructor said goodbye to her nightly glass of Chardonnay to give up habits that were not serving her purpose in life! The CocktailMom name remains, however with a new focus on healthy and authentic living.

10/23/2017

Rituals- How a Simple Action Saved my Sanity



It's 5:45am, I'm tired and wishing I went to bed earlier the night before. I sit in my kitchen with a cup of coffee and my journal. I begin to write, pen on paper, as the dogs munch on their food in the background. The house is still except the sounds coming from me and the dogs and this is why I get up at this insanely early time. To enjoy this stillness.

When M, the older child that we were trying to adopt from the foster care system, was living with us I learned to do this. To get up earlier than anyone else in the house. I knew that the moment he would wake up and emerge from his room he'd come downstairs and be disappointed that it was me and not my wife in the kitchen, every single weekday. He'd immediately want to start a fight about something; the choices he had for breakfast, the lunch that my wife made for him not looking good or simply having to go to school. The morning stillness became necessary for my soul to battle the storm ahead. And this survival skill, it stuck.

M is no longer living with us, I no longer have to prepare myself for a battle in my emotional spirit on a daily basis but I discovered how important it is for me to have this moment of calm reflection so that I can function as my best self. The time that he spent in our house was hard but I cultivated this skill of getting up early and journaling, I learned so much about myself and my needs for self care in the process of parenting him.

The coffee maker has a timer, when I arrive in the kitchen it's ready for me to pour a cup. I read an entry from a book and then I journal and drink coffee. The books have varied from spirituality and mediation, bible quotes and inspirational snippets from leaders of companies. I have no agenda other than to freely write. It doesn't matter for how long. It just matters that I do it. I know that I will feel better in my body and spirit if I do this thing every morning.

Do you have a morning or evening ritual built into your day to sit and reflect on everything that is going on if your life? Try pulling out a journal or notebook and writing out your thoughts. Any type of book will do, it doesn't have to be pretty or inspirational, a composition book will do the job. As you write ignore the misspellings and incorrect punctuation and freely write the things that come to your mind. Set aside a time to do this every day. The more you practice this ritual, the easier it becomes to do. The writing content doesn't have to be anything spectacular, that isn't the point. The point is to connect to your soul, to reflect on your life and the choices you are making. Don't read what you wrote, just close the book and move on with your day or evening. This isn't for judgment or ridicule, this is simply to put the thoughts on the page. Having a book to read an entry from has helped me to start getting my thoughts on the page. Here are some that I have used and enjoyed:

10/21/2017

What activity brings you JOY?



I feel so much joy within my soul by looking down at a new nail color on my fingertips. It may seem silly or trivial to some but I take pride in them being well manicured and looking their best. I appreciate having nail polish on my nails because it's a reminder of the time that I spent devoted to myself, some may call it pampering. I call it devotion.

This time of devotion is not to be misunderstood as "me time" or time away from the family, it's not the time spent at the gym to be healthy or time spent at a yoga workshop gaining inspiration and knowledge. This time of devotion to self, stands on it's own and only benefits me. When my health coaching clients seem as though they are at the bottom of their well and grasping desperately for self care because they give of themselves in every aspect of their lives, I tell them to make a list of what I call their Personal Nourishment Menu. To list out items that are only for you and that you enjoy. After making the list, ask yourself "does anyone else benefit from this?" If the immediate answer in your mind is yes, then cross it off and start again. Go deeper. Find the thing that is for you.

If we imagine a still pond in our minds and you pick up a rock and you throw it into the pond, where the rock hits the water symbolizes you. Each ripple out symbolizes your family and friends, the ones closest to you and the ones further away emotionally and spiritually. Now of course for arguments sake someone will ultimately benefit from your Personal Nourishment Menu items, I'm not denying that. When I paint my nails the company that makes the nail polish, the nail files and the fingernail paint remover all benefit financially from me using their products. But they aren't the people who I am giving of my time and energy. I'm not painting my nails for my family or my yoga students. It doesn't make me a better mom or more capable of my job or enhance my abilities in any way. It's an activity that is only for me and one in which I get great joy from.

So what would be on your Personal Nourishment Menu? What activity brings you joy?
Try creating a list of five things that nourish your soul and fill your well, that way you can go out into the world and be of service. Allow yourself to give from a place of abundance rather than from the very bottom of your well. I'd love to hear your Personal Nourishment Menu in the comments! 

10/12/2017

Parenting Perfectionism


I have struggled with perfectionism my entire life. And now I find myself parenting a child, Z, who struggles with it as well. In my own life, perfectionism has directed my internal drive to succeed, it has pushed me to go further than I ever intended in some areas of my life. The result is that I have mastered a compilation of several skills but they are out of place and not in line with my true passions. All because my perfectionism, which some may see as determination, is paired with my own personal struggle with failure.

That fear of failure has kept me in jobs or situations (my first marriage) longer than I should have been because I couldn't see that it was not the right fit or a healthy environment. My need to do it right, to fix it and be perfect at whatever "it" is....that thing quickly turns into my struggle with "failure". As a child it looked more like repetition and maybe you can identify; Does your child rewrite her answers until she deems her handwriting looks good? Does she practice something over and over again, a dive into the pool or throwing a baseball, until she accomplishes what she deems good enough though to you it looked great twenty minutes ago?

I can see through parenting Z how perfectionism can also turn into paralysis. For him, he sizes up the situation or the task and if he determines that he can't be perfect at it right away then he won't even try it. Like many parents, as I parent him I come face to face with my own issues. And I'm trying to do better, to be better and to fail more openly so that he and others can see that I too struggle and make mistakes. I'm also resisting the urge to redo things in order to put out a perfect product. I'm allowing the imperfection to be in my life and to be okay with it.

In Brene´ Brown's books, Daring Greatly and then the one that follows Rising Strong, she unearths the shame that is often associated with failure and the lessons learned by first taking the risk, then failing and then getting back up. She was motivated by Theodore Roosevelt's Man in the Arena speech, I wasn't familiar with this speech before reading her books but now I often refer to it in moments of true struggle with perfectionism.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Brene´ Brown ties the representation of the arena beautifully into the practice of parenting, “Raising children who are hopeful and who have the courage to be vulnerable means stepping back and letting them experience disappointment, deal with conflict, learn how to assert themselves, and have the opportunity to fail. If we’re always following our children into the arena, hushing the critics, and assuring their victory, they’ll never learn that they have the ability to dare greatly on their own.”

Whether you try again or move on to something else doesn't matter. It's more important to try and fail than to never have gotten in the arena in the first place. That's what I want to teach Z. And my job as a parent is not only to be a good example of this myself, to allow my attempts at something to be seen and accept that though it's not perfect it is also not a failure. To allow myself to be vulnerable in that uncomfortable space and also to step in and push him to try something even though he may not be perfect at it right away or ever. I want to create space for us to embrace our strengths and our struggles and to feel confident in the process of trying something new. I'll probably fail a few times, but this perfectionist is going to parent in the arena. 

10/08/2017

Snapshot of Our Lives- Growth


On the wall in our kitchen hangs one of the most important pieces of paper in our family. It's not a birth certificate or a marriage license or a degree of any kind. It's hung by duct tape in a haphazard way. Completely out of place in our organized, tidy, everything matches or coordinates (in the same color palette) decorating scheme. It's physical form is two lined sheets of notebook paper taped together with scotch tape and then hung on the wall using duct tape. It's been there almost a year in that same spot where it was originally hung. It documents the boys' heights. Their physical growth. But there is so much symbolism in those two sheets of paper taped to the wall.

Life happens fast.
Not everything can be controlled.   
Love is sometimes ugly.

I love those two sheets of paper and if the house was on fire it would be one of the things I grab as I run out. It documents growth, physically, of course but it also documents where our family has been over the course of this very trying year. It has M's height, the child we were intending to adopt on the day he arrived and the week that he left. It has my height, 5 foot 3inches, and I can remember the smile on L's face as he celebrated being taller than me. It has my wife Lauren's height and you can currently see that L is about to pass her as well. I can still hear the "yes!" uttered from the back of Z's throat when we discovered he was tall enough to finally ride in the front seat.

Once the children are finished growing I'm going to frame it and hang it on the wall in a place of honor. It's a snapshot of our lives and I adore it more than the matching pillows and the perfectly aligned books. It's our life and it's messy and slightly off-balance, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

10/04/2017

Worthiness



Recently we bought a new car. Like a brand new -never driven by another person- that kind of new car. My wife and I read reviews and weighed all the various options of price and style, for several weeks. We test drove eleven different models of crossover SUVs and wagons, several brands at many different dealerships. The process was extremely time consuming and exhausting. We narrowed it down to our top two, we test drove those two models several more times. Both were in the same price range and had the same safety features. We struggled with making a decision so we took our growing teenage boys and put them in the backseat of both models thinking this would help our decision if their legs felt scrunched in either model. They fit perfectly in both.

My wife wanted me to have the final say since this would be the car that I drive the most often. So I chose the Subaru Outback with the trim level that included leather seats. It wasn't until after I negotiated the price and we drove the car home that I broke down in tears and admitted to my wife that I've never had a new car before. At forty-one years old, this was my first new car. And never have I had a car that is this nice and luxurious.

I felt anxious driving the new car and one day as my wife and I were out running errands she asked me, "Do you like it?"
"Yes, I love it!" And then I paused, a very long pause. I took a deep breath.
"I just don't feel like I deserve it."
My wife stopped in her tracks, placed her hands on either side of my face and looked me in the eye, "You deserve it honey. You work hard. You deserve it."
I blinked back my tears and nodded my head but I didn't really believe her.

It took me a long time to believe her. When friends would ask about the new car purchase, out of authentic curiosity, I would quickly quantify our purchase by explaining how we decided that now would be the right time to buy a car and have car payments before we had to start paying college bills. I felt like I had to justify this purchase to anyone who asked, and it had nothing to do with the person asking and everything to do with me and my relationship to money due to my family story.

I'm hesitant to say that I grew up poor but rather my family would be categorized as lower middle class. Our house was small compared to my friends' houses; 3 bedrooms and one bathroom for four people. As a child, it always felt like my mom was making things for us (dresses, dolls etc) not because she wanted to but we couldn't afford it otherwise. Our local public school wasn't good so my parents decided to adjust their spending and lifestyle so that my sister and I could get a better education at the local Catholic school. Looking back I am so thankful that they made this decision but as a child you can't see that. All you can see is the difference between you and the other kids. Not only were we the only ones in our class who weren't Catholic, our family seemed the poorest. I was always sensitive to this and it shaped my relationship with money. Rather than spending frivolously as an adult to compensate my childhood, I've been a penny-pinching saver.
Spending this much money on a car seemed frivolous and left me feeling unworthy.

Throughout the course of my life when I feel this way, when life feels like it has me pinned against the wall and I know that I need to move on but I don't know how. I sometimes write out questions to myself to think on and ponder. I've been exploring these questions and my emotions about it in my meditation practice:
Where in your life has your family story played out in a way that you didn't expect? 
Are you wrestling with worthiness or the inability to accept that your past doesn't predict your future?

In that quiet stillness I've given myself the opportunity to lean into the emotions that appear, to embrace the response that comes with answering the hard questions that lead to self discovery. It becomes a practice of humility and acceptance. Now when I get into my new car rather than feeling anxious I pause before putting the car in reverse, I take a deep breath in through my nose and I feel the leather steering wheel in the palm of my hands and I say to myself, "I deserve this. I am worthy." Some days it feels true and other days it feels like a routine I'm doing but I do it anyway. As I continue this practice I know that one day I won't need it anymore because I will know that I am worthy of what the Universe has provided for me. But until then, I breathe in and I repeat this mantra to myself. "I deserve this. I am worthy."

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