Mama Renew

We’re one week into the Back to Self 30 day Challenge! If you’re just joining us now, it’s not too late – simply “Like” our facebook page and join in the fun.

Daydream, by Chantey Dayal

While I hadn’t planned on doing theme weeks, our first week of the challenge seemed to focus on physical self-care. This emerged in part due to my need to care for myself during a miserable cold. It also, however, is the aspect of self-care that is the most obvious. Articles & websites & experts abound telling us about good nutrition, exercise, water and sleep as the path to wellness. But wait, there’s more!!!

We’ve taken steps forward in caring for our Bodies, now it’s time for Spirit as our theme for week #2:

What activities nurture your spirit?

For me, these include creativity, dance, spiritual practice, yoga, alone time…

Here’s the catch: For many busy mamas I know, these are the very activities that too often get set aside in favour of family and household responsibilities. “I just don’t have time” is the mantra I hear over and over again.

This week we’re going to find the time, create the time, make the time… Will you join us?

Much gratitude to brilliant painter Chantey Dayal for the use of her painting for this blog. You can learn more about Chantey on her website & facebook page. Watch for more of her paintings in future postings.

I’ve been sick.   Sick enough that I stumbled over to my neighbors door 2 days ago wearing a full balaclava over my head, a big scarf around my neck, and a sign with the following words scrawled in red ink:

Please Call School – Need Rick Home – Doctor Now

This, after a 5 minute episode in which I enjoyed (not) a croup-like episode alone in the house gasping for breath & certain I was going to die.   Lucky for me my husband showed up from school drop-off just moments later and whisked me off, not to the doctor but to the Emergency Room.   Apparently they don’t like making patients who can’t breathe waiting for an appointment at the clinic.

Official diagnosis?  Acute Upper Respiratory Infection with Laryngitis. Origin?  Viral.  I liked this part – no tough antibiotic decision.  Lovely doctor told me to keep on doing what I was doing – lemon honey garlic ginger tea (she even approved of my addition of homemade rhubarb cinnamon vodka).  And reassured me that when another croup-like episode occured, it would pass, and I would be able to breathe again.

Home again, I settled into two full days of life as a sick mama.  Nestled on the couch with my hot vodka tea, unable to utter even a word to my children as my voice is completely gone.    I’m doing a bit better today, made it to yoga (part of my personal 30 day challenge), and am actually able to sit here at the computer with something resembling focus.  No voice yet, but I’m trying to take that as a blessing.  I’m not all that good at being quiet…

What about the challenge?

I felt horrible announcing the Back to Self Challenge and then disappearing!   My personal challenge for these few days was to simply let go.  No guilt about not working, not caring for children, not cooking meals, not doing yoga.  All my body needed to do was rest in silence.   Thankfully my dear husband works from home as well, and we’ve had two volunteers here to help on the farm, so I’ve had plenty of support and been able to fully let go.

So just a bit late, here is your challenge for days #3 & 4 & 5:

Listen to your Body!

If you need water, drink it.

If you need to pee, go.

If you feel sore, do something about it (yoga, massage, 5 minute stretch…).

If you are craving sex, intimacy, touch… create it.

If you’re full, stop eating!

If you need to go to bed at 7 p.m., do it.

Take Care, Mamas!

Follow our Mama Renew facebook page to join the challenge!

Day #1 was a success!  We heard from women around North America making a commitment to:

stretch, read, study, drink water, hike, drink less wine, go to the salon, clear clutter, tweeze eyebrows, pray…

Sounds like a good day to me!

Interestingly, the #1 self-care intention y’all shared was to drink more water. It’s so simple, isn’t it?   You know the feeling.  You’re thirsty, but you’ve pushed the sensation aside in favour of making school lunches or getting out the door on time. 

We’ve been working with mothers long enough to know that moms are really, really good at delaying that metaphorical sip of water. We’re good at talking about our desire for self-care, our longing for balance, and the challenges we’re facing, and not always so good at taking steps towards change. The busy nature of family life too often takes precedence, and our needs are set aside.

In a breakthrough moment in a Mama Renew group last summer one woman declared water, sleep, and daily exercise to be the absolute core of self-care.  If these are in place, she pondered, perhaps the deeper levels of self-care such as asking for help and knowing when to say no will come more easily.   Let’s find out, shall we?

So for day #2 of the Back to Self Challenge, let’s start with Water.   Lots and lots of water.  Like 8 – 10 glasses today.  & tomorrow.  & the next day!

Follow our Mama Renew facebook page to join the challenge!

Did you know we have a weekly Mama Renew post on Mothering.com?  Here is this weeks’ offering:

How often do you wish for just one more pair of willing hands in your household – as so perfectly demonstrated by Jessica in her Mothering blog post this week?  Someone else to help with dishes, garden, a good kitchen sweep, and occasional childcare.  You know – someone to drain the pasta while you hold a crying child.

There was a time in our life when we had a maid.  Two maids, actually – they came together every other week and scrubbed my home spotless.  It was amazing.  This is no longer within our budget, sadly, and I have really really missed them.

This summer our family has taken on a new realm of household support – WWOOFers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms, an international movement of generally young people wanting to travel, spend time on a farm, learn english, and enjoy family life.  We offer room and board in exchange for time working in the home and garden, and they stay for 1 – 3 weeks at a time.

Click Here to Read the rest at Mothering.com – the good, the challenging – all about asking for help, letting go of control, and working through the guilt!

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The wise women at Nummies.com asked moms if they could go back to before their first baby, what would they tell themselves. These are their answers. Everyone in the video is a mom, and I find myself wishing I had met every one of them nine years ago when I was pregnant with my first…

Enjoy!

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This quote arrived in my inbox last night from Meghan Rathwell (who also inspired this great post on new motherhood and donated a fabulous prize for our Virtual Retreat this Spring).   Perfect Timing.

One of the things I love about the experience of a Mama Renew group is the way we have room to explore our assumptions about what our lives are “supposed” to look like.  Often we see women asking daring questions, revealing seldom declared life dreams, and feeling a healthy dose of optimism and creativity.

Reaching clear discernment is not a simple task.  Most of us enjoy many, many long discussions full of questions and worries and that wonderful query “What if…?” In a post last May we wrote:

And yet every once in a while, we ourselves, or someone we love, takes the leap and says Yes, somehow moving beyond the world of being sensible.

What is it that allows us to move from “what if…” to “I can”?  As mothers I suspect that the patience for clarity is sometimes harder.  We cannot separate our own life decisions from those of our life as a family, and this can create some considerably thick mud to wade through!

Eventually, however, there is indeed a moment of clarity, and it is very much this feeling of the mud and the muck and the questions and worries and doubts all settling to the ground (even if for only a few moments) and everything is crystal clear.  It is not a moment we can create or plan for.  Clarity simply arrives, often in a profoundly understated and simple way. And then we take the first new and exciting steps forward

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We’d love to hear from some of you – How do you know when something is right?  Where do you feel it in your body?  What would you like to say Yes to?

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Many thanks to Martha of Laughing Volcano Art for the use of her beautiful Blue Girl Leap of Faith image.



Having just completed a 3 day intensive workshop on Regenerative Nutrition with the wondrous Nadine Ijaz, Clinical Nutritionist and Registered Herbalist, I am going through our kitchen with all the fervor of a convert.  Testing grains and oils for rancidity, reading ingredient labels, checking for grain moths, questioning the role of Peanut Butter in our family life…

Seven women, one experimental kitchen, and three full days of talking about food – good food, bad food, and good food gone bad.  All the things I kind of understood, I now know with a new depth of comprehension and commitment.  Fats and oils, sugars, grains, dairy… each element of our family diet has been deconstructed and examined.

I admit to feeling an odd mix of excitement and terror going to this workshop.  Sometimes it’s easier just not knowing.  Still, for every moment of resistance there were two more of revelation and integration. I’m ridiculously excited to be soaking grains, baking sourdough bread, and making beet kvass.

I am, of course, in the midst of the classic transition from “retreat” back to “real life”, and am not entirely sure how to make these grandiose plans work within our busy life as a family.  I also am a firm believer in the 80/20 principle, and have in no way said a permanent goodbye to white sugar.  Time will tell what form these new ideas and practices will take within our life as a family.

Still, I feel like I have taken some significant steps towards a new way of eating, and my primary motivation right now is one of pure discovery.   I figure as long as I’m having fun and feeling creative in the kitchen, I’m on the right path!  Here’s a recipe to get you started:

Toasted Nuts

Soak 2 C raw nuts in water with 1/2 tsp sea salt for 7 – 12 hours.  Drain and place in warm oven (no more than 150 degrees) on a cookie tray until dry & crispy (12-24 hours).

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