Checking the Boxes

When I was 11 years old, my mom ran an in-home daycare. It was the 90’s and no one was checking to make sure she was following a curriculum of any sorts or serving organic snacks, so it was assumed that since I was the oldest, it would be my job to entertain my younger sisters and all of the daycare kids on snow days. Ever the obedient oldest child, I would regularly engage my sisters and her “clients” in several different pretend scenarios. My obvious favorite was “church,” where we actually held our own pretend Catholic masses, complete with recorder-playing and Nilla wafer hosts.

One particular day perfectly depicts why I’m currently struggling to figure out how to live in a healthy body after delivering two babies in two years.

Check Your Own Damn Boxes First, Sarah

I made an appointment with my therapist on Monday and told her, “I truly have no clue how to pursue a healthy lifestyle of any sorts now that I have two babies. I’m gaining weight as opposed to losing it and I’m so uncomfortable in this body. The only way I know how to do it, I can’t do, because I can’t be in the gym for two hours a day and meal prepping for hours and hours on the weekend any longer.”

I feel like, every day, I wake up and have the best of intentions, and, by 3 p.m., I’m standing at the sink with a box of Cheez-Its, a can of Diet Pepsi, and a shaking hand, cursing Barney and myself.

Jillian

I’ve been with Jillian (my therapist, who should be President) for almost as long as I’ve been with Mark, and the benefit of that is she knows precisely how my brain operates. She explained to me that somewhere along the line (see above story regarding 90’s daycare and Vanessa’s dad), I learned that it was my responsibility to take care of everyone else before I took care of myself. She told me that my brain likes to work in a linear fashion and be productive and it’s been programmed do to so.

And she told me that kids don’t do linear fashion and productivity. And that my kids are watching me. And if I don’t value myself enough to carve out time for myself, they’re going to grow up and repeat the same damn cycle over again.

That scared me.

I feel like a script will work best here. Allow me.

Me: I already know what you’re going to say. “Fill my own cup.” I read all the self-help books, I listen to all the podcasts, I follow all the mom-fluencers on Instagram. I hear the message loud and clear. But I truly have no idea how to apply that in my own life. Every morning, I have the same cup-filling-attempt inner monologue.

Inner Monologue: Good morning, Sarah! Today is the day you begin to reclaim a healthy body and lifestyle. No hot chocolates and bagels with butter today. Pregnancy and morning sickness are done and you can’t keep wearing flannel shirts to every occasion. Come on, Sarah! This is going to be fun. You used to like working out. You used to love eating healthy foods. What happened?

Jillian: Sarah. You’ve got the Maeve boxes and the Maverick boxes and the marriage boxes and the teaching boxes and you keep trying to get all of those checked off before you get to the Sarah boxes. Guess what? You’re never going to have everyone else’s boxes checked off before you get to your own. Your kids will be 20 before you take care of yourself again if you keep using this approach.

Here’s what you have to do to make this all work. You have to check Sarah’s boxes off first. If you want to make a salad for lunch, you do whatever you need to do to make and eat the damn salad. If Maeve watches tv for a half hour and Maverick sits in his bouncy seat in the kitchen with you, everyone is still being cared for. And you eat a salad like you wanted to, not cold French toast sticks leftover from Maeve’s breakfast while standing at the sink. You start feeling better because you’re acknowledging that you deserve some of the time in your own day, too. Your babies don’t own every minute of your day.

Me: I hear that. But I feel like I chose to bring these babies in to the world and I owe them the best possible life I can possibly give them.

Jillian: Sarah. Even if you were only doing 40% of what you’re currently doing, your children would still grow up to be completely functioning humans. Taking them on pumpkin walks at night to look for Halloween decorations? They know you love them. But that doesn’t mean never doing anything for yourself.

Here’s what you do. You pick whatever three things you want to do for yourself that day. Those three things are non-negotiables. They get done. If the kids have to go with you to barre class and be in the childcare room for an hour, they’re not going to feel neglected. They’re going to see their mother care for herself and learn that exercise is important.

So? I’m doing it. I’m using one of those books that you buy from TJ Maxx and promise yourself you’re going to journal in and then quit after a few days. I’m writing down three little boxes with three things that I get to do for myself each day that are non-negotiables. I write ridiculously mundane things sometimes like, “I will drink four canteens of water,” because motherhood has me putting myself last so often that I don’t even get around to hydrating myself unless I make it a point to do so or “I will go to barre class today.” Then, even if it looks like the morning is going to be a wash, if I’ve written it down, I still do it because I want to check the Sarah boxes. I want to disentangle the childhood message I internalized to take care of everyone else first and I want to take care of Sarah.

Because Sarah needs her boxes checked, too.