Team Angelina or Team Aniston? How about… Team YOU?

Ever feel anxious or depressed?  Really, really anxious or depressed?  Well I have and it sucks.  The worst thing about it is how it effects your basic functionality:

• eating
• sleeping
• breathing

I have a friend whose sister is crying in the bathroom after having a 2nd child (which reminds me of Eat, Pray, Love again).  She is a stay at home mom and is hoping that taking on a job will help her in reducing her depression.  She is seeing a psychiatrist on Monday for medication to help.  I feel for them, having come close to the edge and back.  I hope this woman joins the ranks of recovering supermoms. My friend called me for advice, and for 1/2 hour while my daughter watched TV with a blanket round her neck with the flu, I called her back and we spent 30 minutes talking about meds, depression, anxiety, and creating the support you need. This reminds me of the Working Mother’s Guide to Life, which talks about the 3 basic pillars you need to support you (a partner in parenting [not necessarily a husband], a supportive employer and excellent childcare).  I think concept is worth repeating and exploring.  I like to think of it as “Team [insert your name here].” Team Wendy (names have been changed to protect the innocent) includes:

1. a trained therapist, psychologist or life coach
2. friends/family
3. exercise coach/yoga
4. masseuse/local spa
5. cosmetologist/hair dresser/makeover artist (free makeovers at major department stores like Bloomingdales and free facials by Shiseido counter there can be bliss.  Just show your respect to those at the counter so they know you are seriously considering a purchase, even if you don’t purchase that day.
6. nutritionist
7. if applicable, an experienced career coach
8. if needed, a psychiatrist/women’s health doctor

Who is on your team?

Falling Off the Wagon Completely / Hitting Rock Bottom

Well…the wheels fell off the wagon completely.  I went on short term disability 3 weeks ago and probably will leave my full time job after that.  I’ve made the plunge, now I have to swim.

It’s amazing to think about how all this happened, how I pushed myself to the limit…my body broke down on me and my doctor and husband persuaded me to stop working the day I fell apart, in spite of the fact that I would be leaving my department in a huge lurch – I was scheduled to travel the next day, the following week, and last week.

The initial reaction?  A bit of relief.  Then came the depression.

And what pulled me out of that?  Simple things.  Simple gifts.

1. Audri and Jim Lanford’s inspirational quote of the day about letting go.  Letting go of expectations.  Letting go of a job I loved at times.
2. A new friend who had gone through something similar.
3. A beautiful walk along the Marina, looking over serene water (thanks, AJ).
4. Meeting a family that just moved onto their houseboat, to live a long cherished dream.
5. Watching my daughter run and play with a new friend from kindergarten (EJ), their princess dresses floating along, their unbridled joy, sending laughter behind them in waves as the two recovering supermoms walked behind them.
6. Playing restaurant with these two girls.
7. An empathetic mom (Julia, thank you).
8. My husband reassuring me that I just need time to come to peace with where I’m at.
9. A Good Friend who has a counseling degree (Laura, thank you).
10. A BFF with a practical perspective for me to take into account (OJ, that’s you).

God grant me the serenity, indeed.

Do You Know of a Supermom I Should Interview for My Book?

Back after a hiatus and a “bender” – was not doing well with combatting my supermom-ness and suffered a bit as a result.  This meant I wanted to write my next “perfect” blog post.  Again.  What is that about insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

ANYWAY, I keep meeting MBAs across the country for my day job and the work-life balance issue is asked about over and over and over again.  When I was in business school everyone was so vague about it.  I think there are really concrete answers about when to have a baby, what to consider if you even WANT a baby.  This is what my book will be about, if I can ever find time to finishing writing it.  A friend of a friend mine is a screenwriter, and she said she woke at 4:30AM every morning to write before her kiddo awoke.  I am doing that today but thought about how that schedule requires you to go to bed at 9:30PM, meaning I would have very little time with my husband.  Man, this work-life balance thing is tricky.  But I am going to interview a good sampling of professional women I admire to see what nuggets I can glean from the moments in their lives that feel balanced.  I also want to find common themes, and prove out in more detail some of the theories I have developed from my experience adjusting to working motherhood, and those set forth in one of my favorite working mother books, The Working Mother’s Guide to Life.

Do you know of anyone I should interview because they have achieved some modicum of work life balance?  Looking for non-MBAs especially, like doctors, lawyers, engineers, dentists, pharmacists, artists, writers, any other professional level job.

Being an Anthropologist About My Procrastination and the Ups and Downs of Life

My ability to procrastinate has always amazed me, but I recall as a teenager that I just happily accepted this as part of who I am (again, thanks to Youth-to-Youth’s philosophy that one should accept yourself and people around you for who they are, just as they are). In the past 5 years or so, my internal monologue has shifted from: HIGH SCHOOL ME: “Oh you silly girl, what a procrastinator you are!  Give up the fear and get cracking!” to RECOVERING SUPERMOM ME: “Oh crap, why are you procrastinating about this stupid work project?  You are such a terrible worker.  Shoot, now I only have 2 hours to get this done.  Why aren’t I motivated?  Maybe I’m in the wrong job.  This organization’s culture might not be totally aligned with who I am.  My strengths are in counseling others, why did I even get an MBA?  Maybe I should have gotten an LCSW or MFT.   Maybe I should have become a stay-at-home mom.  I think I would go nuts if I did that.  Does that make me a bad mom?   That woman who is probably a stay-at-home mom that I saw at preschool dropoff today looked like she was so happy.  Am I happy enough?” And on and on and on.

My GAWD, right?  Oh the “monkey mind.”  The reality is, there is a plenty to love about my day job, but no I’m not perfectly fearless or enamored of every part of it.  And for the record, I’m feeling quite happy these days overall.  The key point being OVERALL – I still have my ups and downs like everyone else.  Life balance is not a static state of being, it’s a daily juggling act and we’d better enjoy the ride and manage the juggling or we’re never gonna make it outta this life stage alive!

So yes, I’d say I’m still in “Step 1” of the 12 Steps, becoming aware of the nature of the problem.  A good mentor to me recently asked me to start tracking my moods.  I’ve been trying not judge them, not panic about them, but to just track them.  I’ve been trying to observe myself, not unlike an anthropologist (anthropology is the master’s degree I often wish I had studied in graduate school and even in my UCLA days).

It’s been fascinating, as this bit of mindfulness has made a huge difference in the quality of my life lately.  Because with the awareness comes the chance to nip a bad mood in the bud, before it gets worse.  As one of my favorite authors wrote in one of my favorite childhood books wrote, ““A mood like this has to be fought. It’s like an enemy with a gun.” It is also an opportunity to notice what your “triggers” are, and what works to lift your mood.  For me, it’s career stress, family worries, motherhood worries, etc.  Nothing too different than many working mothers.

Now I can start using more regularly, all the weapons at my disposal.  I fortunately have developed an arsenal of spirit lifting tools from the Ideal balance bootcamp, my studies of meditation/mindfulness, my counseling days, and other resources.  I am more keenly noticing when and how to apply them.  Depending on the situation, I:

• go for a walk/run/get up and dance
• do yoga
• turn on appropriate music and really listen (not just play it in the background of my life)
• talk to a friend, facebook, or catch up on my “correspondence” (email)
• read a quote or two from a favorite author/writer/thinker/blogger
• watch a comfort movie (or clip from my expanding playlists on my YouTube channel)
• take a deep breath
• journal or facebook/blog (!)
• take micro-nap (or even longer!)
• even have a little (hopefully unrefined) sugar in moments of desperation. 

I also usually slip in a bit of positive self-talk.

“Make a game of finding something positive in every situation. Ninety-five percent of your emotions are determined by how you interpret events to yourself.” – Brian Tracy

What are your triggers, and what’s in your arsenal, dear readers?

A 12 Step Program for Recovering Supermoms

I’m back to the world of blogging after a long hiatus. I tried to blog two years ago for the first time for my dear friend Monica‘s health coaching company Ideal Balance, but being a recovering supermom/old fogey-Gen Xer/perfectionist, got it all wrong. I wrote and wrote and tinkered and edited it like it was going to get published in Time magazine. I wrote some pretty good stuff some of the time, like the one I wrote almost a year ago about life balance and how my husband Andy rocks, in honor of Father’s Day; and I wrote really blah stuff other times. I would usually get really excited about it (usually in the middle of the night, then anxiously awaited feedback every 5 minutes until dawn). My dear friends came through with support and comments and created some good conversation. But on reflection, I can see that if I ever decide to make a living writing short pieces, I’m sure the time put in to my blog would not merit the compensation paid for a magazine article, for example. This is why my brilliant, entrepreneurial husband keeps encouraging me to delve into a book, which would, though requiring more time and effort, have great financial upside. As the husband of the heroine from my favorite book series, Betsy-Tacy, said: “You need the meadow-like space of a novel.” I think Andy is saying I need that meadow-like space (though I’m tiptoeing in writing waters first with nonfiction).

Anyway, I couldn’t keep that blog up consistently. Why? I wasn’t motivated. Why not?

(1) Fear (duh)

(2) My perfectionist tendencies (see above)

(3) pure exhaustion, born of (1) and (2) which resulted from the recovery of my burnout as a perfectionist mommy during the first 5.5 years of my daughter’s life.

This year, the 5th year of my daughter’s life, the 10th year of my marriage, seems as good of a year as any to begin a new experiment in recovery: 365 days of mindfulness, reflection, and moderation. Moderation in everything, including:

(A) Eating. This I’ve gotten a bit better at in the last two years, thanks to a kickstart with the Ideal Balance bootcamp two years ago, which helped me lose 10 llbs over the past two years and keep it off.

(B) Work. I’ve also improved to some degree here, since leaving my Fortune 500 job. What I struggle with still is moderating my thoughts about work. I’m good about turning off the blackberry, not checking e-mail, leaving the WORK at work…but I still wake up worrying about the politics, my career future, etc. Ugh.

(C) “Perfect” Motherhood. I relish everything that makes me feel like a “good (read: perfect) mom.” But I’m trying to tone down my tendency to make everything about my daughter, because (1) it will spoil her and (2) it will burn out mommy.

(D) Blogging; instead of my past unrealistic and/or vigilant promises to blog daily, weekly, etc., I’m going to blog whenever I need to for the therapy, or want to for the fun of it. But I am working on not feeling guilty for not blogging at any time. Guilt is such a freaking waste of time.

(E) Facebooking. Acting like a policeman, my husband often says as I feverishly click away on FB, “Step away from the computer and put your hands above your head. Drop the mouse.” The goal is to moderate my perfectionist, black and white tendencies.

(F) Moderation (cliche, but true…”Everything in moderation…including moderation.”) I’m gonna have my high and low moods still, but I’m going to be peaceful with them and occasionally let myself go slightly above the sine wave on the up side. If I wasn’t hyper occasionally, I just wouldn’t be me. In others words, I’m using one of my favorite blogger/author’s 12 Commandments, “Be Gretchen.”

In some ways, as one of my favorite writers, Liz Gilbert (of Eat, Pray, Love fame), put it, this all feels like “Operation Self Esteem: Day Fucking One.”

It also feels like the first step of a 12 step program for alcoholics, which I was first exposed to when I was 15 and began working drug prevention as a volunteer youth leader for the international Youth-to-Youth program. 12 step programs are all about recovery, after all. With Youth-to-Youth, as I learned more about the devastating affects of addiction, alcohol and other drugs, my supergirl tendencies (not yet morphed into supermom tendencies) spurred me to not only (1) choose not to drink because it was clearly the healthiest emotional and physical choice for my personal development at that stage in my life, but also (2) decide to save the world and get everyone to declare with the same verve as I, “The choice for me, drug free!” (this was a cheer we would lead at conferences). Yes, I was an evangelical, passionate, even charismatic (at times) youth leader.

As much as I could be cynical about my pretty unrealistic mission to get billions of people to stop drinking alcohol, I have no regrets for my involvement with Youth-to-Youth…it was a game-changing, edifying and euphoric experience that synced well with that stage in my life. It helped me survive teenagerhood happily and begin to understand who was; kept me out of trouble; and introduced me to some of my best friends, like fellow writer and blogger Kris Lozano.

Then I grew up and got into the real world and the Youth-to-Youth lessons slipped away, one by one, as I lost touch with friends like Kris in the midst of a madly accelerating lifestyle in Los Angeles (2nd only to New York in its pace in this country), and as I jumped into the whirlwind of super-parenthood.

So step one is admitting you have a problem. I’m not sure I’d call my whole life a problem, but the admittance piece resonates. It was really only this week that I truly started to moderate my assessment on the life I’ve built for myself in the last 5 years since my daughter was born. Prior to this week I tended to judge myself (1) idyllically and euphorically or (2) with a level of depression that frightened me. With the help of many supporters, I’m truly beginning to recognize my life for where it is and can finally start meeting myself where I’m at, moment by moment.

That’s where the mindfulness comes in. Being present with where I’m at at any moment, recognizing what triggers the ups and the downs in my life so I can respond accordingly. Knowing who I am and, (to borrow a phrase from the overquoted but brilliant marketing and communications machine that is Oprah Winfrey), living my best life at last.

“Welcome to real world”, they said on Friends, “It sucks. You’re gonna love it.”

Join me on my imperfect journey in the next year where I’ll blog on (1) my progress in “recovery,”(2) interviews I’m conducting of Recovering Supermoms like myself across the country for my soon to be published book (How soon? Let me know if you are ready to sign a book deal for me to publish it, I’ve got the pitch ready), and (3) anything else that seems remotely relevant to you, my readers.

Writing is therapeutic for me, so I like to think I write for writing’s sake…but I wouldn’t mind if you gave me some feedback, positive or negative. I was trained to take tough feedback (I was raised by a Tiger Mom, after all – though one not nearly the monster that Amy Chua has been sound-byted to be).

But like most writers, I love positive feedback more. So be a literary critic, but a kind one, please. It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I’m also really interested in learning about you, and please send any “nominations” for interviewees for my book.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

And wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;

Enjoying one moment at a time;

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;

Taking, as God does, this sinful world as it is,

…not as I would have it;

Trusting that We will make all things right if I surrender to the Love;

That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with love in whatever comes next.

Amen.