The title of this post, paired with a picture of chocolate chip cookies may be confusing, but bear with me. The cookies represent something I have been reflecting on lately. I also won’t leave you hanging without a link to the recipe.
My husband recently read Brad Stulberg’s book Master of Change. He really enjoyed it, and thinking that it might resonate with me, he encouraged me to read it as well. We do this often, pass books between each other we have read in the realm of self-help and spiritual development. This is one of the main things I love about our relationship – we both have an affinity for both reading and bettering ourselves. While not every book lands with me the same way it did with him (and vice versa), we mostly get something out of our respective suggestions. Master of Change is one of those books.
I am only halfway through reading it, and already I am so glad I chose it as my recent read. Stulberg encourages readers to have a fluid and rugged sense of self; that in life, change is inevitable. The only constant in life is change. When we become too rigid with our identities and resist change, that is when we suffer. He references schools of thought from Buddhism to Existentialism, and while I love learning about such mindsets, it’s also helping me feel a little less alone.
In September, we welcomed our second child, our daughter Ella, and this postpartum experience has been all of the things. Name an emotion, and I have probably felt it, both the beautiful and “not so much.” As I am writing this post, she is sitting next to me on her Boppy looking around the room. In this one moment, I am feeling the most overwhelming sense of love, fear for loving so hard, guilt for not turning my entire attention on to her, and gratitude for getting to write this at all. Being a parent is like drinking – no chugging – the strongest cocktail of human experience: often it burns going down, but it leaves your heart feeling a little warmer as a result.
Additionally, we also have a three year old. Have you ever had a three year old? The term “terrible twos” should become obsolete and appropriately replaced by “threenager.” I love my son with every depth of my being, but man this age is tough. It’s also fun and amazing, but he makes the newborn phase feel easy. It’s all of the things; Not either/or, but both/and.
In the wake of this new chapter, I have slowly and surely paired back all of my entrepreneurial endeavors so I can focus on my family. It is a transition that has been both challenging and one of the easiest choices I have had to make. Over the past ten years, I have attached my identity, value and worth in my work. A pursuit I didn’t take lightly. The other morning on my half birthday (I will be 40 in less than six months), I was reflecting on my thirties. I wrote down all I had accomplished – those big ticket “life” items that have shaped both my personal and professional “self.” On this list:
- Got married
- Founded a barre studio (the share of which I subsequently sold two years later)
- Traveled Europe for almost three months with my husband
- My dad passed away
- Started my health coaching practice
- Launched two online courses
- Wrote a cookbook
- Got both my 200 hour yoga certification and power yoga certification
- Launched a natural foods company
- Experienced a global pandemic (as we all did)
- Had a baby
- Launched Healthified website and podcast
- Wrote and published my second book Counting Colors
- Had baby number two
As soon as I finished that list, I looked at my husband and said “I’m tired.”
It felt liberating to say that out loud. In recent months I have been struggling with my sense of self. If I am not an entrepreneur, pushing a project forward, then who am I? But I am tired of trying to prove my “self” through external circumstances. So I have decided to give myself permission to rest, at least for a little while.
We are now ankle-deep in December, and it seems like the perfect time to turn inward and reflect. Even as I type that, I can notice my habit – to put action behind something that is supposed to be passive. It is a constant unlearning, rewiring, and relearning. How to be rather than do. To go through my day as is without having to produce something on the other side. Because that is what I have been doing for the past decade. If I learn something, I want to share it. If I bake something, I want to blog about it. If I read something that resonates with me, I want to write a whole podcast episode about it. The other day I had an “aha moment” about why I operate in this way. I want to give meaning to my experience is what came up for me. I want what I do/learn/experience to matter in some way. And what matters more than if the information inspires someone else? That is the lens I have looked through, and while that desire remains, I have started to ask myself if there can be a more easeful way to go about it that still supports a sense of self-preservation. Less outward energy, and more alignment.
So the other day on a cold and rainy winterish afternoon, I called my toddler into the kitchen and told him we were going to bake chocolate chip cookies. Real chocolate chip cookies from one of my favorite baking bloggers (although I did use coconut sugar instead!). The recipe is not mine. I didn’t have to keep track of ingredient or measurements, I simply had to have the experience of baking cookies with my child. We put Christmas carols on in the background, and with the baby in her Boppy looking on, we baked.
That’s right – of course I had to photograph them. It’s what I love. It’s what aligns.
