Thursday, 13 August 2009

• Hittin the town for self-care

   by Mama Seahorse
  
  

  
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  My hubs and I have an agreement... we give each other nights away, or nights "off".  It's a chance to not have three kids, hang out with friends, come home at 3am.  It was born out of a depression that I had after my third was born, when my therapist suddenly asked me:  what do you do for YOU?  I couldn't answer. 

  When I was 18, I moved away from home, worked, took care of myself, made all smart decisions.  Never drank, never smoked, never did drugs... I was the goody-two-shoes, you might say.  In fact, I spent my teen years and all of my twenties doing humanitarian work overseas and across the States.  We got married at 22, and kept up with that work together.  Then we started having kids - and the first two kids didn't slow us down much.  But slowly, the things that had filled our lives began to drop away as we focused on our growing family.  This is the natural order of things...

  But when #3 came along, suddenly I found myself empty.  All the purpose I had always lived my life with was transferred to caring for the kids, which is not a bad thing, but a person needs to feel as though they are not forgetting that they are more than just a mother.  (curb the judgements that will certainly be hurled at me for saying "just" a mother...)  I'm saying, all of us women hold so much in our hearts, and so much divorce can be attributed to the fact that we tend to lose ourselves in motherhood to the detriment of all else... we forget who we are.

  So enter suggestion from my therapist: Self-Care Night.  This is a regular night, weekly, that I have to myself.  I don't need to call or check-in.  I don't need to be home by a certain time.  I don't have children tethered to me.  This began in October of last year.  The first few found me quite lost.  What to do?  I didn't know... in fact, once I remember sitting in a parking lot chatting with my husband on the phone because I felt I would be too lame if I just came home on my self-care night, but I didn't have anywhere to go.

  Other nights found me perched in a comfy chair in a local bookstore with a nice cup of coffee, reading a magazine that I didn't want to buy.  Sometimes I cheated and used the time to study.   But recently, I have discovered a new self-care activity:  hitting the town.  I realize it might be a little unorthodox, but dancing is my happy place.

  Dance clubs, particularly salsa clubs, revive me and make me feel alive.  Being a dancer all my life, and a dance instructor for 14+ years, dance is a passion of mine.  As soon as I get there and hear the music, my whole body feels right.  People have asked me, what does your husband think about you going to a club without him until 2am?  And my response is that I wouldn't be doing it if he had a problem.  Honestly, he doesn't like to dance... a fact that I had to come to terms with when we married.  Its okay - we have some interests that are different and many that are the same.  He's happy I have girlfriends who want to go with me, and when I come home, he gets to experience the fullness of my gratitude, and he likes that part too. 

  I don't hit the town every week - even I couldn't handle that.  And before you talk about fairness, he has a self-care night too - but he's more low-key with his activities because that's his personality.  But about once a month or so, I pull out the heels and skinny jeans and I kiss the hubs goodnight.  And the freedom he gives me in this makes me love him all the more.

  What do/would you do for "self-care"?

  
  

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