january is february is blahuary...

January is February is Blahuary
or Embracing Crappyness With Intention

Blahuary: A yucky time of the year accentuated by the absence of the twinkling of holiday lights and general holiday cheer. It's when things are cold, people brood, children are moody and tempers are dour. Blahuary.

Bl-ahhhh-uuuu-ary.
I often get lost in the Blahuary of January. I want to do a million and one projects, yet I feel like I have no energy and follow through. I snip and snap and pick more at the boys. They respond by acting even more rambunctious and defiant. Then I find myself whirling deep into a hole of self pity and regret.

During these times I find the pull inside my body to be filled up with something even stronger. A desire to create. To be created. I long to give birth to something, to a project, to a child. I want to give birth to something beautiful, something remolded and formed, pulled up out of the ashes of my grumpiness and woe, given new breath and light then set it to dance across the sky. Then I turn around and I find that I AM filled up! But not with the ideas and projects I want to complete nor with sweet loving clinging children. But with with sugar, and candy and wine and too many cups of tea. My body feels creaky and my jeans feel ever tighter. I feel like I want to collapse and start over but instead its another scone or cookie or crumble.

 Oh Blahuary!  I could forever more write an ode to the woes you can bring!

Yet, this year I want a different Blah in my Blahuary.

I want a different path.

I want to embrace this Blah.

I want to hold it and remember the Blah.

I want to nurture it and love it for what it is.

I want to enjoy every single morsel of sugar laden coco puffs I shove franticly into my mouth and every little slurp of the high fructose candy canes left over from the boys' stockings.
I want to remember every single moment of crusty dishes in the sink, itchy undies on my behind and the smell of unwashed socks on my boys feet.
I want to embrace the pile of laundry that looms over my head as the Mountains of Mordor had lain at the feet of Frodo.

In all of this, I must confess that I am so blessed to belong to a small group of women who periodically muster up their strength to find lovely odds and ends that they can safely and triumphantly share within our small safe "group world." It is like an email book group, that doesn't necessarily talk about books.  It is lovely, and though I have not met every single woman within our group, I care for them all deeply.

At the same time I have been working on this post, one of the women in the group, the ever beautiful and lovely genius R, shared this with all of us, "I have been feeling shitty for the better part of a month. Emotionally, physically, spiritually shitty. One of my intentions for this year has been to actually feel my feelings as they come up, so I am declaring it to you all here! I'm in the dumps! I have been not washing my hair and being generally crabby. And I've been doing an awesome job at it. This is a brag because I've been really present for my minute-to-minute shittiness lately. Yar!"  It was so so so great to read. Not just because I was working on my own Blahs, but because what she is actually doing (embracing the shit) is at the heart of what I am trying (TRYING!) to learn to do.

To Be present with all the crap. To be present with all the crap, even when it is bad and scary. To be present with it. To nurture it. & hopefully, ever hopefully, to let it go.


So here it is; the worst part of Blahuary. My belly bump. My belly bump brought on by the Blahs of Blahuary. Brought on by the lack of excersise and overindulgence in sweets and treats and things.

Looking at this bump in the mirror, I see that it sticks out, more than just a smidgen over the edge  of my jeans. A soft mushy cliff reminding me that I have not been at my best lately.
When I see it, mushing all over the place, what I want to do is this: I want to wear big baggy clothes to hide my belly bump so people won't know that I have the Blahs and a bit of extra weight around my middle. Or even worse...think or ask if I am, you know, on the "nest" so to speak. Preggers. pregnant. 

But I am not! (see indignant exclamation point) I am not pregnant! But you can't really walk around with a shirt on that says "No I am not on the Nest; Blahuary got me at my best!"(well maybe you can...but that is another project).

I have decided something. What I have decided is this: that I am not going to to hide behind my blahs and my belly. Nor am I going to hide my blahs and body and all it's baby belly blahhhh-ness.

Instead I am going to try and nurture it. And take care of it. And remember that all things come to pass and the Blahs are not forever.

                   *   *   *   *   *

Sometimes these things inevitably come back to my mother. And the grief I feel. What is so hard to do sometimes is feel the grief I feel while still being wife, mother, lover, chef, volunteer and all around general handyman. (and handle the blahs of Blahuary).

I know that the intense grief I feel for my mom's passing will not last forever.  Perhaps...perhaps maybe these Blahs and this Grief go hand in hand. I SO want my heart to stop constricting in a tight little bunch every time I think of my mom. I so really want that tightening around my heart to stop when I think of her and all the things she was in her lifetime, that I forget. I forget that what I need to do is let go of what I want and instead hold the WHAT IS more openly and lovingly. That I need to carry "what is" with pride and care, and not with shame. Carry it, cradle it. Nurture it and not deny it.


Because this is what is. Not what I necessarily want it to be, but here is what it is and I need to love it, this life, take care of it with what I got.


xxoo