The other day I was watching Hudson play on his school playground before the school doors opened at 9AM, and I heard “mommy! mommy! Come watch me!” as he hung from the monkey bars. I stood there watching him climb, and realized that I would be LUCKY to have another year or two of being called over to watch in a playground of friends. He enters the first grade next year, and I can feel him slowly slipping from my fingertips. I notice when he pulls my hand away and says he doesn’t want to hold hands when we’re walking, or when he tells me he doesn’t want to talk yet when he comes home from school, but wants to unwind first, and then we’ll share. He is strong. independent, confident, and everything I ever wanted in a son, and while I feel joy in his accomplishments and watching his growth, I feel a low grade tinge of sadness at knowing how quickly time is slipping away from his years as a little kid, and how soon he’ll want to be surrounded by friends and he will think I am annoying or not cool.
I read a quote once about how you’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily – the secret of your success is found in your daily routine. And as I’ve been watching time get away from me lately, I have been coming back to that quote a lot. We can’t slow down time, we can’t make our kids grow any slower and we can’t reverse aging, but what we can do is a series of very small adjustments that maybe *soften the blow* a bit.
I spent a lot of my first few years as a mom thinking about how to grow my business, how to HUSTLE HARDER, how to be busy and always connected and partnering with the most incredible brands, and I am actually thankful for the time I put into my business, but in the past year I’ve felt a huge shift and a huge pull.
At the beginning of the school year I would put Hudson on the bus every morning so that I could have an extra 30 minutes to go on a run after he left to school. But one day in the early Spring I broke that habit, and I drove him to school – just to test it out, and to see what that felt like. I went for a run 30 minutes later, and started my work day later (which I know is a huge privilege) and I got to see him play, chat with some other moms, and be present with Hudson for a few extra minutes in the morning. Ever since that day, I’ve been doing that every morning. It feels so nice to savor this time that he is still excited for me to be there with him. I’ve also been making more of an effort to spend some one-on-one time alone with my boys, just me and them.
Outside of my kids, I have been trying to approach my own life in the same way. It may seem silly, but I’ve been forcing myself to be more consistent about taking my vitamins every morning, and I’ve baked it into my routine. I’ve also been trying to think about how much better my day will feel if I start the day with movement VS jumping right into work. In some ways I feel less on top of my e-mails, less connected to my work, etc. But in other ways, I am okay with that. Every day, every week, every month and every year are just a series of seconds and minutes comprised of thousands of tiny decisions we make as we navigate through. As I grow older, I stress more about making the wrong decisions VS the right ones. Of course none of us are perfect, but sometimes choosing something every day for a lot of days could completely alter a big piece of our life. The power is within us to make decisions that connect us deeply with ourselves and with others, and as I blink and years pass me by, I’ve been trying to sit with that thought, and think about what I can do with such powerful information.