Lindsay Harrel, @LindsayHarrel
Life as a writer is never easy—and when you’re also a parent, self-care is often the last thing on your mind.
If your career is thriving, it can mean your kids are running around like little crazy people destroying everything. Or your patience fails over and over again. Or any number of things.
If your kids are being perfect angels (wait, does this ever happen?), maybe you’ve been experiencing some pitfalls in your business.
Rarely does it seem everything is going well on every level. And yet, we moms are expected to balance it all. (By the way, I’m speaking from my own experience as a mom, but I recognize that some men might carry many of the same responsibilities and experience the same kinds of burnout!)
A Mom’s To-Do List
A short list of the responsibilities and priorities of a typical writer mom might include:
- Completing the work we committed to (deadlines anyone??)
- Staying creative where our career is concerned
- Disciplining our kids
- Keeping kids occupied
- Playing with our kids
- Cleaning the house
- Cooking healthy meals
- Keeping our marriages fresh and lively
- Exercising
- Meditating or praying
And that’s just 10 of the items on our looooong to-do lists, am I right? It’s enough to make anyone hyperventilate, especially Type A personalities like moi.
But I’m going to add more one thing to that list. I know. You feel like one more thing will make all the plates you’re carrying TOPPLE.
But this item…it’s probably the most important of all.
Add THIS to the top of your list: self-care.
Yeah, now you’re glaring at me. I know. But it’s true. Finding time to do what YOU find relaxing is so important for recharging your batteries—both emotionally and creatively.
What is self-care?
According to the Fort Garry’s Women’s Resource Centre, self-care is “about identifying your own needs and taking steps to meet them.” It may seem obvious by its name, but self-care is administered by you! Only you can identify what you most need, and you’re the best person to figure out what that should look like.
Of course, partners and spouses can assist in self-care by helping to watch the children or covering some of your daily chores so that it’s easier for you to find time for self-care in the first place.
Why is self-care important?
Self-care is important because if you are constantly spinning plates, you’re going to get tired. If you’re cramming every spare moment in your day with yet another activity—even if it’s an activity you love, but isn’t relaxing or rejuvenating—then you will either FAIL at the other things on your list eventually or BURN OUT and be suuuuuper unhealthy.
My husband actually had to remind me of this the other day. You see, I’m quite adept at scheduling and organizing my time. But I don’t always think about how I’ll FEEL when I get to a certain activity. If you’re a writer mom (or dad!), you know what I mean—being a parent is draining physically and can take so many of your emotional reserves as well.
For example, yes, you could go-go-go all day and try to work from 7:30-9 pm when your kiddos are in bed. But maybe that time would be better spent rejuvenating and taking care of yourself.
Think about how you feel after working for that extra hour and a half in the evening. Do you always feel energized and satisfied? Sure, you might feel relief that you got more accomplished on your to-do list. There might be some positivity associated with the action if you truly enjoy your work.
But I’m willing to bet that if you are working EVERY evening, it’s not all ponies and rainbows when you’re creating. It can be exhausting and overwhelming to push yourself consistently for a long period of time. (There are times when we just have to put our nose to the grindstone and make an extra push! But I’m talking about a more long-term basis here.)
So, consider in comparison how you feel when you read a good book or lounge in the bath surrounded by bubbles (and NO little people screaming at you!). Think about what that might do for your spirit in the long term.
How to fit self-care into your schedule
If you really to fit an extra hour of work into your day, go to bed earlier than you currently do and get up earlier (you CAN become a morning person!!). I find that I waste a lot of time in the evenings doing a whole lot of nothing (scrolling Facebook, etc.), so that time is not my most productive.
We may not be able to add extra time into our days, but we CAN be smarter about how we choose to use it. And one of those things is to remember that while we may think we can become writer mom robots, our bodies and minds do best when refreshed.
Besides, even robots will stop working once they run out of juice. 🙂
Because we only have a certain number of hours in our day, that means we may have to shift other things around in order to fit self-care into our lives. That’s not easy to do—it feels selfish. But believe me, everyone benefits from Mama (and Dad) being well rested and cared for.
Join me here in May for Part 2, where I’ll discuss some specific ideas for writerly self-care.
Eva and Angela must learn to live again. One step at a time.
It has been fifteen months since Eva and Angela lost their thrill-seeking husbands in a scuba diving accident. Both women are trying to navigate their way through the grief, but neither one is making much progress. Angela is barely making ends meet, angry at her husband for leaving her to raise three children on her own. Meanwhile, Eva is stuck, unable to move forward after losing the love of her life and her source of inspiration.
But then Eva gets a life-changing phone call. Before Brent and Wes died, they had signed up for a race of a lifetime—an ultra-marathon in beautiful New Zealand. Eva begs Angela to run the race with her in their husbands’ place, and Angela finally agrees, hoping to finally understand her husband’s choices.
Training is exhausting, and the race is even more demanding. Their journey grows more complicated by the presence of two men—Marc is Brent’s best friend who is running the race with Eva and Angela, and Simon King is a writer who is covering their inspiring story.
With every step, Eva and Angela must ask themselves questions that they haven’t had the courage to ask before. As the women literally put one foot in front of the other, they wonder: Is it possible to find their way forward in hope?
Lindsay Harrel is a lifelong book nerd who lives in Arizona with her young family and two golden retrievers in serious need of training. She’s held a variety of writing and editing jobs over the years, and now juggles stay-at-home mommyhood with writing novels. Her debut novel, One More Song to Sing, was a finalist in the 2017 ACFW Carol Awards. When she’s not writing or chasing after her children, Lindsay enjoys making a fool of herself at Zumba, curling up with anything by Jane Austen, and savoring sour candy one piece at a time. Connect with her at http://www.LindsayHarrel.com or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.