We All Fall Short

It feels like forever since I've written, and it probably has been. In my defense, for a while I had virtually no usage of my right hand/wrist until I figured out with the help of a fabulous Sports Med physical therapist that essentially I am suffering from Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, google it for fun.

Basically, I woke up the morning after the last Bears/Packer's game with no feeling in my hand, and really bad vasal vagal responses when touching a certain part of my wrist. I thought it was carpal tunnel. It turned out to not be that (obv.) and is essentially an injury resulting from years of swimming, poor posture, and just for fun I'm going to throw in mother hood in there, because I would like to blame any major life changes on my children as much as I can. They'll get their turn to blame me in therapy soon enough, so here's mine.

I've been in PT for a few weeks, and damn if it doesn't hurt. But it IS getting better. I can type now, and perform all my ADL's, which is short for "Activities of Daily Living".

I've also been addressing the issue in my yoga class, because my Fantastic Yoga Teacher Jean has become a friend and mentor and I told her about my TOS and she has decided to gear some of her poses and postures towards me and my issues. I suppose it's a win-win, but on Wednesdays when I have therapy and yoga my body literally collapses at night. Super PT Carolyn promises fixing this issue will help with my triathlon races, and being the trusting lowly momathlete that I am I subject myself to her delicious torture every week.

I am also going through some sort of something here that is hard to define. My daughter is getting ready to go to kinneygarten, and therefore she is entering a new phase of life, which means, essentially, that I need to adjust and enter MY new phase of life. I met with Jean for coffee, and was so inspired. She is a mother of 4 following her dreams, and I want and need to do that too, with hopefully the added bonus of income, unfortunately I am not so very sure what that is anymore. Do any stay at home mothers who haven't really worked or led their own lives know what their dreams are? Do we have any? Are we allowed to have them?

So I've been evaluating things, thinking a lot, and worrying more. Am I doing these things because of my family and the life I've created for the past decade, or really, in spite of it? I'm not sure. I am however subjecting myself to a process and bit by bit beginning to trust it. Once again though, of course it creates the inevitable "mom guilt". There is so little time to follow my own path when the needs, demands and requirements of others are seemingly equally important. In short, in some respect, I am falling short. I am either cheating myself, or my family, neither of which is a very desirable option. And so the cycle continues. The desire to dream and become something greater than the sum of all my parts, the pursuit, the guilt, the 'falling short'.

Where do you fall short? How do you deal with it? Because, truly, we all fall short of our own expectations. Maybe it's all in our own mommy brained heads and we have the disparaging mommy media to thank for that, what with all the syrupy parenting magazines and useless helpful "how tos" on The Matt Lauer Hour . I especially like when Oprah tells everyone how hard it is to be a mom, and Leslie (mom on the rocks) put it best when she said that (paraphrasing here): "Oprah telling me how hard motherhood is is like me telling Oprah how hard it is to be a very rich black woman". Les is very tall. And very white. And very funny. Pretty much the trifecta of everything Oprah isn't. But I digress...this isn't an Oprah bash session, although some people think that the thing to do as a SAHM is sit and watch her all day, so there is relevance to the reference.

Really though...think about it. Where can we improve ourselves, or where do we want to improve, but feel stuck? Think about it. Get back to me if you can.

Song of the Week: Virginia Wolf by the Indigo Girls