The Atkinsons

My thoughts in Yoga Last night

After you have a baby everything halts and for a while it is kind of nice, but there comes a point where you start to yearn for some semblance of your old routine. Nothing quite puts the pieces back together like attending my yoga class. If I am lucky I get to attend a one hour class a couple nights a week and for that whole hour I feel completely at peace. It's this lovely feeling where my husband comes home and I have gotten everything ready so I can just walk out the door and not think about anything until I walk back through it again. 

There are many aspects of this whole process that make me feel strengthened. Aside from the obvious physical part it's a time when I try to push aside all judgment and really focus on things that matter. I mostly have thoughts on things I want improve on; things within my practice, but also as a mother, sister, wife, friend, and member of society. 

I try to think about my goals and aspirations, and I do so one breath at a time. Last night I found that many of my thoughts collected around something I read in a book a week or so ago. I've been trying to make small changes in my life because those are the ones that seem to be feasible and long lasting. One of those was to try to read while I'm nursing or rocking the baby instead of aimlessly searching for unwatched footage on Hulu. I don't always achieve this goal, but like I said it's the small steps I've taken in my life that have seemed to stick. Giving up things here and there until I don't need them anymore.

I used to be an avid reader but it's a past time that I find more difficult to balance these days. The period in your life where you just sit and rock that little baby to sleep is so fleeting, and so I may not read another book for some time because I am sure that quite soon I will chasing after a little crawler instead of rocking him. I saw an interview of Toni Morrison on the Colbert report (so some good things do come from browsing through the channels) and I was very stuck with her and some of the things she said, so I decided to read a book of hers. This is sending me way off topic because what I mean to say is that I was contemplating a quote from a book I had recently read that was written by her. The book (like all her books) was about the life experience of black women. The quote went something like this. 

"All of us-all who knew her-felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor... We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength."

These words swirled in my mind as I contemplated the times when I had mentally derailed someone else in order to lift myself up when maybe what I should have done was reach out a helping hand. We all have our short comings and our insecurities, we wouldn't be human without them- but I think I realized that even my weaknesses can be used as strengths if I allow them to. When I'm not feeling my very  best it won't do me any good to find someone else who is doing worse and prop myself up with it. I can use that feeling to find others in the same self doubt and do what I can to help them feel that they are of worth. The previous sentiment is only superficial and can only last you so long, but I can imagine that the later will bring you much greater joy. 

These were some of my thoughts last night as I pondered on things that I could do better. Sometimes I just don't know how, but I hope that I can find a way. Too often I forget to write things down and then they are lost in the abyss that is every mother's mind- and so when I have those moments of peaceful clarity I am trying to find a way to keep them, to hold on long enough to spark a small change in my life. 
Because it's the small things, for  me anyways.