One quality I've found common to most mothers I know is selflessness. Mothers always put their children first, sometimes even the husband before themselves but the children always come first. It's one of the reason's I guess we love our mothers so much but I've been thinking, is such selflessness good?
There are different types of selflessness. One where you forget all about yourself and keep just giving, another is one where you are selfless but you also think of yourself, then there are others like conditional ones, situational ones, et all. But the one that interests me is the first. I'm trying to wrap my head around how someone can give so much without thinking of themselves. This is the image I have of my mother, this is the kind of woman I thought I should be when I grew up.
Now, I'm not so sure. Well, I don't have children so, technically I am not a mother. But I have 5 dogs and I love them. When I've observed other parents I've noticed that the emotions I feel, my reactions and my bond with my dogs is not very different from theirs towards their children. I'm not saying my dogs feel what children feel for their parents but I definitely feel motherly towards my dogs.
Over the last four years the dogs slowly trickled in and their tribe grew until now they are 5 to me 1. When my first came in, she brought along with her demands on my time. Some of these demands were directly related to her and some indirectly. At that point all was fine, then slowly the numbers grew and so did the demands, now I feel like I have no time for myself. My day's to-do list is brimming with more to-do's for others then my own self.
Yeah, it's true I don't have much to-do's from Che, but between the dogs and the house I've been swamped for a while. And after the day's to-do's are done, I just don't have the energy to do something for myself. This 'myself' being pushed to the last of the list, constantly being last priority has grated on my nerves for a while now.
Then I watched 'Queen' a couple of days before my birthday. My biggest takeaway from that movie was to constantly remind myself to do something for myself. Keep telling myself - 'I' is kind,nbsp; 'I' is smart, 'I'nbsp; is important. Over the last couple of months, I'd kind of given up on my hair and skin, so first stop out of the movie hall was BodyShop and Mac, where I treated myself to cremes, lip gloss and an eye-liner. And I'm proud to report that I've been using them all regularly. I've slipped a couple of times but 6 out of 7 days a week, I've taken care of my hair and skin. My skin actually does look better, even if I say so myself. :-)
Now that I've managed that, this year I want to do more for myself. Not that I will stop doing stuff for the dogs and house but rather I'm going to try and make time for myself too. I want to get back to my craft, my reading, my travel and a lot more.
So, this year it's about bringing the 'I' back into my life. :-)
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