Mama Needs a Refill

Something simple can be such an indulgent pleasure.

This past Monday the kids went back to school after a week off with snow days.

Monday was all about me. For six hours. The length of a school day.

After a yoga class, my long time college friend and I did the unspeakable, right in the middle of the day. A sunny day. So broad daylight was an understatement.

We went to a movie.

So decadent.

So self indulgent.

That night I lingered longer at the dinner table with my kids, held them closer at bed time and didn’t lose my temper.

What can you do in broad daylight for yourself while your kids are at school that will make you smile long into the evening and hold your children tighter?

Happy New Year All! This Fall’s Mama Needs A Refill mini-retreats were such a hit…we are doing it again, but trying a new day, since many expressed interest but were busy on Tuesdays. New Year’s Resolutions don’t have to have a negative spin…take a few moments the First Friday of February to put YOU first and reflect on where you want your year to go!

Mama Needs A Refill

Restorative Retreats For Women

Self-care is about nurturing yourself on all levels –

 physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually –

 so you can live, love and parent optimally.

-Renee Peterson Trudeau

Mama Needs A Refill is offering two min-retreats this winter.

Come get away to a mini-retreat.  These Sack Lunch Retreats are designed to replenish,

rejuvenate and refill your empty cup in the amount of time you could clean one room in your house.

Empty Cup = Bitchy Mama.

J.G. McGlothern

Greetings, I am your retreat leader, Jenny McGlothern, mother, wedding officiant, writer, experienced group leader. I began holding retreat for moms when I noticed how empty our cups were and how we put ourselves on the back burner with all of our nurturing. All women are in the nurturing role, taking care of others, but do we take care of ourselves?

Get away from your responsibilities in a relaxed environment and in just four hours discover your own unique ways of refilling your cup through sharing, laughter, silence, journaling and creativity.

For more information and to reserve your spot:

info@mamaneedsarefill.com

www.mamaneedsarefill.com

Your intentions can manifest intowishes come true, with out needing fairy dust.

Yesterday on the playground, waiting for the after school bell to ring, I began chatting with a mom I see regularly. We wait for our kids in the same spot on the playground. We both took the opportunity to catch our breath before the bell.  In our exchanges of “how are you” we discovered a shared feeling. We both  had been going since the first bell in the morning that signaled the start of school. In those six hours between bells we try to cram it all in, get it all done.

She pointedly asked me, How do we do it? How do we get that time to consciously sit and be still without cramming everything in and accomplishing tasks?

I smiled. Here was my chance to do something  I have been intending to do.  I have been wanting to stop everything at 3 PM and sit with a book and a cup of tea, drink it while it is still hot, catch my breath before getting kids, settle into stillness, read a book.  All for a simple 20minutes, before I walk to school to get the kiddos.

Gina, I said, We consciously do this with having accountability partners. We set our intention, share it with each other, then check in with the other.

Smiling big, her eyes lit up. Yes, her eyes told me, Let’s do this.

The bell rang, we had to stop our conversation and greet children. I’m inspired, she told me as she walked away still smiling.

Me too. Now I had to do what I have been intending to do. Turn it off, sit with me, for twenty minutes.

When do we start?, I asked.

I’m starting tomorrow, she beamed.

Perfect. Me too. Oh, how I love the power of peer pressure. Tomorrow, Friday, we can check in at pick up.

It was set. So not only have I committed verbally to another person, I have written it down.  They say the chances of following through with something more than doubles when you do those things. Speak it, write it down and let someone else in on it at the same time.

It is morning, I haven’t even had my morning tea, and I am already anticipating the afternoon and  hearing about Gina’s “twenty minutes” of conscious” her” time before picking up kids and I am thrilled I get to read Jane Eyre for my twenty minutes. I am thinking about Earl Grey with honey.

These intentions don’t have to be unfulfilled dreams or far off wishes . They can manifest right before our eyes with a little effort, an accountability partner and a lot of letting go.

It's the simple pleasures and letting go of the stressful bits that overwhelm us this time of year.

It’s December, Christmas no longer around a corner but in the final stretch.

Where is your refill level? On empty? Swirled around and going in so many directions you have no idea what your needs are and if they’re being met or not?

Christmas will come regardless of what you buy, make, prepare or do. So what about adopting a less is more attitude this month and just be?

The other day at the pool, instead of doing three more laps to make it to an even half mile workout, I flipped over on my back and floated. I let the warm water fill my ears. The other laps would have to wait until another day. All I could hear was my breath.

My breath not doing anything but being…and really what more is there to do but just be? What else really matters?

Christmas will come even if you don’t send out the perfect Christmas card, make home-made gifts, take the kids to see Santa, make a gingerbread house. But if in doing those things you are filled with joy, experience the Christmas Spirit, then by all means knock yourself out, go to town. But if you are stressed out and missing the joy, screw it and sit down and read a Christmas book and have a second cup of cocoa.

When we wait for our time, put ourself last, our needs, our passions and desires will get lost, forgotten.

Still in a food coma and out of town staying with family for the Thanksgiving weekend I need a moment away from everyone to figure out what I need today to fill my cup. Tucked away in the guest room out of site from the others I seek refuge. The local yoga studio is closed but a walk is a definite possibility and my sister-in-law is game to join me. Contemplating a nap and it’s only 10 in the morning, I would not be missed, so many of us here, I could get some serious shut eye before they even discovered I was missing from the crowd.

And this is what it means to take the time, make the effort, to fill your cup. Move away from others, quiet your mind, do what you need to hear your desires that stir below the surface. As I write this three different people have knocked, or just come in to the guest room, apparently the Black Friday bug has hit half of the group. Four people.  Knock, knock, make it five visits in my place of refuge.

My solitude may have to happen in the bathroom. But I don’t give up. Because it is literally a few moments that I need, just  a long inhale’s worth of time to refill.

If I gave in too early and threw in the towel I would only later erupt from frustration.

So I answer the knock calmly and say, just a few more minutes, then I’ll be ready.  I read a few words, quiet my mind, write, check my online chess games, breathe again, post this, then I am ready to go back and be part of the crowd.

You have to take your time for if you wait for it to happen, it just doesn’t. It will get swept up in the crowd, washed down with the pie and whip cream, blown over, forgotten.  And sometimes the little bit you take is just enough to get you to the next place.

Cups at a recent retreat waiting to be decorated...just like us, waiting to be refilled...eventual potential!

A few weeks ago the words of my yoga class instructor resonated loud and clear and have stuck with me. When leading us into a pose she directed the moves guiding us with her words. Then at the end of her instruction detailing how the posture should look, she would add, Eventually.

Hands here, head there, and then, Eventually, but not today your eyes will see the wall behind you. Or after making sure we were safely in the next pose, Perhaps not today but one day your forehead will be on the ground, eventually, not now.

What a lovely, gentle way to speak to ourselves. We don’t have to achieve it all now. Every step leads us to the next. It is impossible to move to the final step, the goal if you will, if you haven’t taken the steps leading up.

Eventually, one day we will get there. When we have done the work, taken the time and are ready.

A retreat attendee paints her cup with a reminder we all need...Believe.

Today was the second of the Mama Needs A Refill mini-retreat series: The Mental Cup. Six women gathered to unwind, reflect, connect, and refill.

With all the planning and preparation that goes into this, the fact that I get so much out of giving these retreats, is just icing on the cake. I may be the facilitator but we are all the teachers, reaping the benefits of everyone’s wisdom.

We shared on what drains and fills our cups. Many of us readers we found books a great way to mentally refill. All mothers we found the daily chores of house duties to often be draining and overwhelming.

With all the wisdom circling the room it was clear no matter how you choose to refill your cup or how it gets emptied, it all starts with believing in yourself. Believing we are worth it and discovering everyone is better for it when we create time for ourselves. The added icing to the cake (who wouldn’t want cake without it?) is knowing we are not alone.

Recent trip to Disneyland with my family.

Just home from a trip to Disneyland with my family where I didn’t get much me time. I didn’t get to yoga, I barely wrote, not a lot of time carved out for me. And you know what? I still came home with a full cup.

The moments gathered together in one hotel room or around a table for a meal or squished together on a ride filled me up and that isn’t always the case for me. Often I’m too wound up, tired, stressed to enjoy my family. But I was so focused on having fun as well as creating fun for my kids that I found my needs being met by letting go of being in control and just having fun. We got to connect as a family in ways we don’t always get to with time, schedule, commitments and other priorities.

I wanted this family, this is what I asked for and then with life stresses you forget that and you forget to have fun with each other. And really that is the priority, that is where the importance lies.  Oh, to live like we are at Disneyland, spinning around and around with those we love, with those who matter most, without a care in the world.

I’m a city girl who loves the beauty of nature. I have lived in some beautiful places and traveled to others. It’s still interesting to me how at times I can take the beauty around me for granted. Rushing past the view of mountains, ignoring the water and islands in sight, not bothering to stop and soak up the exquisiteness before me.

I have held many of my Mama Needs A Refill retreats in my mother’s home which has an expansive view of the Olympics, and clear views of the ferry going back and forth across the Puget Sound.  Retreat attendees don’t take the view for granted stopping in their tracks when they enter her home, taking a long breath as they drink in the beauty out the window. My mom feels honored to have her home used as a retreat space, feeling in some ways like she should offer up this space for others. She is a widow, living alone and wants to share the gifts of the scenery out her back door.

Often just fixing our eyes on a thing of beauty – a bit of nature can fill our cup enough to jolt us out of taking all that we have for granted.

In my HeartWriter Blog (www.heartwriter.wordpress.com) this week I am writing a series on peace.

Peace. Something we all want in our lives. In our striving toward peace we reach out to fill up, to accumulate, to gain, gather all in the name of peace. What would happen if we let go? In our relinquishing of the things we grab on to for the purpose of acquiring peace would we actually find it? Are we just looking for it in the wrong places? In the wrong things?

To embrace peace must we let go to make room for it? What would happen if we surrendered to the constant obtaining of things, knowledge, stuff…would we find ourselves standing right in the middle of this peace we desire?

Oh, but to let go requires practice and to practice requires showing up.

Today I am going to think about what I can let go of to sit more in the lap of peace.  The idea of relinquishing something of this world I think holds value is a bit scary indeed.  I will take a deep breath and listen to the still quiet voice within and hear the wisdom in the whisper.

Sometimes we don’t have to be still for very long, just long enough, to hear deeply. Which just means creating a practice of showing up and letting go and showing up and letting go again.