Monday was a really bad day . . . from the moment I woke up. . .
Side note: this started as a quick social media post to just share the often-challenging process of finding at least one beautiful thing in each day, no matter how bad it could be overall. . . and clearly, I had a lot more to say about it. . .
Up at 3:45am to get work done, to find that. . .
There were brown stains all over the open-living-kitchen-dining area. . .
To follow them into my mom's room, to see her asleep with poop-stained feet (because of her neuropathy, she has very poor feeling in her feet) and more smears everywhere. . .
With the dog laying right near her head with a giant dark brown blob by its butt and stains all over her sheets. . .
After cleaning floors and feet, showering mom, and cutting out/washing poop from the dog's butt . . .
Leila woke up extra early and had big feeling about not having our usual morning quiet time alone (I got no work done by the way) so the whole morning proceeded with big feeling about everything and me not being able to do anything right. . .
Meanwhile . . . in the few minutes I was gifted, since I wasn’t able to have my usual morning routine, I decided to plan the day and saw in my monthly calendar spread that my mom had a 9:45a.m. appointment. . .
Rush, rush, rush to get mom and Marino out the door with her morning meds, breakfast and water (the appt required her to have fasted). . .
Back to planning the whole week and I happened to check the future log (because I prepared a spread of the following 3 weeks) to see the same appointment scheduled for December 17th. . . which sparked my memory of the phone call with the doctor’s office that the doctor had to reschedule to the 17th but I was so busy and so multi-tasking during that call that I barely managed to write down the new appt on the new date and hadn’t had time to erase it from the old date. . .
Making the call to Marino to turn around and that I rushed them out of the house for no reason . . .
After three hours of big feelings about every little thing I did, it ended in Leila having a full meltdown with kicking, screaming, hitting, pushing, you name it. . .
And there was my precious Dante, just doing his thing, hoping mama could give him a little attention (which by midday he had had none) - requesting a snack as Leila was flailing in front of us and my having to say no.
In the middle of the meltdown, without sharing details, another conflict erupted with my soul sister, so bad, she skipped lunch with us (she lives with us). . .
To realize that we still haven't found Marino's SS card or Passport and he now has an expired license, so to searching for those in the millions of boxes we have because we just moved. . .
To rushing off to pick-up Dante's fall feast supplies and not making it back on time for the first committee meeting for his school (participating is part of the school contract and is taken very seriously) . . .
With the 10 errands in between - one of which my car got sandwiched as I was in the UPS store and having to wait until one of the cars came back (a mall parking lot) to climb in through one/other side - the other to an Amazon drop-off location with a 20 min. line AND no code for the return Kindle (I got to return other things at least) even though I confirmed with the agent over the phone that all codes would be sent. . . so I’ll have to go back anyway. . .
It was now 6pm and I had just gotten home and dinner wasn’t even close to being ready and those poor kids hadn’t seen me at all the whole day, and I didn’t have a chance to fully repair with Leila and Dante, the sensitive, wise soul that he is suggested they take a bubble bath (I’m pretty sure because he knew I had to make dinner). . .
And . . . it ended like this:
Now, I could have lost it. . . that could have been the final straw. . . I could have said, "no more bubble baths!". . . but it wasn’t. I took a deep breath, I grabbed my camera, I gave a big smile and the kids, not knowing what to expect, also exhaled a deep sigh and a large grin:
Back to the Reason for the Post
“Every day might not be good, but there is something good in every day.” – Unknown
Today sucked – cleaning poop, sending people to appointments that had been rescheduled, my feelings of being a "0" on the mommy-scale (a conjured up non-existent scale I’ve unhealthily and unintentionally created in my head). . .
And yet, this was my “good.” This was my one “good” thing today. It came out of nowhere. It was totally unexpected. It came at the very end. . . like a little redemptive off-chance occurrence.
Enjoying them in the bubble bath the few times I came to check-in could have been enough. Dante’s compassion in suggesting it could have been enough.
And, gosh, what a "good something" to end the day with – my choosing not to lose it, my choosing not to get angry about the bubbles overflowing clear across the whole bathroom, my choosing to just smile, and laugh it off . . . that was the something-so-good that I could find in today.
I am so grateful to those children and to myself for never giving up and always trying. There have been many a time that I couldn’t carry myself to the point of choosing to let go, accept and enjoy. I’m sure there will be many time in the future.
For that day, for as crappy as that day was going, I’ll take it. I’ll take that wonderful moment when those children’s faces relaxed into joyful smiles because of my choice.
Every Day May Not Be Good, But . . .
It is so hard – when you’re in the thick of it, when everything’s gone wrong, when all your plans have fallen apart, when your connection cup is emptying and you just can’t catch a break to fill it back up, when you feel you have stepped out of your integrity because you can’t come back to a place of self-regulation and you worry how your behavior will manifest in complete defiance of your values.
It takes compassion, self-compassion, to breathe through what has happened and find that “good” in that day. And it is a self-fulling cycle – when you don’t have the compassion, you can’t find the gratitude and the “good” and you fall into a downward negative thinking hole.
What I’m starting to find, as I take more time to develop a gratitude practice, as I take more time to find the good in every day, I am more able to find it, to choose it, to make it, even on the worst of days. And every time I do, that gratitude and “good” ripples outward and makes the next bad day less “bad” and I am more likely again to find that “good.”
What about you? What helps you find the good?
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