Elana Kirsh

Tag: mothering

  • Working from Home is the Enemy of Mindfulness

    On the face of it, I have a fairly ideal work-from-home situation right now.

    For starters, I have a job – already going better than millions of people around the world. And I actually love my job. I feel like I’m doing good for the world, the people I work with and myself every day, which gives me a steady sense of purpose and meaning. Added to this, my husband isn’t working at the moment, so the bulk of childcare responsibilities – of which there are many – fall on him. This means that apart from feeling guilty about not spending more time with the kids, and not helping him out more, I’m able to work largely uninterrupted for hours on end. Not a luxury that most working parents with young families have right now.

    The cherry on top is my workspace – a granny-flat-turned-home-office on the roof of our apartment. It’s comfortable, quiet, and breezy, and our new dog (I’ll share musings on him in a separate post soon) keeps me company while demanding very little. He also never interrupts Zoom meetings and pulls faces behind me while I’m talking to potential clients, so that’s another win.

    My point is – I know I’ve got it pretty good. And I’m grateful for these circumstances every day…

    And yet.

    I’m finding it really fucking hard to ever finish work these days. To draw a line and switch over to family time, to time with my husband, or even *gasp* to me time. I’m constantly thinking about work, going over challenging conversations, mentally fiddling with budgets and ideas, planning future difficult conversations, building road maps. Writing back to texts and emails and Slack messages while the kids are in the bath.

    It’s better on the weekends. Even if I work for a few hours on Friday morning and a couple more on Saturday evening, in the time in between I’m largely able to enjoy time with the kids, meandering walks with the dog, a family dance party on the roof, maybe even a movie on Friday night. Well, the first 20 minutes of a movie before I pass out on the couch. Really I just stay awake for the ice cream.

    But on work days, mindfulness is eluding me.

    I realized yesterday that part of it is the absence of a commute. We bitch and moan about traffic jams and late trains and how much time we waste commuting, yet it serves a purpose other than just moving from us Point A to Point B. Being in physical transition facilitates a psychological transition, too. My drive to the office takes about half an hour, and gives me time to mentally go from home to work, from work to home. After getting everyone up and ready in the morning and dropping them off, the drive gives me time to switch from being “mama me” to “work me.” And even when I rush out of the office on my “short” days, to pick up GG and Little A from kindergarten and spend the evening with them, I’m usually able to process whatever I was working on, mentally leave work, and ultimately be present with the kids until they go to sleep.

    At home it takes me less than a minute to get to “the office,” and I’m usually carrying or dragging some combination of laundry, a whiny child, a dog, dishes and a computer with me, and often already on a work call, to boot. Half of my mind is still downstairs with the family when I’m up at work, and when I come down, say to have lunch with them, a good chunk of me is still in the last call and writing up an email summary and scanning and re-prioritizing my to-do list.

    It’s exhausting.

    And basically the opposite of mindfulness.

    I wish it was just affecting me, but it’s not. My husband told me yesterday that sometimes it feels like I’m not really here, and I couldn’t even argue with him. He’s right. I’m not here. Not all of me anyway. And if he feels like this the kids probably do, too.

    Trying to meditate
    Meditating together doesn’t work, just FYI

    As always my unexpected guru, he made a suggestion that I’m gonna try this week. Sounds silly but I believe in environmental reminders to trigger behavioral changes. He suggested that instead of coming “home” from work through the internal stairs, that I leave the building via the elevator, take a walk around the block – not on a work call – and then walk in the front door. Maybe this way, even in a few minutes, I’ll be able to trigger that transition that I usually get on the commute. To leave work behind, even for a couple of hours, and just be with the kids.

    I also know that – as is so often the case for me – meditation is part of the answer here. My practice has been rocky lately. I still meditate every morning, but so often I find that the bell dings after half an hour and I realize that I’ve basically just been sitting on my ass on a pretty cushion, legs crossed, back straight, face relaxed… thinking about work. When my mind is all over the place like this I find that a stricter, less spacious and all-encompassing technique is more effective at holding and cultivating my attention – so I think I’ll try some body scanning and super-zoomed in attention practices this week.

    None of this is going to change the fact that we’re all kind of going nuts with this social distancing, the kids need their routine, my husband needs to be able to focus on his work, and the extrovert in me is killing to see other people. But something tells me that a bit more mindfulness and presence might take the edge off the suffering. And shine a light on the beauty in every moment, too.

  • Motherhood and Judgy-ness

    I’ve been trying to write this post all week, about how being a mother has taught me not to be judgmental. About how I used to have all sorts of opinions about other mothers, but now I’ve realized that it’s so hard and everyone’s just doing the best they can and who am I to tell them otherwise. And so I never judge them.

    But something about the post just wasn’t sitting quite right. I wrote and rewrote, moved paragraphs around, thought of a cute intro. Nothing was working. And then I realized.

    It’s because it’s total bullshit.

    I haven’t stopped being judgmental at all – I’ve just learned to be maybe a little less judgmental of people who are basically the same as me. Oops.

    Here’s the real deal.

    Before I was a mother, I had it all sorted out. I knew exactly how I wanted the birth to go, along with everything after that.

    Same goes for how other people birthed and raised their babies. I knew exactly why things were going wrong and what they should have been doing differently. How unnecessary stress was creating pregnancy symptoms, that babies cried because their mothers weren’t emotionally connected, how all nursing problems could be solved if you believed in your boobs hard enough, and of course – that toddler tantrums were always the result of poor planning on the parents part and could be avoided by being totally in tune with your kid.

    I knew everything.

    What I’ve learned with the benefit of a few years of experience now is that shit doesn’t go to plan most of the time. So even if you planned to give birth floating in a pool of flowers wearing a tie dye bikini top, it doesn’t necessarily turn out that way. And so I learned not to judge women who planned a natural birth and ended up with something different.

    But what about my cousin who didn’t have any interest in planning a natural birth in the first place? I wouldn’t say it to her face but the truth – the real, ugly truth deep down – is that a lot of the time, I’m totally judging her for taking an epidural. Hours and hours of very entertaining phone conversations with my girlfriends, judging our respectful-parenting-natural-birthing-baby-wearing-extended-breastfeeding-organic-cotton hearts out. Because there’s an arrogance in me that still thinks that I know better. That choices that don’t fit into my ideology are somehow less than.

    A like-minded new friend tells me about her struggles breastfeeding her baby in the early months. How she had her best-laid plans to breastfeed into toddler-hood but the baby wasn’t putting on weight and crying all the time and everyone was freaking out. So she supplemented with formula and pumped round the clock for months and months, trying her utmost to make it work. Ultimately she stopped breastfeeding earlier than she wanted to, and she was devastated. Her story is fraught with regrets, doubt and sadness. Of course I don’t judge her – why would I? It’s so clear that she’s a mother like me, doing a great job, just trying to do the best she can for her son.

    So what’s the difference between the two scenarios?

    I guess it comes down to understanding. When I can easily put myself in the shoes of the other, understanding and compassion flow. And it’s just more natural to put myself in those other shoes if they look more or less the same as mine. The challenge comes when the world view is different – it takes more of an effort to garner the same level of understanding.

    But it’s not impossible. I have close friends who are very different mothers to me, and I manage not to judge them at least most of the time. Because I know and understand them, and so it makes sense to me why my style of parenting wouldn’t work for them. I don’t have to work to comprehend the motivation behind every choice.

    The ironic part of all this is that I know how shitty it feels to be judged for your parenting. That sinking feeling of being completely misunderstood, of knowing that someone close to you thinks you’re doing a bad job. I often feel like I’m being judged by family and friends and it’s so horrible. And yet as we just established, I’m guilty of it just like everyone else.

    So, here’s the plan. I’m gonna try to do this less. It won’t happen overnight, but I hope I can use skilled compassion and understanding to judge other mamas (and papas) less. To notice judgement as it arises in my mind, and to consciously remind myself that everyone is fucking exhausted, emotional, and trying to do the best they can for their little people. Even if it looks ridiculous and misguided to me. Even if I know just the Janet Lansbury article that would sort them out once and for all.

    There’s this sign on the fridge at my Dad and Stepmom’s place, it says, “TEENAGERS! Tired of being harassed by your parents? ACT NOW! Move out, get a job, pay your own bills while you still know everything!” It’s a dad joke, for sure, but there’s truth in it. As a teenager I really did think I knew everything. And while I’ve learned a lot since, the real wisdom I’ve gained is that I don’t know anything. Well, hardly anything.

    So – more understanding, more compassion, less judging.

    Who’s with me?

  • A Motherhood Manifesto

    The phrase “the type of mother I want to be” comes up for me a lot – in my writing as well as day-to-day conversations. But what does it mean? What type of mother do I want to be? In no particular order, stream-of-consciousness style, this:

    I want to be the type of mother who laughs with her kids. Always. 

    The type of mother who listens. Even if she doesn’t like what she’s hearing. Or doesn’t understand. Who keeps listening until something makes sense. Until her child feels heard. 

    A mother who stops for hugs. If her kids want a hug, she’s all arms. 

    I want to be the type of mother who models a healthy, positive relationship. Naturally but also consciously. The type of mother who goes on dates with her husband, regularly and voluntarily. 

    The type of mother who lets her kids be who they are, right now – not who she thought they would be. Or who they were.  

    I want to be the type of mother who teaches her children to meditate, to express their emotions and to love reading. By modeling, first and foremost.  

    A mother who has a career, along with other interests outside the family. And prioritizes them, too. 

    I want to be the type of mother who tells her kids the truth, through a filter of healthy boundaries. 

    The type of mother who writes. 

    I want to be the type of mother who doesn’t sweat the small things. 

    The type of mother who holds herself to all of these values and goals and parenting ideals… and knows when to say “bugger it” and break her own rules.

    And not beat herself up about it. 

    I want to be the type of mother who thinks about what type of mother she wants to be. 

    Wish me luck 🙂

  • My Cinderella Sleep Realization

    My Cinderella Sleep Realization

    After a few weeks of some pretty dodgy sleep on the part of our five-month-old baby, and a week of getting back on track (more on that soon), I’ve been mulling the significant effect slumber can have on our waking lives.

    I know most of you are probably thinking, “duh,” but sleep has never been a massive priority for me. For better or for worse I’m one of those people that can function well and get by on minimal amounts of sleep – and even enjoy the buzz of feeling overtired and a little loopy. I’ve worked night shifts and long hours and pulled countless all-nighters for reasons ranging from warehouse raves to university essays to long chats with good friends and West Wing marathons. It’s taken years of conscious work on the “value” of sleep (and lots of pressure – ahem, encouragement – on my husband’s part) to get to a point where I prioritize it at all. By now I’m convinced that the amount and the quality of the sleep we get is crucial to emotional stability.

    But delving into some of the (completely circumstantial, non-scientific) data, it’s become clear to me that the time I go to sleep – rather than how long I sleep for or how many times I’m woken to feed – is actually the strongest indicator of my mood. Find a date that I feel like everything sucks, that my husband and I fight, that I demolish an entire block of cooking chocolate – and I can almost guarantee you that we went to sleep later than usual the previous night.

    Going to bed past midnight (read: 10pm) is taking the zzz out of my zen – just like Cinderella. There’s something about those hours of uninterrupted sleep before midnight (Gadi usually sleeps from at least 8pm-2am straight) that make my glass slippers (read: yoga pants) extra sparkly, boosting a positive outlook and strength of conviction that I’m finding crucial right now.

    So that’s my big realization. As a result I’m making a concerted effort to cheer on my inner Sleeping Beauty – so as not to turn into a pumpkin (or worse – the Evil Stepmother!) right when I most need the magic.