Sometimes it's just hard......

to always stay on the road!  

You know how it is.....the week (or the month or the year) is going along well then all of a sudden, we hit a bump and whoababy everything seems to just go haywire.  That one bump causes us to lose your footing and to start spiraling into hopelessness about everything else.....including our ability to stay on track with our healthy eating and exercise routine.
Let's face it---sometimes life is hard.  With. a. capital. H!
With everything we all have to do in a day, it's tough to keep up with even the most minute things--like shaving our legs and removing the clothes from the dryer.  
How can we stay on top of things like eating healthy and getting regular exercise when your world feels like it's topsy turvy, out of our control or even to the point of just plain lousy?
Although we each have our own coping mechanisms to deal with those things in life that just knock us for a loop, I have found that it takes awhile for those mechanisms to kick in--it's just the normal cycle of how people deal with either a crisis or an event that rocks their world.  
I'm thinking about this right now because I am literally living on little to no sleep these past two weeks--between working very long hours, taking care of all the things that need taken care of in Judiland and being the 24/7 go-to person for a very, very special friend who is dealing with a very difficult situation.  It makes me wonder if I am really doing what I need to do to take care of myself! 

 In the early hours of yesterday morning, the situation that my friend is dealing with escalated even further into a full blown, very scarey crisis.   As I huddled on the phone with her deep into the night, hearing her pain and trying to offer comfort, I couldn't help but be frightened for her and what was to come.  I didn't know what to say and I told her so.  Then, she said something that got me really thinking ...."I can't do this when I am so unhealthy and uncared for." 
Now, before I continue here---I should note that my friend is not really  unhealthy.  She  takes care of herself--she eats well, exercises regularly and is very good with check ups and healthy behavior.  And, she is not uncared for in the typical sense.  She has a very loving husband, a strong and supportive family and a wonderful group of very close friends who would do anything for her.  Yet, in the depths of her anguish, this is how she felt.  She felt saddened and frightened by the weight this situation has placed on her entire family and didn't want to put more on their already teetering emotions.  And, she was too embarrassed by what was happening in her life to share it more broadly with her group of friends---even though she knew that she shouldn't be.  Even with hours of trying to encourage her to reach out more, it was clear that was not going to happen--for reasons I fully understood. So, there she was--carrying the weight of it all....being dragged down by it and feeling  that she could not care for her health or for herself.   Thus---being uncared for and unhealthy. 
For me---I do not see an unhealthy and uncared for woman.  I see a strong and an everything-to-live-for woman who was dealt a very big blow in her life---one that would rock even the strongest of us.  Knowing what she was going through, I knew that she  put her needs on the back burner--trying to balance it all and help others deal with it...all the while not cooking, eating poorly, not sleeping well, not having the energy to exercise.  That's what we women do.  As she shared the seriousness of the situation and the depths of  her pain and frustration, it felt somewhat odd for me to say "you have to take care of yourself right now....".  Even though I knew that's what she really needs to do.  As a woman myself, I knew that part of taking care of herself meant dealing with and handling this crisis that was weighing her down and breaking her heart.  Yet, we all know that to deal with difficult situations  in the way that we need to, we must be at our best--which is not easy when you are dealing with the HARD STUFF.   
It's times like this when we have to stop and look at ourselves and realize that we too will have bad days and hard times---hopefully not as bad or hard as my friend is dealing with---but, nonetheless, we are not immune to the black clouds of life.  Reminding ourselves--each and every day-- that we matter and making it a habit to remind ourselves of that is something we should all strive for!   Even if we don't want to call in the troops for help or share our struggles with the world--we need to find some way to deal with the less-than-ideal moments of life without losing our footing when it comes to our own well being.
Many of us have made significant strides in our overall health and well being--whether it be through weight loss or exercise or therapy--we've done it and we owe it to ourselves to keep DOING IT!
That's my pep talk for today.....
You're Welcome!