Where Do We Go When the Momentum Slows?
— By Lauren Trend
I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship with and towards work of late. Something that’s often spoken of, especially in the working parent world, is the notion of balance. That sweet spot where you’re tending to things in equal measure, and at once. Your home, your child, your career, your relationship, your friendships, your health, etc. To be frank, I’m not sure that balance, in the way that we mean for it to, even exists - at least in my limited experience as a parent, so far.
To whittle my current day reality down to one bite-sized therapy take away: When I feel like I’m doing a great job at being a mother to my nine-month-old daughter, work is steadily piling up before getting out of hand. And when I feel productive, passionate and in full force at work, I’m no where near as present as I wish to be as a parent.
I can almost here a chorus of parents out there echoing, ‘welcome’.
Yes. These are the trenches. The depths of parenthood within which we’re asked to surrender and then some - for the sake of our child, for the sake of ourselves.
What I’m doing my best to remind myself of late, is that some chapters are fast, and others are slow. Both at work, and at home. And it seems to be a lesson that I need to learn and re-learn during different seasons of my life.
In an increasingly busy world, all you have to do is take one look online and feel like opportunities and career milestones are passing you by. It can be overwhelming when anxiety rises, especially if your anxiety response is anything like mine: stillness.
When overwhelm hits, my initial response isn’t to ‘do’, it’s to freeze. Thus, feeding the vicious cycle of feeling like I’m not getting enough done, but then feeling too stressed to in fact get anything done.
It’s in these very moments that my current self-practice is trying to embrace the stillness. To embrace the break my body and brain are so desperately craving. To make room for the idling, welcome it in fact. And embrace the lack of momentum I find myself experiencing, because I know that one day, it will return and I’ll be firing on all cylinders once again. And maybe then I won’t feel so compelled to place my entire self-worth on my ability to get things done. (The joys of a capitalist society hyper-fixated on productivity!)
So, today I ask you (me!), where do we go when our momentum slows? What can we focus on between the expansive, busy chapters of our lives?
Can we idle and not label it anything other than a necessary hibernation? Can we press pause and not fall into the comparison trap, remembering that our growth should only be compared to that of our own ideas and measures of success, and not anyone else’s.
I welcome anyone in a similar season of their life to take the pressure off themselves. To take pause and notice everything that you’re actually getting done whilst feeling like you’re not.
And that if you were to take a look around at your life and how it stands today, there was a time that you only once dreamed of being where you are at at this very given moment.
I hope these words find those who need them: You have time. Take a breath, you’ve got this.