This week’s Self-Care Sunday installment focuses on physical wholeness and will help you avoid winter weight gain. How to Avoid Winter Weight Gain I know, talking about winter weight gain on the day after fall is like stores selling Christmas decorations before Halloween. But trust me, planning self-care routines ahead of time pays off big. The older I get, the more difficult it is for me to keep off the extra pounds when I stop my regular routine. What about…
This month, the Self-Care Sunday series will focus on Fall. It’s the perfect time of year to prepare yourself mentally for the holidays. Especially if your family gatherings end up stressing you out and building resentment. In order to move towards mental wholeness, we need to learn to handle problems when they arise. Another Holiday Dilemma “What?” I exclaimed. “I can’t believe they invited us for Christmas this year.” Pedro shrugged and replied, “They are family.” “I know.” Just the…
Kids don’t have the monopoly of going back to school this fall. Adults can join in, too! Busy moms and dads will understand the chaos of the first week of school when kids form positive habits that help them settle in to the routines of the new school year. We can take a page out of their notebooks and use the back-to-school excitement to school ourselves. This week for Self-Care Sunday, we’ll look at how to form positive spiritual self-care…
This week’s Self-Care Sunday post continues the back-to-school theme. I confess, August isn’t my favorite month. And not just because it’s hot. Plump and Missing Tail Feathers An odd-sounding hummingbird zoomed in to the feeder and spread its tail feathers wide—what few he had left. His plump body looked like he’d visited the feeders repeatedly over the past few weeks. Maybe more often than he should. I snapped photos of him and his sorry tail, and thought about how I…
One important aspect of self-care lies in our responsibility to continue to develop our intellect beyond the four walls of the classroom. Wheels of Freedom I remember my first bicycle—a shiny green Huffy with a saddle seat and coaster brakes. The back wheel had a set of smaller training wheels attached. I eventually learned to ride by myself (thanks, Mom and Dad), and experienced new freedom. I cut pieces of cardboard and attached them to the bike frame with a…
This week’s weeks installment of Self-Care Sunday continues this month’s theme of vacation. You’ll want to make sure you take these essentials on your next day hike. I learned from my Dad the importance of survival skills before I even started school. Thanks, Dad! Survival Skills “I think we need to cook them just a little bit longer,” my dad said, looking dubiously into the frying pan. We giggled. “It smells like chicken,” he assured us. We nodded. I piped…
This week’s installment of Self-Care Sunday continues the theme of vacation. Not only do vacations play a huge part in our well-being, helping our kids learn to put their learning to use over vacation helps us enter into the spirit of life-long learning. A win-win situation for everyone! Bored Kids=Vacation Disaster “I’m soooo bored!” Nothing strikes fear and frustration into the heart of a parent faster than those three words. Except maybe, “There’s nothing to do!” Part of us wants…
We highlight mental self-care the first Sunday of each month for Self-Care Sunday. Today, I’ve invited one of my students to share her opinion paper with you. Cherie Whitney wrote this as an assignment for her English class, and she has a powerful message about depression for parents and teachers. Why You Should Know the Effects of Depression In Teens by Cherie Whitney I think adults should know the effects of depression. Most adults seem to ignore that someone…
Routines Build Relationships Face it, without routines in relationships, the relationship would slowly dry up. Back in the days before Internet, when Pedro and I first started dating, we wrote to each other on a daily basis during the long summers we spent apart. Those letters represent a routine of communication that built our relationship. We didn’t write flowery poems or repeat the same sentiment over and over again. We just shared with each other how our day had gone,…
Self-Care Sundays For the next eight months, I’ll continue the MAPS theme from my Write 31 Days Challenge. I strongly feel that in our self-indulgent culture, we often lose sight of the difference between nurturing ourselves and indulging ourselves. Occasional indulgence won’t hurt anyone, but a steady diet of indulgence that overlooks actual self-care can leave us feeling empty and confused. The acronym MAPS stands for Mental, Academic/Artistic, Physical and Spiritual—the four areas of our lives that we need to…
