“I can’t believe I’m here,” I think, and shame wells up in me. I watch myself from the outside as I tip my head back to make sure none of the fistful of goldfish crackers I toss in my mouth hit the floor of the grocery store.
“Uh! Uh! Uh!” my one year old son chants, hand fully outstretched, fingers splayed.
I put two ‘pink’ (actually an orangey-mauve color) princess goldfish crackers in his hand. He giggles to himself before he presses them into his mouth.
“Mama, can I have more?” my four-year-old asks, unsureness and muted excitement in her voice. She knows this ‘isn’t what we do,’ so she treads carefully.
I hold out the bag for her, knowing I should be saying, “okay, now that we’re not all super hungry, this is the last handful,” but I don’t. I know that I’m not done and I’ll want more. It feels cruel (and potentially disastrous) to tell them they can’t have any more and then keep snacking myself. Instead, I keep hand-feeding all of us, listening to my thoughts:
This is almost everything I’m against.
How would I explain this to a client who walked by?
What terrible things are they learning and damaging food relationships are they
internalizing?
Why didn’t I feed him enough earlier?
What happened to how mindfully I used to eat (and feed my kids)?
There is an old adage that goes something like ‘I wish I was half the parent I was before I had children.’ Before I had children, I found this adage snarky and irritating. As an eating disorder specialist, I knew that parents often felt judged. I knew how debilitating this was for the moms I saw in my psychotherapy practice. But at the same time (again, childless) the answers were clear to me. Eating is only for tables. Teaching kids about hunger and satiety is a hugely important job. Kids don’t have to like the rules, they just have to follow them. You must feed yourself mindfully, no matter the other commitments that call upon you. I would warmly empathize with my clients, then remind them of their roles, take the co-pay, and send them off with a kind smile into the world. I meant well, but I had no idea how hard it really could be.
Days after the great goldfish debacle, I am in my supervisor’s office reiterating the situation, laughing at myself. My mindful, yoga-teaching, eating disorder specialist supervisor laughs along with me, sits back, and reminds me, ‘well, it sounds like you were pretty mindful.’
What’s that now?
None of the tools of mindful eating were in place here. We weren’t at a table. We were eating from the bag. For god’s sake, we were walking as we ate. In a grocery store! How in the world could this be called mindful?
Ahhh…the lovely and pervasive cognitive distortions about what mindfulness is and is not. Popular culture would have us believe that mindful eating is ONLY sitting on a chair, silently observing all one’s senses and a practice of gratitude before eating. Sure, that’s great, but how feasible is that for every meal for a busy mom? Sometimes it is paying attention to the mind, acknowledging where we are, and making a conscious choice of what needs our focus. This is truly the most mindful and compassionate way to eat. Sometimes breathing deeply over a bowl of vegetable curry isn’t in the cards when the baby is crying or the teenager is arguing.
That day in the store, I was trying to balance so many things at once – my son’s hunger, my fatigue, my expectations, my judgment, my daughter’s boundary-testing, my disappointment, my hunger, and most notably, filling our empty fridge at home. So many different things pulled at my attention. It made me cloudy and judgmental of myself.
The demands on modern parents are varied and extensive. Even with so many labor-saving devices, we still expect more and more of ourselves – perfectly and healthfully prepared meals, conscious and child-centered parenting, exposure to new experiences, academic development, promoting independence, all while getting enough sleep and exercise, eating the right foods, maintaining marriages, friendships, careers, and interests. Before I had children, I assumed that if I just kept things basic, focused and grounded, I could do all of it and be centered.
Nope.
The good news is that I already knew that I wasn’t alone. I’d already worked for years with moms who struggled to prioritize feeding and caring for themselves somewhere behind the long list of feeding, clothing, washing, working, listening, cleaning and loving everyone else in their families. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve recited the ‘oxygen mask’ metaphor* to an exhausted mom who swears she does not have time to feed, rest, or move her body while she shuttles kids from ballet to soccer. Since becoming a mom, I’ve become especially passionate about the work of helping moms prioritize self-care as a step in their recovery (whether from eating disorders, body hatred, or anxiety/depression).
That day in my supervisor’s office, it became clear to me the resource I’d always longed to write for moms struggling to feed themselves mindfully should not be just another step-by-step program. That’s not how life actually works. Moms are already so hard on themselves (myself included) and I no longer wanted to add my voice to the chorus of ‘you’re-doing-it-wrong-do-it-this-way’ chants. It became important to me to write while I was still actively in the struggle of mindfully feeding myself while caring for small children. I didn’t want time to wash away the memory of how effing hard it is to take care of kids and yourself. I had to write while immersed in the days of feeling like I was cooking with an angry koala attached to me. Before this, I thought I had to have it all figured out – that I had to be the one not struggling in order to help other moms with their challenges. It made me feel like a fraud. There it was: the very thing that got in the way of writing was the same thing that tortured the moms I worked with –trying to do it perfect.
Here’s the glitch. Mindfulness, intuitive eating, recovery, motherhood, and pretty much anything real cannot be done perfectly. And trying to anything perfectly with kids around is a complete set-up for misery and failure. As much as we might take the bait with diet books, 30-day fitness challenges, and parenting blogs -- moms don’t need just another advice manifesto. We need someone with us in the trenches. That’s why it’s so important to have blogs like Dr. Shanti’s and those of us willing to be real about how hard it really is to be a mom and fighting to take care of yourself. We’re on the battlefield too. So, put on your helmet and join us in the foxhole (we’ve got granola bars down here).
*The oxygen mask metaphor is one commonly used in psychotherapy to explicate the importance of prioritizing self-care. This refers to the safety announcements airline staff make regarding emergency measures should a plane lose altitude. Passengers are reminded to put the oxygen masks that drop from the ceiling onto their own faces before helping others. While it might be our automatic response to help our loved ones or someone else in need first, the idea in this situation (as with all self-care) is that if we do not take care of ourselves first, we cannot adequately take care of others.
Corinne Crossley, LMHC - psychotherapist in Canton, Massachusetts, chief writer of www.mindfuleatingmoms.com and mother of two (ages 5 and 2).
From my very first client, I felt drawn to the work of helping people heal their relationships with their bodies. I love using yoga, mindfulness, acceptance & commitment therapy (ACT), and a twist of dialectical behavior therapy in helping clients recover their relationship with their bodies and food. In my spare time, I might be found trying to squeeze in a yoga class, baking chocolate chip cookies from memory, or immediately falling asleep while attempting to watch something on Netflix.
