Before we begin – on a lighter note – the leggings pictured here are Niyama Sol’s “endless” leggings, and they’re going to get their own post because if you are a yoga person or a leggings person or just a person, you need these.
Now.
A couple of weeks ago, after I published this post, I got a message from a reader telling me about her dad. Her dad, she wrote, had developed this interesting habit: He’d come up with five things that were virtually guaranteed to make him feel really, really good, and committed himself to doing at least one of those things each and every day of his life. (One of them is eating ice cream, so if it hits midnight and he hasn’t done any of the other things that day, he will get himself out to a Thrifty and get a cone in his hand STAT, which makes him sort of a hero.)
I’ve gotten a whole bunch of “what’s going on? updates please?!” emails and texts and DMs from people over the past several days – some of whom I know personally, most of whom I don’t – and so let me say this: I believe in the power of sharing experiences, and especially the ones that are hardest to share. I want – even need – to write about what’s going on, and what will be going on in the days and months to come (even though, of course, the short answer is I don’t know). But right now, I can’t. I need to protect my husband’s privacy, and my children’s privacy, and let this all shake out however its going to before I start writing about where I, or we, or all of us are headed.
Life right now can best be described as brutal. I hired a twelve-year-old mother’s helper to give me some breathing room. I am decluttering like my life depends on it. But my head is full to the top with the kids. The kids. Our kids.
And because I can’t do yet what I do when things are hard – write about them – I have decided to choose my own Five Things.
I meditate. Even if it’s just for five minutes.
I go to my favorite yoga class.
I watch Hulu in the bathtub.
I read a book with actual pages.
I put on bluetooth earbuds, and I swim, and swim, and swim.
