Balance is an ideal that is visited and revisited in our household. For the first seven years of having children, my husband worked 60-80 hours a week or more in a demanding and often times stressful job. I quit my job to stay home full time and care for our growing family along with the stereotypically “mom” jobs like all the cleaning, laundry, pediatrician visits, nighttime wakings, you get the idea. We did what we thought was working but in all reality, it wasn’t working at all. My husband’s job was getting more and more demanding. Our children were quickly developing from babies into amazing little personalities yet my husband was not able to spend much time with them or caring for them because he was barely home. I was feeling overwhelmed by the huge responsibility of taking care of most of the family responsibilities. We were both exhausted, run down and it took a toll on our relationship. An opportunity arose for my husband to apply for his dream job in firefighting. It would be a gruelling process of testing, both written and physical along with some pretty intense interviews but the idea of living a simpler, slower lifestyle was worth the hard work and the risk. It would also require an almost exactly 50% pay cut-scary! In May of 2008, he officially resigned from his “day” job and 2 weeks later began his new career as a firefighter.
This is where our life and all aspects of it was turned inside out. We had operated in traditional roles for 7 years. My husband was now home five days of the week. I went back to work part time to help bring up our income. I would love to say that it was as smooth of a transition as it sounds in print yet the truth is, it wasn’t. We were focussed, though, and never waivered from the fact that we were a team. We had to look at our relationship and the things we did not as “me vs. you” but in a way that begged the question “how can we make this work together?” So we talked and talked and talked some more. Daily we were tweaking and retweaking how things were going and where we could work more efficiently together. Nine months later, we don’t have as many conversations as we did in the beginning but more about clarifying the game plan. We have transitioned from a traditional one income, dad works, mom stays home with the kids family to an equally sharing the roles team. We have a much slower pace to life. We both enjoy lots of time with our children, time for work, time for pursuing interests and hobbies and time spent together. This huge lifestyle change that was a challenge to work through, also became the greatest place of balance for us.
Balance will be a lifelong teeter totter for me. I naturally lean towards an enjoyment of loving and nurturing others. It’s in my nature to want to jump to help a friend in need. I am so good at it, in fact, that I can (often) neglect my own need for love and nurturing in the process. How do I best love and care for myself? Proper fuelling of my body, proper amounts of rest and a good dose of exercise daily keep me feeling the self love. I have never been good at putting myself first, though, so I have to constantly be checking in with myself (you know, in those “me” conversations I have hehe) to see how the balancing act is going. A great reminder for me is the whole plane scenario. When they are going through the safety and emergency procedures on a plane, they always emphasize how we need to put on our own oxygen mask before we try to help others. We are only as good to others as we are to ourselves. If I don’t have any energy to pour into myself, how do I possibly have any for anyone else?
What about you? Is there a change you could make in your life, big or small, that would help you move towards a better life balance? Are you putting on your oxygen mask first?
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