Remember the Airline Oxygen Mask Instructions

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Sunday, February 21, 2010

breathe easier image

The first time I referenced the oxygen mask metaphor was during my first job out of college with Teach for America. I had so much young, bleeding-heart passion for doing my part to foster social change in public education and all that remains unfair about it. I rocked (or thought I did) during the six week summer training program and with naive hubris requested a middle school assignment. I scored a particularly challenging gig. And soon after I began the school year, my overwhelm spiraled into severe anxiety and the inability to sleep at all for six weeks — and eventually the inability to do much of anything — let alone teach.

I was 23 years old. And I remember saying to one of my friends who was teaching with me at the same inner-city Houston school (and is still one of my closest friends today):  “There’s a solid reason the airlines instruct adults to put their oxygen mask on first, and then assist their child. If you pass out from lack of oxygen, you can’t help your child do anything. I can’t teach these kids when I am struggling to help myself.”

The decision to leave the job was agonizing and the aftermath solidly demoralizing. And yet my heart at the time felt clear that my presence in the classroom was contradicting the mission that I signed up for to provide excellent education for under-privileged children.

Now, fifteen years later with success in another career, I’m in a fairly chronic sleep-deprived state once again — but much less severe, and thankfully not because of all-night-long anxiety attacks.  Yes, we’ve “night-weaned” our baby, but that doesn’t mean she’s sleeping through the night.  My wakings now alternate between hearing the baby waking, crying briefly and my husband shushing her back to sleep, and my toddler waking me to request a trip to the bathroom or some water. It’s getting easier each week and I know there is also magical parent-child closeness to be relished during this chapter of life.

Yet the self-care struggle remains. As I strive to provide consistent loving care for my girls while frequently neglecting myself, I’m reminded of the airline oxygen mask instructions and the poignant applicability of this metaphor to these intense early years of parenting. (more…)

Posted in AP & Self Care | 2 Comments

Living the Dream – We Love Our New Housemate!

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Thursday, February 11, 2010

Here’s the bizarre dichotomous nature of my life right now. On the one hand, I’m fully living the stress of this recession as my husband and I scramble to figure out how to live off of 10% of the income we had three years ago.

On the other hand, I’ve never been more rich than I am right now. I’ve never felt more alive or inspired to create; I have never been more fully expressed (I love writing my bloggity blog!), and I have never felt more gratitude for everything I have:  My family, my health, my connections with others. Pure sweetness and true wealth in my book.

And — HOLY POWER OF INTENTION — we have a live-in cook!!

Amazing!  Sometimes I still can’t believe it. I can play with my girls and/or exercise while someone else prepares a home-cooked healthy meal and after dinner I can either work or participate in our bed-time routine and someone else cleans the kitchen. What??  Is this for real?? (more…)

Posted in AP & Self Care, Breastfeeding, Co-Sleeping, Nutrition | 2 Comments

Our New Wild Card Approach to Self Care

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Monday, February 1, 2010

Three years of ridiculously bad sleep, a laughable exercise routine, a high dose of economic stress and a solid propensity for weekly binges on either chocolate chip cookies or Annie’s mac and cheese or a basket of tater tots at Dog Almighty……um yeah, I’m not exactly the poster child for Self Care that I strive to be. Yes, I balance my occasional mac and cheese binge with frequent visits to Casa de Luz thanks to a trade my husband worked out with the owner, and I prepare plenty of healthy meals for my family — but all together I haven’t felt great about the big picture of our lifestyle.

Reading my Self Care posts, you may have gotten the impression that I’m the queen at manifesting all things good and healthy for myself and my family. (Ha!) Health and well-being is certainly my number one priority right now. I’ve been striving for it and certainly writing about it a lot — but quite honestly — our diet and exercise routine (or lack thereof) hasn’t come close to what I believe is necessary for disease prevention and longevity. Living through the last month of my entire family so unhappily sick helped me get clear on our need to change something about the way we live.

Our one fabulous bit of progress has been on the sleep front.  Our new approach to the family bed?  Divide and conquer.  Our littlest, now 16 months, has turned a corner and can happily sleep seven or eight hours with her Daddy.  YES! (this “yes” really deserves eighteen exclamation points to give you the full idea of my feelings on the subject). She may wake once or twice, but she immediately falls back to sleep.  And I feel OK about it, because she’s still being responded to with sensitivity and love.  This is a life changer.  Had I continued to sleep with her, she would still be nursing every two to three hours and I would officially be The Crazy Cravotta Lady. So, it’s Daddy and sweet baby in one bed; me and sweet toddler in another.  What about the husband-wife thing, you ask?  We’re working on some creative solutions in that department.

Now. To the truly healthy lifestyle and self-care question. My husband and I have been saying we’ve got to figure out how to work exercise back into our schedule for months and it just hasn’t been happening. And I’ve been worried that when I’m back to work 8-5 and anxious to get home and see my girls, the probability of fitting in exercise could be even more challenging.

And then I got this wild card idea while setting intentions for the New Year. What if we rented out our guest room to someone as a trade? Maybe someone studying to be chef that would love free rent in exchange for grocery shopping, preparing meals for us five days/week and cleaning up the kitchen afterward?  That would free up as much as 2 hours/day for me on those days!  Time that I could take the girls out in the jogging stroller and knock out a run, get some special time with them at the neighborhood park, and come home to a healthy, home-cooked meal.

So we went for it. Posted an ad on Craig’s List earlier this month.  And Voilà!  Would you believe the dream we put out there was a dream come true for someone else? A young, delightful woman who wants to change careers and become a chef moved to Austin last week to pursue her passion for cooking. She told a friend that she really hoped to find a family here that she could live with and cook for to get practice toward her dream profession. And she’s starting cooking school with the Natural Epicurean in May.

She moves in tomorrow.

February 1st, 2010 marks the beginning of a new chapter in our life and our mission to take better care of ourselves while caring for our sweet angels. We hope and give thanks for this little experiment being a positive experience for all of us.  Power of Intention rocks!

Posted in AP & Self Care, Nutrition | 8 Comments

Three Easy Tricks to Get Out of a Rut

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Thursday, January 28, 2010

Thank you Helen.

I touched on aspects of these emotional transformation tricks in a post last month on managing holiday stress. If I only I could remember to put them into practice more often! Nudged to reconsider these today when I was stuck in a rut, I once again marveled at how instantaneous they were in shifting my state of being. I went from feeling irritated, frustrated and focused on what wasn’t happening in my life to feeling alive, inspired and focused on what I can do next to grow as a person, to be fully expressed, and to provide value to my family and my community. Within minutes! Knowing how well it can work for me, I’m now inspired to guide my 3 year-old in trying these out when she gets emotionally stuck.  I can remind her of how she felt in this picture when her arms were outstretched in pure, unfettered bliss. 

1)  Change your physiology.  When you’re pissed off at life, how does it feel in your body?  What do your shoulders do?  How do you breathe?  What happens to your forehead, your mouth, your jaw….?  Now think about your physical state when you’re feeling your favorite emotion.  My favorite emotional state is a combination of inspired and secure.  When I feel this way, I feel energetic, powerful, open, and tapped into Life.  My chest is open versus hunched, my face is bright and content versus scrunched or clenched and my breathing comes easy.

To find the emotional state that matches the physical state, start with the latter.  Stretch.  Walk outside.  Dance.  Practice Yoga. Check out this great article from Fit Yoga Magazine posted in Yoga in Tribeca on how to impact the way you think and feel and create through direct manipulation of the body.

2)  Check in on your focus and your beliefs in that moment. This morning my rut was around focusing my mind and perception on “everything taking so long”. Putting my focus there, I was energetically blocking anything else from happening and ultimately inhibiting any number of miracles that can happen every day.

3) Change the question.  If you hear any version of “What’s wrong with me?” or  “Why can’t I figure this out?” in your head, get conscious of it, recognize that no valuable answer comes from a negatively oriented question, and try asking a different set of questions like:

• “What’s next?”
• “How can we have fun?”
• “What am I grateful for right now?”
• “What am I willing to do to create a new reality?”
• “How can we make this an amazing adventure?”
• “What is perfect about this moment?”
• “What am I learning?”

Posted in AP & Self Care | 2 Comments

The Power of Intention

By Monica Cravotta  |  Published: Sunday, January 24, 2010

Our brilliant and amazing friend, Helen Attridge, has played a powerfully supportive role in our lives including marrying us in Austin almost five years ago. My how life has changed!

She’s a talented coach who shares all kinds of great tools for creating a life you love.  Here’s an easy meditative journaling exercise she adapted from the 15 minute miracle that you can do at the beginning of each day. In the past, I’ve done variations of this, including expressing gratitude at different times during the day for something I seek before it happens as if it already has.  This week, I’m all about expressing appreciation for my family’s health and practicing patience for this becoming so.

Today________is a new day for me to enjoy. I am free to choose my thoughts and in choosing my thoughts , I can choose what I attract and create in my life.

Today my intention is_____________________________________________________________

1) Give gratitude for the blessings you already have in your life. (Research shows that just 3 minutes a day spent in gratitude impacts the immune system for 6-8 hours.   Example:  I am so grateful for my health that allows me to enjoy my friends, my children.

2) What is a positive emotional state that you love to feel?  (grateful, inspired, passionate, secure)

I love it when I feel___________. When I feel this way I__________________which makes it easier for me to________________.

3)  Play wildly in your imagination and picture yourself living the life of your dreams — a life you would love to wake up to. Write about it as if it were already so.

4) Re-read #3.  Close your eyes and visualize yourself living this life, notice how it feels in your body and write down a description of the sensation.

5) Invite assistance from  your Higher Power. This may be spiritually based for you or may be a relative or friend you cared for who has passed away, a strong connection you have with nature, or other guides you check in with.

Dear______, thank you for your guidance, love and ongoing support. If it is in my highest good and supports my well being and my path and the path of others, please divinely orchestrate the following in just the perfect time. Examples:  Give me the strength to…….inspire me to……..guide me to……….help me to………

6) I am now ready to release any beliefs, patterns or behaviors (eg. self doubt, need to control, sabotaging myself), plus all other issues known and unknown that are preventing me from living my best life now. This act of releasing enables me to_______________.

7) Ask your wise self for advice or guidance.  Dear__________, please make it easier for me to move forward in my life by providing wise advice on the following question:_____________________________________.

Write down answers that you receive.

With enormous gratitude I now agree to __________ these and even greater gifts in just perfect time in wonderful ways that bless and benefit me and others.

Signed_____________________

Date______________________

Posted in AP & Self Care | 1 Comment

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