Under the Oaks: Camp Mommy

sit stiller in the warm whirlwind

Welcome to Under the Oaks, a quiet place to sit and read in the Land of Oaks and Roses.

My daughter starts Kindergarten on Thursday and my son starts preschool phase-in on Friday. After 25 days, Camp Mommy is coming to a close. I really wanted to enjoy these weeks with my kids. I wanted to move slower, sit stiller in the warm whirlwind of beads and dirt and endless snacks. I knew going into it that the challenge wasn’t going to be creating the perfect schedule or identifying the best activities. It was going to be my own mind. It was going to be getting myself to a place where I could be present, which we all know is more complex than it sounds.

Hi from Camp Mommy!

Like clockwork, as soon as real camp ended, a handful of unexpected opportunities hit my inbox. Brand partnerships, a dream interview. Things that would also require my presence in order to have them. And they were a surprise. I’ve planned out different parts of my career but this isn’t one of them. Success here feels too good to be true. Like something that happens to someone who hasn’t dedicated their peak earning years to wiping little butts and tears.

But, wait, it was time to start Camp Mommy! Presence remember? I wake up hours before my kids so my mind is mine before it becomes everyone else’s. I give myself these hours so that I have the energy to give away the next ten. The problem? Ten isn’t enough. The exhaustion hits by early afternoon everyday. And that’s on good days. If there’s a tantrum, or a potty training incident or any of the other items on motherhood’s menu of hard things, the exhaustion alarm clock goes off even earlier.

If I could sum up the hardest part of my life right now it would be having to give away energy when I (desperately) need it. It would be moving through the pain that is trying to be who I want to be when my body is telling me to stop. I listened to a great podcast where Marcus Weston described the way we welcome a work out’s pain, and how that mindset can apply to the rest of our lives too:

“The gym should be a very painful, stupid experience. It should be. But because you have absolute certainty in the outcome, you accept the pain and you actually enjoy the pain. And in fact without the pain it’s useless. You pay for the pain. Same thing in life. If you have that same certainty, if you knew that every single second was a training ground for some expertise, some experience, some greatness, some majesty, some profession, some place to help millions of people potentially…I mean, you’d tell yourself I can handle more pain. Please more pain now. Because I buy into the fruit in 10 years time.”

Marcus Weston

I love this concept, and believe it to be true. Exhaustion is a price I’d pay over and over again for the love that I’ve received, for the evolution that I’ve experienced. I know that the moments when I’ve yelled at my kids were the exact ones that turned me into the kind of person who knows how to apologize. All the motherhood minutes spent crying in the shower were also minutes spent changing into the kind of person I’ve always wanted to be. The kind of mom and wife I’ve always wanted to be. The kind of person who could write a newsletter like this. Every painful minute was a seed. And those seeds have grown. They’ve grown into discipline, stamina, patience, and especially heart opening. Camp Mommy gave me more seeds to plant. What makes 5 am a time when magic happens? The seed that I planted when my newborn woke me up every 45 minutes. The knowledge is knowing, with certainty, that when the newborn cries again, you are in that exact moment paying for the fruits of your future. “Knowledge is only rumor, until it lives in the bones,” Brené Brown says. Motherhood makes it hard to get this work done. It’s also the reason it exists.