When I recovered from postpartum depression, I felt as if I had reached the top of a summit and had done all the work I would ever need to do on the Personal Transformation Front.

I was wrong.

I was finished with cognitive behavioral. I did not need to meet with my psychologist every week to confirm that I had a handle on motherhood. And I had indeed conquered the beast that was postpartum depression. But I was no where close to finishing my work on the Personal Transformation Front.

And I never will be.

This is the thing I have learned the past few months: I am either actively transforming myself or stagnating. And by “stagnating,” I do not mean “staying the same.” I means “rotting and festering and turning into a pond that is so slimy, even the frogs are grossed out and seek out shinier puddles.”

I don’t want to turn into a stagnant lifeless pond, my water evaporating until I’m not much more than a mess of mucky leaves. I want to be a river, flowing and glittering and moving forwards and onwards, turning bends and crashing down the sides of mountains.

So I am accepting the fact that I am a Work in Progress and that I’ll never have some epiphany that turns me into a finished perfect manuscript. I’ll be forever working on me, myself, my issues, and the meaning of life. And that’s okay.

Actually, being a Work in Progress is better than okay. It’s amazing.

In my last post, I talked about waking up at 5 a.m. to start my day with journaling and stretching before my kiddos emerged from their room, demanding apple juice, snuggles and picture books.

It was a nice routine. I’m sure I’ll do it again.

But holy crap, I got tired.

Maybe it’s because it’s the end of my cycle and I’m due to get my period any day. Maybe it’s because Nathan and I were watching Season 2 of Making a Murderer and I get rattled easily, so I had trouble falling asleep at my usual 10 p.m. bedtime. Or maybe it’s because I’ve been walking more and more and my muscles need a little extra rest. Who knows? All I know is that last week, it felt great to roll out of bed at 5 a.m. but this week, not so much.

It’s a good lesson. I have to remember that what feels right today may not feel so right tomorrow. My body’s needs are in constant motion. I can never figure things out completely because change is constant. The best thing I can do is pay attention and stay curious so I can give myself the things I need.

And who knows what time I’ll need to wake up tomorrow? Though I think I can safely predict I will never be sort of person who wakes up after three hours of sleep feeling refreshed and ready to climb a mountain. Some people can do that. But not me. There is just not enough caffeine in the world to make that scenario okay.

I recently started waking up at 5 a.m. It’s amazing. Before my kids wake up, I have time to journal and stretch. I feel like I have so much more energy and patience when I have started my day with a little time for myself.

This is a very recent development. Sleep is essential. It is the foundation of my mental health. If I’m not getting enough sleep, then I don’t feel like my best self. I don’t even feel like my okay self. I feel like a shitty shadow of myself.

So I am waking up early without an alarm clock. I am letting my Circadian rhythm do its thing. If I wake up one day and discover I missed the 5 a.m. hour, so be it.

Couple of observations:

• I weaned off Mirtazipane right before Christmas. Mirtazipane is an anti-anxiety sleep aid that I had been taking since my first round on postpartum depression in 2013. When I took Mirtazipane, even just a teeny tiny dose, I slept past 6. Since getting the Mirtazipane out of my body, though, I find myself waking up naturally at 5 a.m.
• Five a.m. is early. When I first weaned off Mirtazipane and started waking up at 5, my initial reaction was What. The. Fuck. I’d roll over, burrow under the blankets, and stay in bed as long as possible.
• This strategy backfired. I’d either doze and have half-dreams about my To Do list (which is not at all relaxing) or I’d fall into a deep sleep and got woken by the kids, and then I’d be uber grumpy. If I get woken up during a deep sleep state, I just don’t feel right all day.
• So I decided to listen to my body and try getting out of bed at 5 a.m. just to see how it felt. But I only did this because I strongly suspected that my body was ready to go at 5 a.m.

So here I am. It’s Saturday morning and I’ve already had two hours to myself! I’ve journaled, I’ve down a stretching program, I’ve tinkered with my novel, I’ve had breakfast, I’ve read, and now, I’ve written a blog post. Maybe waking up at 5 a.m. is my new secret magic.

Just don’t ask me to give up caffeine.

I have decided: 2019 is my year of no sugar.

Let me clarify: 2019 is my year of no refined sugar. I am allowed to eat all the fruits and veggies that my heart desires. Yes, grapes and watermelon have sweet sugars, but I don’t have a problem with fruit. I have a problem with refined sugar, and so we are breaking up for at least an entire year.

I am also not worried about the occasional bit of refined sugar in a savory dish at a restaurant. I don’t eat at restaurants very often, and savory dishes are not my problem. I am overweight because (a) I emotionally eat (b) refined sugar in (c) cookies, donuts, cakes, ice cream, candy, and various assorted desserts. I am not overweight because sometimes there is a drizzle of sugar in some salad dressing at a restaurant, so I’m not going to obsess over those infrequent brushes with the White Sugar Beast.

Earlier this year, in August 2018, I broke up with sugar for one hour. Then another. And another. I kept breaking up with sugar for an hour at a time until I was ready to commit to an entire day, then a week, and then a month, without refined sugar. I ended up avoiding refined sugar until Halloween. Then I allowed myself to go crazy and eat All The Candy on October 30th and October 31st.

I went clean again until Thanksgiving when I allowed myself to have All the Pie and All The Ice Cream.

I was good for about two weeks, and then, I decided I was allowed to have sugar in light of the Christmas holidays. I decided I could relax my refined sugar ban and go clean until the New Year.

Oops.

Within a few days, I was sucked back into the vortex of sugar binging. One day, I ate about 2000 calories of Hershey kisses while standing up next to the microwave. Another day, I senselessly gobbled up a dozen cookies. But hey, the holidays are about sugar!

Right?

After I gave up sugar in August, I had the best menstrual cycle of my life. It was short, about 28 days, and I did not experience a blip of PMS. No mood swings, and none of my usual insomnia. I had the most gloriously civilized and healthy menstrual cycles in August, September, October, and November.

December was not so good.

I had three nights of insomnia. Not ideal when you are preparing for the holidays with small children. And I had a much longer cycle than usual. Instead of the 26-28 day cycles I had been enjoying, my December cycle lasted 31 days. Those extra days? Overflowing with moody, bitchy PMS.

I can see the connection between my health, my menstrual cycle and refined white sugar. No sugar, no PMS; lots of sugar, lots of PMS. It’s that simple, and fuck it, I don’t want to live that way anymore.

So I won’t.

In August, when I gave up sugar, it felt right to do it in the smallest way possible. One hour. But now, four and a half months later, it feels right to go big and bold and resolve to give up sugar for 2019.

I feel relieved. Lighter. Before I made this decision, I was wasting a lot of energy thinking about how much sugar I would let myself eat in 2019. I knew I had to eat less, but oh, I’m turning 40 in January. How could I turn 40 without cake and ice cream? And then there’s Valentine’s Day. How can I celebrate Valentine’s Day without dark chocolate? And then there’s the family trip to Vegas in June. How can I visit the buffets without eating all the gelato?

Now the decision has been made. I don’t have to agonize over whether I can have sugar on my birthday or whether I should indulge in a teeny taste of my kids’ Easter candy. I’ve already made the decision. I want to see how healthy I can feel after an entire year sans sugar, end of discussion. I’m not going to waste my energy debating various exceptions.

I am so excited for this adventure.

I broke up with processed sugar nearly four months ago on August 5, 2018. I’m still eating as much fruit as I want. I’ve also had sugar I’m sure at restaurants, but I’m not worried about a random sprinkle of sugar on a savory dish. My problem is with sugary desserts: cakes, ice cream, cookies, more ice cream, candy, and did I mention ice cream?

Since August 5th, I have allowed myself a few desserts. I can count them on one hand:

1. Some candy the day before Halloween because hello, the day before Halloween.
2. Tons of little mini bars on Halloween. Delicious.
3. Apple pie and ice cream on Thanksgiving.
4. A slice of boysenberry pie the day after Thanksgiving. And by “slice,” I mean “about 1/4 of the pie.”
5. 1.5 Red Vines the Saturday after Thanksgiving while at the movies with my kids.

Compared to how much sugar I was eating (ahem, inhaling) before the Great Sugar Breakup of August 2018, this is basically nothing.

Then there’s gluten. I’m sensitive to a protein in wheat and oats, so I’ve been avoiding all things gluten and oats since mid-August.

I’ve lost ten pounds, but bonus points: my menstrual cycle has changed. My cycle used to be unpredictable, ranging from 28 days to 35 days long. There was only one thing that was dependable about my cycle: PMS. I would always have some mood swings and a night of awesome insomnia right before my monthly visitor arrived.

Since eliminating processed sugar and gluten, my cycle has been 28 days or less. Most recently, I had a 26 day cycle! I’d complain about having my period more frequently, but I’ve noticed that I’m experiencing less PMS. My mood swings are not nearly as drastic, and I did not have insomnia this past cycle. Woot woot!

I initially assumed my body was just changing with age (I’m nearly 40), but then I realized my cycle changed shortly after I dropped sugar and gluten. That seems like too much to be a coincidence, no?

Next up: I’ve decided to get really, really, really, amazingly good at eating my vegetables. Hopefully I’ll keep seeing positive changes on the health front. I’m nearly forty years old and I’m finally accepting that old axiom: you are what you eat.

Most of my life, I assumed I was locked into a certain personality – stressed, anxious, worried – but hey, I could not help it. That’s just who I was. Besides, my Type A personality kept me busy, productive and successful. I would surely be a wreck of a human being if I gave up my anxiety.

Then again, maybe not.

After I was diagnosed with postpartum depression, I tried cognitive behavioral therapy with a psychologist. We did not just eliminate my PPD symptoms. We kept working, even after I had recovered from PPD, and helped me become a much less anxious person.

Now I know that I am not locked into a high-strung, anxious personality. I can train my brain to become the person I want to be.

Lately, I’ve been working on the following areas of Brain Training:

• Gratitude. I try to practice gratitude daily. It always makes me feel good and warm inside.
• Abundance. Love is abundant. Success is abundant. There is enough magic and wonder to spread around for everyone.
• Embracing uncertainty as something good and magical.
• Being flexible with setbacks.
• Realizing nothing is automatically good or bad. Something that immediately seems like a setback may actually be a blessing in disguise.
• Compassion for others and myself.
• Breathe. Remember to breathe. How is it I have been alive for nearly forty years and paid almost zero attention to my breath?
• Mindfulness. Which is tricky to reduce to a bullet point. It’s one of those slippery words that can mean different thing at different times. I think. Maybe not. I’m learning!
• Acceptance of human limits, especially my own. Like right now, I’m tired, so I have to accept that my body needs a little rest.
• Discomfort is part of life. If I spend all my days trying to eliminate discomfort, then I’ll miss out on the magic of life.

I think I’ll try to use these bullet points to write some more detailed blog posts over the next several weeks.

A few months ago, I stepped back from running a mom-to-mom postpartum support group.

Last week, I posted the last episode of my podcast Adventures with Postpartum Depression.

It seems like my intuition is leading me towards something new. I don’t know exactly what, but slowly, as I let my mind wander across journal pages, thoughts are emerging.

• How much was my experience with postpartum depression an isolated mental illness? And how much was it a stage in a spiritual and/or personal journey?
• What part of my experiences with postpartum depression were just a result of my personality? I’m an introvert. I need space to be quiet and alone and experience deep solitude. But when I became a mother, I felt like I was supposed to be some idealized version of a mother (that probably only exists in my head and social media), and that mother was supposed to flourish at large mommy and me classes, when in actuality, I do better in small group settings. So certain symptoms of PPD might have been at least partially the result of me trying to be someone I am not.

Deep breath.

Sometimes, when I start a blog post, I hope to come to some incredibly concise epiphany that I can share with the world. But I think right now, I’m supposed to feel a bit lost and vague. I think I’m supposed to use this space to wander around, ramble and thrash with some ideas that are percolating… ideas that I could not explore when I was deeply involved with the community of moms who have postpartum depression. Or rather, ideas that I did not feel comfortable exploring on my PPD blog, my PPD podcast, or at my PPD support group; because for a mom in the darkness in PPD, she just needs to do what she needs to do to get out of that particular darkness. The ideas I’m exploring these days are not the sort of ideas that would help a mom in the throes of PPD.

And so long as I was hosting a PPD podcast and support group, I was not mentally or emotionally in the right space to explore new ideas.

I’m starting to understand that I had to end my podcast and support group, because I’m on a journey. For a time, I had to play the part of PPD advocate. But now, I’m continuing my personal journey, and I am supposed to move in new directions and force myself to grow into new roles.

I have no idea where my personal journey is taking me. I just know that today, I am where I am meant to be.

Lately, I smell sour. It’s my sweat. I think it’s because I have been slowly losing weight. When I’m not losing weight, I don’t notice my sweat. But when I am losing weight, I notice an odor.

Actually, I can be more specific.

I have lost and regained weight many times in my life. But I never noticed a sour smell when I losing said weight. But during the past year, I have tried to go gluten-free a few times; and every time I go gluten-free, I notice my sweat becomes sour. Right now, I am about two months into being gluten-free, and the sour smell has been present the entire time.

It’s easy to think, Holy shit, my body needs gluten! But I think that’s not true. I think my body is in the process of getting rid of whatever toxins had accumulated in my body from too many years of too many carbs, and I just need to be patient.

I’m not going to try to mask the sour smell with perfume because perfume makes me nauseous.

When I got my first tarot reading at the beginning of the year, the reader told me that I need to sweat. When I saw my doctor for the first time in 2018, she also told me to sweat. The message is clear: get sweaty! I even bought a Groupon to try an “urban sweat lodge” that wraps you up in blankets and heating pads for an hour to give you the most intense sweat experience of your life.

I let the Groupon expire.

I was busy. Being a mom is hard work. But mostly, I think I was just letting Resistance make excuses so I would procrastinate and avoid losing the weight.

I think it’s time for me to stop procrastinating, listen to my body, and book an appointment for the urban sweat lodge.

Here’s to lots of sour sweat!

As a stay-at-home mother, my To Do list can sometimes feel daunting and impossible, but really, there are only a few essentials on the list:

• Breathe
• Eat
• Sleep
• Make sure my children breathe
• Feed my children
• Help my children get the sleep they need

That’s it. But these essential self-care items are not even on my To Do list. Instead, my list is cluttered and clogged with things that don’t matter. Things that are nice to do if they don’t compromise my sanity, like run the preschool book fair and be the room parent for Pippa’s kindergarten class; but ultimately, the fate of nations does not rise or fall based on these activities.

At 5 a.m., though, my To Do list feels urgent. Lately, I fall asleep at 10 p.m. and wake at 5. I try to get back to sleep for one more hour, but I end up tossing and turning in bed, with my brain blasting messages about my To Do list. The art project for the school dance! The art project for the school dance! The art project for the school dance! A very easy item on my To Do list, that does not matter in the grand scheme of things, and yet, my Ego likes to throw a fit about it at 5 a.m.

I think, as I eat healthier and healthier, my body is needing less and less sleep. Maybe the thing to do is just get out of bed and start my day at 5 a.m. instead of letting my brain go nuts for an hour.

Because in the light of day, when I look at my To Do list, as bloated as it may be, it does not seem impossible or scary. Rested and nourished, I can look at my list with a sense of humor and realize that (a) everything will get done in a timely manner but (b) even if it doesn’t, at least I have the essentials down pat.

I’m breathing. My kids are breathing.

I ate breakfast. My kids ate breakfast.

I got a good night’s sleep. My kids slept as well.

That’s it. Everything else is extra credit.

And in the game of life, there’s no need to accumulate bonus points.