(Before you get worried, I'm feeling great! Just going to do a mental health tangent at the end of this post.)
Over the weekend we celebrated my birthday, and then Mother's Day. I now feel greater sympathy for all the people who have their birthday right next to Christmas. The Mother's Day/Birthday crossover isn't nearly as big of a deal, but I did have myself a little pity party about Mother's Day getting swallowed up a little by my birthday the day before, and feeling a little sad that I don't get to be celebrated on two separate occasions each year!! (For sure some snarkiness in there, but I absolutely had a pouty little indulgent moment on Mother's Day that I'll be sure to check at the door next year, because Jared really tried to make me feel special both days.) In fairness to my pity party, Jared has had to work 24-hour shifts over my birthday for the past 3 years, so I think a little sadness around my birthday is absolutely warranted. As a silver lining, this was Jared's last 24-hour shift ever! (supposedly)
I forgot to get any pictures of birthday or Mother's Day festivities, but I got some cute pics of everyone else throughout the week so I'll put those here:
(not pictured: me and Jared went out on an actual birthday date to an actual restaurant, and for Mother's Day we went for a scenic Casper Mountain drive and roasted marshmallows--all Jack's idea. And we video called our wonderful Moms! Dear Mom, thanks for listening to me whine about my own mothering journey when I should've been pumping you up about how great a mother YOU are on Mother's Day. You're the real MVP.)
^^Savvy being a metaphor of me and my bad attitude while everyone else was just celebrating me and/or being a toddler and throwing normal toddler tantrums.
^^Jack "driving" the stationary car while we were visiting the "poo poo cows." There's a quiet road right by our house where several enormous white cows live. Jack calls them the poo poo cows.
^^Patio weather at last! Jack did this all by himself, except for the "k" that I made.
^^Last weekend we visited Ayres Natural Bridge. It felt like spring at last and we're so excited to wave our last Wyoming winter goodbye!
Back to some birthday talk, and then I'll touch on mental health. I'm surprisingly not feeling sad about this being my last year in my 20s, for three reasons: (1) I've heard great things about the 30s, (2) my 20s were filled with some tremendously difficult times, and (3) maybe I'll be done being pregnant forever once I hit my 30s?? We're planning to try for baby #2 after Jared's done with residency, and honestly if next pregnancy is as rough as the last one, there's a good chance we'll be done after that. For a long time I felt sad about that, but I'm starting to get excited about it if it continues to feel right. We'll shoot for a baby #3 if things go much smoother next time around. TBD.
And now for some mental health chat! I love that in my generation this topic isn't really taboo anymore. There are two people in my life who are huge proponents of therapy for all. First is my friend Emily who finished her degree and started her own therapy practice in Seattle. And just had the cutest bb girl ever. You go girl. Second is a close cousin who benefited a lot from doing a year of therapy recently and is so open about how it can be easily accessible and a positive experience for literally anyone. You don't have to have any major "issues" to work out to be able to benefit from therapy.
Anyway, this cousin of mine told me that it was so easy to get started--she just made an appointment to talk to her bishop and asked him if he could make her an appointment through LDS family services for counseling. He made the appointment for her, and it was all paid for through the ward's fast offerings (not always the case that it's completely covered by fast offerings, but I think it's generally pretty affordable if you use LDS family services). The most intimidating part of thinking about therapy for me was definitely the thought of finding a therapist and setting up a first appointment, so when she told me how easy that was I started to think about maybe looking into it. We're about to be faced with some major life changes, and I think talking through them and getting some tools from a trained third-party source could be helpful.
So anyway, last week when my bishop asked me to come meet with him to give me a calling for our last two months here (they're desperate for additional hands in primary), I didn't even really plan this, but when he closed with, "Do you have any other questions?" I was like, well ya, could you get me set up with an appointment for LDS counseling services? He's a brand new bishop so he hasn't done that for anyone yet, but he said he'd look into whether it's available in Casper and get back to me. I'm really excited! If it doesn't work out here in Casper then I'll probably look into it when we get back to Utah. Three must be my magic number this week, because there are three things I can think of right now that I'd love to get help with:
(1) Navigating the big life transition from 7 years of a very intense work schedule for Jared, to what will hopefully be a much more normal schedule and less of a solo-parenting lifestyle. I'm not necessarily worried about this, mostly just excited, but with any big life change there are sure to be bumps.
(2) Setting boundaries around family. We've lived away from family for almost a decade now. At first that was really hard for me, but now it's the norm to spend weekends and holidays by ourselves and I worry I'm going to be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of family members we'll be living near when we move back to Utah Valley. All of my siblings and their spouses and kids live there, and my parents and grandparents and many aunts and uncles and cousins do too. And everyone all still gets together, pretty frequently! It's wonderful, but the last couple of times we've gone to visit, my little introverted self has felt a little overwhelmed by how many lovely people there are to keep up with. I just think it'll be helpful for me to learn how to recognize what my boundaries are and how to hold them so I don't let myself get overwhelmed or burned out.
(3) Getting past some anxiety/trauma about getting pregnant again. I know the word trauma gets thrown around a lot, but I think my pregnancy with Jack for sure falls under that umbrella, since I felt a full 10 times sicker when I was pregnant with him than I did the time I had the flu and food poisoning at the same time. And it lasted every minute of every day and every night for 250 days and nights. I could probably use therapy to work through my oddly terrible childbirth/extended postpartum pain/colicky newborn phases too, but the pregnancy thing is what I'm most scared of at this time.
So with all that TMI published on my blog now, yay therapy! Therapy for all! If you have any relationships or hard times or self-confidence things you find yourself thinking about often or wanting to talk through or get tools for . . . therapy! Let's do it together. Go team.
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