Blog #14 Strategies for balance

Multi-tasking is not one of my strong suits, so I have to be extremely organized in order to make life work. I know each day that I work from 8a.m. - 5p.m. so that is automatically on my daily schedule. The hours left in the day plus weekends are the only time I have for school, family and relaxation, therefore I have to plan them also. I started with the first day the syllabus showed up for each of my classes. I immediately put on the calendar when each assignment was due in each class so that I could make sure I never got behind. Procrastination is the enemy of a balanced life. I feel this semester was very successful for me because when I did have a little extra time I worked ahead in my classes which gave me time for a few extra things like spending a whole weekend with my sons who visited from Houston and I actually bought a new home and moved during this semester while still working full time. I am very lucky that my children are grown, so that gives me more time to devote to school, but I still have to add time for me. It is most important to eat healthy, exercise and get plenty of rest when juggling so many responsibilities. All of these things had to be scheduled also, like exercise is something that happens during lunch, when I can run to the gym for 45 minutes each day. As much as I live by my calendar though, the only way to keep from being super stressed is to remember that sometimes my life and my schedule don't work the way I planned, so I also plan to be flexible when needed.

Blog #13 Weakness Versus Strength

I think as women we often hide who we really are for who we think others want us to be. To be able to admit that we are flawed takes courage. To be able to admit that you were addicted to drugs or alcohol would take an extra measure of strength, because you are not just admitting to being less than perfect, but you are opening yourself up to people judging you in many areas of your life. The first thing I think of is that people would no longer trust you, because you would no longer be the person they thought you were.

Another reason it would take great strength to admit you were addicted to drugs or alcohol is that in admitting it, you would be watched closely as you try to deal with that addiction. You could no longer tell yourself, I'll do something about it next week, because your friends and family would be ready for you to fix it now.

Finally, I think it takes strength to admit to addiction is that one of the first steps to healing is to figure out why you became addicted. To have to look deep into yourself and find other ways to cope with things in your life is very scary. If you were able to deal with it before you became addicted, you would have. Now to deal with it plus deal with an addiction is unbelievably hard.

To me weakness is hiding the truth and hoping the drugs and / or alcohol will save you.

Blog #12 Impact of Mental Illness

My mother suffered from Depression most of my life. She did admit to it enough to get prescriptions from doctor's for anti-depressants, however that was as far as she was willing to go. She was from a family of 11 children, 5 of whom were mentally retarded. This colored her perception on mental illness. She was afraid that if she admitted to any form of mental illness, everyone would assume she was mentally retarded like her brother and sisters. She also grew up in a time where they locked you up for mental illness, even her mentally retarded brother and sisters were placed in "State Schools".

What my mother really needed was a professional to help her work through her Depression and other coping difficulties. The medications helped off and on, but without knowing exactly what was behind the Depression, it was hard for the doctor's to prescribe the proper drugs in proper amounts. Her Depression led to a prescription drug addiction for the last 50 years of her life, and those drugs often counteracted the anti-depressants.

My mother's drug addiction and Depression effected our entire family. For me, I became the enabler who would do anything in my power to protect my mother from friends and families disapproval. I took on the responsibility for her happiness, and since there is no way to really be successful in making others happy, my self esteem was as low as it could get. I was 45 years old before I finally realized that my mom was sick, but she had chosen to stay that way. She was not my responsibility and she wasn't sick because I failed her in some way. Since coming to this realization, my self esteem has grown exponentially over the past 7 years, but only because I made the conscious decision to have a high self esteem and a high confidence level.

Blog #11 "With Our Future In Mind"

Our culture is geared to instant gratification. If everyone lived "with our future in mind" I think we would actually be happy and healthier. The first thing I can see changing would be our spending versus savings habits. I think more people would have large retirement accounts because if they were thinking about the future they would have started them when they were very young when compound interest would really make a difference.

I also think people would be healthier, because they would consider how their eating and exercise, or lack thereof, would affect their bodies today, tomorrow, next year, 20 years from now.... This would probably lower the rate of all the chronic diseases we have been studying. For example, if we all ate healthy from the time we were young and lived active lives, the obesity rate would be gone and therefore so many would not have ever developed cardiovascular disease or diabetes.

Just changing these two things, our finances and our health, how much happier we would all be. So many people today are worried about whether they have enough money to make it from pay day to pay day and are miserable because they are overweight. Think of all the time and energy we waste, that we could spend on more positive things. We all need to commit to live "with our future in mind".

Blog #10 Health Risk Preventions

One of the first behaviors that I think we need to change as women is putting everybody else so far above ourselves that we ignore our own needs. For example, we will always find money to make sure our kids and husbands see the doctor when needed, but we always put off our own physicals because we can't afford them. If we are lucky enough to have health insurance, we still have large deductibles, so we put it off so long we never go. Yearly physicals, mammograms, and PAP smears are all important for preventative health. What we don't realize is that this is learned behavior. How many of us that always put off that yearly physical had mothers that always put off their yearly physicals? What are our daughters learning from us?

Next thing women to learn is how to cook and prepare healthy meals for themselves and thier families. I think women have had so many responsibilities on their plate that one thing they have delegated is meal preparations. Unfortunatley we have delegated that to fast food chains that have cost us and our families our health. Instead of continuing to add more to our day, I think we need to start simplifying, slowing down enough to prepare a meal and eat together as a family.

So many of us are so busy running around making sure our kids are involved in every possible activity that all we do is sit in the car, dropping one child at soccer while running the next to dance and by the time we get the third to band we have to go back to the soccer field to pick up child number 1 and on and on we go driving in circles. Again, I think it's time to simplify our lifes. Why can't we go outside with our kids and play soccer with them or have a family dance in the living room after dark? If we want to improve our health we must get moving again.

The biggest benefit that I see in simplifying our lives is that so much of our stress will disappear. Stress is a necessary part of life, but I think we have gotten so out of control that the levels of stress we are under are actually causing our heart problems and even cancer. If we want to be healthier and have healthier families we are going to have to be active in our health and quit being the passive spectators we have been.

Blog #9 Diet and Exercise Challenges

I could be the poster child for diet and exercise. Over the past 30+ years I have tried everything that has come on the market with even an inkling of credibility. The problem was that I never tried to find out why I had gotten so out of control as to gain over 100 lbs of fat. Six months ago I was ready to try one more time to loose the weight. I watched an episode of Oprah when she had guests on that had gone through gastric bypass. Many people believe that gastric bypass is the easy way to loose weight, but Oprah's guests pointed out that it is still a long hard journey. Everyone of them said that when they had to give up their addiction to food, they found they had adopted a new addiction, some to alcohol, some to sex, some to shopping. The new addictions may have varied, but the fact that they all replaced one addiction with another was across the board. This is when I decided that before I started another program I would have to find out why I was addicted to food. For me it was a spiritual journey through Bible study that I learned some deep truths about myself. Once I knew why, I then began to work on healing those issues before I ever started dieting (no I didn't do gastric bypass, it wasn't a healthy choice for me). Six months later and 60 lbs lighter I am over half way through my weight loss journey. I no longer feel like I'm on a diet, because I simply eat to live now. I no longer crave any food of any kind and I can also tell you that I have not become addicted to anything else to replace the food.

I knew from the beginning of this journey that I would have to add exercise into my program, and I will confess I have been avoiding it like the plague! I simply hate exercise! Well, 2 weeks ago things changed. The owner of my company has come up with a program to reward and encourage healthy living. We get points for things like loosing weight, exercising, yearly checkups with our doctors, and participating in events like "Walk for Life". At the end of each year we turn in all our points for either cash or paid time off! I can remember saying years ago, I could exercise if someone would pay me. Well, the time has come to act on those words. Two weeks ago I began my exercise program. I started by briskly walking 30 minutes per day either on my lunch hour or when I first get home in the evenings.

Of course the owner of my company wants to make living a healthy lifestyle as easy for each of us as possible, so yesterday I signed up on the company program for a gym membership. A large group go to the gym together at lunch time, and when I hinted that I needed to add weight training to my week, they all jumped in and asked me to join them. Monday will be my first day, and I'm actually looking forward to it. Of course if my blog is super short next week, it may be because I'm too sore to type!

Let me encourage all of you as you graduate and head into the work force to find companies with great benefits like mine. Benefits like good health insurance, healthy lifestyle encouragement, gym memberships, can be much more beneficial in the long run that just a high salary, because with these benefits, you'll feel like enjoying that high salary!

How to change societies image?

I have seen shows with anorexic women whose body image is totally askew to the fact of what their body actually looks like. They may be so thin that all you can see is the outline of their bones, but they truly believe they are still fat. I think society has the same skewed image of aging and menopausal women. Being 52 myself and having gone through surgically induced menopause 17 years ago, I can tell you that the truth of menopause is much better than societies view.

I can honestly say that the year I turned 50 was the best year of my life. The only one better was 51 and I gotta tell you I think 52 is gonna top it! My family is raised, my career is taking off and I can finally focus on me! Going back to school to get my degree is something I have always wanted to do, but family and other commitments always came first. Now for the first time in my adult life, I come first. That doesn't mean I have turned into a selfish person who ignores all my other responsibilities, it just means my responsibilities have changed, so that I am now free to explore new and exciting things.

How do we get this message out to society? We are going to have to have people who stand up and make their voice heard. How did women get the right to use contraceptives? There were a few women who were brave enough to stand up and make their voices heard. Yes, they suffered persecution because of it, but if they had not had the courage to fight, we still wouldn't have contraceptives available to us today. So you may ask what are we going to stand up and say and to whom? My first thought is as wives and mother's our first audience is our husband and children. Notice I didn't just say daughters! Yes, we need to teach our daughters how to respect themselves and have healthy self-images, but we also need to teach our sons how to value women. If we can bring our sons up to have healthy self-images then maybe they won't be as intimidated by the strong independent women we are bringing our daughters up to be. The best way to get this message across to our sons and daughters is by having healthy enough self-images of ourselves that we command respect from our husbands and everyone else in our lives. If we don't love and respect ourselves, how do we expect anyone else to?

I received several cartoons on menopause this week, but if I included those in my blog, then I would just be perpetuating the myth of how bad menopause really is. Don't worry though, I haven't totally lost my sense of humor, I did laugh at the cartoons!