It was a cloudy day. I think it started out that way, but I’m not exactly sure. The sun wasn’t yet up when the kids woke in the morning, and I was so busy from the moment I woke up that I didn’t notice if the sun ever made an appearance.
While it was cloudy, it wasn’t the kind of cloudy that indicated something exciting was going to happen – there weren’t any dark clouds suggesting impending rain or snow. The clouds weren’t racing across the sky, charged with the energy of a windy day. They were just… there. Like someone smudged up a canvas.
It seems nature was reflecting my mood, or perhaps the other way around. I don’t know what it was about that day; it seemed to be going along fine until it wasn’t. Then I just stalled out in the “not fine” segment of the day and there I stayed.
Have you had a day like this?
My first instinct was to dig in and figure out what went “wrong.” Was I carrying more stress than I realized? Were the kids’ repeated poor behaviors weighing on me? Was I on a stretch of eating poorly? When was the last time I exercised?
There wasn’t a specific, obvious culprit to my mood, and it frustrated me so much because I wanted to know what was “wrong” so that I could fix it.
To add insult to injury, that day I had a few hours scheduled on the calendar to head to the coffee shop to get some time to myself. I wasn’t feeling like doing any of the things that I typically enjoy doing during my time off, I just felt kind of…blah.
I was thinking on all of this when I recalled a concept I was working on with my 8-year old. She occasionally shuts down when faced with very challenging things, and I was trying to help her understand that sometimes things are just going to be hard and she won’t get them the first time. I introduced her to the phrase, “This is hard, and that’s okay,” and we practiced it together. In that conversation with her, I recalled times when things were hard for me and no matter how differently I wanted it to go, I couldn’t do anything about it other than accept it.
“This is hard, and that’s okay.”
I tested out a modification of this phrase on my blah day. Instead of feeling like I shouldn’t be feeling that way, or striving to somehow overcome the melancholy feelings, I told myself, “This is a blah day, and that’s okay.” I tried to allow myself to sit in the boring, the mundane, the less-than-stellar moments of it all and just be okay with it. After all, where did I get the idea that each day needs to be remarkable? They aren’t all going to be, and in fact it’s the low times that make the great times so great.
Moving forward, I want to be kinder to myself when I’m having the unremarkable days. I want to remember that all emotions can serve a purpose, and I want to take time and be present in the down days to learn what they have to teach me. I find this especially important because little ones are watching me and learning from me how to handle the down times. If I want them to give themselves grace on the hard days, I have to model that first and be kinder to myself when the days are hard.
