“I am a bad mother
I am a horrible wife
I can’t even manage to keep my house clean
I can’t breathe.
I feel panicked.
Why can’t I ever get organized?
My life is a mess.”

I woke up this morning in a state of stress from my very first waking breath. You know the kind of morning I’m talking about. We overslept. Bella hadn’t done her homework the night before, and the kids went to bed late. Jules has a cold and is feeling miserable/ is miserable to be around. The house is trashed, dirty dishes in the sink from so long ago I’m not even going to tell you out of embarrassment. Life has been way intense lately. No towels clean in the bathroom. No bread for Bella’s lunch because I didn’t make it to the store yesterday. Sam in a rush because he is working on contract now and every hour he isn’t at work is an hour he is not being paid.

I woke up on the defensive, and it went downhill from there. At one point, as I was rushing down the hallway with my head down and a dark storm cloud hovering over me, I realized the words I was saying to myself. On continuous looping repeat - over and over again – beating myself further down with every second. I was creating and sustaining my negative reality this morning all on my own – I didn’t even need any help from stressful circumstance. I had decided what mood to be in and what stories to tell myself from the second I opened my eyes.

Why?

I walked back into the kitchen and leaned on the counter, head in my hands, and closed my eyes for a moment – trying to find that desperately needed center. When I opened my eyes, I was leaning over one an open catalog (one of the veritable plethora of random merchandise pushing publications that have found their way into our mailbox in the pre-holiday push to buy! buy! buy!) and my eyes immediately went to picture of a shirt that had a spiral on the front, and the words ‘Find Your Happy Place’ in a funky font. It was self help - screen print style - sending me a message from the universe.

Indeed.

I gave a bitter laugh. Find my happy place. Ha! As if! Unrealistic, my frazzled self screamed in frustration. Can’t be done. Life is shitty right now. Too intense. Can’t handle it. Where on earth would I find my happy place in this moment? And so I continued telling myself similar stories as I went through the morning routine on cranky-assed autopilot.

“Why can’t she just listen to me?
Why do I have to do everything?
Why can’t they take care of their shit so I can actually find something when I need it?
I’m being so horrid to her, she deserves a better mother.
Can’t she stop the blessed screaming for a fraction of a second so I can freaking think?
My life is never going to feel normal again
I should be doing better than this.
I want to run away
I can’t do this.
I feel so out of control.”
All varieties of the same theme – “I suck, I can’t cope, and all the rest of them are just conspiring to make it all worse”.

Nice.

I knew what I needed to find my center – and I knew it wasn’t all that much. All I usually need is just a little time alone, with music filling my ears loud enough to block out the negative mantras that were taking over my body and mind, and enough time to replace them with positive words and to clear my heart enough to replace chaos with peace.

Five or ten minutes would do it – but finding five or ten minute’s alone in quiet during a running-late-crazy-stressed school day morning? Not gonna happen. No way, no how. Motherhood is not often conducive to spontaneous opportunities for meditation – no matter how vital it might seem in the moment.

So I did the next best thing – I put my head down and barreled through the rest of the routine, stopping for a moment to burn a CD. My beloved iPod is broken, and music is my sanity. I needed some tunes this morning more than ever. Even though it made us a few minutes later than we already were, I knew it was time well spent.

I recently created a playlist for a friend that I called ‘Songs for a New Beginning’. I made it for her, but I’ve since adopted it as part of my own soundtrack. I pulled this together quickly one evening – instinctively pulling songs at random that I knew contained the message I wanted to share with this person – hoping that she could hear what I was trying to tell her with the music.

Some of the songs I had just downloaded, only listened to a few times, but I went with my gut. These songs speak to me of comfort, solace and a reminder that the tide always turns. Music that tells me it’s all okay, and that gives me courage to keep plugging away. Words that tell me that I am good, I am blessed, to just believe. I needed these tunes today.

I managed to get into the car - a buzzing, humming, steaming mass of stress and resentment and general pissed-off-edness - popped in the CD and started to drive. The first song on the CD was Deb Talan’s Comfort. This was a song I had chosen especially to be the first song in the mix, because it said exactly what I wanted to tell my friend but couldn’t exactly find the words to express.

As I drove down my street, Deb’s sweet, soothing voice filled the car;

“And when you can’t remember a better time
you can have mine, little one.
In days to come when your heart feels undone
may you always find an open hand
and take comfort, there is comfort.
Take comfort wherever you can, you can, you can”

I meant this song to be a message for another weary heart, but instead it turned out to be a message that I needed desperately to assimilate into my own being.

I swear that within minutes I was breathing deeper, feeling calmer, in a totally different place than I had been just moments before. Yet again, music soothed my crazy soul and helped me knit myself back together again. I don’t pretend to understand why it works, so quickly and completely, but I am grateful that it does.

And so today, with the help of lyrics and melody, I work on changing the stories I tell myself. I realize the power of these mantras. I believe that I do create my own reality, and that what I give my attention to is what I bring to fruition. I know this to be true – but I am utterly and completely challenged by the in-the-moment reality of changing my thoughts in order to change my perception of my experience so that I can, in turn, change my world. (how’s that for a run on sentence?)

I need to find myself some mala beads, to wear them each day and to actively work to change my self-destructive mantras into words that build me up instead of breaking me down. I need to seek out time to meditate, to protect those quiet moments with the music that sustains my soul. I need to focus on finding the time to do 108 repetitions of the stories I SHOULD be telling myself each day. We all need to do this.

My new mantras
I will be okay.
I am loved.
It will get better.
I create my own reality.
I will not fail.
All I need is my breath.
I am soft and I am strong.
I trust my heart.
I am open to the universe.
I am me and I am enough.

Want to join me? What are you currently telling yourself that is dragging you down? What stories do you need to change? Create your own mantras and we can work together on changing our realities with the power of our thoughts and intentions. This is good, meaningful work. It needs to be a priority.