GOALS FOR 2024

Written by Diana Martins

Waking before the kids and having time to myself to do some light exercise, drink water, journal, and enjoy quiet sounds luxurious to me. It has been part of my wants for myself for many years now. Every time I sit down to write to my future self, waking up early before the kids is what I envision for myself.

I have tried to set my alarm and wake up but quickly convince myself that snuggling next to hubby is better. If I can rise, I feel a little lost rather than empowered. Also, it didn’t take long for me to fall back into my snooze pattern if we had an off night with one of the kids when they woke up and needed us. I would also convince myself that I would feel too tired during the day.

I started to think about this, after all, I am a determined, driven entrepreneur and I can do hard things. Am I just being “lazy”? I shake that negative self talk quickly because I know that I am not a lazy person! As I started to think about this, I realized that I was actually scared. I said to myself, "OK now that I have identified what is blocking me, what exactly am I afraid of?"

I have a fear of feeling tired. Not just plain run-of-the-mill tired, but the tiredness that comes with exhaustion, eyes burning, feeling desperation for a nap right at 3 pm pick up time, body aching, migraine-inducing tiredness. I felt this for months in my first postpartum experience every single day. Not to mention the two subsequent postpartum experiences when I had my other two babies that also led to months of tough nights. I realized that I have some sort of trauma from the lack of sleep I experienced. I don’t want to call it PTSD to take away from the serious clinically diagnosed PTSD that people experience, but some trauma is creating this block of fear that is preventing me from achieving my goal. The fear is blocking me from unlocking a new version of myself.

This is why waking up at 5 AM isn’t my goal this year. My goal this year is to heal that part of me. I need the well-rested me to be the norm. I am going to aim to heal that part of myself by going to bed early and honouring my body’s need for rest. I am going to send a lot of love to the new mom that I was 8 years ago.

This year I can still honour the activities I wish to accomplish at 5 AM in other times of the day. I am committed to a quick gym workout after drop off and even though it’s’ not everything on my list of mindful practices, it is something. I am also learning to not be an all-or-nothing person and that something IS better than nothing. I really force myself to turn off earlier in the night to get more sleep in. I can’t be the early riser if I am operating from a sleep deprived perspective.

After speaking with many of my clients, I know I am not alone in this. I know other moms are terrified of feeling the same sleep deprivation they did when their child didn’t sleep, and I wanted to write this post to allow other people to heal themselves. You are not lazy or uncommitted or unmotivated, you may just need to heal past trauma that you haven’t acknowledged, and I hope that you do and manifest the version of yourself that you want to be.

Diana Martins

https://dianamartins.ca