A Page Out of My Own Book

by Heather Long | More from this Blogger

Since I wrote that post earlier today about are we our own worst enemy - I've been giving it a lot of thought. So, in an effort to set an example and do a little self-exploration at the same time, I wanted to share with you a personal experience I had last summer. Last summer when I tackled my new fitness regimen, I did so after a number of self-realizations. In retrospect, I was doing exactly what I wrote about earlier.

Confronting Yourself

I was always in good shape when I was younger and I enjoyed dancing, equestrian sports and more. In order to keep up with that kind of lifestyle, I maintained my shape. Yet, after my daughter was born - I couldn't lose the weight and I couldn't seem to stay healthy, I was always coming down with cold after cold or flu or worse.

Becoming a mom was a difficult transition - but what was worse for me and it took me years to admit this - was becoming a stay at home mom wholly dependent on my husband for income was far more difficult than I realized. I'd never done the dependent thing in my whole life.

Now, don't get me wrong - I loved being a mom and I wanted to be at home with my daughter - but the transition from career independent on track to - going wherever I wanted to be if I put my mind to it - to a stay at home mother and wife was a huge, huge, huge leap.

When I was growing up - this was a lifestyle I saw on television and the reality of it was something of a culture shock. Now imagine if you can for a moment - the conflict that this creates - I was feeling guilty for resenting my own choice.

I never said your own emotions had to make sense.

What I learned

It took almost four years for me to reach this realization and to confront the fact that I was not proud of my own choices. So I had to ask myself - why wasn't I proud? Why did I think being a stay-at-home mom was worth less than a career in a field that I wasn't enjoying? Then it hit me - I was letting myself go and I was sabotaging myself - but because in every significant way - my life changed after my daughter was born - but it didn't seem to affect anyone else around me at all.

They all seemed to stay the same. To an extent, even my husband did - he still went out with the guys after work a couple of times a month. He found other people to go to the movies with when I wasn't free or we didn't have someone to watch the baby. He went to the office every day. He went out to lunch with co-workers - day in and day out - he was living his life the way he'd lived it before.

I wasn't. I was living a totally new life - and it took me four years to wake up and smell the coffee. So I looked my fear in the eye - and I realized I felt guilty for feeling ashamed for being different from who I'd been - so I let that difference color my appearance and affect how I took care of myself. No one else seemed to understand the changes I was going through - least of all me.

One Year Later

I confronted my fear - I confronted my reality and you know what I found out? I like being a mom and I like being who I am. It was time I started showing it. Oh and that arrogance about everyone else not understanding what I was going through?

I'm not the first mother on earth to change her life and rearrange her priorities and I don't care what the magazines say about the modern woman having it all with her career and her child. I do have it all - because I only get a few years with my daughter before she grows up and heads out into a life of her own. Hand in hand with this realization came the first serious investment I'd made in fitness than in all the four years previously combined.

So - what's kept you from your fitness?

Learn more about Heather Long

Heather Long is 35 years old and currently lives in Wylie, Texas. She has been a freelance writer for six years. Her husband and she met while working together at America Online over ten years ago.

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