“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are real you don’t mind being hurt.”-The Velveteen Rabbit
I think one of the hardest parts about being a mother is that we are real… and so are our children. Parenting is a continual act of living in reality…even if we would much rather just live in a world where our children didn’t get hurt, didn’t make mistakes, didn’t have to suffer. I remember when my first four or five children were little. My oldest was no more than 10. Sometimes it felt like I was the mother duck and they were my little ducklings; if I looked behind me, they were all following…my little brood. I’m sure I thought this was real, and it was. But it was also only temporary. As my first few children embarked on the teen years, the “real” was not so easy. When I looked behind me I didn’t always have the same view. What I saw was the older ones venturing off in different directions and I couldn’t as easily herd them back. I started to lose that control that I must have believed I would always have. It hurt a little, and my fur got a little tattered. [Read more…]
A few weeks ago I wrote about not having enough time in my 9-kid weekend to squeeze in a workout. Yesterday I had the advantage, however. No soccer games! No swim practices! Nothing at all on our schedule. A highly unusual thing, to be sure. You bet I took advantage of that! I was able to ride the exercise bike, lift a few weights while doing so (read a book too!), then go for a five mile run with my friend, Susan. I figured I needed to cram it all in…I don’t know when I will have another “luxurious” weekend with no sports on the calendar. About an hour after we finished our run, a huge rain storm swept in. Nice timing! I even got a walk in last night with my sister, Elizabeth who just got in from California for a week-long visit… Anybody else have it so good this weekend?
I have teenagers on my mind. My daughter Annie turned 13 today, and that makes four Hetzels that are teenaged! Eight years ago our oldest (now 21) became a teenager. Although we really shouldn’t have done the math, my husband and I realized this morning that we have 18 more years of parenting teenagers! By that time I will be able to write a book…but for now, I’m just hanging on for dear life. 
James and I first heard the words, “Love is a decision” from a Catholic priest about five years after we were married. It was a bit of a paradigm shift. Even in the pre-marriage class we attended, we could not remember hearing that concept. However, after only five years of marriage, we both knew the truth of those words.
Here are five quick and dirty reasons why I think exercise makes me a better mom. I will elaborate on each of these in the weeks to come, but for now…
I used to really hate strength training! Or more accurately, I hated what I thought was strength training. I could do a cardio workout all day long (not really, just saying) but a weight workout…that was torture! Now, I’ve come to enjoy strength training, and I’ve broadened my understanding of what “strength” means. Part of the problem was that to me, the word strength meant primarily weights. I wasn’t interested in becoming bulky, and lifting weights was burdensome, so it seemed impractical to me. At the end of a run or after a swim workout, I would try to fit in a few upper and lower body weights to “tone” up and to gain some strength, mostly to avoid injury. But one day, I tagged along with one of my kids to a personal trainer (we had given her some sessions and the trainer let me come for free) I was amazed at the intensity of the hour long workout, especially at how my heart rate increased and stayed fairly high throughout. The idea that strength and cardio could be done at the same time was a new concept for me. Still, a personal trainer is expensive and took a lot of time. For me it wasn’t realistic. 
To Exercise or to Sleep….that is the question!! We might as well face it: we can’t do it all. There are no “extra” hours in the day just waiting for us to use for sleep and exercise. I am often faced with the dilemma: sleep or workout? Now in my 40’s, I face this more than I did in my 20’s or 30’s, when it seemed “I could do it all”! I find that the answer has a lot to do with trying to keep balance in my life. We can usually sense when our bodies are sleep deprived. As a mother of nine, and with one child still under the age of two, I can honestly say that I have been sleep deprived for about 20 years! 
“I can do anything for one minute!” This is my motto for working out at home. It’s hard to stay motivated when I’m not at a gym with an instructor or when there are no other people sweating and working out around me. At home, it’s only me. So I need ways to stay enthusiastic and engaged. I have found that short, intense exercises that take strength and focus help me to do that. Hence, the “one minute” motto! Using a little timer set to run back from one minute, I press start and know that, however difficult the exercise is, I only have to do it for 60 seconds. 
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