Breaking A Sweat Again

Since my brother-in-law's suicide, pretty much everything has been turned upside down.

Obviously, life has to go on and I've got two little people who know nothing of death and grief (thank God!), so something had to give in my attempts to maintain some sort of routine for the Muffins and trying to find a balance between taking care of others and myself. Guess whose needs were pushed aside? I feel as though I've been wading through mud for the past month or so.

Of course, the near-incapacitating sinus infection that I've been fighting for nearly 3 weeks hasn't helped much, either.

I'm happy to report that I'm now well on my way to being on the mend, so I reclaimed a part of my life and routine last night that I had no choice but to let slide over the five weeks: I went back to the gym for the first time in over three weeks.

God, it felt good.

The week after Mark's death, it was all hands on deck (and, thankfully, J was around a lot so that I could be up at Mom's to help), so the gym was definitely out. I attempted to go back the following week and did alright, even managing to keep my appointment with the trainer, but my heart wasn't really in it and then life got busy again. In the week leading up to Liam and Ella's birthday party, I willingly took a little hiatus from working out formally because I was doing hours of yard work and justified that that was enough of a workout. Then, the kids got sick and I came down with it too. On top of that, Mom's been on three rounds of antibiotics for her pneumonia and I've been doing a lot of running back and forth between my house and Mom's taking care of her and others. Even if I hadn't been sick, making the time to hit the gym would have been pretty much impossible.

Finding the time to take care of myself is, needless to say, something I still need to work on (I know, I know who doesn't?) and, although life is settling into a new groove (one in which I'm more "on call" and that's totally OK), I need to be more mindful of not pushing my needs too far aside because, cliche though it is, you can't take good care of others until you care for yourself.

I reclaimed my workouts last night and it feels so fabulous.

Yay me.