- Children Indoors: Kids are used to playing outside but are now confined indoors, leading to more cleanup and clutter.
- Laundry Piles: More layers mean more laundry, and mud seems to sneak in despite everyone’s best efforts.
- Less Sunlight: With less sunshine comes reduced Vitamin D, affecting mood and energy levels.
- Dietary Changes: Holiday parties often lead to more sugary treats, which can impact everyone's mood and health.
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What is a fear you carry deep inside? One that not many may know about, but affects many of your everyday decisions? Me? That somehow there won’t be enough, and my family will be left short.
Why does this affect my decisions? Because the last thing I want is for my family to be short somehow. Short of food, finances, or simply time.
So what do I do? First, I try to not let the fear overtake me. I acknowledge that it is there, and then remind myself of all the ways God has continued to provide for us in the past. My heart calms, and I can clearly think towards my next step. I then thank God for His provision and ask that He continue to remind me when that fear comes up again.
This fear has also been a motivator for me. When I started staying home, our income was drastically cut. While we would no longer be paying for daycare or as much in gas, we now had to pay our own insurance and the grocery bill would be increasing. How were we going to offset the cost?
I looked around. We already lived on an acreage. I had gardened some in the past, and was getting pretty good at it. Why not take it to the next level and have the garden provide as much of our food as we could!
And so it began, in more earnest. I planted more of what I knew we would consume and less of the extra stuff. I learned how to preserve our food supply for the winter. I also started learning how to grow more of the vegetables my family liked, so we weren’t buying as much at the store.
The garden is still expanding and growing. I use the winter to learn more about the next vegetable or fruit I want to grow. I take notes and perfect the methods for our farm. I’m playing with double cropping and starting a permaculture orchard now.
What started as a fear of not being able to buy enough groceries, has turned into a huge garden with the potential to meet 80% (currently around 50%) of our family’s veggie and fruit needs when it is all mature. All this from not giving into the fear, but stepping back and looking for the opportunity in the fear.
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Rules. They are there to guide us and keep us safe. Some rules help us to live life the best way possible. Some show us our shortcomings. Many people don’t like rules. That rebellious heart just wants freedom, I know I’m not alone here. Some people like me test the rules. Is that really a rule or a suggestion? Why is it even there?
Bless my mother, somehow she didn’t kill me growing up. But she did learn if she wanted me to follow a rule, I needed to know the why and that she really meant it. Guess what? My daughter is the same as me….
One rule that I have followed since growing up was what some consider the ‘Golden rule’. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
What kind of rule is this? Really it's more like a guideline to life than a rule. It is one of those rules that show us how life works best, how to interact with others well. Logically, if you want to be treated kindly, you should probably treat others with kindness as well. It is in our human nature to want to reciprocate how others make us feel.
This is also a rule that is so hard for young kids to learn. Why should I share? It’s mine! She’s in my space, so I pushed her out. He took my toy, so I hit him. Just a few examples from my house lately. At the same time it is so important to teach our kids this guideline.
Kids who grow into adults who never learned or choose not to follow the ‘Golden rule’ are ones that are bitter. They are adults, people don’t like to be around. I do not want my kids to grow up to be those adults. I want them to be kind, understanding, and a friend. As their mom it is now my job to teach them what it means to be a friend, to be kind, to be understanding. And it starts at home with their siblings.
As one of my kid’s favorite books says “to have a friend, you have to be a friend.”
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I wish everyone who has had a traumatic birth experiences birth redemption. I do not wish anyone to have a traumatic birth, but unfortunately it happens all too frequently. This is part one of two in Blog posts.
What happens during a traumatic birth? It is not just physical trauma, it is emotional trauma that takes a hidden toll. This hidden emotional trauma leaves scars that no one can see. It can change the way a mother views herself, her body, her baby, her life. When this hidden trauma occurs, the outside world does not see what is happening. To them all seems well, everyone is alive. They don’t see the internal struggle and the life that is not thriving, but only surviving.
Before the birth of my daughter I had a view of a strong and capable woman. A little nervous and not knowing what to expect of birth, but confidant I could handle it. After all my mom did, why wouldn’t I be able to.
I left my daughter's birth feeling broken, robbed, and used. My confidence was shaken to the core. I didn’t recognize my own body, didn’t understand what happened or why. Everyone was so happy, my daughter and I were alive. They didn’t see the struggle to bond, the hurt that went way deeper than the scar. The confusion, trying to figure out what went wrong.
Her birth left me with a view that my body was broken. That it was unable to handle a pregnancy, or birth. I spent the next year in physical pain, burying the emotional pain and swearing I’d never go through that again. How? I would simply not get pregnant again.
Over that year, I started digging into improving my health. I was tired of the pain. I switched jobs, because I physically and mentally just couldn’t cowboy anymore. The pain continued. I finally found help for the physical pain. I was blessed with an occupational therapist who understood the effect emotions have on the body. She led me to the path of emotional healing. Once those two pieces met, the pain, both physical and emotional, finally started to heal.
For more on what I did to heal, get the course here:
https://getoiling.com/CassandraRow/landing/recovery-from-traumatic-birth
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Tough question, but one most of us will face at some point. Something we loved doing must be put on hold for a time, sometimes known, sometimes unknown. Hobbies or passions are held or altered for different reasons: life circumstance, health, finances.
When this happens there usually is a process of grieving. You deny that you really have to give that hobby up and find ways to still include it. Then you have feelings of anger or frustration that you just can’t make the hobby work. You might try bargaining for time, money, health, to get just a bit more of that passion. Then you fall into a bit of a depression as you long to do what you used to love. Finally you accept that maybe one day you will be able to do your passion again.
Feeling like my passions are being taken away has happened to me recently. I am a strong willed, independent, woman. I love riding horses, and being in my gardens. With the addition of each child my time riding has decreased, but I am ok with that as I still have them and have continued to care for them. My garden has increased as our family has increased, filling much of my used to be riding time, because it is something else I enjoy and the kids can do it with me.
Late this winter however, I saw both of these hobbies start to be limited and felt them being taken away. I had started bleeding heavily during pregnancy and found I had a large subchorionic hematoma. I was put on activity and weight restrictions of 10 pounds, until the bleeding stopped. This made it impossible to feed hay to my horses, help my kids ride, or start yard prep for the garden. At first I was ok, ‘it’ll only be a couple weeks, then I can resume’ (denial). But the two weeks turned into a month and still no end in sight. In total I bled 7 weeks. Even after it was done, I was still advised to keep the lifting light and limit activity so nothing would reinjure.
I was angry. Angry there was no clear reason or answer to why. Angry I couldn’t take care of my portion of the chores, upset I was having to rely on everyone else to feed hay, get feed, pour the feed into the cans, and do the heavy lifting in the gardens.
I then went through a bit of depression as I realized all the things I might not be able to do this summer. Planting was going to be difficult, weeding, mulching. Planting the bushes was out of the question. Clean up in the wind break was on hold. My plants I started suffered, as I didn’t care for them like they needed.
Only recently have I been able to accept that I will not return to full normal activity until months after delivery. That has been helped by being surrounded by friends and family that are willing and able to step in and help, with the chores I cannot do (thank you to my husband, who does the bulk now with his own cattle chores). Friends who come out and help with the big garden days (Nicole and Andrew) and get the digging, mulching, weeding done.
Is it still hard? Yes. I want to do so much and don’t like relying on others to have to help me all the time. I have accepted that some things just won’t happen this year, but there is next year. I also know this is not forever and one day I’ll be back to full speed. But that buggy horse is sounding really good right now….
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What is something that completely annoys you? We all have those random things annoy us. For me it is chaos and disorder.
I like my life organized, whether that is my environment, or my actual schedule. The order helps me to function and stay focused. Having kids has greatly altered that, but I still keep the clutter to a minimum, and try to keep things picked up and organized. If it is an area I need to work in, you had better believe there is order to it. I will get so distracted by the disorder, I don’t work on what I need to, only cleaning the mess up.
Chaos, tends to be more of a social thing. We’ve all seen it, you walk into an area, and there are 500 things going on and no one really knows what they are doing or why. Some people do just fine in these situations, my sister thrives in them. Me? I want to take command and organize everyone, so we are all working towards the same things, not necessarily the same task, but the same goal. It takes everything in me to not.
Life has taken a lot of time to mature me and settle me down a bit. I've learned to prioritize, what actually needs to stay organized, and when it is time to have the kids clean up their toys. I have learned to keep the clutter to a minimum, eliminating piles before they become huge, and throw away the broken toys that don’t need fixed.
I still try to schedule my life, but have learned to give myself time and grace when plans change. I obsessively write things in my planner, so it looks organized, but understand that the 30 minute task is going to take an hour at least with kids in tow. I have learned to schedule my tasks not on my old time self, but on the I have 2 helpers in tow time (at least twice as long).
Do I still stress when life takes a left turn when I was expecting a right? YES. But I am getting better at letting go and rolling with the changes.
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Have you ever had a time when you had a heartfelt conversation with a friend that challenged your belief of something? I had that several years ago when a friend challenged me to look into the safety of products I had always believed to be safe. She had recently made a discovery that shocked her, but knew me well enough to know I needed to research on my own.
So what did I do? I started reading the book she recommended. Then started diving into numbers, research, safety studies, death rates, reaction rates, I looked at it all. I simply could not believe that a product that so many people used was not actually safe. How did it pass regulations?!?
What I found shocked me. The companies who made the products, weren’t even liable if there was a severe reaction or death from them. In 1986 all those companies were made legally exempt from liability, by congress! If a company isn’t liable for harm by their product, meaning they can’t be sued if harm occurs, how and why would they be guaranteed safe?
Then I started to compare the numbers. I looked at death rates prior to the product being released, and turned them into percentage (number of deaths in a year / US population that year). This made the number comparable across time. Then I looked at the reaction rates to the products once they were widely being used and turned them into the same percentage. You know what? The reaction rates were higher than the death rates on every one!
Knowing all of this I started to look into the safety testing of the products. They were only tested for less than a year usually before being marketed to the public! No wonder there were so many reactions.
So what can you do? Do your research. Do not be afraid to question anything. Take your time to make decisions and use google.scholar for the real hard studies, not google. I am no longer afraid to challenge my own thought process and try and prove my opinion correct using science. One of two things will happen. Either I solidify my position, or I change my mind.
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What is something that truly frustrates you? The one thing that no matter what the situation, gets under your skin? I have always been an analyzer. I was also taught that for every situation, there is another side, you may not know until you dig or ask. As I have grown older, I have carried these habits with me.
It bothered me in high school, and it bothers me today. When people see one side of the picture, instead of looking at all sides of an issue. This can be a simple argument, or a huge political issue. Looking at both sides of the picture can shift your perspective greatly, in either case, or anywhere in between. The trick comes in learning to filter through your own paradigm.
What is a paradigm? According to vocabulary.com,
“A paradigm is a standard, perspective, or set of ideas. A paradigm is a way of looking at something. The word paradigm comes up a lot in the academic, scientific, and business worlds. ... When you change paradigms, you're changing how you think about something.
Each of us has a different paradigm based on how we were raised and our life experiences. If you do not keep an open mind, be willing to ask questions and truly listen, to gain understanding of their opinion, you will only stay in the same argument state. By having open conversations, where you are willing to let your perspective be challenged, you gain insight and understanding. Your opinion may not change, but your heart will be able to understand where the other side is standing. Why they believe what they do.
In the past 5 years, I have allowed my paradigm to be challenged and changed over and over. In conversations with friends and other people, I have allowed my thoughts on medicine, food, and health be challenged. After many of those conversations, I usually dug into more research on my own. That is what I do. I want the whole story, I want the science. After those research digs, my perspective and opinion changed at least a little. All because I was willing to be open and dig more. I was willing to see the other side of an opinion.
Where have your paradigms been challenged recently?
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