After vacation, the double mom work starts.
We always extend out our vacations up to the very last day that we can, which means that there is usually something the next day that requires our attention. Perhaps we should learn to not do this, but when it comes to the vacation and you are sitting there enjoying the time, I think we would wonder why we didn’t extend the fun to the very last day. Which is why we extend it to the very last day before we question it.
This last vacation we took the girls’ winter break and slapped together a road trip to the Grand Canyon. If you aren’t following me on Instagram, then you missed all of the beautiful pictures of the great states of New Mexico and Arizona. The shocking contrast in landscape from 100 miles to the next is jarring and beautiful. It really is an incredible road trip to take with the kids when they are this age.
First, because we could trust all of them to be careful in the canyons and to obey us. All fundamental if you are wanting to not experience an accident. (It’s crazy but accidents still happen there and people still fall off the edge. Not so crazy to think about when you see what some people do while there ie. climb past the guard rails and jump from rock to rock.) Second, because after they saw how much fun it was to see the beauty and feel the accomplishment of hiking across the ridge of a mountain (it is pretty great to look back and see how far you’ve walked) they were hooked and wanted to do more. The littlest asked if we could find a place to go hiking for her seventh birthday. Sneaky mom-objective accomplished!
We had a great time. There was some much-needed family time that happened, some conversation and some new jokes that were developed and we proved to ourselves that we still actually like each other.
But the probably with vacation is that it always comes to an end. And when I walk through the doors of my house I tend to have a hard time focusing on what I just left behind and instead focus immediately on what lies ahead: laundry.
Hustle, Bustle, Burst
It isn’t just that there is a car to unload and suitcases to unpack. It’s that there is a ton of laundry to do, and kids need their school stuff organized, and there’s no food in the house.
The day after we arrived, we had a dance competition which took up all day. There was also hubby’s gym class and the one soccer match he wants to watch every week. The Sunday afterward we had volunteered at church and homework to get done and we were called to help out a neighbor. In between all fo that we went grocery shopping and found school clothes that needed washing and all the other extras. Besides all that, I started feeling more and more behind on my business stuff because for the last week I hadn’t written a blog post or written in my book or checked my newsletter subscribers or checked for people buying my books and journals.
It’s not that I wish to be able to come home and do nothing but revel in the greatness that was the vacation, but I did recognize that this ‘hit the pavement’ attitude was not good for me. It stressed me out and made me feel bad about going on vacation now that I was home. And apparently I’m not alone. Many American’s confess to not going on vacation because they fear the consequences of the work pile up more than they think they need the break. This is not good for our mental health as a country!
So I started reflecting on a question: How can you give yourself space to process the vacation, to let it linger and not just move on back into work and back into the hustle? What steps can you take to ease more into the return instead of feeling this jarring sensation, as though stepping across the threshold of your front door means you are in another world entirely and must adjust your activity and mood accordingly.
Spend Time Processing
I am not a natural processor. It’s something I had to force myself to learn through counseling. When we are on family vacations I always take my journal, but there is never time to write in it. We always have something going on and my family doesn’t like it when I take time out from them to go away and sit with my journal. For better or worse, that is how it is right now.
Since I don’t usually write in the journal on the vacation and the days get overwhelmingly busy once we get home, weeks can go by before I get a chance to write. And then, in the past, there was a time that I simply let it go and never wrote about the trip because it seemed like the time to do so had passed away.
This time I was determined not to let that happen. As I felt myself get more and more agitated and stressed out, I stood still one day and analyzed what was going on. Then, even though there was laundry to do and clothes to fold and dinner to make, I sat down with my journal and wrote a little bit. Not a lot, but at least a little. That night I did the same when I put myself to bed just a few minutes earlier so I could write. (perhaps this is something I should do WHILE on the vacation…)
I think its good to sit and reflect on the vacation with the family, to look over the pictures and remember what we did just a few days beforehand. I haven’t done the picture book yet, but getting that done within the first week would be so good because all the jokes and little stories would be fresh in your head still to add to the photo book.
And if you are in a situation where the people around you are jealous or don’t want to hear about your vacation for whatever reason or think that reveling in the memories of that vacation is stupid and your should move on and keep up with the program, let me tell you something: It’s OK to not feel guilty about reveling in what you just experienced even though everyone that you’re around now was in the same hustle and bustle of the week to week. You don’t’ have to pretend that you didn’t just have a great vacation.
It’s good to linger in that in-between of vacation and ease back into real life. In order to do this, you might have to say no to invitations for coffee that week, or not watch the show you put on hold or stay alone for lunch a few days in order to process and journal and get the photobook done. Don’t feel guilty about this! Because if you just jar yourself back into the hustle and bustle you might find yourself resenting the vacation itself.
That’s what I realized as I reflected on what was going on with my stress level and what I could do to change it. I realized that half the time we plan a vacation, my mind automatically goes to the overwhelm of getting back from vacation. Since I have my own company that ‘requires’ me to work every day, I find it hard to give myself the excuse to not work during the vacation. This time I was good about batching and had all the things I needed done, done. But that didn’t change the overwhelm of when I got home.
As women and mothers, we need to stop feeling guilty about not having been home, and instead feel good about the fact that we did something healthy and good for ourselves and for the family. Vacation is good for all of our emotional and mental states, so we need to reject the tendency to allow the benefits of that vacation to just disappear and vanish once we step back into life. Instead, we need to see the importance of allowing those benefits to hover over us because otherwise, we are teaching our minds a bad habit of associating vacation with something that ends in stress, guilt and anxiety.
If you study habits at all or the mind, you will know that the mind will learn things and process them on its own if you don’t tell if how to process. Therefore, the more you practice the habit of being stressed after a vacation, the more you’re going to feel anxious on the vacation because you’re going to be anticipating that stress and anxiety when you get home. That’s not good for anyone. We all need to better learn how to be present in the moment and that it’s OK to be fully present during the vacation and to even let that presence in the vacation linger a few days longer.