Well, it is Family Day Weekend and it’s February, so it seems a good time to talk about love. I love my three kids with total abandon. I love nature. I love animals. I often forget, though, to love myself.

I didn’t have a blog post ready for early this morning when I normally like to post.  I thought I’d get on it this afternoon, and now here it is 10:00pm and I just sat down to write. I had big plans for today, and this weekend.  I was going to balance my perfect family life, my household chores, and my work. I ended up sharing lots of love, working on some household maintenance, and not doing a lot of business work I wanted to get done. That left me feeling pretty short-tempered late this afternoon when I realized there just weren’t enough hours in my day. Ever. But I just left it come, and then let it go.  I enjoyed making a great dinner, made my daughter some of her favourite dairy-free ice cream, gave her some hugs and sent her to bed. I finished putting up a shelf and tidied up the living room, and finally came up to the office.

I realized I actually did a lot this weekend. I attended two performances of my daughters musical. I went to the gym. I had two business calls. I had dinner with a friend Friday, and with family Saturday. I re-organized my bedroom with the help of my son visiting for the weekend, painted a wall and moved a large shelving unit in the living room, cleaned up a bit of the back yard. I went on a little impromptu shopping trip with my daughter, we cleaned her room top to bottom (one laundry basket of giveaways, and one garbage bag full of stuff no one would want). I went on a beautiful walk with my two daughters today.  And I spent some quality time talking with my kids. I think it helped me realize all was not lost when I didn’t get to everything on my list because one of those calls this weekend was a coaching call, and she reminded me of that same thing when assessing my week last week.  I was disappointed in myself, but she had to point out I had done what I set out in my goal planning to do. And so it was with my weekend.  My main goal was family time.  I had lots of that.  Work was supposed to fit in around it. And it didn’t. That’s okay.  I’m back at it tomorrow.

Why is it we can be so gracious to others and never give ourselves a break? Loving ourselves is the only way we can truly love others without condition.  We need to treat our health, our time, our interests, our finances, and our opinions with respect and clear boundaries. Others will appreciate that, but, more important we will appreciate that about ourselves. Life will feel balanced, and full. We will love freely, and have more of ourselves to give when we are cared for first.  I’m getting there. So as a wrap up of Family Day I am telling the world I love myself.  I’m a hard worker, but I can get distracted, I have endless patience, I love a good belly laugh, my vice is potato chips, I love deeply, I’m honest, I can be defensive, I want to make a difference. And I am worth it!

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