Photo credit: George Doyle
Writing publicly about this part of my life was a big decision. I thought about it for the better part of a year. Even after all that deliberating, in the end it was a leap of faith, just like starting this blog a year ago. My hope is that my story finds the right people at the right time and helps them. Thank you to the Huffington Post for publishing it.
© Camille Williams and Wake Up, Mama! 2016
I wrote this article for Elephant Journal. I love this publication and I’m so happy to be part of it, especially on a topic I feel so passionate about!
Self care is not a luxury. It took a while, but I finally get it. It’s a necessity, like food and water and breathing.
I’m a midwife and a homeschooling mom of two boys. It’s a life I love, and it takes a lot of juice to keep it up and running. More still to keep it flowing and vibrant.
I no longer expect to be able to pull the energy and peaceful frame of mind I need—for myself and my family—out of thin air. It has to be consciously generated. I’m learning how often, in what ways, and for how long I need to make time for self care and renewal. Continue reading
Kali, the Hindu goddess of death, destruction, creation, fertility, healing, and compassion.
I’ve been thinking a lot about anger. I’m working with it at home in my efforts to quit yelling at my kids. While I navigate that process, I’ve also been thinking about how anger plays a role in our responses to the injustice, corruption, and violence we see in our world. Unfortunately, there’s been no shortage of material for this kind of exploration.
There’s also no shortage of pressure in spiritual growth culture to beware of negative emotions and be all about positivity and good vibes at all times.
Having the sole mission to spread love and inspire others with positive messages is one way to serve, and we need more of this for sure. And there are other valid ways of being in the world that are a little more down and dirty, but can still effect positive change. Anger has its rightful place in this realm, as the call to direct action and the generator of energy. Continue reading
In my last post, I wrote about a prayer ritual from my husband’s religious tradition that I do every day. Since then, I’ve been thinking more about the role of rituals in my and my family’s lives. It’s kind of funny that I’m writing about this, because I used to hate the word “ritual.” It conjured up vague but frightening images of biblical animal sacrifice. Or something. Either that, or it was synonymous with routine, which I used to equate with boredom and rigidity. Either way, I had no use for it.
I love the word “ritual” now. This was a gradual change, and I never noticed or thought about it as it was happening. Without ever planning it that way, I keep adding rituals to my life one by one, and now they are my spiritual container, my guideposts. Initially foreign and even a little bit forced in some cases, with time and repetition, most of them have become part of me now—as comfortable and familiar as a favorite pair of broken-in shoes. They are reliable reminders to focus on what really matters. On the harder days, they help me hang in there. On the best days, they create more joy in our lives. Continue reading
Sometime during the year after Boy 2 was born, depression snuck up on me. I had experienced several bouts of it since adolescence, but it took a while for me to figure out what was happening since it came on gradually and I had some legitimate stressors to pin it on. Once I finally accepted that it was more than just situational stress, I got some counseling. Just as important, I thought about lifestyle changes I could make—more exercise, a regular meditation practice, etc. I was talking with my husband, Gurpreet, about that and he said very definitively, “You need to do prayers.” Continue reading
Wake Up, Mama! 