Get Your Girl Back

Parenting takes a lot out of me. Especially parenting kiddos with special needs. From 2010 until now, I have really struggled with my mental, physical, and emotional health. Recently I attended the Thirty-One National Conference in Denver, and I heard four amazing motivational speakers. The one that really spoke to my heart, however, was Traci Bild, author of Get Your Girl Back. She talked about prioritizing life and taking deliberate steps to get your life back to the way you want it to be. We can't do everything, but we can prioritize and really focus on what is important to us. When I sat down with myself and figured out what "girl" I wanted back, I came to these conclusions:

• Fitness and Health - feel better, stronger, and fit back into my clothes. This includes having time to work out and the resources to eat healthy. 
• Parenting - spending time actually playing with my kids, cuddling, reading, and interacting one-on-one in a fun way every day for at least 10 minutes. Sometimes I spend an hour with one kid, but it is on homework or a project. I want to enjoy my kiddos. After all, I spent years trying to get them, right? Ten minutes doesn't seem like much, but ten minutes of one-on-one attention for each of my lovelies is a lot more than I have been giving.
• Marriage - We obviously married each other because we loved one another. Somewhere over the last few years, we have become a bit disconnected. It happened in little steps with events in our lives: miscarriage, moving, fostering, adopting, parenting, recruiting trips, etc. In the last few months, we have been more intentional about spending time together and remembering why we enjoy one another. We are even going to start "dating" again! 

Wow! My Thirty-One business and my teaching career didn't even make the list! What is truly important to me has nothing to do with money or prestige. It is health and family. Traci has emails, a dream journal, and a book coming out soon. I can't wait to dig further into her challenge to get my girl back!