Comfort Zone – Mom Dad CuppaKids

What Nobody Told Me : Post 40 Secrets for Us Gals

by Jenn & Chris on September 9, 2016

Is this Middle Age?

As I caught up with some other school moms at drop off the other day, the conversation somehow took a quick side turn to mentioning vaginas. (we have a midwife in our midst). As we mused through the hilarity of a round of vagina stories, I realized my comfort with the word vagina has become mainstay in my world. The older I get, the use of va-jay-jay, cooch, and other cute definitions of our underbits takes up too much energy and for me, it has now simply become straight up vagina.

Funny how that works isn’t it? As we get older, the concern over being socially appropriate pretty much flies out the window.

We all got so worked up about leading up to 40 didn’t we? We did our 40 things we learned, 40 things to do before your 40 and reflected on each of our past 40 years. Our own “coming of age” story played out on all our Facebooks. We gave very little fucks and felt more empowered and confident in our new decade than ever before.

But then we actually turned 40 and that wasn’t nearly as bad as we thought. Things did, however, suddenly and very rapidly started to change. Sure, there was the typical your eyes will immediately go down hill when you are 40 (truth) and your body will start feeling more “your age” (also true) but there is a shit ton missing that is really hardly ever discussed at all.

To the Sisterhood of Travelling Pantyliners who have already tred this path, I expected more from you. A warning perhaps?

At least with puberty, you faced that awkward moment with one of your parents or were alternatively handed over a sex ed book with various animals screwing as your point of reference.

You let me down a little.

You didn’t tell me about all the OTHER stuff.

The mid-life, what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-me kind of stuff that takes over. As our bodies morph into something completely different, our emotions hit epic highs and brutal lows, but nobody is talking about it. (Or hardly).

So let’s talk. Straight up.

Here are a few things I would like to pass on to my up and coming 40-somethings to better prepare them for this next phase of life.

You will have the heaviest periods of your life. Oh to my 16 year old self who stayed home from school cause the “cramps were SO painful”. Suck it up butter cup. You have NO idea.
You lament and miss the days of yesteryears. Gone are intelligent movie scripts with complex subplots, subliminal humour and challenging storylines. Movies like Sophie’s Choice, Kramer vs Kramer, MASK, The Godfather, The Princess Bride, Breakfast Club, or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Trust me I could go on with this list) have now been replaced by deeply disturbing, ridiculously benign ditties like Sausage Party, Dirty Grandpa, The Do-Over and Ted.
You will start experiencing insomnia, you might start having anxiety, and the blues will feel deeper than ever before. Keeping a keen eye on your mental health and be sure to take care of it now before it becomes critical. It can affect you, your marriage, your body, your children and your life. Be aware.
You used to giggle at the way your aunts & uncles danced up a storm at weddings. You know why they were so happy? It was the only LEGIT place they could dance! Going to a club over the age of 40 when you are meeting young bucks and affirming that you could (in fact) be their mother is a total buzzkill. They are drunk and stumbly and get in your way when all you want to do is dance and you have gotten rusty on the back elbow check you used to dance to clear some space to dance and …”Wait Wha? Did you SEE the way she was dancing?? Not like we EVER were assholes as kids right?? *Ahem* Judgy McJudgerson.
You used to be a good dancer. When you were young. Now your POP is a Diet Coke and your LOCK is on the storage unit down the way. Finding a groove that doesn’t hurt your knees, or doesn’t have you stuck on the floor once you went low, (Shit, I’ve gone too far) low, (Crap, now I have to fall over to get back up) low is damn near impossible. Just deal, have fun or start taking Hip Hop classes.
Time will feel finite. Like the clock really is ticking. Through watching illness take over dear friends your same age to starting to go to too many funerals, this will be the first time that you start to realize that you only have so much time left in this beautiful world of ours.
You will discover more about how your body operates, what you like & care less about how you look. Sex will be everything from utilitarian, fun, painful, familiar, quick, sensual, passionate or any combination of the afore mentioned. The difference now is that (on the nights where you are both”game”) not only is it good, it’s fireworks.
The words “prolapsed uterus” has a far higher appearance count in your conversations than you ever care to discuss. Pelvic floor and kegels advice has changed from a giggle on using them to strengthen your orgasm to using them to make sure nothing falls out of you.
You will pee. Just a little. Like all the time (unless you have been working on those kegels) When you sneeze, cough, throw up, go trampolining and quite likely even run.
You will love deeper. Play harder (although the hangover recovery period takes about 3 days longer) and appreciate the true value of dear friends.

I want to tell those up and comers, to simply care about the important things & let go of everything else. Talking is important. If anything to just know you aren’t alone.

Keep talking girls. Keep talking.

Vagina.

Real Life

To The Friend Who Doesn’t Want to Be a Burden

by Jenn & Chris on August 24, 2016

The Return of Real Friendship

We were out for dinner, catching up on a long overdue series of updates on what was happening in our lives. Social media lead the prompts as we reviewed what we “knew” of what was going on with each other & asked more top of line questions. As you described a heart-wrenching account of a situation with your child, you started to cry. The pain and heartache I saw in your eyes told your story far deeper than you could possibly share. And then you said those words, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to burden you with all of this”.

Oh my lovely. As if listening to a dear friend share their sadness (& with that a possibility that we could provide some small relief by talking it through) would be a burden?

But we all think like that these days don’t we?

The advent of social media, one in which we send status updates that accrues barely 1% of our lives, has added an extra layer to our onion.

Taking a risk and peeling it back to tell the honest goods? The straight up truths? The aches & pains that are normal & natural parts of going through life? That’s too much rain on someone else’s parade.

Only its not.

That’s real friendship.

THAT is the depth & breadth by which you can measure one who truly is a friend. The person who is wanting and willing to get into it with you. The ones who can give you a sense of comfort in talking through the ugly, the messiness of all of it, the stigmas, the joys and the sorrows.

But the catch is, you need to feel comfortable sharing yourself (& all your warts) with your friends. It’s icky sometimes, sure, but walking through your issues with a friend can make the difference between life is over and life has tremendous possibilities. You often just need that different perspective to weigh in on the problem.

Over the last couple of years, I functioned through a pretty serious case of situational depression and unsettling anxiety attacks. It took me a long time (& a lot of trust with some very special friends) to admit or talk about any of that because I too didn’t want to be a burden. When I would dip my toe in and mention it to someone, the amount of times I got back “but on Facebook you always look like you have your shit together” was pretty astronomical. OY. Listen, we ALL have burdens. Everyone has things/crap/shit they are dealing with and absolutely nobody is posting their entire life’s story on social media. If you are like me, I don’t believe in adding more negative content to an already full internet cesspool. So I only try to bring positive in the things I say online.

This summer, we made extra efforts to reconnect with those dear to us & work on peeling back the onion to the way it used to be. To talk, openly & honestly about what’s going on. Those “burdens” we have been so reticent to share are nothing but in our heads. The moments we have embraced together before we go away seem to have a special sweetness to them. We know these are memories we will carry with us on our trip, filling our hearts with gratitude and love.

Friendship needs more than the occasional text, snap or status update. Like any relationship, they need to be fuelled & fanned to continue that flame. If you truly are a friend to someone, think about how you can reach out to them and reconnect. Work through each other’s issues together. Talk, cry, hug and laugh through it all. Talk for hours. Lend your ear to listen to a friend so that they might feel comfortable doing the same.

I don’t want another status update of you. I want you (warts and all :))

Let’s get back to reality.

Family Matters Real Life Travel

Finding the Edge of Comfortable

by Jenn & Chris on July 19, 2016

When everything feels icky & squirmy & totally uncertain

Mom Says:

I was a bulging, sweating, 8 months pregnant hot mess in the middle of one of the hottest heat waves we have ever experienced. My husband will recount to you tales of woe and suffering as he endured the words “I’M UNCOMFORTABLE!!” more times than I care to remember. It has become a standing joke between us, one that is typically accompanied with boohoos and mockery to indicate said Uncomfortablist is being entirely unreasonable.

On a happier pregnant days — On a happier pregnant day at the cottage

The word comfort has been an enemy in so many ways throughout my life. At the start of our marriage, I would share with my husband (often) my thoughts that the minute we were comfortable, we were done for. Comfortable meant being normal, stagnant, conforming and lacking passion. I didn’t want us to ever get there. I wanted us to strive for date nights and spicy moments so that the notion of comfort would never take hold.

I am often found pushing myself past my comfort zone. Whether it’s skydiving, scuba diving, motorcycling, bungee jumping, or climbing mountains, I have done it all. At the start of every one of these adventures, I am scared poopless. Every. Single. Time. Until I do it & then realize that that wasn’t so bad after all.

The whole fam came out to support me when I jumped out of a plane. I hope we are teaching our kids to be fearless. — The whole fam came out to support me when I jumped out of a plane. My only hope is that we are teaching our kids to be fearless.

I like it & I don’t like it. It feels icky and squirmy and often disagreeable. Yet something about pushing through the hard parts, to conquer and achieve a challenge on the other side makes it so worth the initial grossness of it all.

The thing is, I have started to think of my comfort zone as exactly that. It’s just a zone. It’s not your prison cell. Your zone can take on different shapes or sizes. The more we push, the bigger our space of allowable adventure becomes. We just have to keep pushing out the walls.

As we hit our 3 month window before we leave on our #CuppaRTW Round The World trip, I have recognized I have that uncomfortable feeling once again. This feels new for me because this time it’s not just me getting out of the zone. We as a family are taking this on, all parts of it feel foreign and unsettled.

I have been trying to explore what is actually causing these whirl-a-gig butterflies inside me and I think for the most part I have figured it out.

We are planning to not plan which for a planner makes things all kinds of up in the air. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster that’s pulled out of the station and already on the ride but need to get past the urge to hold my breath through the whole thing because its a long time before its over.
I am curious how we are going to manage surviving as a family 24/7 over the next many months. We are a strong team and we all love each other dearly but we already know we are going to plan for breaks or we will end up killing each other before we get out of South America. We have even invented a safe word to roll out on the days for the kids (or each other) are driving us so batty that we might say something we regret. We are also planning on taking days in which one of us takes the kids and in which we each take one kid to keep things different and exciting.
Very soon, we will no longer have a home. We are letting go & rid of most of our stuff. The grounding stuff. As we start packing up, we are starting to work on how to create a new version of “Home” for us & the kids. We will have no place to come back to and the concept of coming home will now have to truly live in “home is where the heart is”. So how do we teach that to our kids?

I know these are all just growing pains as we start this new chapter in our life. I just can’t wait till my brain is settled on the other side and starts feeling more comfortable (baahaaahaa) with it all.

Climbing Kili was something I thought impossible. Until we did it.

Dad says:

oh, the pain of comfort…

I am, unlike above, comfortable with comfort to a point. The balance I constantly try to strike is to look around and appreciate accomplishments before running off to literally jump of a cliff. There is little joy in a life so hectic that you forget to breathe, look around, smell the roses, you know, LIVE…

Part of joy is enjoy, which is a poorly spelt word that should be in-joy. Get in the moment, relish it, then set you sights on the next adventure.

Healthy Living

Are you IN your (Comfort) Zone? Or OUT?

by Jenn & Chris on September 9, 2014

Mom Says…

A while back, the word comfort (or any variation of that word, see: comfortable) somehow became a swear word to me. In my head, comfort was equitable to not living life to its fullest, to mailing it in, to being happy with status quo. The barometer of our marriage was often determined by the word comfortable. If the hubs heard that word, he knew I was getting fidgety.

I couldn’t imagine that a Groundhog Day style of the same routine was the best way to live the only life we have. I had warned about the swear word but in truth it wasn’t really a reflection on our relationship. We are a good team. It wasn’t fair holding our marriage accountable for what I need, so I started pushing myself to go after things that took me out of my comfort zone in order to feed that need for exploration and adventure.

For the record, I absolutely HATE the squirmy icky feeling of delving into something new. But what I discovered was that by pushing through uncomfortable, I have succeeded to some degree at whatever I have tried. Sometimes the accomplishment is simply the attempt, not necessarily doing well by it. But more times than not, I discovered trying something new has actually brought with it experiences and rewards that I never knew would be possible had I not given it a try in the first place.

This is something I want our kids to learn, and hopefully model as they grow up. It is better to try something new that be paralyzed by the fear of it. So here we are: New blog, a journey to a whole new kind of lifestyle (Heathy, Clean Living, Gluten Free), and a whole new path out of Comfort.

Dad Says…

There is an opposite side of the coin here; without a comfort zone, you cannot appreciate exiting it. I believe that you must take time to appreciate everything you have if you are to strive beyond it.

I found an goofy shirt with a cartoon of a guy sitting around a fire with a cup, captioned ‘good life’. I think that sums it up pretty well; you have no idea what he did during the day; running rapids, parasailing, who knows what adventures have filled his tank.

What you do know is he is taking the time to reflect on them, absorb them, and assimilate them into his ‘happy place’. Everyone has a happy place; its where you go when planking…it’s that action where you take all the good stuff and make a leaf pile of it and roll around in it and look at the sky and wonder ‘what’s next?’ while thinking “holy crap, I can’t believe that branch held us 8 kids” or “wow, that home made bike jump was WAY higher than I thought, hope this stops bleeding before mom sees…”

I’m just saying it is important to reflect back on your accomplishments and wrap up in them like a snuggie and M.A.S.H rerun before running off on your next adventure, or else why are you doing them in the first place?

HOW ABOUT YOU? Where do you like LIVING?