thank you, body ll cheryl shares

I’m Cheryl and a new be.come user. I’m also a mom of two young children which means life can sometimes feel chaotic, loud, messy, silly, and joyful… but I struggle to find peace, stillness, and time to connect to myself. In the past couple years, I’ve used my exercise time as my “me time”. I would banish my kids away from me-distracted with a screen or toys- while I lifted, cycled, burpeed… and when they inevitably interrupted, I felt anything but the peace I was seeking. I felt frustrated and resentful.

It didn’t help that my main motivation for working out was a frantic desperation to shrink my body. “Get rid of the mummy tummy”…. “lose that baby weight”…. we are bombarded with these messages within days of giving birth. I obsessed over and tracked every bite of food I took and punished myself with extra workouts if I ate “bad foods” that day.

I came to realize what kind of behavior I was modeling for my kids and it wasn’t what I wanted for them or for me. We all deserved better.

The first day I did be.come, I apprehensively decided to try and include my three year old. I set up two yoga mats and let Z know, “this is your very own mat! You can do the moves they teach on the video or move however feels good for you!” She’ll follow the video for 10 seconds, then twirl, then kick, then run off and play, then come back and rejoin. She doesn’t feel the stress and rejection of being told to “leave mommy alone”. And I get to surrender to the unexpected. Maybe I pause the video to clean a spill or give a hug and that’s OK! She also gets to see wonderful role models- people moving their bodies because it makes them happy and strong, not as punishment or to make themselves smaller.