A Royal Pain in the...

I threw my back out putting the baby girl in her crib, something so simple, but it has made me miserable for the past week. Every move I make (except for laying on my back and standing straight up) causes it to twinge. Do you know how hard it is to raise two little children without lifting, twisting, lunging, crawling, reaching, carrying, climbing, and so on?

I think it's getting better, but it's hard to tell, because I can feel better and then pull it again and it starts all over.

The royal pain I refer to in the title, though, is not my back. It's me.

All my energy goes into being in pain, coddling my back, and feeling sorry for myself.

That is the worst, I think, feeling sorry for myself. That is what keeps me from writing, or from taking out my paints, or making the effort to do something creative. Actually, you know what? It doesn't necessarily even keep me from being creative, but my miserableness keeps me from paying attention to my creativity.

While I have been nursing my ouchie back, I have also drawn several drawings in my journal, sorted through my previous journal drawings, written at least one poem (focused on being miserable, but so be it,) written passionate and/or witty emails to old friends, cooked dinner every night this week usually with recipes of my own invention, taken a billion and one photographs (so what if my technoidiocy prevents me from posting them,) and actually gotten a chance to read a book and watch multiple movies.

Wait a minute. I have been living my creative life despite all my various sorrows and miseries.
No matter that I have the feeling I should be doing more or it should somehow look different. (Perhaps like one of those wonderful studios I keep seeing on various blogs, full of light and color and paints and fabric scraps and works in progress and all that devotion to work.)

I make a vow to myself to pay attention to the creativity that is trying to make itself known. It's there, trying to BE, just like the little tadpoles in our fishpond, just now budding their little pollywog legs, trying to be hoppy frogs.

Sometimes the transformation is so gradual, and I am looking so minutely, that it is easy to miss my growth from exhausted mom to mom who gets her mojo back. I'm going to really value those tiny little pollywog legs I'm growing. They are getting me back on my journey.