Six Sets of Seven

On movement, motherhood, seasons, and finding my way back to myself

Lately, I’ve been trying to increase my outdoor time.

Nothing revolutionary. Nothing particularly complicated.

Just… get myself outside more.

Walk. Move. Breathe fresh air. Look around.

Effie helps tremendously with this because she has absolutely no interest in my excuses.

And, if it’s the weekend by 10 a.m., she is rearing to go. Despite when the rest of us have collectively decided that perhaps we simply live in bed now, she just follows us around. Pawing at her leash. Pawing at the door. Appearing in whatever room we happen to move into next.

Wherever we go, she goes.

Until finally, we take the hint.

So, thank you, Eff.

Because of you, I think I’m finding myself again, bit by bit.

This morning I had some time and thought I might take a yoga class. Instead, I decided to see where the morning took me after school drop-off.

I figured Effie and I would do a speed walk.

It turned into a 5K run.

Apparently that’s where the morning wanted to go.

I’ve been playing around with interval training on our Wednesday morning outings by the dykes, and I’ve made my goal ridiculously simple:

My job is just to drive myself there.

That’s it.

Get in the car. Drive there. Get out.

Even if I’m moving like a snail, I’m there.

And something usually happens once I am.

The music goes into my ears. I hit play based on whatever mood I happen to have brought with me that day. Sometimes it’s my dopamine playlist. Sometimes running music. Sometimes Dance Dance. Old-school 2000s. A vinyasa flow playlist. Sometimes I let Apple decide and put on my “Melanie Watts Station,” which is always an interesting glimpse into what an algorithm apparently thinks is happening inside my brain.

And then I move.

I’m slowly learning to meet myself there instead of immediately trying to change her.

Okay. This is where I’m at today.

This is where I need to be.

It’s okay.

I’m doing enough.

Each step is enough.

Which brings me back to this morning.

I drove home after drop-off, spent a little too much time on my phone—because, human—and realized yoga probably wasn’t happening. But I wanted to do some weights. I actually felt like I had the energy.

Yesterday had been an October boat day.

Yes.

An October boat day.

Twenty-two beautiful degrees and sunshine, somehow, in October. It reminded me of doing the same thing back in 2020.

Six years ago.

And then, because this is apparently what my brain does while running, I started thinking about seven-year cycles.

Isn’t there something about our bodies regenerating every seven years?

Our skin? Our cells? Our minds?

Do we somehow shed the old and come into something new?

As it turns out, the science isn’t quite that tidy. Our entire bodies don’t replace themselves every seven years. Different cells regenerate at wildly different rates, and some stay with us for a very long time.

But I still like the metaphor.

Because I’m 42.

Six sets of seven.

Six seasons of becoming.

And it made me wonder about this last one.

Was that what the past year was about?

Because there were times when I felt so low-energy. So overwhelmed by the number of changes happening inside my body and around me. There were times when I genuinely felt as though I were drowning in it.

I told myself my body needed time after surgery. Time to adjust. Time to heal.

Then, a year later, I learned more had grown back. I received an adenomyosis diagnosis and suddenly had another explanation for some of what my body had been trying to tell me.

So was that why?

Hormones?

Perimenopause?

Healing?

Adenomyosis?

Life?

Forty-two?

Probably some cumulative summation of all of the above.

Maybe we don’t always get one neat answer.

Maybe sometimes the answer is simply: a lot has happened here.

And somewhere along my run this morning, I looked around.

And I felt appreciation.

I realized something else too.

I am not living with a man who stands around pointing out my faults.

He accepts me as I am, however I am.

The person saying the awful things is often me.

I am the one putting those words inside my own brain.

Do more.

Be more.

Be better.

Be stronger.

Be more muscular.

Be less flabby.

Stop eating the sugar.

Have more discipline.

Get organized.

Clean the house.

Do the thing.

Do ALL THE THINGS.

And then, naturally, stay awake binge-watching true crime—the fascination I’ve carried since I was a teenager and thought perhaps I’d become a forensic psychologist or something. Ha.

Apparently Night Shift mode does not magically turn a midnight murder documentary into restorative sleep.

Who knew?

Neither do the snacks I sometimes eat while watching it.

And none of this is about punishing myself for eating sugar or watching television or having a messy house.

It’s about noticing.

Because behaviour is information.

Mine too.

I’m noticing what actually makes me feel good the following day and what doesn’t.

I’m noticing that I don’t want to lose these important days with my kids because I’ve kept myself awake, fed my body things that make it feel crappy, and then spent the following morning feeding my mind crappy words too.

That is something I can change.

Not perfectly.

But intentionally.

I want to continue being someone my children can look up to—not because their mother has abs or a perfectly organized house or never eats sugar after 8 p.m.

Please.

I want them to see me living.

I want to keep up with them on a school run.

I want to play soccer with them and steal the ball away.

I want to dance.

I want to be strong.

And I also want them to see me rest when my body tells me I need to rest.

Because I don’t want to keep pushing myself beyond my own capacity until I bend—or snap—and then tumble straight down that shitty little toilet spiral of negativity, nit-picking the organization, the mess, the clutter, my body, my productivity and everything I haven’t managed to accomplish.

AHHHHH.

I am human.

And perhaps part of the work I am doing in my own life is exactly the work I hope this next generation learns to do a little earlier.

Feel.

Notice.

Move through.

Channel.

Rest when you need to.

Begin again when you’re ready.

Because our kids are growing up in an incredibly stimulating world.

And, frankly, so are we.

Constant digital input. Constant pressure. Constant opportunities to compare ourselves.

Look what they’re doing.

Look where they’re travelling.

Look at their house.

Their body.

Their children.

Their career.

Their garden.

Their beautifully labelled pantry containers.

More.

More.

More.

No.

No thank you.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that less really is more.

Because less gives us somewhere to be.

Less gives us enough quiet to notice what is happening around us.

Less allows us to experience appreciation rather than constantly searching for whatever is supposed to come next.

And perhaps gratitude isn’t something we manufacture by telling ourselves we should be grateful.

Maybe some of our deepest gratitude comes because we remember the hard parts.

We’ve lived the challenges.

We’ve gone through periods when things felt heavy and uncertain and uncomfortable.

And somewhere along the way, we learned how to pick ourselves back up.

We collected strategies.

We practised them.

We learned which ones actually worked for us.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

We practise these things when we can so that they’re available when we actually need them.

Rather than push.

Push.

Push.

Break.

And then wonder why we can’t function.

So here I am, typing about all of this in solidarity because perhaps someone else is wondering the same things.

Who am I now?

What am I doing here?

What actually matters to me?

What is the meaning of all of this?

My son asks me questions like this.

He started when he was seven or eight.

Yes. These are apparently our bedtime conversations.

He’s been a deep thinker and feeler from the beginning. Before he’d even mastered “Mama,” when I was somehow still “Dada,” he had already figured out the far more important phrase before the age of one:

“What’s tha?”

Everything.

What’s tha?

He wanted to know.

He still does.

And I think I do too.

Both my children inspire me.

Yes, that includes the doggos too!

As do the parents I meet. The teenagers and children I work with. People from completely different walks of life.

They remind me to keep my younger self nearby.

The curious one.

The dancing one.

The one who wants to know what’s tha?

Because when I allow all of those versions of myself to exist together—the child, teenager, dancer, mother, counsellor, wife, writer, woman standing in the middle of her sixth set of seven years wondering what the hell her hormones are doing—I feel more whole.

More like myself.

So today, I am taking pleasure in my day off.

Which, naturally, I have turned into a Get Shit Done Day.

A workout.

Gardening.

Housework.

Writing.

And I will also remind myself:

The rest will get done in its due time.

I genuinely believe that so much of what we need is already around us in some form. We have to learn to stay open enough to notice it—and discerning enough to know what actually belongs to us.

That takes time.

Experience.

Mistakes.

Practice.

And sometimes another person gently reminding us that we don’t actually have to solve our entire lives today.

Thank you, hubby, for being that reasoning voice when mine gets sucked into the chaos.

For reminding me that it’s okay.

It’s okay to rest today.

It’s okay to read for twenty minutes.

It’s okay to walk outside and breathe some fresh air.

It’s okay to come back to the work afterward—especially when we really do have to.

And for those of you doing so much of it yourselves…

Or you and your partner are both somewhere deep in the trenches…

I see you.

Maybe this is why I’ve never really connected with the idea that January is when everything has to begin again.

For me, autumn has always felt more like the reset.

Maybe it’s years of living according to the school calendar.

September and October arrive and we slowly find our routines again—not for a dramatic New Year’s transformation, but for the long haul.

And nature seems to understand this far better than we do.

We harvest.

We prepare the garden.

We tuck bulbs into the earth.

We clear what has finished.

We let things fall away.

Then winter comes.

Things become quieter.

Energy turns inward.

The ground rests.

And none of it looks particularly productive from the outside.

But underneath?

Things are still happening.

Roots are forming.

Energy is being stored.

Something is preparing itself.

We are allowed to do that too.

Not every season of our lives is meant for blooming.

Some are for planting.

Some are for shedding.

Some are for lying dormant.

Some are simply for getting ourselves to the dykes on Wednesday morning, putting the music in our ears and taking the next step.

Even if we’re moving like a snail.

Because the spring will come.

And when it does, perhaps the goal isn’t to emerge as some completely new and improved version of ourselves.

Perhaps it’s simply to recognize the person who was there all along.

Bit by bit.

Step by step.

Finding our way back to ourselves.

With Love,

Mel Watts