Last year was something… What happened to me emotionally is exactly like what happened to me physically. It all came undone! I got so overwhelmed that my eating habits went down the drain and portions got increasingly bigger by the day until I had put on 5 kilos, in quite a short period of time actually, and turned into some tired, bloated, irritable person who once resembled me. It was like one of those documentaries where the protagonist decides to see what happens if she has a dinner from Fudruckers and dessert from Baskin Robins regularly for a couple of months. I constantly felt hungry or over full. I felt like I had a cloud in my head that prevented me from thinking clearly. Pair that with staying up late and waking up early and you had a mess of a person.

It wasn’t all for nothing tho, I was creating my children’s play centre. I put my family and myself through quite a bit in getting there. But I was blessed to be met with at first excitement, then annoyance then acceptance and patience from them all. (Or they gave up and got on with it but lets say they were patient) At least I do have something to show for it. I said it was only the last year but truthfully it was over two years. The slow destruction of Mama B started when I began to work on my dream project and became obsessive about it. I ate slept and breathed it. Till one day it was open, and the children came, and it was real. Everything fell into place except for one thing. I didn’t find a manager.

Now in these dreams I had of opening this center never was I ever the manager. Not in one scenario or fantasy or day-dream was I ever the manager. I was the owner, the vision, the person who oversaw and gave direction. Who floated in and sprinkled her magic while someone more experienced and capable actually did the doing.

When  we were running small playgroups it was relatively easy. Time consuming but enjoyable. Time consuming because the concepts were new to some of the staff (just play and explore) we had to literally walk them through every single aspect and some were really not completely convinced with the ‘just play with them’ aspect of it. They felt that they were not doing anything worthwhile. But for a child under 3 years play and exploration is the most worth while thing you can do with them. Actually correction, with all children.

I had brief moments of hope that I would get my life back and find a good manager but those fell through. After which I always went back to managing but each time  more drained and exhausted. I got to the end of the 5 week summer camp we ran, and thought that if I am in the same place this time next year that I don’t know how I could continue without the support.

When all hope was gone from my heart (cue dramatic music) in walked a woman (who’s meeting I was going to cancel). We spent an hour talking and met a few times after that. After asking her to give training to my staff a week later, I offered her the job of manager. She accepted And for the first time in two years I slept well.

The summer vacation came, and there was someone else doing the program planning. True, we sat down and decided on the themes and objectives together, we divided the classes and updated the policies and procedures but after a week of working one on one with the manager I went and had a proper summer. I read books just for fun! I played with my kids, I slept! and I came back to a full program plan, reorganized rooms, new toys and equipment and someone else in charge of it all.

I don’t know if any of you have suddenly looked at yourself after gaining weight and decided this is it! You are going to lose the weight and get back to your former self. If you have and were able to lose the weight then you will understand when I say that your former self is actually no longer there anymore. Shapes have changed, and even when you get the numbers down it takes more time, more effort, and things don’t settle quite where they were. I worked hard and I got there in the end but the person on the other side is not the person I started out with. Physically or emotionally. Something’s you can’t fix once they have been broken. and sometimes it’s a good thing. it just means you’ve exhausted certain pathways and need to find new ones. There’s an element of freedom in not being able to have my same patterns to fall into. Most likely those patterns were no longer serving me anyway. So we turn the page and start a new chapter.