I am still trying to catch up on my emails from the point at which I gave birth to Will. I realize now just how much extraneous stuff comes to my inbox that I don’t really need to have clutter up my life. For instance, I get a newsletter from The Thrillist (both the San Francisco edition as well as the national edition). While I have gotten some interesting information out of these mailings they are now annoying. So I have been unsubscribing to as many things as possible.

I need to clear space in my life for my new role: Will’s mom.

To fully step into this role I also need to be wholly Christine so that I can be a solid role model who will be one of his most influential people to set the tone for the kind of interactions he will have in life. One thing I have been working on as a person as a mom is to recognize when I am in a fearful or ungrounded place and to get out of it and find a grounded and confidant place. People know when you are uncomfortable, afraid or if you are confidant. I want him to feel confidant and secure rather than feeling that something is wrong. I think that when I worry or stress that he will know and it will have a negative impact on him.

One thing that you could liken it to is how dogs pick up on people’s fear or authority and they will respond to you accordingly. I think that most people have heard that you should not let dogs sense your fear… especially protective or aggressive dogs. I have personally experienced this with dogs in two different situations. The first one I was 6 years old and was fearfully fleeing an running dog who caught up with me and bit my hip. The second time I was about 26 and even though I feared this dog that charged after me I turned and yelled “HALT!” with an outstretched arm and stopped an aggressive charging doberman! Wow.

We have also been working to get rid of clutter in the house. What a difference this makes. We had some boxes laying around on the livingroom floor for several days that we finally moved last night and now the living room is more open and I feel less confined or crowded. There are still piles of papers and stacks of magazines among other things to go through and get rid of. I feel daunted by the task. That is a lot of sorting. I am working to sort things as they come into my life so that I don’t have to deal with a mountain (or a mountain range) of crap. Those mountains just tend to loom over me which really bothers me.

I think the issue is having a system. I need a system to sort and contain my stuff, otherwise it contains me.