A Test of Integration

Last week, I shared a little about the doldrums and the dance between listening to our body's messages and changing our situations. This week, we're going to talk about integration. Integration is the art of holding the "good" and the "bad." That is, not sinking into misery forever and ever and denying that there is any good, and also not constantly looking for silver linings and ignoring the very real pain. Healthy adulthood is often a quest for integration: letting both the good and the bad be true, all at the same time. 

In an effort to feel better last week and escape grey, low-snow Utah, I enlisted the help of a delightfully flexible and adventurous friend, and we ran away to the north, where they actually have snow. The snow was cold and fast, and halfway through the day, I got unlucky and fell wrong and... ugh... an opportunity to grow in integration. As a true-blue optimist, I tried to ski it down, and when it was (painfully) clear that was idiocy, I allowed the friendly Jackson Hole ski patrol to assist. 

So now I'm home, nursing a sad knee, waiting for my MRI appointment to figure out next steps, and practicing integration. I am sad and frustrated. I am grateful it wasn't worse and glad that I got injured in a crappy snow year. I am hopeful that the good ol' knee just needs time and rest. I'm reconciled to the fact that if more medical intervention is required, I'll cross that bridge. I'm just practicing feeling it all and letting it all be true (because it is). It's lame, and it's ok.

Sigh and double sigh. 

Doldrums

Sigh. It finally hit. The doldrums. No wind in my sails, no snow under my feet. I'm a little bit sad and lonely. Some of this definitely has to do with the weather. We have had a wildly low snow season, and when you organize your life around skiing more, having to work hard to find snow is a bummer. Some of it is the come-down from a very busy December, plus a quiet house since my husband has been traveling for work all month. Some of it is deep sadness over the state of the U.S. Some is a natural response to the hunker-down nature of winter. Combine it all, and I'm a little bit in the doldrums. 

Ok, so I've done the most challenging part for me - recognizing how I feel. Now comes the second hardest part - what's my response? 

Option 1 is to follow my body's cues. I have space and time to be a little slow and lethargic. I know (in my head) that I can trust what my body is telling me. It's ok - nay, it's healthy - to be stationary sometimes, and it's fine to feel a little low. 

Option 2 is to use some grit and some motivation to get myself up and doing things that I know will probably feel good. This requires a little "digging deep" to get the ball rolling. I also want to stay sensitive to how my body and emotions are responding, and if it's just not working, and I would have to really strive to stay moving, it's time to fall back to Option 1.

This is the work of integration. It's listening to my body and emotions, evaluating what I want, and staying sensitive to how I respond as I take my next steps. I've spent a lot of my life simply not listening to these inconvenient emotions - when you have little kids and are working full-time to support your family, it doesn't really matter if you feel a little low, you just have to keep going. I've made it through that chapter of life, and now I get to pause and listen with more gentleness to the voices inside of me. Slowing down runs counter to how I've trained my brain to respond to challenge, and it's a good skill for me to focus on in this season.

Tracking my Foundations

My focus this year is on foundations, and I've been racking my brain trying to figure out how I want to track all of these wonderful activities. A massive checklist was off the table quickly - these are things that are not only good for me, but they're things that I love, so the last thing I wanted was to transform them into a guilt-laden, never-good-enough checklist. But if not a checklist, what? 

My answer: A mosaic. I have long loved the concept of time as a mosaic (from Laura Vanderkam's I Know How She Does It).  The idea is that our days are often heavily slanted one way or another. But if we pull back and look at a week or two, we can start to see our time as a mosaic (a tile of kid time, a tile of exercise, a tile of hobby time, a tile of work time), and we can decide whether or not we like the picture that's forming. This takes the pressure off of creating a perfect day or week and focuses on the bigger picture. 

So, here's my experiment for 2026: a mosaic of these foundational practices that I love and that are good for me. Every day, I'll color in the activities I do. Yep, I even wrote the activity on its corresponding crayon - we are all in. The focus is not on perfect days but on each week and month as a rainbow of the foundational patterns I want in my life.

Will it work? Will it be a fun, colorful celebration of things that I love? No idea. However, I like the experiment, and I'm willing to give it a try, learn from it, and iterate along the way. 

How do you like tracking your goals? What has worked for you in the past? Are you trying any new approaches to motivate yourself in the new year?