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Krista shares a life lesson.
By Aussie Lee | December 3, 2009 | 
This honestly has to be the sweetest real life story I have read in a while and for Krista Vernoff to share a part of her personal side like this, well kudos to her I say. 
Even though she is obviously going through a tough transition in her life, she is still able to inspire others, including me. Have a read…. it’s worth it. 
Coco is 2 and a half. Two and a half! I honestly have no idea how that happened. Last thing I remember she was a lumpy bump of sweet-smelling baby squish, snuggled up against my chest, breathing. God. The simple, sweet, exhilarating act of listening to her breathe occupied hours of my day. Now, she’s about to start school. School. Okay, it’s pre-school and it’s only two and a half hours a day, four days a week, but still. She’s all, “I’m big girl, Mom!! I wear underwear now! No more diaper!” This is an actual sentence she said to me yesterday. Except big girl sounds more like beeeeeeeeg guuuuuuuhl! And it’s true that last week, out of almost nowhere, she decided she was potty trained, and she was. Seriously. She doesn’t even wear a diaper to sleep anymore. If it sounds like I’m bragging, I’m not. I want to beg her to slow down but that doesn’t make any sense. Because, really, what’s she supposed to do? Crap her pants some more because her mom needs some time to catch up emotionally??
I’m 37 years old for one more month. I’m dealing with some pretty tremendous changes in my life (an impending change in my marital status not the least of it). My impulse is to try to go back to when she was a lumpy baby, to go back to when the most complicated decision I had to make was what to eat in order to make her more boob milk, to go back to when her Dad and I were happy together, to go back to just listening to her breathe. But there’s no going back. I recently heard a wise person say, “If you’re not progressing, you’re regressing. There’s no such thing as standing still.”
To Coco, progress means potty-training herself. And going to school. And being a beeeg guuuuhl. For myself, what progress has meant in recent months, is learning, for the first time in my life, how to take care of myself. It’s meant eating well, it’s meant doing everything I can to get enough sleep, it’s meant finally, finally going for formal meditation lessons (which have been transformative).
In the past, when I would go through a break up, taking care of myself meant bars and boys and comfort food and lengthy, self-obsessed conversations with my best gay boyfriends into the wee hours. But today, I have a responsibility to do it differently. More than that, I have a desire to do it differently. Because I’m a mom, and because my kid is sharp as a tack, and because she sees everything and she feels everything, I have a responsibility to show her what it looks like to go through a hard time, feel all your feelings, even the grief, and come out the other side.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for us, once we become adults, to experience self-care as a good time. When we’re kids, it’s easy. When I say Coco potty-trained herself, I mean it. Didn’t put books and candy by the toilet. I didn’t incentivize her to get out of the diaper. (It’s not that I think those things are wrong, it’s probably just that I hadn’t gotten around to it yet.) But what I did do was cheer for her. Every time she piddled in the potty, I cheered like she had moved a mountain. I raised the roof and clapped my hands and said, “Oh my, Coco, you’re such a big girl!” I was proud, and she felt my pride and she felt pride in herself, so much so that the act of self-care became fun.
We do it for our kids all the time. We cheer when they brush their teeth. We laugh and smile and take pictures when they feed themselves. We raise the roof when they pee on the potty. We celebrate their every victory. So when is it, exactly, that we start beating the crap out of ourselves for our every failure instead of taking pride in our every success? At what age did we make the switch? I don’t have an answer to that. All I know is that I am not kind to myself when I fall, when I fail. And that most adults I know relate to me on this.
And now that I’m a mom, I can’t do it anymore without the quiet, gnawing knowing that I am teaching my daughter how to do it to herself; that she is already in a school, a whole lot more than two and a half hours a day; that I am her best and most influential teacher; that she sees me; that she takes me in. And that if I want her to grow up knowing that it’s okay to fail sometimes as long as you learn from it, knowing how to take care of herself, knowing how to nurture herself even in the face of her own failure, then I’d better start cheering on my own behalf.
Sometimes the changes I’m going through are terrifying and sometimes they’re exhilarating. It would be easy to panic and easy to collapse and easy to want to stay in the same old routine, crapping in a diaper. Um, that’s a metaphor. A clumsy, gross metaphor, but you get my point. My point is that last night, I got 8 hours of sleep. And this morning, I ate a healthy breakfast. And today, I’m speaking kindly to myself, and I’m at work, doing my job. And that’s progress.
So, yay me. (You can’t see me, but I’m raising the roof right now.)
Go me.
Krista Vernoff is an executive producer and head writer for Grey’s Anatomy, and co-author of The Game On! Diet. Since giving birth to Coco, Krista has lost nearly 50 pounds on the diet. (BettyConfidential.com Pic & Article source)
Go you good thang.
Till next time,
Aussie Lee xxoo
Topics: Blogger: Aussie Lee, Grey's Writers, Interview, Krista Vernoff, Pics / Scans / Videos | 2 Comments » |
December 3rd, 2009 at 09:58
I love Krista. I’ve said before, she’s my favorite writer on the show. This story was just sweet, I read it yesterday when she posted it on twitter.
December 3rd, 2009 at 13:22
I love this! I read this earlier today and it is so inspiring! I have always thought having a child is the best thing that can happen to you and it can get you through the worst of times. Just the little things like them peeing in the potty can give you so much joy! This article just proves how meaningful it is! This woman is awesome and for her to still write such awesome episodes and be true to the fans during this hard time is amazing! My respect for her just went into overload!
Amandaland!