Me Hyphen Baby

A good friend once compared her engagement to her now-husband as a type of "hyphen" between being single and being married.  It's a dynamic time period in one's life where the boundaries between yours, mine, and ours are fuzzy, especially to people outside of your relationship.  People will say, "Just wait til you're married," as if your relationship now as an engaged couple (or before as a couple dating) isn't as serious as it will be when you are married, simply because you haven't yet been able to file a joint tax return.  I have been married now for a little over a year and a half and I have discovered a different type of hyphen in life-- the time between getting married, and having children.

Just like the hyphen of engagement, people on the outside of your relationship are focused only on the next thing.  If they haven't come up to you and blatantly asked, "So, when are you having kids?" it's definitely on their minds.

This topic has been weighing heavily on my mind for some time now.  First it was because of my job.    90% of the people I work with are women.  85% of the people I work with (including the men) have children.  While I very rarely get asked if or when I will start popping 'em out, I get these gems instead:

"You're so lucky you can do whatever you want."

and

"You'll understand when you have kids of your own."

Last summer, I was faced with another hurdle between myself and Those-Who-Have-Kids... Beachbody.  To me, the most obvious people out there who want to lose weight and get healthy are moms.  And rightly so.  In an effort to give all they have to their kids (as my mom has and does for me and my brother), they put themselves and their health on the back burner.  They've maybe put on weight, or never lost the weight they gained when they were pregnant.  They don't have the time to spend working out because they are providing for their families.  They may not believe they deserve to set aside time.

But this is not me.

I am very busy.  I work a full-time job as a teacher and a part-time job as the Business Manager for the local high school theater.  I take care of all the household responsibilities:  cook dinner, go grocery shopping, clean, do laundry, pay the bills, run general errands.  I love working out, and I make it part of my day, like brushing my teeth and washing the dishes.  I need to make sure I make time for my husband, my family and my friends.  I very rarely, if ever, have extra time.

Yet, I took a leap of faith, joined Beachbody, and suddenly found more time that I didn't know I had to work that business too.  Some of it was easy, because I was already working out, cooking dinner, packing my own lunches.  But some of it was harder to fit into my day-- weekly nighttime conference calls, posting more to social media, doing personal development, creating a blog.  What I realized was that, if you love something, if it's of value in your life, if it's WORTH it, you will make the time. Does anyone REALLY have the time to have kids?  Does anyone sit around pre-baby, and think, jeez, I'm so bored, a baby would really fill up my day?  NO.  People have kids because they want to love something, to nurture something, something that is a representation of the love that they share with their partner.  If anything, people probably think, "I don't have time for a baby!"  Yet millions of people have them and millions of people find the time.

So here I am, in my hyphen world with my Beachbody baby.  And I am having a hard time, a REALLY hard time, connecting to people like me.  People in this hyphened state of life.  People pre-baby.  I'm having a hard time showing people what a fantastic baby Beachbody can be.  How it can fill your life with so many good things, that you find the time for it that you didn't think you had. Parents will say to me, "You'll understand when you have kids of your own..."  Maybe that's true.  That I can't truly understand what it's like to love until I have a child of my own.  That I don't know what I'm missing.  BUT I also know that I had no idea what I was missing with Beachbody until I became a coach.

So this is where I sit.  Unsure where to go next.  Do I take a leap and reach out to more people "like me"?  Do I sort of just glide along until I have kids and finally "understand"?  How do I show people like me that they can find the time to do something like this and it will be worth it?