I have a question for all of you parents out there. Please raise your hands all of you who hope your children will grow up and put themselves last on the priority list regarding health. Go ahead, don’t be shy. What? No hands? Oh, you think I’m being ridiculous? But wait a minute, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing by running around at wit’s end ignoring our health, skipping checkups, avoiding yearly screenings. We are teaching our children that it’s not possible to grow up and take care of yourself and your family at the same time. The moral of this little exercise, if we want to be good parents we have to be good to ourselves.

So guilt aside how do we do that? Well that’s exactly what we’ve been working on. This Summer I am serving as the Ambassador for the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women BetterU 12 week program. Everything that I have done this Summer, every step that I have taken, both literally and figuratively, I have done so in the presence of my children. They are my support team, but they are also very much my audience, watching and internalizing the choices that I am making, whether I or they like it or not. What can I learn from that? Well, first and foremost I can learn that I am not alone. [Read more...]