Create Sanctuary to Foster Weight Loss

One of my favorite children’s books is A Little House of Your Own by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers. This gem of a book shows a little girl creating a multitude of hideaways – little escapes from the world – in her day to day life. These include a fort constructed with a blanket and a table, a tree house, and a corner in a garden.

While this book is written for children, its message is universal. Animals have dens, birds create nests, babies long to be held and cradled. We all need a little house of our own, a place – both physical and mental – where we find comfort, feel safe, and can become reacquainted with ourselves.

Without this sanctuary, we feel deflated, resentful, and haggard, with a chronic undertow that something’s missing in our lives. If we are deprived of this safety net, we look to inferior substitutes – food – to fill the void that a sense of sanctuary can provide.

Here are ways to create nests, little pockets of renewal, throughout your week:

• Go outside for a run or a walk
• Watch the sky or stars
• Do a craft or hobby – an activity that you can get “lost in.” (Janice Taylor lost much of her weight by doing art when she wanted to eat!)
• Meditate, pray, or write in a journal
• Talk on the phone with a friend
• Go see a movie, read a book, watch a movie, or see a performance
• Have a night to yourself (for moms, you can spend the night at a friend’s house or a hotel if you need a night of solace)
• Devote a place in your home as your “house of your own:”  a sacred space where you keep treasured objects, where you can be by yourself, or that is decorated in a way that pleases you
• Listen to podcasts or inspiring audios or books on tape while driving in your car
• Close your eyes for 10 minute breaks throughout the day
• Nap

There are a multitude of ways to create a nest. As you take the time to create this space for yourself, and make it a regular habit, you have the opportunity to explain the gift of self-care to your children with concrete language that they can understand. So if your children try and interrupt you while you’re meditating, you can say, “I’m in a little house of my own right now. I’ll be available in 20 minutes.”

The beauty of this habit is that it gives every mother an opportunity to offer her children a language of self-care, words to describe the need that we all have to reconnect with ourselves, our spirits, dreams, passions, and inner truth. Your children will delightfully surprise you by their awareness – they will get it – and will then request solitude for themselves.

What a blessing. Can you think of a better skill for a child to have, or to know and understand? We all want our children to be true to themselves. Likewise, we all want to be mothers who are true to ourselves. Making space in our lives for nesting, for sanctuary, for retreating into the deepest, truest core of being, is how we bring our inner truth out into the world, aligning our behavior and our actions with our deepest values.

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