Hello Wedang People,
It’s been a while since I wrote to you. I have been quite busy in the meantime. We had family coming from Utah, and they were greatly missed after they returned safely home. It’s one of the best things about summer, which is when all the cousins are gathered. My boys were definitely having the times of their lives. They went kayaking, swimming, spent hours playing with their gadgets and connecting their games. We had meals in the dining room which seats all of us. Food sharing is definitely my love language. It was the peak for me when everyone sat and prayed before having steaks. I felt grateful, satisfied, and belonged.
It was also a great time to clean and re-organize. I did something that made me very happy and I still am. I reorganized our dining room. Before, it was full of metal shelves with our pantry in it. I moved all of those shelves to the basement with the help of my husband, and now it is a fully functioning dining room.
I also did a theme with it, and you can guess what it is! It is Javanese themed room. Instead of trying to find my style through Pinterest, I found mine from my heart. I had a batik table cloth, bamboo food trays, pretty plates and cups from Facebook Marketplace, and napkins from Temu and Amazon. I left the cupboards with Afton Max’s shrine in that room, together with pictures of my husband’s ancestors. I figured his memoirs should be with other people that had passed.
I found myself keep coming back to this room just to look at it. Every time I have a break from cleaning and the baby is taking a nap, I took a 5 minutes detour and just stare in it. I love it! I imagined myself hosting parties here and telling people about my sweet boy Afton Max, just keeping his spirit alive.
It crossed my mind if it’s going to be creepy, telling a story about a baby that was born sleeping. A baby who’s wisp of hair is kept in a picture frame together with his dad’s speech on his funeral. But I need to keep talking about him, as a way of my therapy. It is a part of me continuing to live my life without going crazy.
If you’re one of those unfortunate mothers that ever had this happened to you, I am so sorry. I know exactly how you feel. I know how that knot in your stomach is there whenever you start thinking about it. How you’d want to scream sometimes to escape the dread. Oh, I know it well. I am sending my love and prayers to you through my newsletter, and know that we are in this together. Reach out to me and we’ll talk, cry, scream –whatever you want to do. I’m all in!
During the times when we had our brother-in-law’s family visited, I didn’t have much time to drink my tea. I feel a little out of sync, but overall, still good. I drink more coffee than usual, and I felt like a raisin. Summer is hot and humid this year, and I am nursing and distracted a lot so I forgot to take my water. I’d drink some when I remember, but that is not enough.
Even though I skipped meals from being so busy, I gained a little weight. It is very upsetting personally. Because I am trying to gain my life back and loosing weight is one on the list. But it makes sense to me when I take a look at my Oura ring app. I was under more stress than usual.
Using Oura ring, I came to recognized myself better. The stress that I was under was also a physiological stress. It doesn’t mean that I am stressed in my mind, but physically I sort of was, and therefore it made my body stressed out too. And that could be good, it could mean that I am moving around more. It just depends on what my activity goals that day. If I hit my goals that day, or surpassed it, it could mean that I am doing great and heading in the right way to lose weight.
But if I was being not active and not hitting my goals, it could mean that I was in distressed up in my head too. That wasn’t the case this time, because I was hitting all my activity goals and even a little bit more. But since I was not eating what my body needs, and on top of that not hydrated enough, it made it worse. I was feeling happy, but because it was a fast-paced environment that was happening, I didn’t listen to my body cues.
This week, we also went to the beach. We went to a different kind of beach this year. It is not the relaxing kind that we usually go to. We picked the chaos! I am used to the overcrowded places back in SE Asia, and this one was not even that bad. A beach is a beach, and I do the same thing everywhere. I soak up the sun, played with sand, swam the waves, and talk to strangers.
My kids also prefer this kind of beach, because there are more things to do. They like over-stimulated things like arcades, VR headsets (we let them try that for 10 minutes), parks, museums, you know that kind. I can tell they had more fun than going to the beach that are relaxing, not a bunch of people around, and very clean looking. It is weird, but that’s just how it is with my family. They were born into chaos in East Java, and that stuck with them.
So needless to say, my body is screaming for more cues. I was tired, dehydrated, stressed out, but not in the bad mood at all. Maybe because I am used to chaos, I still found myself happy in these moments. My husband though, is quite the opposite. He would only do these kinds of things for the sake of our children, but he needed calm and order. He was really out of whack and moody. Chaos is just not his thing.
Now here comes the good thing that I was going to explain the whole time. After seeing me drinking Wedang teas all the time, helping me a lot with setting up my business, being suggested by ChatGPT to start drinking herbal teas, he finally gave in!
It sounds like he was forced into it, but I never forced him to do it. I know my husband, and there is no telling him what to do until he decides to do it by himself. He just started today, and boy did he start it good! He started with a prayer. Then comes the determination after. It gave me such a heartwarming feeling about it and I am happy that he made it such a big deal.
This is what made drinking coffee and tea so different, I think. It is HOW we drink it. We drink coffee to fulfil our addiction, because life is hard and we need something to kick it off and help us make it through the day. But tea is the opposite of that. It is a tradition, a meditation. Drinking tea is accepting that whatever may happen today, shall happen, and I am drinking my tea.
Anyway, he is on his third cup now and he said it is doing something to him. He said his mood is better and he felt more awake. I think he is experiencing some clarities, just like how I am feeling it. It is a little different than fixing a mood, though it is quite similar. It is the feeling you get when you are more focused on things that you are going to do, you have the plans laid out on how you’re going to do it, and you will do it. And yes, I gave him my Blue Lemon today.
Wedang People, it is not my thing to try to sell something. I am not a very good sales person. I am not pushy and I probably won’t reach my target. But I am good with spreading good things. I want to do good things, and therefore I want to let you know that you don’t have to be stuck with a bad habit. You can change! And just like my husband, it all started with a prayer and a determination.
Good Luck on changing today, I will be with you along the way.
Wedang Wellness Virginia 
Leave a comment