My morning routine is very much the same every morning, which becomes aggravating at times because I'm the only person awake to do it. I'm typically up at 5 AM, when I proceed to feed all of the animals, take the dogs out for a walk, shower, pack my daughter's lunch, wake her up, make her breakfast, and maybe finish a couple of smaller tasks that didn't get completed the night before, like putting away folded laundry or cleaning the smelly litter boxes. I do this every morning, weekends included.

If you noticed, nothing in that routine was about me with the exception of un-stinking myself — but that's really for the pleasure of other people, as I consider showers to be a real waste of time on most days. My morning routine revolves entirely around my family. Most days I don't bother eating breakfast, or making lunch for myself to take to work, because I am too focused on taking care of everyone else.

While putting everyone before me can be considered a commendable trait, there is a part of me that realizes that there is a real issue with never allowing myself the opportunity to be important.

I almost start to develop a bit of a resentment towards my family. Why does he get to sit on the internet for hours at a time? Why does she get to play on her DS and I can't? It's obviously not their faults, they do their best. But they are lucky in that there is a balance for them between caring for themselves and caring for others, and they are awesome because they can both do it flawlessly and without any effort. I, on the other hand, cannot.

This was brought very vividly to the surface a few months ago when I decided to commit to shaving off some extra weight. I decided to try going mostly raw to boost my health. What kept me from taking the plunge, however, was the sheer amount of time that would be involved every morning making food. I'd have to make smoothies for myself, and pack my lunches. I'd have to commit to working out every day. How the hell was I going to have the time to do all of this, when I barely had the time to take care of all that other crap in my day?

This was when I realized that I had a problem far bigger than the 20 pounds I wanted to shake off. When had I become the lowest common denominator in my own life? Where had the switch occurred?

Here I was, wanting to get healthy, but feeling as though I wouldn't have the time to do it. The time, of course, being the five minutes it would take to throw some ice and bananas in a blender in the morning and maybe 30 minutes total in exercise time. It seemed unbalanced to me that litter boxes and dishes and dog food had suddenly become more important than my own health and happiness. I needed to restore balance, and the only way that I could do that was if I started caring less about my family and more about myself.

It may sound terrible and selfish, but it's the only way that my experience could be explained. I needed to learn that my health and happiness didn't necessarily have to come first, but it had to come to a very close second in the grand scheme of things. I had to be selfish for just a moment and remind myself that I am important, that I am worth the time spent trying to make myself happy. I needed to learn to stop feeling guilty if I was sort of happy that my kid wanted to spend the entire evening outside with her friends. I needed to learn to ask for help, because as I said, my family is awesome, and they will almost always be happy to stop doing what they are doing for a moment to do something that I politely asked them to do.

About a month ago, I woke up at my usual time and reminded myself that I was worth it. I fed the animals and made a big banana smoothie for breakfast. I then took the dogs for a 45 minute walk, getting in my exercise while doing something that I had to do anyway. I came home, showered, packed my lunch, and woke my daughter up. When I told her she'd be packing her own lunches from this point forward, she was actually pretty happy about it. I texted the hubs when he woke up and asked if he would do the dishes from the night before. The litter boxes could wait until I got home. My daughter's bed time went from 9PM to 8PM, because I need a little downtime at night and an early bedtime. And between 8PM and when I went to bed at 10, I started working on a novel I hadn't touched in months and mindlessly surfed the internet.

I felt great. And I realized that caring more about myself didn't implode the house, or kill my family, or send swarms of locusts through the neighborhood. It felt pretty damn good to consider myself important again.