Tag: lessons

Contracts

Well it never rains but it pours, especially when the Universe is trying to teach me a lesson. This year has been an intense look at my friendships, where I think things are okay and then have received a stark wake up call to point out things are not quite as I feel. 

But today was interesting, a friend who was struggling with me, mentioned something I hadn’t really heard (or listened to?) before. She said I wasn’t vulnerable enough, I was too strong and strident in my opinions, not raw enough. 

I feel raw inside. I feel like I absorb the energy of others so much that I am battered and bruised and hauling myself off the floor on a regular basis. But perhaps I don’t show it. 

Then this afternoon I remembered a contract I made with myself as a teenager. My mother and I were in a terrible place together, communication was slim and often toxic and I can recall, so clearly, committing to not letting my mother see when I was stung by her words. 

‘She will not know how much she hurts me, I will not give her that power over me.’

Has that contract with my mother, over 30 years ago, stayed with me all this time? Has that part that I shut down, the instinctive response of pain expression, been giving people a different impression of me than I feel inside? 

I’ve always been fascinated by people whose faces don’t fully portray their emotions, I find myself staring at them, observing the disconnect between word and expression. Am I one of those? I have to confess I’ve often felt the opposite, that I wished my non verbal communication wouldn’t betray me in the way I sense, but maybe that’s all tied up together. And there again maybe I’ve become good at verbalising my feelings after all these years of personal growth and learning, but when I express my sadness with words, I’m still holding back the emotion so no one can read my heart. 

Heart to heart….. the very best form of communication and one I pride myself on, but maybe not when I feel the need to protect myself, maybe not when I risk feeling hurt. 

I don’t know how easy it is to write a new contract for myself, especially when I haven’t really been aware of its dominance these decades gone. But I guess I’m going to try….. 

First published on social media on 9th December 2022

The Rockery

My youngest is a do-er. Any task where tools can be utilised, muscles stretched and creative energy unleashed, that’s heaven.

And it welcomes its own journey of negotiation, surrender, guidance and boundaries. Much like most areas of parenting really.

This past week we designed and created a rockery in our garden. Our ideas were not fully aligned. One of the areas of parenting I have struggled with is finding the balance between fully embracing the creative vision of my child, measured against not only my own desires, but actually more the practicality and functionality of these endeavours.

I have learned that leaning fully into their own ideas has so often just led to crushing disappointment as they cannot yet manifest in practical terms. This has its own gifts, and disappointment is not something to shy away from. Counterbalanced by the knowledge that with a little guidance these ideas can create the most glorious of lessons, skills and confidence. The cherry on the top is also respecting my own visions, to model holding my boundaries and not allowing the ego of child to believe themselves too worldly, too early. And then of course there is surrender….

All this in just a few days of moving rocks, planting flowers and scattering stones. All of this everyday as a parent.

When to guide, when to step back and allow, when to stand strong, when to surrender to flow.

These are life lessons for me but the painful edge is that it can feel huge that I am this influencer of principles to real, live humans who are still growing and forming and absorbing it all. The pressure can feel utterly overwhelming until I remember that I’m just human too, that we chose each other from the stars and love is love the world over after all.

So to all you mama’s and papa’s agonising over the most recent battle, the lost moment, the unsaid apology, the what if; I want to offer the words that I comfort myself with.

My work is their work, my lessons are theirs. We are intertwined for this very reason, for this moment in time, for this day of chaos, for this hour of hilarity. All of it is and all of it isn’t. Everything is just as it should be.

Love Hope Faith and Grace.

#parenting #childhood #boundaries #surrender #joy #love #hope #faith #grace #negotiation #guidance #influencer #humans #lessons #asitshouldbe

First Written on Social Media 27 March 2021

Dumped On

So I was recently dumped on.

Emotionally speaking. 

This week I have had three hugely frustrating conversations with various customer service representatives from three vastly different companies. All of them were unable to satisfy my enquiry because of company policy/beliefs. And with one I got a bit arsey until I brought myself into check and reminded myself that he is simply the spokesperson or, frankly, not even that, the automaton for the company. It was not his fault. 

And then it happened to me. 

Someone had issues with the bigger cogs of a wheel I was representing and took me out in their frustration. Everything that I was doing was wrong and causing them distress. And then they got personal too and started the whole ‘other people think this too’ about me. That I’m not doing things in the best way, that I’m not diplomatic or something enough. That I am too abrupt. 

Yup. I can be. And I have spent years beating myself up on ‘not being enough’ and I spent a few days holding this energy that was hurled at me; dumped on me. 

And then I remembered that I’m ok. That I am a good person, even if I am sometimes abrupt. I am kind even if I not ALWAYS diplomatic. That I am allowed to be human and flawed and that when someone is dumping, that is their shit to deal with. 

As Tosha Silver said is her fabulous new book ‘It’s not your Money’: ‘This event may indeed have been Divinely orchestrated… I was even grateful to the curt lady who’d hurt my feelings. If I’d hated her, I would have missed the whole point.’

And this was me, I could hate the woman for dumping AND feel shit about myself or I could take the opportunity to recognise my vulnerability to this sort of judgement, take a deep breath and restore my soul. 

All of it is a gift. All of it is a lesson worth learning. 

And breathe…..