I haven’t posted for exactly one year. One year ago today I shared a story of loss. Loss of my third son, Colin. Loss of a brother, grandson and friend. It was an experience I do not ever wish to relive nor do I wish for anyone. However, there are many gifts I have acquired over the past year, as a result. Colin sped up a process that had been nipping at my heels for years. It forced me to change, to work on myself, to learn to truly love myself.
I haven’t posted since then because this has been a quiet process. As a fern frond unfurls, I have been opening up small bits of myself, connecting with myself and understanding what I need.
You never know what someone is truly made of until you have children. And that includes yourself. We all have toxic traits (maybe not, but I think so). We are all walking around holding up shields. Shields composed of coping mechanisms or behaviors that we learned from others that came before us and taught us about the world. Not only about the world but how to interact with it and the other humans that inhabit it. We don’t know they are shields as the injuries that led to their creation happened long before, potentially before we remember.
Over the past year I have learned how to choose for myself, set boundaries to others and starting getting ‘unstuck.’ One thing I didn’t realize is that I was living in a constant state of fight or flight mode. I was very unhappy and had been since my first son was born. His birth triggered PTSD that took years to identify and work through- am still working through, may always be.
This time last year, my husband was also quite unhappy. And we had been in marriage counseling for 4 years and we were both in individual counseling. In some (bad) months, we collectively spend $1500 on therapy. Things were not working as they were. I love my husband, deeply. He is a good man. But he does not know how to love. And I do not either. I thought I did and maybe I forgot sometime ago, but neither one of us was being a very good partner. The struggle was real and it ran deep through every member of our family. I decided I needed a break. A break from the constant struggle, chaos and general discontent that existed in our marriage. My husband moved out for a couple of months and lived with his mother. At first, neither one of us knew what this meant or why we were separated. We both feared divorce but both wanted to continue working on our relationship and our family. I decided to to pull the trigger and remodel our house and the kids and I moved in with my mother.
After 3 months, during which Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years’ past, we moved back into our home as a family and continue to make it work each day. I have a few pearls of wisdom from this past year that I would love to share now.
Self love is discipline. Self love is choosing the hard today for an easier tomorrow. Self love means considering your own needs, without first considering those of others. Self love is tirelessly and kindly advocating for your own needs. Self love is not settling to ‘keep the peace’ in any relationship. In order to love another, you must first love yourself.
Our kids do not need to be busy or ‘do all the things’ and they certainly do not need to have all of the things. Stuff weighs us down. It creates a chaos that is hard to name. It’s overstimulating, dusty, most of the time it is superfluous and can create a distance between ourselves and those we love most.
We all crave to be connected with others. The ways that we seek ‘easy connection’ prevent us from good connections. The very devices that were created to connect us have only caused us more disconnection and unhappiness. We must re-learn to connect with others and nature. “Get back to our roots,” if you will.
If you spend your time avoiding or escaping life, you are merely surviving. Whether your escape is drugs, alcohol, shopping, hoarding, watching TV, social media, video games, gambling, or working, if you are avoiding the real work, you will never get where you want to be. Why would you want to spend your life avoiding it?
I have few secrets that have not been written about before. I’m finally accepting that life is just hard for me. It probably always will be. And maybe every single human feels this way. My life, as have those of many others has been marked by loss. We come into this world perfect. We slowly learn that we are ‘too much’ or ‘too loud’ for others and we adjust ourselves, we grieve our authentic selves. Over time we say goodbye to grandparents, parents, friends, lovers, partners, pets and sadly, for some, children.
We may have accepted the enigma of our society that keeps us working hard and striving (hustling). Or we may have figured out that the true meaning of life is to love others and seek deeper connections. It is not wealth. It is not status from a career. It is our ability to give to others unconditionally. This is not to say that it is wrong to love your career and contribution to society, but it is not larger than those that create new life and nurture it. That will always be the job that we were born to do. And brings true happiness. Especially with the support of ‘the village.’ And you have to build your own village. Given the direction our society has moved since it was created, we pride independence and individuality and shame others for ‘needing’ others. Our species was never meant to be like the wolf, we rely on each other to survive. Don’t ever let someone make you feel ‘less than’ for needing them or anyone else. You are human. You are allowed to ask for your needs to be met. And they are allowed to say no. Just keeping it real. We can really only rely on ourselves to meet our own needs. But if someone else does it, we feel loved. So go out there and meet someone else’s need, without expecting a thing in return.
I have bad days. When my cup feels empty and I need to feel better about myself. I focus on what I can do for others. Whether that is a fist bump to a colleague at work or an extra cuddle for my highly sensitive offspring, I always feel better having lifted someone else. And the better I feel, the better I become.
If you want a better life, it is your choice. Your life is always your choice. I used to worry about the day that I ‘gave up on life’ and became like others that have come before me and just quit trying. Would I quit my job? Would I spend my days drinking? Would I watch TV and ignore my children? Would I do that? It was my choice. It always has been and it always will be. Every day that I get up, it is my choice what my life looks like. And every day I get up and choose to do my best. And sometimes that looks like taking time for myself to go to the gym or a walk to clear my head. Or on the really loud days, relaxing looks like 6 hours of yard work. If you felt that sentence, I see you.
Our habits create the life that we have. If you want a better life, create better habits. For ex) I hate last minute rushing to get out of the door. So now I leave earlier. I get up earlier. I shower earlier. I leave more time for the ‘in between moments.’ When you have little kids you might think, I need to be there in an hour it takes 30 minutes and it’ll take 30 to get ready. There’s always the 5-10 minutes it takes getting into the car. Stop to look at bugs. Spill a drink or need a last minute snack. Now I just add extra time. No one ever got sad about extra time and not having to rush. It makes my life better to not rush, so I just force myself to get up sooner, and I’m always thankful for the time. That is real self love.
It’s really important to understand your own coping mechanisms. I’ve spent the last year really learning about the impact of trauma on the body and about how we attach to other people. Many of us coped with our early environments in ways that resulted in developing anxious or avoidant/dismissive attachment. For me, I now know that I have Disorganized attachment. Which, I know there isn’t a ‘worst’ but it sure feels that way. Sometimes I’m anxious and need lots of reassurance and other times I push people away. I’m surrounded by a sea of avoidants that trigger me with their ‘avoidance.’
Over the past year, I have hit many milestones. Since processing the loss of Colin, the most loved and never met, sweet little boy, I have grown immensely. I’ve changed in priceless ways. I like myself better and I feel a momentum that is propelling me forwards. Instead of constantly feeling like treading water, I feel like I’m on solid ground again. I am at peace. Not every moment, but the peaceful moments are closer together. And I know that it will feel peaceful again.
Some books that I now highly recommend:
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, Body in the Healing of Trauma by BESSEL VAN DER KOLK https://www.besselvanderkolk.com/resources/the-body-keeps-the-score
Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller https://www.attachedthebook.com/wordpress/
The Empathic Parent’s guide to Raising a Highly Sensitive Child: Parenting Strategies that I Learned to Understand and Nurture My Child’s Gift by Freeda Meighan https://www.abebooks.com/9798614031671/Empathic-Parent%E2%80%99s-Guide-Raising-Highly/plp
MumGene 