We have watched a particular family on YouTube for years. We started watching when the son was around 6 or 7 and he’s 10 now but we have gone back and watched their videos since he was 18 months. We’ve seen this family grow and evolve and move to a new home. They’ve shared their vacations and fun experiences together as well as birthdays and holidays—we’ve seen quite a bit of their lives. They always share their Christmas and this past holiday, they spent it on Maui. That simple change of venue brought up some uncomfortable feelings for me, a continued realization of the fact we can’t always cling to tradition and sometimes we need to do things differently. Sometimes we have to try something new to find out what works. What works changes over time and we need to have the experience to find out. But seeing the location change from what we’ve watched over the years was definitely odd and sparked something in me, reminding me how our own traditions have changed over the years. We’ve gone from huge family celebrations with a tight schedule to much smaller groups on different days. We are missing more people now and it feels a bit more empty. The love is still there, we just look different.
The truth is things looking different isn’t a bad thing—that’s how life works. Traditions are mired in what we know, and if we hold onto what we know too tightly, we never learn what can be. As I watched this family celebrate in Hawaii, so far from where they normally spend their holiday, but the whole family together, I actually remember a few things: The first is that it was really weird to be in Hawaii near Christmas. I took my husband there when he turned 23 so it was right before the holiday and it was so odd to have all of the Christmas sprit but none of the Christmas feel. Watching this family on TV, I always loved how they celebrated Christmas at their home because they did it SO big and I wanted to do the same for my son. Seeing a similar version of the celebration that wasn’t quite it felt off but also hopeful. Even thought it wasn’t the same, they were all still together and it looked like the family had an amazing time—they were with those they love and all the things they normally did were done together even if it did look different. That made me remember my own Christmases, all the family there and how that family has dwindled now, but like I said, even if we are smaller, the love is still there.
Even if it’s a bit melancholy, that episode was a clear reminder of the mindset I’ve been on as we navigate our own changes—we need change and we need to embrace it. Change can open up an entire world of opportunity. There is beauty in what we’ve done and what we have built, but we grow from it. We don’t try to make it be the same. The end of 2024 showed us very clearly that relationships change and we need to evolve with them. Things do not react well when they are kept caged for too long, and we need to accept ourselves, other people, and our circumstances for what they are. Then we can do our best to adapt and make them what they are meant to be. We are in 2025 and those kids are so grown up now and things aren’t the same…we aren’t the same. I used to get really sad about that, and moments like cleaning out those clothes and then seeing kids grow up would send me into a spiral. I guess I kind of am in a spiral but it feels different—I’m not trying to stop it. I welcome those changes and I welcome the now. I am grateful for the now as much as I am grateful for the past. Things are right on track—we are right where we are meant to be. What a gift.
I’ve held so tightly to the past in all aspects, romanticized it and loved every moment of what was that I haven’t sat in what is for very long. I’ve constantly tried to be somewhere else, either remembering things that happened, the good times or I’ve been on to the next thing, worked to create the next thing. I haven’t sat and just enjoyed where we are, where I’m at, who I am and who I’ve become. I had a dream last night that my 8 year old was at a party and wasn’t listening to me when I was asking a question about something he wanted. He was ignoring me entirely and I told him that we were going to leave his own party if he was going to keep being disrespectful and not able to answer a simple question. He started crying and we ended up walking across a field and he was giving me his typical sass and being sad and he told me that I made a big deal out of nothing. Then we were in an SUV and he was driving. He was telling me that what happened was nothing and the disrespect essentially wasn’t as important as I was making it. He drove off the side of the road because he couldn’t steer and he was going too fast even after I told him to slow down, and we ended up going down a really steep mountain hill and we ended up in a parking lot with me steering and telling him to keep braking. I share this because there is a part of me that knows I’m trying to stop him from growing too quickly like I can stop time.
The day before I was going through his baby clothes and asking myself how he got so big so fast. These clothes have sat in my basement for years—my son is 8 now—and I hadn’t looked at them since we packed them from the townhouse. I’ve struggled to let go of those things because they represent a lot. They represent the time I became a mother and the short time I had with him, the interrupted time I had with him as I was trying to navigate working and being a mom for the first time. They also represent what we lost, the hope we had for another baby, when we lost our second child. I know both kinds of people who would look at the clothes and just let them go and others who, like me, would struggle because we’re not just seeing the clothes. We’re seeing all that was and all that could have been—literally. There were certain pieces I looked at and I remembered exactly the moment he wore it and what we were doing and my husband asked me how I could remember that and I told him that this is how my mind works—those moments are imprinted on my mind and then I pulled up a picture showing him the moment I was talking about. I REMEMBER. My baby isn’t a baby, I know that. But clinging to the past isn’t going to change him growing up.
Clinging to the past isn’t going to keep me young, on vacation in California with my parents, safe with them, having so much fun in the pool, going to Universal or the zoo or the animal park. Clinging to that memory isn’t going to make it happen again. I need to be where I’m at and accept that things have changed, we’ve grown, and this is very much a new beginning. I can appreciate what we’ve done, what we did, and I can love what my life was like. It’s easy to get stuck there when there are issues in the present. But the only way we can maintain that presence is to be present. We need to deal with where we are at and enjoy the now and we can make changes toward a better future, but we can never relive the past. I’m a Potter nerd and I’ve often considered the story surrounding The Resurrection Stone. There have been many stories of similar items, all with the same message, that returning from death won’t work because that person is no longer of this time. I never understood that. I always assumed that, if brought back to live again, they would kind of pick up where we left off, wanting to be the same person and do the same things. I never understood that the break in time caused with death creates a disconnect from what is for these people. So the point is that we need to be of our time and not lament what is no longer here, wishing we could have it again.
Letting go isn’t easy because we have an emotional attachment to what was, perhaps an attachment to how we remember it and the feeling it gave us at that time. There are things we all wish we could do differently but that doesn’t mean we will ever be able to change what happened. In order to begin again, we have to do something new even if it feels weird. We make new memories and we adapt to what is. We have to wake up and be happy where we are and adapt to the changes or we let the change wash us away entirely. No matter how intensely we remember, we can’t live in our heads—the real world is out here. The real world is what we have made it and we need to have an immense appreciation for where we are. We need to be grateful for what was while alive in what is. We need to pack up the old clothes, the ones that really mean something, and we need to lovingly donate the rest and allow them to live again and serve purpose in someone else’s life. That is the gift: the ability to let things live again, not keep them stuck in a moment. That is how things go on. The memory is wonderful but the reality is so much better—be where we are and allow life to grow and flow as it is meant to. Let the rest go.
“Give the gift two years. Two years of patience and consistency and grace and effort to change your lifestyle to go after the healthier version of you that you are dreaming of. Give yourself two years because it will be worth it,” Leah Hope Health. There is an unhealthy obsession, a fixation on how much we can do—and after I wrote those first few sentences, I had to stop to get some things done around the house so I went about my day. As the day went on, I saw myself overwhelmed with how much we had to do—all of our own choice, of course. We had begun moving things in the basement so we could clean things out and rearrange it how we want it and I don’t want it to sit in a state of disarray. I was fully aware we wouldn’t finish it all in one day, that wasn’t the expectation, but I was fully of the mindset that we needed to get done what we could get done—throw away what needed to be thrown away, build the shelving that we could build, move the things for donation so we can get that out of the way. Right now I’m about creating space and that space is so cluttered. I don’t live comfortably in chaos and I am certainly not able to sit and play a game in chaos. I no longer want to put off until tomorrow what can be done today and I want this to be a time of doing activities that yield real results. So we decided on a project, I don’t want to leave it half finished. Losing momentum right at the start of any venture can be a death sentence to that project because the brain finds opportunities to quit and to follow the path of least resistance so it will find old patterns and do that.
I am fully aware of those moments when we have to stop—I am not talking about pushing through the point where the body and mind truly do need to stop, but I am talking about those times when we THINK we need to quit. There is a difference between overwhelm in the moment and the actual NEED to stop. So we have to give ourselves time. We have to pace ourselves. We have to look at what the overall goal is and ask if what we are doing in that moment serves. There are times the answer is going to be, “You need to sit for an hour.” There are times the answer is going to be, “You’re done for today.” But the most likely truth is that we can keep going. It’s not pushing through, it’s rearranging mindset. When we talk about playing the long game, pacing is even more important. If we jump right off the bat and try to do it all at once, we are very likely to get overwhelmed and want to stop. It’s not that we have to stop, but we will feel like we need to. But with a long term goal or project, it is important to take the time needed, especially if it’s a bigger project. It will take a hell of a lot longer to start and stop for 6 months than it does to do 20 dedicated minutes a day. The long term is sustainable that way. Change takes a lot of work and so many of us are looking for the quick fix, the easy answer, the immediate result because we want to move on to the next thing. Some projects take a while but they take even longer if we stop.
There’s a saying I’ve shared before that we overestimate what can be done in a day but we underestimate what can be done in a year. I want to add that we can’t sabotage what can be done in a year by not starting today—or by not doing what can be done today. Don’t let fear stop us, don’t let the fact that everything isn’t perfectly in place stop us from even starting. Don’t let the fact that we may need to take a break part way through be a permanent stop. Learn to do what can be done in the moment and then do whatever else needs to be done next. It doesn’t have to be done all at once, it just needs to get done. So we need to be patient with ourselves and we need to appreciate the work and time that real change takes. It’s about consistency more than anything else. Don’t fall in the trap of thinking if we can’t do it all in one day then we shouldn’t do anything. If we can’t accomplish the thing then we need to ask ourselves what we can do that will at least get us in the right direction, what can we do that supports the thing. Transition and change mean doing different things and often it’s more important to train the brain in little bits each day, to do things each day, that bring us closer to the goal rather than it is to finish the goal in its entirety in one moment. So whether it is cleaning and organizing, shifting careers, changing mindset, changing our habits, becoming healthier, any of it. Learn to let go of the old and be patient with the new—after all we are learning and that does take time. But don’t give up. Find the actions we can take every day, no matter how small, and take them. Do what needs to be done every day even if it’s not everything, and we will get there.
“It is in the smallest boxes we find the most precious things,” Atouche… I liked this little reminder that it isn’t always the big things in life that bring us the most joy. It isn’t even the big things that make us who we are at times. It’s the culmination, the combination of all the little pieces that make us who we are and make our lives so special. The way we smile, the way someone smiles at us, the sound of a loved one’s voice at the end of a rough day, saying hello my beautiful wife. The appreciation of a good meal—whether we make it or have it prepared for us. The thrill of finding that perfect book, shirt, piece of art, a vision coming together. The unrelenting joy of being together with someone you hadn’t seen for a really long time. Celebrating anything because the more joy we have in our lives the more joy we bring. Seeing a sign from source that we are on the right track. When we finally accomplish a goal and get that win or we are just able to take time to play the game. When we are able to slow down and take a walk in nature—or just get out a bit. A vacation, even if it’s just time away from work where we can come back to ourselves for a little bit.
For me, it’s the way the cats follow me all day when I’m home or when I get home from work they find me, they curl up with me while I work and they sleep with me at night. The way my son asks me to cover him up at night because he likes the way I do it—and then how he asks me if we can stay home and cuddle rather than go to school and work in the morning. The way I understand that those little moments create the magic I felt as a kid, the moments I thought were so special and took so much time, I see are mere seconds and in the simplest of actions like tucking him in at night or reading with him or listening to him talk about the things he loves. The presence, the ministry of presence that demonstrates and solidifies love in our minds like when my husband puts his hand on my back at night. Sitting in my special chair or in my bed or on my side of the couch and reading a book. Watching a movie cuddled up under the giant 10×10 blanket with the whole family. Slow weekend mornings that feel perfectly timed. Slowing down in general. Finding the right pace in my writing. Getting in the groove with a creative project. Spending holidays with the family—and it’s about time, not anything else. Moving my body—and a massage!! Seeing the snow start to fall or seeing the first signs of spring, or the heat of summer, and the calming of fall. The ability to simply be and let things be is the greatest thing—to be alive.
None of these are particularly big things but they are monumental in forming the core of life. I know so many times we feel the day to day is boring or that we are somehow missing out on something. There are so many options in this life it can be overwhelming and we tend to live in a go big or go home, do-it-all-yourself, never-stop-moving society. And the truth is there are endless possibilities in this world and it is so freaking cool that we get to decide what to do with our lives. We can’t get overwhelmed in the thrill of it that we paralyze ourselves with indecision just as much as we can’t be so driven that we miss out on the present moment. We can’t miss the point—that while we are creating something we love, we are also living with those we love. This is the only time we have and at the end of the day we will likely regret more of what we didn’t do than what we did do with the exception of overdoing. It really is the little things that matter and add up to the big things, the joy of life.
“Not everything that comes out of crisis is bad. Sometimes traumas are the reason you know how to help,” unknown. I can’t say I enjoy strife or struggle or even the minor inconveniences of every day with things I feel should just work. It’s a giant pain in the ass when we think we have all of our bases covered and it all goes left. But we have to keep perspective and understand that not everything is as bad as it seems and not all inconveniences are the crisis we think they are. When things got tough, I can’t say I didn’t learn something. Sometimes the thing I thought was so terrible turned out to be an inconvenience that showed me a different way to get where I wanted to be. There were events in my life I thought would break me—and some nearly did— that I still stood up from even if it took me a long time to recover. There were some I know I became a different person, not for the better because I felt weaker after and I still question what the point was. But then there were moments I know people expected me to stay face down in the dirt and I stood up, I came back, and I kept going. In those moments, I knew that there was a lesson from whatever struggle I’d just been through.
We all have a very different definition of trauma at times. Something that breaks one bounces off of another. There are no-brainer cases we all agree fall under suffering and loss—the struggle to find food, not having clothes or shelter, dealing with any kind of abuse, critical illness. But the truth is, it also isn’t up to us what counts as trauma in someone else’s life—it’s all a very relative experience and I think we all have varying degrees of struggle in our lives so we can help each other learn. No, first world problems like not having the color nail polish we want isn’t a crisis, but it can still show us how to gracefully deal with disappointment. Sometimes we are the example for other people. Whether that is an example of strength or what not to do depends on the day, but our experiences are definitely lessons for others as well as ourselves. Inspiration or cautionary tale, well, that also depends on the viewer. Life is pretty subjective. Those lessons are also a matter of interpretation at times. It’s up to us what we do with them—do we bend or do we break? What modifications do we make? Often the point is just to learn that we can get up again, that we are stronger than we thought and can endure more than we believed.
Humans do this weird thing where we try to one up each other with what’s wrong in our lives. We shouldn’t compete over trauma—we all know those people always trying to prove they have it worse, like it’s some badge of honor to see how much is wrong with them. We also like to share other people’s struggles. I have a friend who will tell me what went wrong with her all week as well as what went wrong with all of her friends. Look, I don’t want anyone to suffer—I really don’t, I think there are plenty of other ways to learn lessons, thank you—but I also don’t think everything we deal with in a week is a crisis. I also don’t need to invest myself in everyone else’s problems, I don’t need to go looking for issues and I certainly don’t want to create them. For those I CAN help, I’m all in, 100%, call me and I’m there. Hearing how you’ve chosen to take the same failed chance and it failed again, or how you’re not feeling well and still smoke, or how you want a certain thing but still repeat the pattern, or how you immerse yourself in other people’s troubles, well that’s a you thing. Frankly, no one got anywhere actively looking to go further into the shit without trying to find a solution. That’s the other side of this too—how much of our trauma did we cause ourselves? And is it trauma or drama? If we’re honest, it’s probably 80% of it is drama.
I get tired and annoyed looking at everything from a negative lens because not every little thing a crisis. Convenience has made us soft and the things we find traumatic really aren’t that big of a deal. I used drama and trauma as a weapon, thinking the only way I could get attention or get what I need (a day off, my husband to give me a backrub, anything really) was to have something wrong, to create an emergency or a problem (victim). I didn’t understand that we are allowed to want and to receive what we want, we don’t need to justify why we deserve it. Our job isn’t to convince the world we earned that reward by going through struggles. Not all struggle is nobility, sometimes it’s our own stupidity. But the truth is sometimes we have to go through something really uncomfortable, really painful, really extreme to get the point—which is that we are strong enough to handle what comes our way. The experience teaches us so we can teach others and we pass down the knowledge. We grow and expand the more we learn, and the more we learn, the more we can help others.
Courage looks like so many different things. I never really considered myself courageous—I’ve often wanted to find a way to take my chances and do the things that called to me, that excited me, and it was only quite recently that I really started to fully explore the complete expression of who I am. I’ve peeled layers of it for years and I feel I’ve gotten more out there recently than I have in all the previous years. I was recently told I was courageous for sharing my work, these words, and for going further with my publication. While it may not be a traditional route, it is still a huge leap, and it felt really nice to have that commended. I spent too much time in my fiery nature, sitting on the sidelines knowing what I was capable of but allowing myself to drown in fear, putting out my light before I even got a chance to fully ignite it. I looked for someone to carry my spark rather than tend it on my own, rather than let it grown and expand. I always knew my power was great, I always knew that I had good ideas, that my words carried weight. I’ve always been incredibly grateful, grateful beyond words in fact, for the gifts I have. I wasn’t always sure how to handle them, I wasn’t always sure how to express them, or how to pay them back so to speak. For a long time I didn’t feel I was worthy of the expression of what was rightly and innately mine. I thought my purpose was to fan the flame for others and become their source of hope, their light, I thought I was supposed to nurture their dreams and make sure they succeeded so that one day someone would do the same for me.
I looked up to people who had no fear, no doubt, no regret about being who they were. I saw how they simply said what was on their mind and didn’t worry about someone not liking them or being misunderstood. When it came to school and facts, I had NO problem opening my mouth, but as I got older and lost some conviction for a while, it became more difficult to feel confidence in what I knew. I also admired the people who shamelessly went for the things they wanted, everything from trying out for a sport that they hadn’t done before, talking to a teacher in a certain way, leading projects, for those who seemed to shape their reality into what they want. I admire those who can take nothing and put it into something, those unafraid to break the rules and not follow the directions—I’ve always been terrified to lean on my own instincts. That, however, is changing, and I’ve taken more leaps forward this past year than I have in nearly my entire life. From self-care to self-expression, I understand what it feels like to not hide and to simply stand in what we believe. I admire those who shuck the normal way of doing things, those driven by passion that keeps them going and they feel there is no need to stop, those who operate on their own schedule and according to their own instincts. It’s an amazing sense of freedom, authenticity, and autonomy.
I want to share my words, let people hear where I’m at and where I’ve been and I want to tell the point of my story, I want to control that narrative rather than let people define me and that means being vulnerable and exposed in some arenas. There is no reason to wait for someone else to tell me what my life is about when I’m here and can explain it myself. My voice is worthy. It’s so weird to have such conviction about my story but have the fear to actually act on it. I told my sister in more detail about my work and she actually said that she found out today that her sister has more courage than she does. I was completely taken aback because I have always looked at my sister as one of the bravest people around. She left home and never came back because she was following her dreams and her instincts. I know it wasn’t always easy for her but she did it. She moved 800 miles away because she felt a pull to something that we didn’t understand and she has sustained herself on her own in one of the most emotionally harsh environments out there. So to hear her tell me that I had bravery in that context made me understand that we all look at each other’s strengths differently. There is no hierarchy between us, we are sisters. We are fully grown adults each successful in our own right, each dealing with our own trials and tribulations as well. But we are on our own paths and on those paths success does look different and there is space for that in both of our lives.
All we have is now. I don’t want to wait until I’m gone for my message to get out there, with the point of it skewed by millions of experiences and interpretations. If that is the goal then I can’t hide behind a rock waiting for people to find me. I need to step up and out and share. Vulnerability is terrifying, but we have to be vulnerable if we want to get the idea out there. At one point, nearly all we have was thought of as crazy, everything from electricity to permanent houses to cars. Hell, it was thought of as crazy that we weren’t the center of the universe. That didn’t stop those who were curious from literally putting their lives on the line to share those ideas. Damn the consequences, they moved forward with sharing what they believed. Doing something new is scary but the more we do the scary thing, the easier it becomes. The more we stand up and share those pieces, the more comfortable we become. In order to be that version of ourselves we have to let go of the version that didn’t think we could be that person. We have to let go of the part of ourselves that holds us back from completely putting ourselves out there. That is true courage: going after what we want even if it means going against the grain. I learned a long time ago that even if we don’t feel strong, we are often that backbone for someone else. If we can do that, if we can support others through whatever they are going through and offer encouragement, then we can do the same for ourselves. It’s a matter of perspective and sometimes we have to learn to see ourselves through someone else’s eyes.
Today I am grateful for authenticity. In my life I’ve vacillated between full, brazen oversharing and wearing a mask that conceals nearly every part of me. I’ve been anything and everything for everyone and I’ve also stood my ground. I think that makes me pretty human but it also makes me pretty hypocritical—I guess hypocrisy is part of humanity too. I’ve always been able to see middle ground, both sides of nearly any argument and get to the point of what the parties involved were trying to accomplish and what they were saying as well as where one or both were misunderstanding each other. I prided myself on being a pretty straightforward person as far as telling others when they were misunderstanding something and getting them on the right track. But I struggled to find that level of acceptance for myself and that, in turn, made me not accepted by others. I was a chameleon, adapting and fitting in to any group, because I could understand and relate to people—but they didn’t relate to me, and I never understood that just because I understood someone it didn’t mean that I belonged or that they fully understood me. People didn’t always read other people like I did. I used to think I was bad at picking up on social queues but the truth is I was so overly sensitive and in tune to others that I was aware of their shifts before they were and it made them uncomfortable, and because I could fit in everywhere, no one knew where I really belonged—and I didn’t either. These first 11/12 days of the year have reminded me how things feel when we are completely aligned and walking in our authentic self. Not trying to fit in anywhere, just being. That gets us further than trying to manipulate or fold ourselves into someone else’s definition of who we are. It also gives us complete control over our direction—and it feels good.
Today I am grateful for defining priorities. Oh, my friends, anxiety and ADD are a bitch as I have so often shared/lamented/exalted. I love the creative energy I have and the surges I get where ideas pour out of me, and when I’m in that zone, time doesn’t exist and I feel like I am on a high. It truly is a gift. ADD, however, makes it hard to capture the moment and follow through on a lot of those ideas and anxiety meets ADD when we are trying to accomplish all of these tasks that our wonderful, tuned in, antennae have picked up for us. I started writing down the actual break down of some of my goals—steps, dates, actual assignments/projects, etc.—and it is something to see the month fold out before you. This is probably not a revelation to many of you but I was never a person who defined my time and when I did I was vague with it or I let myself slip and not follow through if something else came up. I realized over 2024 that I can accomplish a lot—I did a ton of new things and I made a lot of progress in my goal areas but I also saw how much further I had to go. And for the first time I didn’t panic. I saw that I could get there as long as I refined a few approaches, got clear on who I was and what the goal was, and then put it to paper so I would remember and commit to what needed to be done. I’ve been grateful for priority before, but that was priority to a short term thing—this is a bigger picture, a vision coming true.
Today I am grateful for collaboration. Yesterday unexpectedly saw my husband and I starting a remodel on the basement. We’d been talking about rearranging things for a few weeks but we have some larger items that slightly limit what we do—and the previous owners of our home had the weirdest insulation all over the walls (we have a look-out basement) that was, unfortunately, obliterated by mice over the years so we had been talking about taking it down as well. And, of course, there were things we store in the basement that needed to be organized-again. Life is funny that way, as soon as you have something put together more stuff seems to seep in and create more of a mess. Regardless, we needed some racking for a few of the things we still need to store and I had to reorganize some things that I had to phase out. We had an amazing time planning out the new layout and what we wanted to do, going through all the options we’d been thinking of, and, honestly, it was really nice to start going through stuff to start organizing again. There were boxes of things I’d been convincing myself I wasn’t ready to get rid of—and truth be told there were things I’m not ready to get rid of—but it was beautiful to go through it and reminisce, and not nearly as painful as I’d been thinking. Now we have a horribly messy basement but an awesome plan to make it what we want, and we have reestablished our teamwork and connection.
Today I am grateful for blessings. The meaning of that word falls into religious connotation, stating “God’s favor or protection; a prayer asking for God’s favor or protection; a favor bestowed by God, thereby bringing happiness.” I look at blessing as a gift from higher power, spirit, as well as others—and sometimes others are the blessing. As I sort through the history of my life in order to continually shift on the right track, I see everything I’ve held onto. I see all I have been gifted and granted and put to good use in this world to open up additional options. I have so much gratitude, not just for the things we have, but for the opportunities this life has afforded us, me. I am grateful to have the choices I do, to be able to create, to receive and give, to live without strain for the daily necessities, and now, I am incredibly grateful to shape a future with those blessings. I am grateful to be able to put all of my words and work into context and practice and good use for my family and those around me. I am grateful to turn the blessings I have into more blessings.
Today I am grateful for desire. Desire is a delicious word, suggesting something slightly out of control but fully carnal, the need for something we want we can’t explain. I don’t care if this is on the most basic physical level or in how we live our daily lives, desire burns and provides energy and it consumes us at points. The fun thing about the burn of desire is it never really burns us. It can take over at times but it is in the best possible way. Whether in love or in design, desire fuels creation and passion. Desire is passion to the next level. It’s a wanting that pushes us forward and when we get the results we want, it is the most satisfying feeling. Sometimes we don’t know the next steps to take but we look to the thing that feels right on the path toward a larger goal, and we let that passion take us to where we need to be. Desire at its peak is one of the most exciting things in the world. We are lucky to have such encouragement and motivation toward things and to feel the pull to it. I’m not suggesting we blindly follow every whim we have, but I am talking about enjoying it whole-heartedly. Let us be consumed by the things that give us joy so we can produce more, so we can feel more, so we can share more. Desire is fuel and creation is the work behind it and the results are completely up to us and how we put that desire to good use. Desire has brought me many things in my life and I stifled it for too long, so now as I learn to work with it and go with the flow of it, to admit what it is that I want, I thoroughly enjoy seeing the results of where it takes me—and I like the way it feels.
“If a person lets you down, it’s time to reconsider what you’re asking of them,” unknown. Timing is everything and this quote hit at the perfect time for me. I had a beautiful conversation with my sister yesterday, one we’ve never had the depths of as adults. I always had the impression that I was just the kid sister to her, someone who needed guidance and direction and I often felt unheard. I had a story in my head for a long time that she wanted to hold her place as the oldest and I needed to be quiet because she thought I was just trying to stamp my feet and get my way. We reached such a powerful understanding of each other by the end of the conversation that I feel our dynamic, our relationship has changed. Truthfully I feel changed as well. I felt supported and heard in a way I hadn’t before and I hope she did as well. We are all looking for connection, more specifically understanding, but we all want to feel like we are heard and able to freely express who we are, to safely express a truth, and to bounce ideas off someone. I am grateful that we had this conversation because that level of connection has been long overdue. We are both strong-headed, stubborn people and we were both operating under some assumptions that weren’t true and were easily cleared up with a simple conversation. I feel like I found more about myself too because we have way more similar emotions and thought processes than I realized. I always knew we had a lot in common—we are siblings and that was why I was so frustrated at not being heard in our relationship sooner. But during the course of that conversation, something else hit me: it is the understanding that we need to support each other that made me look at some of the other events in my life, specifically the relationships with people around me.
I had two trains of thought when I read this quote: this is about expectation and we shouldn’t place unrealistic expectations on people but we need to hold up our end of the bargain when it comes to relationships. Then I was thinking about the support of my friends as we’ve been experiencing a disconnect in our relationships lately—and I truly don’t feel like any of that comes down to me. Yes, it always takes two, but hear me out: I have felt myself growing and expanding and learning new things about myself and as I move forward, I have felt them retreat from me. I have felt them try to dim me as I am trying to evolve and come out of my shell—specifically speaking ill of my business to others right in front of me and not respecting my boundaries when it came to my work, not doing any kind of deep dive into my work, making the story always be about them, not being emotionally available during crisis, and then literally not reaching out for events they partake in with each other. I have felt their pull toward the negative as I’m working on other things. I never asked that they believe what I do—they don’t need to understand it even, that isn’t their responsibility. Even if they don’t understand, we can still be supportive of each other. And I do not feel that support. I feel their bond with each other increasing and more exclusion by the day while they look at me like I’m the problem. I am growing, in some ways I wouldn’t have been afforded the opportunity to grown without them and I am grateful, ALWAYS. But to turn around and start demeaning the person I am because the real me is showing through is not the mark of a friend. Remember: growth is never a problem and if someone requires you to stay in a shell too small or a box that they built in order to be their friend, that isn’t a friend. If someone deliberately tries to break down your progress and finds ways to undercut your efforts, that isn’t a friend. If they withdraw when you get a bit brighter when you create space in the spotlight for them as well, that is their choice and that isn’t a friend.
So to the first train of thought: it isn’t up to people to live up to our expectations. We aren’t here to dictate what someone must do for us as relationships and true support aren’t conditional. Each person in a relationship agrees to fulfill a certain role for each other but it is formed from presence, being there for each other and we mutual respect. There is the expectation that we at least like each other if we have agreed to be around each other. Even if we can’t reach an understanding about what the other person is doing, we need to at least create space to allow a person to be who they are and give them the same grace we would like to be afforded. If the latter two points can’t be reached, then we need to ask what we are doing in that relationship. If those things are too much then we can walk away knowing it simply wasn’t a good fit. It is never asking too much of anyone to allow for the full expression of our authentic selves. When we experience the difference between the two types of relationship—as I did in that conversation with my sister and understanding support and then thinking about my current state with some other people—we need to make a choice. The choice always needs to be ourselves. Our purpose is to be entirely who we are. It isn’t so much about someone letting us down, it’s about upholding the boundary that if we are not equally cared for and respected, if those are things we need to ask for in the first place, then it is time to move on and we can do so with good conscience. As we start off this year, I hope we always remember our worth and never settle for anything less than the total acceptance of ourselves—and if someone can’t do that, then have the courage to walk away. Remember, it’s better to let someone else down than let ourselves down.
“We need women who are so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational and so disciplined they can be free,” Kavita Ramdas. I love this in the context of moving forward, both as individuals and as a group. Speaking of letting go yesterday brought to mind this idea of the people who have helped me move forward and break the habit of negative first impressions, and approaching things too timidly/with fear—lacking confidence, really. First impressions aren’t always accurate—and neither are later impressions. Sometimes the people we think are for us turn out to be the ones holding the knife and the ones we thought were out to get us are the ones cutting us out of the net. People surprise us and we need to let them because we all deserve the opportunity to be who we are—and we need to afford them the same opportunity. Sometimes we have something others need and sometimes they have what we need—and we will never know until we allow them into our bubble and start discovering who they are. Sometimes in that discovery process, we learn more about who we are as well.
I have friends who think (and thought) they needed to take care of me under the assumption I would have no say in choosing how to move forward. While it was nice to be cared for, they didn’t hear what I said, they didn’t see who I was, they didn’t allow me to express the things I needed to or understand that I had more control of my situation than they thought. They saw a few moments of weakness that they didn’t really even help with, and they assumed I was weak, that I needed a hero or that I didn’t understand something about life. Rather than supporting me through those times, they assumed they needed to support me entirely and that they could influence my identity and who I needed to be to them. While I have no issue helping my friends, I struggle with demands being made on how I am supposed to accept their help. Or rather, I struggle with saying I need an orange and they give me an apple and I’m supposed to be satisfied or grateful because they gave me fruit. Or being grateful when I say I just need someone to listen and they tell me their story repeatedly rather than hear mine so it becomes more about us taking care of them rather than mutual reciprocity.
I recently found out what happens when there is real support between friends. When there is more than a common interest between people and they are actually similar. There is power there. There is amazing power in support that comes from shared desire and goals and interest versus a manipulative need for validation under the guise of being helpful. Friendship is born of both mutual interest and shared goals and there are times in any relationship when someone can’t carry all the weight and someone does a little more work than the other. That doesn’t mean one person is weaker than the other and if the other person is constantly making our struggles about them, that’s more exhausting than trying to solve the problem on our own because we end up doing the feeling work for that other person rather than working on our own issue. Friendship that understands the ebb and flow, friendship that comes from relating to people shows reciprocity rather than letting one person always handle their issues on their own while also having to help the other party. There isn’t a hierarchy where either side is trying to prove they are capable of all things, some sort of superiority thing. That relationship is about being collaborative rather than forcing someone to be something they are not or putting our issues on them.
A strong tribe is built of women who bring out the best in each other. We heal each other and we work to move forward together. We need a tribe, we need that support. I have witnessed what happens when we are too independent and I have witnessed what happens when we are too dependent on others. We either end up burnt out or disappointed because people aren’t meeting our expectations. But there is a middle ground: when we find the right group of people we each play our role and we are stronger for it. Certain relationships are meant to help us through a particular time—I will bring back the saying about a reason, a season, or a lifetime. I assigned the wrong designations to some people, we all do, and we need to move on, knowing who we are, knowing what we are meant to do and what we need. It’s ok to not be everything to every person. We aren’t meant to fit in everyone’s mold and they aren’t meant to fit into ours, either. But those who are for us will always find us at the right time, no matter how long they are with us. To those who stick around and build with me, I am beyond grateful to solidify who I am with you. To those who brought me to the real ones, I am beyond grateful because you chipped away the parts of me that weren’t really me. To my future tribe, I welcome you, and I am proud to be part of you. To all, thank you for the lessons—I carry them with me, always.
Today I want to share the lesson of letting go from my mother. Maybe it’s more accurate to say the lesson of not letting go, specifically what happens when we don’t let go. My mother is the queen of grudges and I absolutely learned how to do just that from her. I remembered every nasty thing people said about me and how they treated me and how they made me feel. I carried it with me as both a defense mechanism and excuse to not get to know people and as an act of martyrdom for when I still gave people chances. Also a lesson from my mother—we thought it was forgiveness to a degree but the reality is we never forgot any of what happened. The first impression was it and that is how I defined people moving forward because I learned from my mom that people don’t change and often one bad decision is who they really are. I cut people out before I even let them in because of a first impression. I’ve been wrong multiple times, especially as I’ve pointed out these last few weeks. I was wrong about it with my husband, I was wrong about it with some people I truly now consider friends. I had been super quick to write them off and after meeting them, I saw a different side. It’s funny or ironic that often the people we make a judgement on are those who we share similarities with.
This side of the lesson is about breaking the family pattern of writing people off before we know them. I experienced loss early in life so I am no stranger to the knowledge once something is gone, it is gone. Those losses haunted me and left me with a helpless feeling about life and a severe deprivation of faith. During the holidays we spent a lot of time together with family and there is such a history there—so many dynamics and feelings. Many of them are entirely justified and I understand the frustration, anger, and resentment. But is there a purpose to it? Holding onto that level of emotion for this long with no outlet hasn’t served any purpose other than to exacerbate the negative. It’s holding onto the coal that’s burning the hand thinking we are going to one day throw it at the person who hurt us—we only end up burning ourselves. I’ve witnessed first hand the choice to fixate on the negative and how it has taken a lovely evening, a great time together, and completely ruined it because we can’t let go of those feelings. We want the other person to understand and feel what we did. We want them to acknowledge their part in how we feel. If we want to talk about a waste of time, this is it: expecting someone to feel/understand how we feel without explaining it. I know even if we do explain it there is a chance that they won’t get it, but at least we made the effort and aren’t wasting time expecting people to be mind readers and being upset over something they have no idea made us angry.
We need to heal the past in order to move forward, even if that healing is reconciling that others do not understand or feel the same way we do. There are things we may never get our due for, we will not get what we feel we are owed. But holding onto that resentment serves nothing but to ruin the time we have now—and I will repeat it until I’m blue in the face—we never know how much time that is. Why ruin all potential good times for the sake of holding onto one bad time? Why allow those feelings or the feeling of one incident determine how we feel the rest of our lives? And those feelings expand to all of those around us. There comes a point we have to accept responsibility and understand that we are the one with the issue and we can either address what’s bother us or we can let it go, because holding onto it has done nothing but cause more pain. Our martyrdom, our righteous anger, does nothing to the other person, but it weighs on our hearts and minds and can drag everyone else down too. There is no point in making ourselves sink and blaming others for it—we are still the one who drowns.
I held onto things far longer than I should have–some of them were justified and some were not. I made judgements on people that I shouldn’t have and I regret that because there could have been a great friendship formed much sooner. There were stupid moments that honestly could have impacted the trajectory of my life had I put aside pride and just tried to understand. And even now, thinking of that regret serves nothing. We are here now and the only way to move forward is to move forward. Cut the ties to what happened and understand that we are here now because of what we did and didn’t do but we can’t change it. Learn the lesson and move forward, the biggest part of which is not making rash decisions about someone’s character or their intentions. Don’t decide who we are before we figure out what works for us, meaning don’t write someone off because they are a certain way. We may have more in common than we think and we just haven’t discovered it yet. Whatever it may be, put down the coal, cut the line, and let go of the past, of what we thought hurt us and welcome the gift of time we have now. As long as we have that time, we have the ability to make it better. Don’t drown in a puddle, find our support and move forward. Sometimes the person to help you forward is the last person you’d think—we may surprise ourselves as much as they surprise us. Trust it, let go, and move on to enjoy the time we have.
The Intentional Dreamer 