Tag: change

Building Trust

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“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.” – Lao Tzu

I come by conflict avoidance honestly. By that I mean it’s deeply steeped in my family history. I never heard my parents argue when I was growing up. Assuming that they did instead of just avoid all conflict, they must have done it entirely behind closed doors. As a Presbyterian pastor, my dear dad was so good being with people suffering crisis and loss but when it came to conflict, he also had a gift for just not responding.

I remember when I was in college, I took the car I had to him because it was overheating. He was refilling the radiator from the garden hose as I trailed around behind him. At one point I said, “Dad, I think there is a better way to do that.” He didn’t respond. He didn’t argue that he had been around cars a lot longer than I had or point out that I brought the car to him, he just simply didn’t say anything until it was refilled. Then he looked up with a big, bright smile and said, “There, it’s done!”

Read the rest of this post that I posted here at the Pointless Overthinking blog

Say More

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“You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you’ve become yourself.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

The other day I was having a conversation with an acquaintance that I know professionally. She was sharing her concerns for her younger son who is starting his freshman year of college 3,000 miles away. Trying to find the balance between listening well and not prying, I remembered a prompt that I’d picked up from a Brene Brown podcast, “Say more.”

It works like a can opener! I’m a pretty good listener but since I think the art of listening always can be improved, I’m always trying to expand two things to make me better: curiosity and space.

My acquaintance was telling me that her son got a nose ring and was trying out partying. Her story had two threads. One was a little bit of a mother’s grief because she thought she knew who her son was and thought that he did too. And who he was, a smart geek, didn’t match with his freshman year antics.

The second was her effort to be open supportive of her son as he grew and changed. As he texts her updates about what he’s doing, she is trying to find the right balance of how to respond. In many ways, she said she wished he wasn’t telling her because she was having to walk the line of condoning what he was doing.

Curiosity and space. It’s what her son is experiencing in these first months of college. It’s what my friend is trying to give her son. It was what I was trying to give her so that she could vocalize her story. Two gifts that allow us to change and to still say more.

(featured image from Pexels)

Taking Off the Hats

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“Don’t go through life, grow through life.” – Eric Butterworth

In my daughter’s first grade class they fill in a mood meter for each day that tells how they feel and why. For example, last Tuesday she marked sleepy and proud and said she was proud because she made it in without being scared. Which is huge for my 6-year-old.

School has been in session for a month now. A month of adjustment to early mornings, pickups and drop-offs, new faces and routines for my kids, a quiet house during the day for me. It’s a lot and it’s taken the entire month to adapt.

The thing I’ve noticed most for me is the slow unwinding of some of the pandemic trauma that came from the necessity of being involved in everything in my kids’ lives. It’s like relaxing a spine that I had to hold stiff or I’d crumble. I was wearing so many hats – teaching assistant, school janitor, lunch lady, principal entertainer, class clown, mom, chief encouragement officer – that I’ve gotten to take off some of them and ease the strain. There is an intentionality to this restarting of activity that feels rich and treasured in a way that I took for granted before.

What I’ve uncovered is that I’m a way better parent when I don’t have to do it all. Which sounds so obvious but in crisis mode, I couldn’t gage the impact. Now when my 2-year-old son comes home and doesn’t want to have his diaper changed, I have the energy to fly him around the room pretending he’s an airplane on the way to the changing table. I’m listening better and I’m more playful when not having to run my engine all out to get everything done.

The uncertainty is still with us but I feel like I have a fuller tank to deal with it.

And the most delicious thing is that I miss my kids. I gather them up on Friday afternoon and can’t wait to spend a whole weekend playing together. I’m so incredibly impressed by how they’ve handled this transition. It hasn’t been without tears but we’ve faced these big moments talking to and understanding each other.

My mood meter is proud and grateful!

Pass On the Sugar Please

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“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart

When a friend recently complimented on pulling off two birthday parties for my daughter in one weekend (trying to keep numbers low), she said, “I don’t know how you do it.” And I thought to myself “I know how – a whole lot of sugar!”

I have a serious sugar addiction. When my meditation teacher did a really restrictive purge of sugar a few years back, I wondered why in the heck would a person want to do that. Because it’s just sugar. It doesn’t make me irresponsible, impair my ability to operate any machinery, or steal in order to afford it. Right? I was so proud that I’d gotten off the dangerous train of drinking too much wine that I thought there was no way I’d start limiting my sugar.

But I’m 52 years old, have had two c-sections in the last 6 years, my knees and my hips hurt and I want to live longer enough to see my kids have kids – unless they wait as long as I did to have kids and then I have no prayer of that!. And not only do I want to live that long, I want to do it being as active and comfortable as possible. I’m not likely to climb any big mountains soon but I’d like to rock climb, hike, bike and run around with my kids!

So for the past 2 weeks I’ve stopped eating foods with added sugar and also given up Diet Coke. Initially I had a persistent headache that wouldn’t stop until I drank enough water to make it through. But I’ve also slept better, had more consistent energy, and been less achy. I love candy and I feel like Diet Coke is the drink of gods. But when I crash after having either, I’m starting to recognize it’s not worth it.

There’s a little voice inside me that whispers, “You are going to give up something else?” It’s that self-indulgent, whiny presence that wants to frame change as if I am losing something and when I listen to it, I stay stuck. But when I listen to the centered voice that rings of Truth, I find the wisdom that with change comes the gift of freedom.

Now I’m finally understanding why my meditation teacher did the sugar purge. Because if I’m going to sit and listen deeply, I also need to pay attention to the signals my body is sending me. Sometimes I hate awareness but it always gets me somewhere worth going…

Privilege

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“The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.” – Mother Teresa

On many nights, my almost 6-year-old daughter comes in the middle of the night to climb in bed with me. I have a big bed so it doesn’t bother me. From what I can tell she isn’t scared or having trouble sleeping, she’s just woken up and decided that it would be easier or more fun to go back to sleep in my bed. Then we came back from a vacation where we’d shared a bed she wanted to spend that first night home starting out in my bed. One night stretched to three nights and then it happened – the night where she didn’t even ask before she assumed she could start in my bed.

In less than a week a privilege became a right, or at least an assumption. I think about this as I grapple to identify my white privilege. It’s something I’ve had for my whole life so naming what is so endemic to my experience is difficult. Until I start listening to experiences of black people and realize that the access, the safety and the assumption of equity I have had are privilege. I’ve heard from other white people that they have worked so hard for what they have and don’t doubt that’s true, but it doesn’t mean that they aren’t privileged. I’m starting to see that it’s so many things in the day-to-day experience that I don’t have to worry about so that I can just focus on education and work that is privilege to name just one. I don’t imagine that my ponderings are changing the world or that I’m even getting it right. But it seems like I have no hope of being a part of changing this unfairness or the dialogue unless and until I see the system. The way I figure it’s like in relationships, good happens when we are willing to look at what isn’t working and start to say “this has to change” and the more people, the better it goes.

I asked my daughter what her brother who sleeps in a crib thinks about her getting to sleep in my bed. She said that he probably doesn’t care. I told her it’s not fair for her to start in my bed if he doesn’t too. Today I can, at the very least, start the conversation for this next generation to understand that unless everyone gets it, it is not something we can assume, it’s a privilege and we have to figure out how to share it.

Rethinking the Rote

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“Everyone wants to get enlightened but nobody wants to change.” – Andrew Cohen

This morning I woke up in my bed for the first time in four days. As the temperatures rose during recent heat wave that enveloped the Pacific NW, I kept lowering our sleeping locales because we don’t have AC. First to the first floor and then as the we kept breaking the record high temperatures and the house barely even cooled at night, down into the basement where my son slept in a storage room and my daughter and I in the garage.

Each move meant small adjustments to the every day routine. Like not being able to empty the recycling or not turning on the tv because it would disturb where my daughter was sleeping. Not restocking the fridge in the evening or doing the dishes because it would disturb where my son was sleeping. Instead I sat out in the garden reading a book. So as we returned to our proper beds last night, I realized how much I do by rote. Small things that I do by habit like grabbing reusable shopping bags on the way to the car became visible when I had to rethink how I do them because the car was parked in the driveway and I used a different door.

Exposing the myriad of things that I do without thinking made me think about how deep my groove is and whether it is providing me efficiency or making me inflexible. It was harder to feel like I was getting things done over these days that were different, probably because I was having to make more decisions. But it was also a chance to make the unconscious conscious and make sure it serves me.

It feels good to be doing things as usual this morning. But I’m also taking away some intentional changes. I don’t need to turn on the tv or do the recycling every night and should instead spend more time sitting out in my garden. Disruption is an amazing teacher.

Walking Boldly into Truth

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“Everything you have ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” – George Adair

Last year a friend of mine realized that she was gay at 50 years of age. In the 6 months that followed her discovery, she came out to everyone significant in her life. She didn’t have a girlfriend or any other forcing function to do it, she just walked boldly into her Truth. I know that some of those conversations, especially with the older generation were hard but when I asked her about how she did it she told me she was ready to find love and hiding who she realized she was would only hinder her path.

As someone who is walking a less traditional path by having kids as a single person at age 46 and 50, I am so inspired and in awe of my friend. I remember being five months pregnant and feeling really glad I wasn’t showing because then I’d have to tell people what I was doing. (Yeah, that wasn’t going to stay hidden forever. 😊) I had told everyone close to me, but for strangers and acquaintances, I was sure they’d think I was some loser that couldn’t find a partner. Over the years it has gotten so much easier but I really had to work hard to be able to say it without fear.

I told a lifelong friend this the other day and she was surprised. “What?” she said “we just always assumed you were some super-empowered woman.” Ha, ha. If it were that easy, there wouldn’t be a whole genre of stories about heroes who spend the entirety of the middle act wandering around trying to do everything they could to pursue their path without being vulnerable. I can say with complete certainty that if the constriction around my heart hadn’t been so tight and getting tighter every time I thought of having a family and time hadn’t been running on out my ability to have or adopt children, I would still be wandering around trying to find the right husband with which to have children. Anything so as not to have to face the vulnerability of saying, “This is what I was certain I had to do even though the circumstances at that time of my life meant doing it alone. I didn’t want to rush finding the right man and in doing so, make a mess of it.”

In Harry Potter, the young witches and wizards learn to run into the brick wall between platforms 9 and 10 to get to the Hogwarts Express train leaving from platform 9 3/4. We reach thresholds in our lives and need to change something — a job, a place we live, a relationship, a way of thinking or being, or something we just have to do — and they feel a lot like that brick wall. It is terrifying to consider running into, always looks easier when someone else does it, and once across, it is the place that transports to the magic life beyond. It’s only a perception that we don’t want to stand out that keeps us from walking into our Truths. When we do, we break that constriction around our hearts and can feel the full power of the vital heartbeat of life.

The postscript here is that with one year of my friend coming out, she has found her person and they’ve bought a house together. She crossed her threshhold and is living in the fullness of her life and it’s a joy and inspiration to watch!

Time to Grow

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“When you are finished changing, you are finished.” – Benjamin Franklin

I was recently given the opportunity to do some consulting (my day job) for the church for whom my dad was senior pastor when he retired. A chance to do meaningful work for an organization that does amazing job of outreach in the community, racial justice and creating a base for growth for families is right where I want to be. To make it work, I hired a new caregiver for my daughter to come for four hours on the day she has remote school and her brother is in daycare. Naturally, my daughter was nervous on the first day even though she’d met her several times before but she seemingly got past it pretty quickly. Until a couple hours in and I had to leave the house. She bumped her ear on a chair as she was reaching to give me a hug and the tears that came were much bigger than the owie, “You are going to leave?” she whispered tearily.

Ugh, it’s no wonder it feels so hard to consider personal growth and change. My kids are changing at an incredibly rapid pace, the world around us changes but I feel like I’m supposed to stand still in the middle of it all like a statue in order to be that predictable presence, sorta like home base in a game of tag.

I have to consider that I might be the biggest believer in the fact that I cannot change for the sake of my kids. In order to create the consistency that is the cornerstone of their lives and to not be the source of any ruffled feathers, I likely am the most fervent proponent of this belief.

But I know I’m not alone in this. There is a myth from the Trobriand Islands off of New Guinea. In that story, humans were immortal because they could shed their skins and stay young forever. One day a grandmother went to bathe in a river with her granddaughter and while bathing, shed her skin which snagged on a branch. When she returned, her granddaughter didn’t recognize her youthful appearance and was afraid. The grandmother went back to the river, found her old skin and restored her appearance but humans henceforth lost their ability to live forever.

After I reassured my daughter I would be back in two hours, I set her down and resolutely walked down to my car. Then I panicked as I recalculated whether I could do the work without making the change, carving out the additional hours in the evening after I put my kids to bed. I couldn’t and more than that, I shouldn’t because that’s how myths get perpetuated, we pass them on generation after generation. I am fully committed to showing up for my children and the other people in my life – being present, interested, vulnerable and real. When I try to be unchangeable, I feel like I start covering over who I am like a cup that tarnishes so that I diminish my ability to show up. You can’t polish without some rub so even as uncomfortable as it is for me, I’ve committed to some gentle friction as I try to keep growing and changing.

Renewal Isn’t Just for Spring

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“When you are finished changing, you are finished.” – Benjamin Franklin

I was talking with a friend who is having a hiccup in a long-standing relationship she has with some friends, a couple. We were talking about what was frustrating her and how she views them and their history and it seemed clear to me as an outsider that there was a different way to see it. She decided that there were two ways she could proceed, do nothing and trust that God would help work it out or to speak up and say something, though she wasn’t quite sure what. I asked her if she felt like the relationship needed to change even if it was her that had to change, maybe just by seeing them differently? She wasn’t sure.

Which I think was a fair answer but it made me wonder, when do we say “yes” to change? I think back to long before I had kids, when I was married and was dying in a relationship with someone who needed a lot of care but gave very little back. And still, I was hanging in there until someone told me of his infidelities and it all blew up. Best thing that ever happened to me. But, why was I unwilling or unable to make a change before then even though I knew I was unhappy was largely about not wanting to break my word.

Recently I read a blog post by Rebecca that told of her experience of being laid off after more than 30 years when COVID hit. She walked through the dismay and disbelief that this happened and then she did the work to reframe it as best thing that could have happened to her. Is it loyalty that keeps us from changing before it’s foisted on us?

I assume that we aren’t in charge of the big seismic shifts that happen to us. They come along to blast us out of our ruts when we’re in too deep. So instead I’ve been working on recognizing that everything is seasonal. If I like something, perhaps the way my baby runs to me for reassurance when he hears a loud sound, that’s great but it’ll change. And if I don’t like something like how hard it is to clip the baby’s fingernails, that’s also okay because it’ll change. I look outside and watch my yard grow, bloom and shed and try to stay soft.

We can embrace renewal from within or be eroded by change from the outside. In my lifetime, both have and will continue to happen and what I’m finally realizing is that the benefit of embracing it is that it’s a lot more graceful. The flexibility that I am trying to practice on little changes helps keep me from stiffly falling over when the big changes come. Talking through this with my friend helped me see this in my experience of relationships as well. Planting that seed with her, the idea that change is always happening, helped her see it a little differently and she found the words she needed to say to be a part of where’s it’s going. That inspired me to see her differently and so the renewal grows and grows!

The Lightening Rod for Big Feelings

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“The best way out is always through.” – Robert Frost

It’s my sister-in-law’s last day of nannying for me. The kids are aware of it but since they live so much in the now, it’s not as much that they focus on that information but the air is crackling with change and they sense it. It reminds me of the song my daughter sings about lightning: “Electricity gathers in a cloud, When frozen rain and bits of ice are bumping all around, Electricity leaping towards the ground, Lightning is the flash of light, Thunder is its sound.”

Just like with thunder storms, that energy has to go somewhere and in most cases, I find that I’m the lightening rod for my kids. They’ve bravely keep their little selves together until they see me and then it all comes bursting out. Lightning rods work because they draw the strike and then are wired to ground so that the energy is discharged safely into the earth. If a lightning rod is not wired to the ground, it provides no added protection to the structure.

I’m the conduit for my family’s emotion because my kids aren’t old enough to process many of the big feelings that come along with trying, getting hurt and having little control over the circumstances of life. And it’s not just kids that bleed off their pain and uncertainty. But to be the safe place for someone else’s emotions without endangering ourselves, we have to be connected to the ground. The danger of not being is that the electricity stays within us, causing damage to our organs, flashing out somewhere else unexpectedly or perhaps worst of all, building up until it’s a layer of charge that buffers our enjoyment of life. Completing the analogy, if we aren’t grounded we will not provide any added protection to the structure.

As with so much in parenting, I do much better with big feelings and changes if I take care of myself so I find myself continually working on my grounding. All week I have been getting up extra early, meditating to find that awareness that is bigger than my fear of the unknown, writing to process it all, and lying on the ground, ostensibly to stretch but even more to remind myself that there are many things that hold me up as life shifts. Leaning in towards the raw power of transformation and change, I find my center that is there through it all.