Tag: self empowerment

2023 – TRUST

On By leisuregirl72In UncategorizedLeave a comment

My word for the year that will define my experiences in the year 2023 is … TRUST.

I intend to TRUST myself, to TRUST my intuition, to TRUST my feelings.

I want the word to be spelled in all caps to emphasize how critical I believe that particular action is for my survival. I’m not being melodramatic by saying it’s critical for my survival. I’ve dissociated too many times and lost myself too many times not to understand how trusting myself is key to living my life authentically and fully in the present.

I will aspire to believe in myself, that I am capable of great things, and to not fall into depths of self doubt or criticism if I should fail along the way.

from marcandangel:

“It’s not too late.

You aren’t behind.

You’re exactly where you need to be.

Every step is necessary.

Don’t judge or berate yourself for how long your journey is taking.

We all need our own time to travel our own distance.

Give yourself credit. And be thankful you made it this far.”

2023 – New Year, New Start

On By leisuregirl72In UncategorizedLeave a comment

Jan 3, 2023

A year has flown by. After my mom fell in June of 2022, time seem to pass in spurts marked by a new challenge presenting itself almost every day, except that they weren’t actually new. They were long standing conflicts, resentment and bitterness buried in shallow graves only to be unearthed by the slightest unsettling of the status quo. It was my mom’s fall that started everything, brought everyone back, brought siblings talking to each other again.

We had a plan for our mother, believing that the best situation for her and for her children was to place her in a home. She of course had other plans. Every step towards our plan was thwarted. For someone who is as physically impaired as my mother, my mother does an impressive job of maintaining her agency. She is still making her own decisions, whether or not it benefits the rest of us, be damned.

You have to respect my mom. She’s a survivor. She’s got resilience. She has determination. But just because I respect her doesn’t mean I have to be an active participant in her life. She can make decisions about her life and I will make decisions about mine.

This year will be about me. Does that sound self centered? I certainly hope so.

Being happy

On By leisuregirl72In UncategorizedLeave a comment

To be happy, to enjoy life does not mean that our lives is free of troubles. In fact, it is in knowing grief and sadness, that I’ve come to have a deeper understanding of the meaning of happiness.

As an adult, being happy is an intentional act of bravery. We are trusting ourselves to make the correct choice for ourselves and for others. It means that we must choose ourselves first, we must decide that our life is worthy of taking care of, worthy of nurturing, worthy of loving. When we decide that we are important, we decide where to focus our attention and manage our energy.

The words self care is in the vernacular a lot these days since the pandemic started. Having spent time during the pandemic, mostly in seclusion and sometimes with a select few, our “pod”, managing the energy in our relationships to each other, and to ourselves has become more intentional. How we make ourselves available or not to others has become weighty decisions usually made after much consideration.

For me, I’m a natural introvert. I enjoy getting to know people individually or in small groups and chatting with strangers is not unusual for me but spending time at parties where I know few is where I feel most ill at ease. The pandemic gave me a reprieve from being socially awkward by giving me a socially acceptable justification for declining invitations to gatherings. I didn’t have to feel guilty for saying no, didn’t have to feel like I disappointed anyone. Most importantly, it gave me a reason to not make my monthly trips down to see my mother. It provided me space from my mother that I didn’t know I even needed.

The idea of giving ourselves love and care took me while to get used to. Initially, it seemed self centered and even selfish to take time and care for myself. I grew up taking care of my siblings and my mother and somehow along the way, I came to expect myself to do it. I took on responsibilities that no other siblings took and I came to think that it was my responsibility to compensate for the lack of that I perceived from my siblings. As time went on, my siblings were happy to relinquish their involvement to me and my mom reinforced my behavior boosting me to a favored position in the family hierarchy. And now many years later, I realize how backward I’ve been when I thought I was so smart. I wasn’t smart. I was just feeling righteous and judging others for taking care of themselves.

I had no idea what I wanted. I just followed my mom and anyone who had a stronger voice. I was a people pleaser to the max. It was a lot easier than figuring out what I wanted but over time, this wore away my spirit. I began to feel something was lacking but I couldn’t figure out what. But luckily, along the way, I started deciphering what I knew what I didn’t want. I knew I didn’t want to be in the shadow of my partner – I wanted to shine in my own light. I knew that I would be unhappy having a life that was centered around taking care of my mom, knew I was unhappy being verbally abused by her. I was finally able to name it for what it was rather than rationalize her treatment of me was acceptable.

I am learning to cultivate a loving relationship with myself, being kind to myself when I fail, giving myself grace when I unwittingly hurt others, holding myself to the highest ideals, knowing that I am committed to being a work in progress and forgiving myself for being imperfect.

I realized that others only treated me the same way I was treating myself. I never expected anything more than what I received.

Each one of us must make a choice as to whether our life is worth living, a life that follows our values, one that we believe in. Life is too short to live someone else’s dreams or to delay living my own dreams because someone thinks that they don’t follow their agenda.

Being happy happens when my values and my actions align and I know by my gut feelings when I’m off the path. The beauty is in paying attention.

Life after Love

On By leisuregirl72In UncategorizedLeave a comment

We seem to have several typical solutions to manage our grief following a separation from our romantic partner. We harden our hearts, we distract ourselves with work, hobbies, etc, or we numb ourselves with alcohol, denial. The third more difficult way of coping is to accept our former love for what it was: imperfect, sometimes difficult, sometimes harmonious, and altogether beautiful for what it was when it was ours. And then remember that nothing is permanent and everything must end.

But when we end a relationship, we don’t just lose the person. We lose the life we had with that person, we lose the future that we imagined.

In the last seven months, I’ve revisited my memories of my last relationship almost daily. And more and more, I’ve come to understand why we were attracted to each other and some of the lessons we learned were almost identical. In each other, we found a version of ourselves that we wanted to become. We were learning to love ourselves enough to ask for what we wanted and needed from each other and our intimate relationship with each other served to model what we wanted from our other relationships, me with my siblings and my mother and he with his brother.

My struggle was learning to feel that what I wanted and what I needed was what I deserved. It all starts with how we feel about ourselves and it’s hard to assert what you want when I barely knew myself. I didn’t know how to make myself happy or fulfilled, how could I expect my partner to do it? It was an impossible task to give to my partner, a self fulfilling prophecy for failure. All I knew was that I wanted my life to be different but I looked outwardly for the other to transform me. Even when I didn’t know what I wanted, except that I just wanted something different, it felt wrong to leave everything behind and just follow my partner until I figured it out. When it was apparent our agendas were not aligned, I was too afraid to lose him to speak up and tell him what I wanted or needed. By then, I had confused him as well as myself.

I’m not moving forward from this relationship so much as moving sideways until I get my bearings again and there is no more insight to plumb from this relationship.

How does one become whole again when I feel like a part of myself has been left behind?

My Filial Piety

On By leisuregirl72In UncategorizedLeave a comment

What exactly is my perspective on filial piety? In short, I no longer believe in it. I believed in it before I understood the true nature of my mom, before I fully believed in myself.

I think it’s an archaic idea and serves only the parents. Dogma works when people mindlessly live their lives without a sense of consequence for their actions. Everyone needs a moral code to live by and some will follow what has come before them and adopt it without challenging the ideas while others, the minority, work at a model that fits them, that makes sense, that they have thoughtfully decided with conviction and intention.

When I am aging and no longer able to care for myself, perhaps there will be someone to take me in and care for me. I would hope that they do it out of love and not a sense of duty. Guilt only takes you so far before one is buried in resentment and bitterness. I would not want my loved one to live their life that way. But love, love will take you beyond what is physically capable. Love is the activity of the source, the divine energy of nature. And when you can no longer make decisions out of love, it is time to look at alternatives.

If there is no one to take me in, I hope I have the means to take care of myself, preferably in my own home enjoying my own company and those of others if I so chose. And if I no longer have the means to take care of myself, I would prefer my life end peacefully rather be a burden to others. If I forget this resolution, I hope someone would remind me to read these words of my younger self.