I feel like becoming a mother turned life on its head. Everything feels different, looks different. I feel as if I'm learning life all over. This time, my eyes are a little more aware and open to the need for love. Love for each person I meet. Love for those who I may have judged too quickly before. Love for myself.
It's the love for myself thing I struggle with most. For so long I've had a voice in my head with a comment about everything I do wrong. "Why didn't you..." "Why haven't you..." "Why can't you..." "You could have..." "You're so..."
This voice also chimes in on all the things I'm not in comparison to what's around me. My style's not good enough. My confidence isn't strong enough. My conversation isn't witty enough. My writing isn't clever enough. My efforts aren't good enough. I struggle to fall asleep every night, for this is when I can hear the voice more clearly. Unfortunately the voice not only comments on the wrongs of the day but all I'd goofed up before. Focusing on embarrassing moments. What-if's and What you should have said's. All of this was growing from a sad (and false) belief I've been building on for seemingly forever.
You're not valuable. You're not enough.
I've become aware of this foundation of thinking only in the last couple years. It's a difficult thing to realize about yourself. And with that realization has come a lot of answers about why I do what I do. The origin of my insecurities. For example: I find I've used this way of thinking as a way to "do good." I believed that by being hard on myself for the things I was "doing wrong" that I was being self aware as well as motivating myself to do better. I've always used my shame to stay on the "right path." A terrible cycle of trying to do better then beating myself up to the point that I was getting nowhere.
Imagine my struggle to realize that this, this way of thinking, what I have always done, was what's wrong. It's changing everything. My mantra this year, which I borrowed from Brené Brown's book Daring Greatly,* is I am enough.
Suddenly, my worth isn't measured by the state of my messy house. By the laundry I didn't do. Or the people I haven't visited. I'm teaching myself that I'm not a terrible person because I haven't figured out how to be consistent with... well, anything. But specifically dinner at the same time every night, or eating out last second because the thought of making dinner again makes my heart sink. My worth is not disrupted when I see someone who seems so much more put together than I am and with three kids, yet. And most importantly that who I am right now is okay. Good, even. Someone imperfect but trying. Really trying. Someone with great intentions and a lot of hope. I'm learning that striving to be the best I can be is important, but telling myself I'm nothing until I am that person is stunting my progress.
It's not easy. I'm literally rewiring a pattern of thinking that's always been there. But already it's changing my life. I feel closer to my Heavenly Father. I feel closer to the people around me because I'm seeing that they too are enough and loved as I. I'm hopeful that as I continue to work on rooting out shame and recognizing my worth that things that are hard for me now may not be so hard in the future. It's exhausting catching myself in my shame-based patterns. Trying constantly to be kinder to myself, recognize when I'm feeling lousy and trying not to place blame, and then staying motivated when I now feel justified being lazy (ha!) And all the while balancing my roles as mother, keeper of the home, wife, primary teacher, choir director, daughter, sister, friend, and neighbor. But life is always something. Up and down. Give and Take. Win and lose. We must trudge along and do the best we can with the information we've been given and smile as often as we can at what's beautiful.
So here's to a new week! A week free of shame and past mistakes. Another week of practicing to become better. A new week of being enough.
*Brené Brown is a shame researcher and I would highly recommend this book. I think everyone should read it. It is about the power of vulnerability and whole hearted living as a way to decrease shame. She also has two excellent Ted Talks that are worth listening to.
2 comments :
So when did you get so wise?
This is what I am just now learning as well. If only I had been able to understand it at your age :)
I wish I had the power to know which young people are s struggling like this and I had the magic of a reset button! Negative thoughts are death and we know this on some level -- we hear it and believe it, but what we don't know is that the thing we just did there, or the way we motivate ourselves, or how we judge those motivations is what the experts are taking about because the negativity is so hardwired we don't even equate it on the same plane. We know not to act or seem negative but we are blinded to the fact that we eat, sleep, and breathe negative.
Rooting this out is hard. I find myself flipping back and forth -- it's almost as if I don't quite believe that the freedom of happy, positive thoughts is allowed. That while I want it to be true, there's something deep inside me that tries to being me back to reality -- the false reality that has lived comfortably inside me since early childhood.
God bless you Sasha, you ARE enough, you are more than enough!
It's nice to hear that you're efforts are starting to work and you're starting to rewire and think better of yourself, because you are amazing! And I think you do a lot of really cool things with your life and your life makes me hopeful for my life. So there. I love you.
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