Acknowledging my personal limitations has been a necessary (yet difficult) part of my journey in recent years. One palpable limitation is winter. Therefore I proactively and very intentionally booked a holiday to California so I could take a break from the demands of parenting and get a much-needed dose of warm sunshine. I returned home this week after seemingly endless days of healthy eating, lots of sleep, long daily walks and hours of sitting, reading and writing. I returned home not only relaxed and refreshed but also with motivation and passion for my life.
It has been unbelievable then, to realize that the space between quiet and calm California and chaotic and crushing Calgary is less than sixty hours! I can’t sleep. I have emotions to manage every moment that the kids are with me (or not with me). And the incessant work gnaws at my consciousness like a dull saw grinding through an aged tree. I feel like a set of bagpipes that the air has been squeezed out of, with no breath to fill back up again. How could this be happening? Did I not take the break, so that I could come back with a full tank and embrace each day – as if it were a day at the beach?
Portions of my adult life have been filled with All or Nothing living. I would either celebrate my success, or mourn my failure. I either over function, taking control of everything and everybody and flying through life without truly stopping to see what was passing, or under functioning, wondering who I can dump everything on (my husband?) and how I can get out of all the things I have committed to. Life is a pendulum, however, we are not meant to stay at the outer edges; the majority of time is spent moving through. I have wasted a lot of energy swinging toward one thing or away from another. I crave getting it right and am often disappointed by my mistakes. Why? Because our society values and encourages the capable and is uneasy with those who are struggling.
However, the last season of my life has been about learning to embrace and celebrate my flaws. It is teaching me to live with more honesty and to take responsibility for my mistakes, instead of using them as a character assassination. Through parenting I have faced things that I truly believe would not have otherwise come up. There have been many challenges, eye-opening gifts and hard realizations. Personal growth has become part of my formula for living wholeheartedly and so I have people in my life that can support me in that area.
There have been many ah-hah moments; I have learned things about myself that have always been there and yet I could not see. I didn’t have the information or perspective to understand the footprints that followed me to here. Now I do, and it is creating a fundamental shift, mainly in the areas of acceptance and compassion. Moreover, knowledge together with practice has given me many skills that I did not possess any natural ability for. I have learned that there is no truth to the myth that if we were meant to do something, it would come naturally. Never has this been more obvious in my life than it is in my love relationships.
The gulf between success and failure, between good and bad, between perfect and flawed is the place where we live; it is the place where our flaws reflect back at us, revealing that flawed is something that binds the human race together. We are all bits and pieces of a whole, that when examined too closely, somehow feels raw. No one enjoys that feeling. However, risking vulnerability and being raw is our only path to human connection.
So as I realize that less than three days have passed since I walked on the beach, heard the rhythmic surf, felt the warm sun on my bare skin and felt completely at ease, I know that I cannot live exclusively on the beach or in the confines of my family. I simply need to let the pendulum swing and sway at a speed that I cannot control. But more importantly I need to allow it to stop and come to a complete rest; in those moments, I need to surrender all that I have (and don’t have), all that I am (and am not), and all that I want (and lack) and rest in the knowledge that I am not alone.
