It’s funny to me how my mind works, at times. It’s funny when I can be untangled enough from my unhinged thinking to see it, because while I’m in it, not quite so funny.
Can you relate?
When I’m caught up, and the feels are real, it is really quite challenging. I am not my own best friend in those moments, and sometimes that’s just part of the process, not always though.
When I have the bandwidth and self awareness to stay present and intentional, when I have been working to stretch my capacity to move through whatever is there for me. At those moments I am really proud of how my mind works, of what I can do with my energy, or how I allow my breath to guide and open up spaces previously off limits to me. Those are the moments I aspire to have more of.
I have had many moments of both kinds of mind lately, because EVERYTHING in my world is changing - and it is a LOT!
I’ve been a mother for 25 years - 25 - WOW! And I have done that time ; ) alone. No co-parenting opps over here. Which has meant my identity, for my adult life has been as a mother ahead of all else. My children are my world.
The ride has been wild - so many adventures, so many unexpected twists and turns and through it all, I have treasured being able to bring my girls along. Nikkie told me once that she didn’t realise that most people didn’t bring their kids into the spaces I freely exposed mine to until she got older and understood how much they had experienced growing up. It is much easier to do when they are smaller, more portable and less likely to challenge the logic of doing the things you ask them to do.
They are both officially grown up now - adults in the eyes of the law… and Nialah is off to uni in a week and a bit. Like LEAVING home, not going to be here any more. WHAT!??
My babygirl, is not going to be here every single day, I won’t hear her voice in the morning, I won’t feel her mischievous energy when she is up to something. What a wrench for my heart.
Yet I am immensely proud of the young woman that she is. I love how she has carried herself to get to this point, and I am also thrilled for the opportunities she is opening up for herself. This is magic - she is magic. I can see so much beauty right now for her and all the things that lay ahead. All these things make my heart ecstatic, and my mind exploring these possibilities is so on board. When I am playing in these visualisations, my mind is behaving the way I enjoy it most.
This mind of mine also lends itself to consciously playing with the potential that awaits my new expression of identity. Who do I choose to be as a mother in this new capacity of remote parenting, of being a confidant from a distance, not immediately sharing in her triumphs and experiences. Who am I as that mother? Being that version of mother also leads to the question, who am I as a woman? What are my priorities in this version of my womanhood? What do I want them to be? How do I support myself getting there? What resources do I have to make it so?
I love this game. It took me a while to warm up to just how vast this version of me could become. I am still exploring what it could mean for me now, in a month, in a year. It actually blows my mind how much space is mine to play with, and it also shows me where great gaping gaps exist, the kinds that were not so plainly exposed when my identity was so watertight all these years.
Can I really dare to dream wildly? Can I be so bold as to do what I want to do without having to consider fitting it around my girls? Can I just say yes, yes and yes to me?
What will that cost me? Who am I to think about doing whatever I want, whenever I want?
Enter, pesky mind, mind that wants to shut me down by throwing up all the reasons it is not safe, all the reasons I need to stay in the shape I have been accustomed to filling, to keep things as they are. That is the task of this unconscious mind of mine, of all of ours - to keep us where it thinks life is safe, predictable and familiar. I get it, I am grateful and I also know that is not my truth. I also know that the more robust my magnitude to hold these restricted musings AND explore expanding, the more I will get from all of the next steps I take. The more resilience I will cultivate by testing my edges whilst having compassion for where I am and where I feel vulnerable, it’s a delicate, confounding dance and life continually invites us to find our rhythm and tempo with it from the inside out.
I enjoy learning more about who I am and who I can decide to be through the day to day situations I live through. I continue to have a wild appreciation of this life of mine and who I wish to be by playing the game with ever deepening commitment and investment. I see profoundly the potential every single human holds, and I get excited to be one of the ones who supports others in their journeys of discovery.
We are all here for our own version of greatness 🥰