Tomorrow marks the official beginning of a new school year, both for my kids and for me. My son is starting middle school, my daughter is a Junior in High School (YIKES! How even??), and I am starting my second semester of an MS in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. I took the Summer off from classes to work on some other important things. I turned 43 this year, and have have found that my goals are very different than they were when I was 33, raising small children. Back then I scoured Pinterest for life hacks on couponing, organization, redecorating on a budget, and recipes that sneak veggies into kid-friendly favorites. While I still love me a good Pinterest life hack, my goals have shifted from trying to control my external environment to learning to accept the things I can't control, changing the things I can, and developing the wisdom to know the difference. It's feng shui for the soul.
Spiritual Feng Shui is about clearing out the cobwebs of control illusions and perfectionism-seeking, and putting my spiritual house in order. Now if you think for one hot second that I am trading one brand of perfectionism for another, don't. Putting a spiritual house in order has less to do with order and more to do with acceptance and self-compassion. Getting a spiritual house in order means making a home where imperfection, failure, doubt, insecurity, fear, and disappointment are invited to tea with warm biscuits and boysenberry jam. It means creating a space where the voices of regret and worry about past choices are listened to by one's inner old lady--that woman that can tell you, in the same breath, how you need to get off of your hind end and do the hard thing, but also that she will hold you as long as you need her to while you cry about how hard it was afterward. Our inner child is worth listening to, but our inner old lady really knows what's up. She knows when to give us that look that says, "Child, you are straight up fooling yourself right now. It's time to get real. Go take care of things, and I'll be here when you get back. I'll fix you a plate." My inner old lady knows that my spiritual feng shui is not about deprivation and cardboard food.
So, this Summer, I have worked on letting go of things. Letting go of doing my kids laundry for them when they have stalled on doing it for themselves. Yep, it means a messy laundry room floor sometimes. But it also means competent kids who realize that their Mom put in lots of good years as their housekeeper, and now has her own other work to do. I'm also letting go of trying to read everyone's mind and discern their feelings, like some kind of bomb-sniffing dog trying to figure out if we've got a live one. Many women take on this role in their families, because we have been raised to believe that it is our job to keep everyone happy, balanced, and stable. We have been taught to diffuse the proverbial bombs before anyone even knows they are ticking. Nope. Not our job. We need to let our people feel and resolve their own feelings.
That one's a killer challenge for me. When you're intuitive and empathetic, you usually see other people's emotional stuff coming before they do. Or you think you do. So you want to fix it. If only they would ask, you'd be able to help them. Here's where my inner old lady clears her throat, looks down at me over her reading glasses, and says, "Just cuz you can, doesn't mean ya should." Right?! She's so wise, and calls me out every. single. time. It's hard, though, because, for some of us, carrying other people's pain feels like what love looks like. But that's not always love. Sometimes that's enabling, and it often feels so heavy that you can't get other important things done because you're hauling their mess around. So, like my inner old lady, tell them they can do that hard thing, and that you'll be there to talk when they get back. You can even fix them a plate (or grab something pre-made from Costco. They even have acai bowls now)! That's ninja-level self-care!
My final spiritual feng shui goal is to get my body back in healthy shape. Now this one is so fraught with the potential for shame and patriarchal cultural body nonsense that I hesitate to even talk about it publicly. It seems like people latch on too quickly to physical transformation stories. We applaud women more and more the thinner they are. This is dumb and dangerous. There are skinny people all over the world whose inner voice is shaming them into submission saying, "If you don't lose weight, people will assume you have emotional problems." "If you really loved yourself, you would do what it takes to stay healthy." "Don't you want to set a good example for your kids?" So, here's the thing. Life has a lot of hard things in it. We are all just doing the best we can. Shaming only takes the weight of all of those hard things and multiplies it with messages that isolate us, hurt us, and alienate us from one another. We cannot and must not be about that. We are so much better than that. So, for me, getting my body in healthy shape can't be about keeping up with the Jones's or avoiding ridicule and judgment.
For me, getting my body in healthy shape is about giving myself permission to hand off the baton. To let things fall apart sometimes so that I can put myself back together. It's about listening to my inner old lady tell me, "If you wait for things to slow down to take care of yourself, you'll be my age before you do anything. Now let me drink by wine in peace while you get your butt to the gym." It's about LOVE. So I am going to write down what I love. Write down what brings me joy. Then I'll make a list of the action steps that pave a pathway toward those things. I love feeling strong. I love some good arm muscles. Sharice Davids is my inspiration these days. I'm never going to become a martial artist, but I love the idea that these arms that have held, rocked, hauled, cooked, and cleaned up after my kids, and have held people when they were sick or dying, could get strong again and carry me into the next season of my life. So I'm going to do my burpees and planks and think about lifting up whatever needs lifting in the next 10 years. It will be a kind of thank you note to my body for surviving the last 5 years of terrible self-care.
Spiritual feng shui is less about order and more about freedom. We spend the first half of our lives trying to learn the rules and play the game. The second half begs us to listen to our inner bad ass old lady who reminds us to "do no harm and take no crap." My inner old lady is no demure shrinking violet. She calls me out and loves me up in equal measure. She won't let me make excuses and put myself on the back burner. She wants me to take up space and speak my mind. She wants me to resign from my role as resident people-pleaser and emotional bomb diffuser. But she also knows that I need to hear "I love you" lots of times a day and like long hugs. And she never tells me that I'm too much or that my vulnerability makes me needy. When she looks at me over those reading glasses, I can always tell that she's proud of me. I love my inner child, don't get me wrong. But my inner old lady teaches me how to be who I needed when I was young. She's compassion and love wrapped in laugh lines and serving me up a plate of biscuits with boysenberry jam. She is my spiritual feng shui guru, and she cares less about order and more about me. Invite her over sometime and let her in. You won't regret it.
Spiritual Feng Shui is about clearing out the cobwebs of control illusions and perfectionism-seeking, and putting my spiritual house in order. Now if you think for one hot second that I am trading one brand of perfectionism for another, don't. Putting a spiritual house in order has less to do with order and more to do with acceptance and self-compassion. Getting a spiritual house in order means making a home where imperfection, failure, doubt, insecurity, fear, and disappointment are invited to tea with warm biscuits and boysenberry jam. It means creating a space where the voices of regret and worry about past choices are listened to by one's inner old lady--that woman that can tell you, in the same breath, how you need to get off of your hind end and do the hard thing, but also that she will hold you as long as you need her to while you cry about how hard it was afterward. Our inner child is worth listening to, but our inner old lady really knows what's up. She knows when to give us that look that says, "Child, you are straight up fooling yourself right now. It's time to get real. Go take care of things, and I'll be here when you get back. I'll fix you a plate." My inner old lady knows that my spiritual feng shui is not about deprivation and cardboard food.
So, this Summer, I have worked on letting go of things. Letting go of doing my kids laundry for them when they have stalled on doing it for themselves. Yep, it means a messy laundry room floor sometimes. But it also means competent kids who realize that their Mom put in lots of good years as their housekeeper, and now has her own other work to do. I'm also letting go of trying to read everyone's mind and discern their feelings, like some kind of bomb-sniffing dog trying to figure out if we've got a live one. Many women take on this role in their families, because we have been raised to believe that it is our job to keep everyone happy, balanced, and stable. We have been taught to diffuse the proverbial bombs before anyone even knows they are ticking. Nope. Not our job. We need to let our people feel and resolve their own feelings.
That one's a killer challenge for me. When you're intuitive and empathetic, you usually see other people's emotional stuff coming before they do. Or you think you do. So you want to fix it. If only they would ask, you'd be able to help them. Here's where my inner old lady clears her throat, looks down at me over her reading glasses, and says, "Just cuz you can, doesn't mean ya should." Right?! She's so wise, and calls me out every. single. time. It's hard, though, because, for some of us, carrying other people's pain feels like what love looks like. But that's not always love. Sometimes that's enabling, and it often feels so heavy that you can't get other important things done because you're hauling their mess around. So, like my inner old lady, tell them they can do that hard thing, and that you'll be there to talk when they get back. You can even fix them a plate (or grab something pre-made from Costco. They even have acai bowls now)! That's ninja-level self-care!
My final spiritual feng shui goal is to get my body back in healthy shape. Now this one is so fraught with the potential for shame and patriarchal cultural body nonsense that I hesitate to even talk about it publicly. It seems like people latch on too quickly to physical transformation stories. We applaud women more and more the thinner they are. This is dumb and dangerous. There are skinny people all over the world whose inner voice is shaming them into submission saying, "If you don't lose weight, people will assume you have emotional problems." "If you really loved yourself, you would do what it takes to stay healthy." "Don't you want to set a good example for your kids?" So, here's the thing. Life has a lot of hard things in it. We are all just doing the best we can. Shaming only takes the weight of all of those hard things and multiplies it with messages that isolate us, hurt us, and alienate us from one another. We cannot and must not be about that. We are so much better than that. So, for me, getting my body in healthy shape can't be about keeping up with the Jones's or avoiding ridicule and judgment.
For me, getting my body in healthy shape is about giving myself permission to hand off the baton. To let things fall apart sometimes so that I can put myself back together. It's about listening to my inner old lady tell me, "If you wait for things to slow down to take care of yourself, you'll be my age before you do anything. Now let me drink by wine in peace while you get your butt to the gym." It's about LOVE. So I am going to write down what I love. Write down what brings me joy. Then I'll make a list of the action steps that pave a pathway toward those things. I love feeling strong. I love some good arm muscles. Sharice Davids is my inspiration these days. I'm never going to become a martial artist, but I love the idea that these arms that have held, rocked, hauled, cooked, and cleaned up after my kids, and have held people when they were sick or dying, could get strong again and carry me into the next season of my life. So I'm going to do my burpees and planks and think about lifting up whatever needs lifting in the next 10 years. It will be a kind of thank you note to my body for surviving the last 5 years of terrible self-care.
Spiritual feng shui is less about order and more about freedom. We spend the first half of our lives trying to learn the rules and play the game. The second half begs us to listen to our inner bad ass old lady who reminds us to "do no harm and take no crap." My inner old lady is no demure shrinking violet. She calls me out and loves me up in equal measure. She won't let me make excuses and put myself on the back burner. She wants me to take up space and speak my mind. She wants me to resign from my role as resident people-pleaser and emotional bomb diffuser. But she also knows that I need to hear "I love you" lots of times a day and like long hugs. And she never tells me that I'm too much or that my vulnerability makes me needy. When she looks at me over those reading glasses, I can always tell that she's proud of me. I love my inner child, don't get me wrong. But my inner old lady teaches me how to be who I needed when I was young. She's compassion and love wrapped in laugh lines and serving me up a plate of biscuits with boysenberry jam. She is my spiritual feng shui guru, and she cares less about order and more about me. Invite her over sometime and let her in. You won't regret it.
No comments:
Post a Comment