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How I Avoid Disappointment

We all know what it feels like to have the wind sucked out of us when disappointment takes over. It’s an awful feeling. I used to experience it much more often, until I learned a valuable lesson:

Setting expectations only leads to unnecessary disappointment.

In 2009, tears streamed down my cheeks the whole way home on a flight from Los Angeles to Tampa. While there, I had been offered the ideally perfect job for me, with the minimum salary we needed to survive, and I felt like everything I had worked 5 years toward creating was coming true. We filled out the paperwork for an apartment in Glendale and starting planning our new lives.

Then, I got the strangest phone call the night before I left. It all came crashing down. I would have to leave L.A. with no prospects, my tail between my legs and the reality that we would probably be staying exactly where we were…in the 470 sq ft studio in the same zip code where I grew up.

I was devastated. We both were.

My husband finished his L.A. internship and came back to our tiny studio. We didn’t know what else to do since it was the peak of the recession, so we started our own business. Fresh out of college. That business ended up providing an income that supported both of us and opened up doors to relationships that have changed the course of our lives.

We still ended up making all the things we wanted happen…just here. In my hometown. Not 2500 miles away. Now we both have careers we love, two kids, a home, and my family lives in the same neighborhood as us.

When I think back to how disappointed I was when the opportunity I thought I wanted didn’t work out, I realize that it was a gift.

Plan B became Plan A, and I am better off for it. How can we even see what gifts may be resting in Plan B if we are too busy being overwhelmed in grief from Plan A (that by the way…never happened, was never going to happen, and literally only existed as a figment in our imagination)?

Mindfulness teaches us to keep our thoughts and energy in the current moment. This is particularly challenging for me, but I’ve learned it’s the best path to my inner peace. When I feel the emotion of disappointment coming on, I pause. I ask myself if I am only feeling this because of an expectation I set in my own imagination, and if I am missing a gift that is right in front of me.

As we prepare for 2021, my encouragement for you is to hold the plans loosely. I believe setting goals and intentions are important. They give us something to strive toward. They help us rise into growth and self-improvement. However, we must be prepared for the curveballs that are inevitably coming.

And before I go, I know many of you probably feel disappointment the most from other people. I feel you. But it’s really not much different than what you expect from your future plans. We cannot control either people, nor plans. I try really hard to release people of crazy high expectations, especially the expectations to which I hold myself. I choose to observe people. I let their actions show me their personalities, their priorities, their insecurities, their fears, their past hurt, their strengths, their gifts, etc. When someone disappoints me, I just watch it and observe it. I allow the experience to teach me something I need to learn about myself.

In simple terms…I hold my expectations of people much like I do my plans…loosely and with gratitude.

Thanks for making it to the end of this blog post! Two options to keep going if you want more:

Looking to create more peace in your life? Then I highly recommend downloading the free E-book from my site, Create Peace. Just drop your email below and it will be sent to you.

If you happen to be a working mom, join our community on Facebook

Before You Set Your 2021 Goals…Read This

Every December do you start thinking about the next year? I do. I am a lover of all things goals, vision boards and planning. This is prime time for me to start thinking about what I want from my life in the coming year.

After a decade of setting goals and making vision boards, I want to share with you what led to results and what kept me spinning in circles.

Here are the top 3 changes I made to my goal setting strategies that delivered great results.

1.     Don’t set goals. Solve problems. 

We have been taught over and over and over again that goals should be measurable, have deadlines and all these systems on how to set them properly. I did it for YEARS. And I missed a ton of the goals I set.

True change happened in my life when I focused less on the “goal” and more on the problem that needed to be solved. 

Most people are more motivated to solve a problem than meet a goal. So if there is something you want to achieve, rather than focusing on the finish line, focus on why the finish line even matters.

Since health goals tend to dominate New Year resolutions, let’s start with that example. Traditionally, the goals you hear about are number of pounds lost or a new pants size. And how many people give up by February? A lot.

Restructuring this goal for me looked like replacing the pound goal with solving the problem of why I was always so tired.

Just tackling the problem of needing more energy led to more sleep, drinking more water and replacing foods that made me tired with foods that fueled my body. By default, I lost weight.

Can you restructure a goal you were planning to set into a problem you need to solve?

2.     Focus on the habits

I highly recommend as you map out the problems you seek to solve, look for a habit that is connected to that area. True life change happens when we change something we do every day.

Instead of focusing on the large goal, focus on the daily habit that will lead to that success.

For example, we “dabbled” in the Dave Ramsey get-out-of-debt philosophy for six years and kept gaining, not losing debt. We simply could not deal with tracking cash. I know the cash envelopes work for other people, but we could never use them successfully. Three months into using the app EveryDollar we were making financial progress. It syncs with your checking account and any other accounts you want to link. Every transaction, you can drag and drop into a budget line item.

We set a daily goal that we would track our transactions in the app. This simple daily habit kept us tied closely to our budget and helped motivate us into wiser decisions. It inspired us to find ways to enhance our income. By a year in, we had eliminated a ton of financial stress. By three years in, we were debt free (minus the house).

The big goal wasn’t what got us the results, it was the daily habit of making tiny steps in the right direction.

3. An abundance of love and grace

I chose to include this one because my journey completely changed when I fully grasped grace. Goals involve growth. Growth is messy. It requires getting out of your comfort zone and being awkward.

I think one of the mistakes we often make is that we expect it to be easy to achieve our goals. The reality is…it’s most likely going to be two steps forward and one step back. A constant volley between encouragement and discouragement. When the discouragement hits, many people label it a failure and give up. Once you realize it’s just part of the process, you can keep going.

To keep going we have to shower ourselves in grace and love. We have to understand when we make mistakes, we are just human. We have to realize that done is better than perfect. We have to remind ourselves we are worthy, capable and strong.

I feel confident in saying you can accomplish anything you set your mind to achieving. My recommendation is to translate it into a problem to solve, focus on the daily habits that will get you there and to be filled with grace and love for yourself along the way.

2021 is coming. You got this.

Thanks for making it to the end of this blog post! Two options to keep going if you want more:

Looking to create more peace in your life? Then I highly recommend downloading the free E-book from my site, Create Peace. Just drop your email below and it will be sent to you.

If you happen to be a working mom, join our community on Facebook

Some Encouragement for this Week

This is a difficult week for many people, so I want to speak to those challenges. I’ve heard many discuss pains such as:

  • Choosing not to gather in person for Thanksgiving because of the pandemic
  • Grieving the loss of a loved one who will not be present this year
  • Fear of having a political conversation with a loved one who has different views

I am sure there are many other challenges people are facing in addition to these very common situations…so how do we move forward?

The irony is…the answer is in the name. Thanksgiving.

Most of the time, the pains we face cannot be cured. There are no solutions. Gratitude allows us to redirect our attention to what we do have and what we can control.

Gratitude can come in so many forms. Gratitude you are still here. Gratitude for the friends and family you have. Gratitude for the breath in your lungs. Gratitude for the multitude of memories with your lost loved one. Gratitude you have food to serve.

There are books galore written on the power of gratitude. There is no shortage of scientific studies that show all of the benefits….from psychological well-being to emotional health, social health, and even spiritual and physical health.

The scriptures are covered in verses on thanksgiving and gratefulness, from the Old Testament to the New. Gratitude plays a major role in every major religion around the world.

What we focus our attention on grows.

So this week, if your pain begins to grow power over you, shift your attention. Find gratitude.

Since I am a Ziglar-certified coach, it seems appropriate to gather for you a handful of great quotes Ziglar had to say about gratitude. May you find encouragement in these words this week (see images).

Thanks for making it to the end of this blog post! Two options to keep going if you want more:

Looking to create more peace in your life? Then I highly recommend downloading the free E-book from my site, Create Peace. Just drop your email below and it will be sent to you.

If you happen to be a working mom, join our community on Facebook

Where to Go from Here

Since Saturday I have heard many calls to unite our country, however, I have not heard anyone tell us HOW to heal from what we have witnessed over the last several years, and especially 2020.

The best I can offer you is to share my personal story in hopes it may show someone else their right next step. I mean…as the wise troll from Frozen 2 said, “When one can see no future, all one can do is the next right thing.”

There was a point a few years ago when the state of our country broke me. The level of division, hatred and lack of empathy took its toll on me, and I literally found myself in the fetal position under my covers crying for three hours. The moment was completely out of character for me, so I knew I couldn’t stay there. I had to write a new story that would get me out of bed and into action.

I remembered an important principle that both religion and science agree on…love is greater than fear. I literally sat up in the bed and decided at that moment I would not live in fear. I would out-love and out-give any hatred that was around me.

I turned my energy toward my own back yard and decided I would take personal responsibility to make my community better. This concept will look completely different for every person. For me, it looked like following my heart for foster care and becoming a Guardian ad Litem. As the saying goes “when the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Two other opportunities presented themselves to join non-profit boards that directly touched the things I was most passionate about.

To quote the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “If you want to be a true professional, you will do something outside yourself, something to repair tears in your community, something to make life a little better for people less fortunate than you. That’s what I think a meaningful life is. One lived not just for one’s self but for one’s community.”

Did you know that one of Ginsburg’s best friends was the late Justice Antonin Scalia? The two often had the most conflicting views on the bench and yet the closest friendship outside the courtroom. They served alongside one another, frequently disagreeing on rulings, yet still able to be filled with love for one another. My fear is that this is what is slipping from the fabric of our culture. While Washington may have grown that direction, our communities don’t need to. We can disagree and then roll up our sleeves and work together at the community garden, the food bank, our local chamber, or any project focused on improving our communities.

The book of James has continuously been a source of refuge for me since I was a teenager. James 1:19 says, “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”

The part I want to bring attention to is the “quick to listen.” There is no reason for us to let the political divides of this country divide our communities. If you are feeling frustrated with someone who maybe voted differently than you, rather than avoid them or be angry at them, my recommendation is to lean in. Ask them to coffee or lunch. As Steven Covey says in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, seek first to understand.

Over the last few years, I have made it a habit to ask questions. “Why do you think that? What experience shaped you that formed that opinion?” and then I listen with no judgment. I do not share my thoughts with most people because I do not believe their desire is to seek to understand. Their desire is to seek to respond. We have all seen this on social media.

Don’t be that person. If we are going to unite together to build stronger communities, may we be the ones who seek to understand; who ask questions just for the purpose of listening. May we learn from each other’s experiences.

As great of a sound bite as calling for unity makes on a television screen preached by a politician or celebrity, they have minimal impact on uniting us. We must make the decision to come together, each having a seat at the table, for how we will use our gifts and talents to rebuild this country into a better version than we have ever seen. The power rests in our hands.

When Seasons Change

As I drove through the late-autumn mountains this weekend, all I could think about when I saw those leaves fall were the moments when I lost my foliage. When I personally went from abundance to barren. When I felt life stripping me of my identity.

Can you resonate?

Have you ever felt like those trees stripped of all their leaves? Standing there vulnerable and uncertain of what the future holds? Knowing it will probably get worse before it gets better?

When I’ve had those seasons, what I couldn’t see at the time was how necessary it was for everything but my foundation to die. I had to let it all go.

I needed a season where I felt open and vulnerable, so that when the time was right, it could all grow back stronger. When the time came, new life would emerge. I would return better than ever, but only because I let go of what needed to be released.

Over the last several years, I’ve gone through so many pruning experiences, and also experienced so many abundant joys, that I’ve simply accepted this is the inevitable flow.

My wish for each of you is that you may come to recognize we cannot be evergreen trees. If you feel stripped down to the bones, if you feel your identity blowing away, if life is doing the pruning for you that you weren’t able to do for yourself, let it go. Acknowledge you are in a season. Acknowledge this is temporary. It will not last.

Trust that just ahead is a season filled with greenery, floral decadence and abundant fruit. Your spring is around the corner.

If you are in a spring, enjoy every day of it. Smell the roses. Take lots of pictures. Soak it all in. Because the seasons come and go.

May we all learn that these seasons are simply part of the process. A necessary step in our growth. May we begin to see there is beauty in the fall and winter.

Why is it so hard to ask for help?

I sat with my phone in hand, staring at the text message app with tears streaming down my face. My son was due in a couple of weeks, and all I needed to do was ask a friend to accompany me to a doctor’s appointment. I was scared to go alone, and I couldn’t type the words without bawling my eyes out.

Why on earth was it so hard to ask for help?

At the end of my pregnancy, things started getting complicated as he was still breech and the due date was creeping closer. My midwife was sending me to see an OB. My husband was out of town for work, and all my family members had work schedules they couldn’t adjust. I had to weigh out which fear was harder to swallow, going to this doctor’s appointment alone or asking for help.

In the end, I had three appointments where I had to ask for different friends to join me. Each time I cried through sending the request.

Since then, I’ve become acutely aware of how hard it is for me to ask for help.

It manifests in many ways. Piling all the tasks for work projects onto my list and having the hardest time asking other people to manage some of the weight.

Hearing the request of “let me know if you need anything,” and never letting anyone know when I need something.

Taking on more than I can handle, and then letting things slip through the cracks.

And so much more.

Two years ago, sitting with my phone in my hand while the tears fell, was a cross point of three fears. The fear of lack of control, the fear of rejection, and the fear of vulnerability.

I remember being most scared that they may say no. It’s as if I was attaching my self-worth to whether they saw my request as a priority in their lives. All three times I had to ask for a companion I started it with “do you have plans on ____.” That way if they were busy I could move on to the next option without having to hear no.

It became obvious to me that I like to be seen as strong and independent. I desperately wanted everything to be okay and for me to be able to rock these appointments solo like it was all no big deal. In asking, I had to admit to them that I was very scared. I had to admit I wasn’t okay. I had to admit I needed a support system to get through this experience.

The other fear was rooted in a lack of control. I had researched all the birth plan options. All the best providers and locations. All the Plan B’s. All of the “if this, then this” scenarios. But I didn’t map this one out. Having a breech baby and changing literally every detail of the birth plan the last couple weeks of the pregnancy wasn’t in the playbook. I felt vulnerable. I felt unprepared. I felt highly uncomfortable. Needing help just added to the vulnerable state I was in.

Since this experience, I have tried practicing asking for help more often. It’s still really hard for me, but at least now I don’t cry through the asks. Here are a few of the things I have learned:

  • Don’t be the friend that says “If you need anything let me know.” Most people don’t even know what they need and if they do, it’s so far out of their comfort zone to communicate it. It will be so hard for them to ask you to help with something, that they will probably stay silent. Just show up. Just do something.
  • The more you practice asking for help, the easier it becomes to recognize the old habits that aren’t serving you. Now when the overwhelm starts to hit, I have a much stronger radar for “I probably need to invite someone into this process to help me carry this load.”
  • Asking for help is a sign of strength. I believe one of the reasons it’s so challenging is it makes us feel weak to ask for help. In reality, it takes great courage.
  • Most people really like to help, they just don’t know how. Letting them know how you could use some help will empower them to feel wanted and needed. Being direct about our needs can actually be helpful to our friends and family.

Thanks for making it to the end of this blog post! Two options to keep going if you want more:

Looking to create more peace in your life? Then I highly recommend downloading the free E-book from my site, Create Peace. Just drop your email below and it will be sent to you.

If you enjoy reading these posts, then drop your email into the box at the footer of the website and you will get an email from me each week with a new post.

Don’t should on me

Yesterday at church I was talking to my priest and mentioned that I’ve been coming as much as I can, but I’m juggling a lot right now. It was obvious she could hear the guilt in my undertone, and she quickly reminded me that the world doesn’t revolve around how we spend our Sunday mornings, and she was delighted to see me whenever I could make it.

It was like she lifted a weight off my shoulders.

It flashed me back to a conversation several years ago. I was invited to a girls night out with a new friend, and I ended up sitting across from her bad ass entrepreneur friend. I was struggling with what to order because they didn’t have a single thing on the menu I wanted. She said to me, “Oh…I see what’s happening here. You’re still catching other people’s guilt.”

Huh?

She said that she stopped participating in the guilt game. There are people who walk around throwing guilt on others, and there are people who walk around catching guilt. Once she realized it was happening, she stopped participating. If there is not something on the menu I want, I don’t HAVE to order something. This concept was too much to wrap my mind around in the moment so I settled on a hot tea, deciding that passing on any food items was enough outside my comfort zone.

I’ve never seen this delightful human again, but she helped change me that night. She told me that when someone starts “shoulding” all over her (telling her what she “should” be doing) she just smiles and says “are you trying to make me feel guilty?”

Since then, there have been a couple times that I’ve felt extremely uncomfortable as someone tried to throw guilt on me, and I decided to test the idea. I smiled and said “are you trying to make me feel guilty right now?” Bam. Conversation ended. It freaking worked.

It’s been almost four years since that night, and I have come so far in managing my guilt. I realized not only did I frequently catch others’ guilt, but I was also regularly projecting onto others as well.

The most common occurrence I’ve noticed of this usually involves the word “should.” What I/you SHOULD be doing or SHOULD NOT be doing. Or maybe SHOULD HAVE done by now. Guilt is usually at the core of this phrase. When I hear the word “should” in my own thoughts I try to ask “according to who?” Often times it’s a result of the comparison game or an unfounded belief system.

A great replacement when having these thoughts or speaking these words is to exchange should with could. “I could have gone, but I chose not to because….” I love using could because it returns the power where it belongs. It gives me back my personal responsibility to do what’s best for my situation, and not what did or didn’t work for others. 

Obviously, I will be working on this for the rest of my life. I mean, just yesterday I was apparently concerned with the fact I thought the priest was thinking I “should” be showing up in the pew more often.

If you are still playing in the game of guilt throwing and catching, I hope you find your path to freedom as well. Just because it’s happening all around us, doesn’t mean we have to participate.

Lower the Standards



We are two weeks into our 12 week course Create Peace, and I’m seeing a reoccurring pattern that is extremely common with the women I coach.

I find myself encouraging them to lower the standards.

This doesn’t seem like what you would expect from a coaching conversation and yet it happens constantly.

What I have noticed is that the women I work with have this innate drive to improve, but the expectations often don’t match the reality.

In a recent coaching conversation, a mom shared with me that she is already waking up at 4:15am to get some quiet time alone before the family starts waking up. In an effort to improve one of her spokes, she was looking for more time in the day and said “I’m struggling with the fact that I can’t wake up any earlier than I already am.”

Woah. Stop right there. Let’s flip the script.

A full night’s rest is an extremely high priority that I always encourage people to rearrange their lives around. Let’s not adjust there.

I shared with her that I look at my priorities and habits alongside each other constantly. I also measure them against the season of life I’m in and what’s realistic.

Currently, I’m in a season where I am not carving out time for a traditional workout, and I refuse to feel any shame about it. My kids are early risers so they wake me up in the mornings and it’s go-go until everyone is at work and school. I pick them up and we go straight into dinner and bedtime routines. By 8:00pm I have my quiet time before I crash. I choose to use that time for writing, coaching, quality time with my husband, social time with friends, self-care, or the 1,000 tasks weighing on my mind.

However, health is still a priority to me. So what that spoke looks like right now is I got a standing desk at work. I jump on the trampoline with my kids to get my heart rate up. We go on walks in the neighborhood and I try to add in some jogging to have a little cardio. I am regularly lifting my 35 pound toddler.

In addition, I pay very close attention to what I’m eating and am maintaining my health through good food choices, which is 80% of it anyway. I do not budge on prioritizing my water intake and my sleep.

I know eventually my seasons will shift and I won’t have a two year old who always wants to crawl on me. One day, I will return to my love of a structured yoga practice and running triathlons. One day I will be in fantastic shape. I will enjoy the rewards and feeling that come with a fit body. In the meantime, I am releasing the shame around these thunder thighs.


But right now, in this season, balancing these priorities, I am not trying to be superwoman. For some women, their workout is a non-negotiable and that’s fantastic. My health is a non-negotiable, but I’ve just had to find ways to stay healthy that look a little different right now.

To bring it back around to the 4:15 a.m. mom, after we talked it through, what she needed wasn’t more hours in the day. What she needed was to tweak the hours she has to be most efficient. She went from setting a habit goal around how early she rises to looking at her habits around social media and setting goals to prevent her from getting sucked into the scroll.

Another client had to lower the standards by releasing the idea that she had to complete this 12 week course in 12 weeks. It remains online indefinitely, so she is now looking to get through the material over the next 6 months instead because life is throwing her some curve balls.

I regularly find myself helping people slow down, take a deep breath and adjust their expectations.

May we all find the grace with our lives and our circumstances to set expectations that match the capacity we have to do and give in our current reality.


Grace and peace my friends,


Sophia Hyde

Thanks for making it to the end of this blog post! Two options to keep going if you want more:

Looking to create more peace in your life? Then I highly recommend downloading the free E-book from my site, Create Peace. Just drop your email below and it will be sent to you.

If you enjoy reading these posts, then drop your email into the box at the footer of the website and you will get an email from me each week with a new post.

When Friendship Hurts

 

In private conversations with mothers, I’ve heard the exact same story over and over again. A new mother wondering what happened with her closest friendships. It’s a painful story I resonate with in deep parts of my soul, but also one I’ve finally come to a peaceful place with and feel healed enough to talk about.

As most of us experience, a majority of friendships are for a season. The season that the two of you share the bond that brought you together. It could have been classmates, coworkers, a church community, a project you were both working on, a neighbor, or a plethora of other commonalities. I came to accept that it was normal to grow apart from some amazing people I shared life with because our seasons no longer aligned. I have a fiercely loyal personality, so this was a hard pill for me to swallow in my twenties.

But none of that could prepare me for the changes that motherhood brought on.

Overtime we develop certain friendships that we believe are our ride-or-dies. Relationships that can withstand any hurdle and are just as intimate as family. The friendship is bigger than our geographic location, career changes, and personal life changes. But as I have experienced, and so many women I have I spoken with, sometimes those are seasons too. When those shift, they catch you by the most surprise and leave you feeling wounded.

Becoming a mother shifts your entire world in a moment. Once that child enters the world, it’s like an earthquake. Everything centers around keeping this human alive. If you are a mother that also chooses to (or needs to) go back to work, that becomes your max capacity. Keeping you and that child alive, fed and bathed while maintaining a career becomes all you have the width and breadth to manage. Your little spare time will most likely go to self-care or a rare date night with your significant other.

When I had my first daughter, on top of the usual adjustments, we also were in the middle of a personal life crisis. We lost our home, moved in with my parents and then moved when she was two weeks old and tried to set up a new home with both of us working from home and taking care of a newborn. It was overwhelming.

When she was about six months old, I picked my head up and realized that during that very challenging season there were some friends that showed up more than I could have expected. They helped us move, brought over a meal, just came and sat with me to be company, even mowed our lawn when my husband left for a month for work when she was five months old. And then I realized there were some people who I thought were my inner circle that had not even come to meet her.

I’m not a woman that keeps a scorecard. I always give the benefit of the doubt, but something this time felt different. My husband, being the peacemaker he is, kept reassuring me that I was overthinking things and these people still loved me and cared about me, they were just busy. So I tried to reach out and make plans but I was given excuse after excuse.

By the time my daughter was a year old, I was finally able to accept that these were seasonal friendships. By “able to accept” I mean I wept many tears and grieved the losses. (At the time they felt like losses, as I healed I realized they were just normal seasonal shifts that I didn’t adjust to very well.)

A similar pruning happened after I had my son. For most of the pregnancy I was in a ton of pain, barely functional, and solo-parenting. After he arrived I had about a month I was home with him before I was back to work. And when he was two months old he landed in the Pediatric ICU for two weeks, five days of which he was on life support. I tear up just thinking of how close we came to losing him and the compassion of the nurses and doctors that carried us through that time.

Again, through that six month period there were people who checked on us regularly and showed up for us. Even my friend who was living in the Middle East sent a baby shower gift, a care package for his arrival and managed to be a support system to us while I was living at the hospital with him. Between our friends and our family, I felt overwhelmed in love. We had been so blessed.

Months later, after the stress and trauma had settled down and I was no longer in survival mode, I reflected back. There were certain people who I had in my inner circle who managed to go missing during that time. A reason for why they couldn’t make the baby shower, too busy to come sit with me when I was home with him, absent during the hospital stay. And these were people that in my mind I would have paused the entire world and inconvenienced my family to show up for them.

If you are a working mom then you know, our time to pour into our friendships is so limited, and it has to be very intentional. Every invitation we say yes to leaves something else in our life neglected. Moments at home with our family to just rest (not clean, or meal prep or grocery shop) are far and few between. To maintain our health and our family’s health, we have to set clear priorities.

Most of the time, I am managing how I spend my time, energy and resources by what or whom can most afford to be neglected, not what I most want or desire to do.

Fast forward a couple years and I am so blessed with amazing people in my life. When I say that, I am including the ones I was referencing in this post that I felt caused pain. (Minus one who I realized was a narcissistic abuser and I had to get help to heal from that one, but that’s a different post for a different day, HAHA! I have absolutely 0 contact with her in any form now)

The arrival of both children taught me so much. Here is what I have learned:

  • I choose to tell myself a story that the actions (or typically lack thereof) that hurt me the most were never, ever them realizing they were hurting me. They were in their own state of survival and they were doing the best they could to get themselves and their families through each day.
  • When I am going to pause the needs of myself and my family to invest in my friendships, I am going to pour into the people that pour into me. I will be a mirror to those I love so that I do not accidentally hurt anyone I care the most about. There is a well-known concept I took to heart, “you are a reflection of the five people you spend the most time with.” After the experience with my second child left me feeling disappointed when some of the people I invested the most time in were not the ones that showed up for me on my darkest of days, I literally got out a sheet of paper. I knew that with two kids, a marriage, a full-time job and a side hustle I would be investing very little time into friendships. I wrote down five names that I wanted to love on the hardest and make sure I always showed up for in the ways they needed me and everything else was bonus.  
  • I have gotten very good at saying no to invitations. It’s never, ever, ever because I don’t WANT to go to something. I am an Enneagram 7. I absolutely LOVE socializing, spontaneous fun and making new memories. Literally…the driving fear of a 7 is FOMO, the fear of missing out. I want to be at all the things, party with all the people and maximize the amount of laughs I can have on this planet.

But I have come to realize that I cannot do all the things. My children literally cry when someone other than mommy tucks them in bed. My job supports our family. My husband craves time with me. I’m blessed with parents and siblings (plus nieces and nephews) that live nearby and I treasure the time we can be together like they are gifts sent directly from God himself. These things will fill up a calendar quickly.

All that to say, when the invitations start coming in for birthday parties, Christmas parties, backyard barbecues or whatever the festivity may be, I pause. I didn’t used to pause. I used to look at the calendar and see if there was a conflict and if not I always went. Now I realize “dinner with my family and putting my kids to bed myself” is an event.

Now I say yes if it’s a mutual friendship (meaning someone that also shows up for me). Or I will say yes if the invitation in an investment in my self-care.

  • I’ve found other ways to love on friends. My love language is quality time and that’s how I WANT to show up for EVERYONE. I just simply can’t. So now I try to show up with words of affirmation a lot because it’s really all I can manage. Maybe it’s a social media comment or DM, maybe it’s a text to check in, or maybe it’s some other form of communication (I don’t make phone calls…don’t be offended, lol). But this is a way I can manage to make someone feel loved without taking away from my family or career.
  • I focus on the gratitude for the people who are in this season. Whether it’s because of a commonality with our children, our careers, living in the same vicinity or whatever we share, I enjoy them to fullest with no expectations. I appreciate the friendships around me for what they are right now, and I don’t expect anyone to still be here when I’m 80. I laugh with them, I cry with them, and I (on rare occasions) make plans with them. Because I’ve been hurt, I don’t hold anyone to the expectation anymore that they can weather all my seasons. It’s not fair. Neither of us know what life can bring. Some of my most favorite friendships I have right now are with people I have only known for the last 2-3 years and that’s okay. They bring so much joy into my life and have been a gift on a silver platter. We will enjoy each other’s company, learn from one another, and one day life may separate us, and now I am perfectly at peace with this truth.

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Dear World…I Give Up

Dear World,

I give up. I give up trying to please you. You are absolutely impossible. You are full of contradictions and hypocrisies. I refuse to let you get under my skin anymore.

I refuse to be yelled at anymore for following my convictions.

I refuse to be belittled because I made a choice different than the one you wanted me to choose.

I will turn you off when you start making me feel like less of a woman, less of a mother, less of a human because I don’t see the world through your lens.

You see, as women, and especially mothers, we have been given so many mixed messages and contradictions that I cannot even keep up with them anymore.

Don’t let your kid have too much sugar, but also never deprive them of an opportunity to “just be a kid” so I will make you feel guilty every time you decline the free sugar being thrown in their face everywhere you go.

Here are 1,000,000 ways to lose the weight and get into shape immediately but also love yourself just as you are and you don’t need to listen to what society says about your body…except for that here’s all the health risks for not having an exercise and food plan that is on point…but YOLO so eat the tiramisu.

Post all the pics of your kids. We love them so much. It makes the world brighter. Don’t post any pics of your kids, you’re invading their privacy and subjecting them to the risk of being on a porn site.

You’re a horrible human if you don’t follow the CDC schedule for vaccinations for a baby but also, here’s all the potential side effects and risks that inherently come with injecting something foreign into your small child.

Do whatever it takes to get your child into the most affluent school you can afford, or the best public school that you can afford the real estate to get into the district. But oh, all the parents abandoning neighborhood schools are ruining the public education system and causing education inequality.

Never let your child out of your sight but don’t be a psychotic helicopter parent.

Here is every book, podcast, Pinterest board, magazine and documentary on how to organize your house and keep it clean, but also don’t be OCD and stressed out over a messy house.

Dear society, you told me to aim for the sky and dream of being whatever I wanted when I grew up and aspire to climb the highest mountains. Then you shamed me when I wanted to follow those aspirations and be a mother too. I was apparently supposed to sacrifice all of that to be a “good mom.” And you shamed my friends when they decided they were so dedicated to those dreams they didn’t want to be a wife or a mother. So which is it?

2020, I can’t with you anymore.

You want me to stand up for what is right except when it isn’t want you want to hear. Apparently that doesn’t apply when we have a difference of opinion on what “right” looks like, or more realistically, how to get there.

So I’ve decided…I dissent.

I will beat to my own drum. I will live a life that requires no one’s approval. I will begin each day in my quiet meditation with my God. I will discuss my decisions with my partner because my choices affect his life. But everyone else is optional.

I don’t care if my presence makes you feel uncomfortable.

I don’t care if what you thought was best for your kid is different than what I thought was best for mine.

I don’t care if my clothes choices aren’t in style right now. I literally could not care less what Instagram influencers are wearing in their feeds.

I don’t owe you any explanations.

To all my female friends, may you find the strength to mute the voices.

May you step into your greatness, without needing anyone’s approval.

May you find the joy and the peace that comes from showing up in this world with full authenticity.  

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson