YOU? You moms? You’re good moms. Each one of you. Each of us. Sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes anxiety and a racing heart get in the way of recognizing the truth. Sometimes guilt over just about anything steals the joy we think we should always be feeling.
That joy is OURS. We can own it. We’re allowed. We should. There is no guilt. We did not do anything wrong. It is not our fault.
We’re allowed to feel happy.
(Andrea Bates)
What’s the one thing we don’t give ourselves enough of?
Permission.
We don’t give ourselves permission to grieve, to hurt, to cry, to take the day off from things we need to – to take time for ourselves. So when we do try to unwind, this lack of “permission” to relax interferes with our ability to fully unwind.
Instead of unwinding, our minds race with what we should be doing or how we will get everything we need to get accomplished once we’re done unwinding.
We don’t give ourselves permission to grieve how WE need to grieve. It’s a process, an impossibly intimate and personal one at that. No grief is like the next. So instead, we “buck up” and move on, judged by those who think we haven’t done so quickly enough.
Then there are expectations, levels of impossible perfection. Yes, we should strive to be the best we can be at all times but you know what? Sometimes the best you can be is just that – the best YOU can be. Not the best she can be, or the best he can be, but the best YOU can be. It may not measure up to what you see in your head as the best you, but at the end of the day, as long as you’ve given it your all, that’s what matters.
The other thing we don’t do often enough is give ourselves permission to love ourselves or love those around us with wild abandon. We hold back a little piece of ourselves too often because we fear vulnerability. The act of blooming fully scares many of us because we have known pain and refuse to let ourselves get wounded again.
But here’s the thing about that – we don’t live if we hold ourselves back or if we let others change our sense of selves. Permission for truly being yourself is something only you can give. Realizing this is a huge leap forward toward healing any pain which may have frozen you in the past. As a popular Disney song commands us – let it go.
I’ve been growing into permission to be me. There have been days where I’ve been a wonderfully glorious blossom and others where I’ve been a wilted flower. But it’s okay because each day, I’ve been the best damn blossom and wilted flower I can be, which is what matters when the sun sets.
Then, in the evening sky, the moon rises. It waxes, it wanes, form changing with the twilight of every evening until it grows full then fades away completely.
My favourite is when the moon hangs low and grins down at us, like Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat. Sometimes, I imagine there is a devious cat just behind the inky darkness, waiting to pounce on us.
Moments like these are what help me hold onto whimsy in the face of the craziness of daily living.
Focus on the little things.
Give yourself permission to be the best YOU that you can be.
Love with wild abandon. Laugh with your belly. Sing with joy.
Above all else, grin back at the Cheshire cat and never forget to hold onto the whimsical.
Do you remember when you were a kid? The littlest things made us happy, didn’t they? Like those machines that you put quarters in and get tiny toys that break the instant oxygen hits them? They were fabulous for all of 1.5 seconds, right? Or how about sitting in your room, building things out of Legos or playing with Play-doh? It did not take much to put a smile on our faces. Ahhh, those were the days.
Flash forward to adulthood. Get up at the break of down to drink did coffee, run around like crazy to get ready for work and/or get the kids ready for school and/or both, ultimately forget something, have to go back for it, drop the kids off, go to work, or run errands, then finally get home at the end of the day, dinner, maybe a little time to yourself, and then bam. Bedtime. How the hell bedtime get here so fast? Close your eyes after setting your alarm so you can do it all again the next day.
Did you take any time for joy? Any little things tucked into your day that made you smile and giggle as if you were a 5 year old who just got the toy you wanted out of the quarter machine? No? Well, that’s a damn shame.
The key, as a lot of people will tell you, to staying happy, is to maintain a stranglehold on that childhood innocence and wonder. Pick up just enough common sense and cynicism to function in the grown up world but dear GOD don’t let that childhood innocence and wonder dissipate. Do stupid stuff. Let go. Have fun. Laugh inappropriately and loudly at everything, anything, and nothing at all. Do things that make you smile, often, with people you love.
Stuff like I do with J.
Stuff like what we did tonight at the car wash.
We ran to the grocery store to pick up a few things to finish off dinner. Then, we spotted the doughnuts. Lately we had denied ourselves this guilty pleasure but tonight they were salacious sirens nestled in a forest of sweet treats, begging to be rescued. We reluctantly (okay, not so reluctantly) rescued six of them, planning to take them home and hug them ever so gently with our stomachs after sending them for a ride down the esophagus flume.
After the grocery store, we checked to see if the car wash was open. The past week and a half has covered the car in salt, snow, and other random ick but because of the frigid temperatures, we have been unable to wash it because well, the water would just freeze instantly.
The car wash was open, so we turned in after a horde of cars passed by. Two lanes were open, and we, we chose the one with the idiot. His driver side door was open, his feet on the ground, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip as if it were a man clinging to a cliff waiting for a stiff breeze to come along. He wore a hat, a fedora style hat, and glasses. He slid his card into the slot, tapped the screen, and stared curiously at the screen. One of the employees came over to help him, sliding his card in for him. As we idled behind him, we watched the vehicle in the other lane surge forward.
I evaluated the situation after we sat there for a couple more minutes, put the car in reverse, and headed for the other lane. We pulled up, I activated the screen, made my choices, paid, and moved forward as the winner in the other lane sat there, continuing to struggle with the machine.
An employee directed us onto the auto-fed car wash. As I popped the car into neutral, J grabbed the doughnuts.
“Which one you want? The cruller?”
“Sure! Just a minute.” I put my wallet away, then took the doughnut. I squealed like a little kid. Doughnuts. In the car wash. I took out my phone and snapped a pic. There was just something so gleefully delicious about eating a sweet donut whilst hidden in the soapy flaps and rollers of the car wash. It felt so wrong yet so damn good. Best damn cruller ever.
Joy in life is found in the simplest of things, the things we forget how to see when we get past a certain age. Just like Journey advises… don’t stop believing.
And now? I’m gonna have a doughnut at 10pm at night.
Because joy.
‘Tis the season to split oneself between the nostalgia of days gone by and the promising anticipation of sparkling new things yet to arrive. It’s the time of year we find ourselves inundated by “Best of” lists and the ever daunting “resolution” lists. December ends and January begins in an odd state of limbo swirling around us as if it were a beautiful and haunting blizzard threatening to swallow us whole if we stopped long enough to stare at the accumulating drifts of lists beneath our feet.
Is it okay for us to stop and stare at this vortex of nostalgia and anticipation? Will we be awestruck by the ferocity of the electricity dancing about in the overhead clouds? Or should we doggedly march forward, one right after the other, heads down, ignoring the invigorating storm?
Stop and smell the roses, we are told. But we are also told not to let the grass grow under our feet. Take the road less traveled, it will make all the difference. Do not go gentle into the good night, rage, rage against the light. We are all meant to meet that light one day. But until then, take the road less traveled and refuse to do anything less than rage against it. Yawp until you can yawp no more. Live life, don’t let life live you.
We seek, in life, a balance of joy and sorrow. We reach for joy when the sorrow shreds our soul to the bone, bleeding our hearts dry until there is nothing left, not even the marrow to suck out of life. So we are still, frozen, in grief, pain, whatever the reason, until joy surges forward and replenishes the marrow and our life force. With this resurgence comes the drive to rage against life. How do I know this? Because I have been there – splayed open for the world to see, my heart atrophied and hardened on the bare floor, aching for hope and love. It stayed there awhile, resigned to never finding love again, trapped in the penumbra of a hovel deep in the woods. Yet, it still beat and now, it is full of life-blood, dancing in the light of joy because of a daring rescue.
I wish that for those who read this. I know so many who have lost or faced difficult changes this past year. I am here to tell you that it gets better. The grey lifts, the sun rises, and the sky does fill with spectacular colour. It never stopped. It’s just waiting for you rise up from beneath the waves and see the tango of exploding soft oranges, pinks, and pale blues as you watch, breathlessly, the sun languidly traverse a cerulean sky until the clouds, holding hands, bed the sun beneath the horizon. As your feet find the shore, caressing the wet sand for the first time in eons, you exhale, letting go of the shattered soul which has claimed you for far too long. You slink out of your old soul and into your new one, the promises of joy filling your heart with a joy more beautiful than any fully bloomed scarlet rose covered gently in sweet morning dew.
Breathe.
Yawp.
Live.
This, this is your year.
Make it so.
We recently moved. Believe me, I want to tell you why because it was hell, but I just am not ready to do so yet for a couple of reason. First, I’m still recovering, and second, we haven’t quite wrapped up the final details of the move with our former residence yet. Once we’re free, I really look forward to sharing everything. Because whoa.
One of the things that the last place we lived did to me, particularly over the past couple of months, was give me a case of near-agoraphobia. I hated going out because I never knew what I’d come home to and if I’d be able to make it from my car to our door without running into someone.
Now that we’re at the new place, we can go places. I can go places by myself. I still force myself to get off the couch and go, though, because the memories are so fresh and the fear is still bubbling just below the surface that if I go out….
But today I forced myself to get up and run errands. I needed to return a couple of things plus I needed to pick up a couple of things. So I got ready, gathered the returns and the receipts, and got in my car.
After I merged onto the interstate, a car flew past me. One of the bumper stickers caught my eye.
It looked a lot like this:
The reaction was visceral. Tears welled, my heart raced (more than it already was thanks to minor anxiety), and I was MOVED. The car continued on its way and I realized that had I been even 2 seconds later, I would not have seen this perfectly apropos message.
And then I pulled into Sam’s Club for my first return.
I was greeted by this lovely sight:
The owner came out before I got out of my car (the club wasn’t open for us non-business folk just yet). On my way in, I stopped and talked with her for a few minutes. I told her how I had just seen a car with a bumper sticker that said “Don’t Postpone Joy” and how shortly after that, I pulled in to see her van. She was very friendly and open to talking.
She said a lot of people smile at it. “Why not put it on the side of my van? It’s a free billboard!”
She delivers phone books, she said, and sometimes that can irritate people. But when they see the cheerful message, it kind of neutralizes her throwing the phone book in their driveway, etc.
Her inspiration?
Her son received a bracelet with the saying on it and she was quite taken with it. “Why NOT?!?” Her daughter also has a tattoo of the saying on her ankle. (Her son walked up whilst I was talking with her and made a point of telling me about his bracelet. They all seemed quite used to discussing the saying on the side of the van. SO grateful I had the opportunity to talk with all three of them.)
Live. Love. Laugh.
Spray painted on the side of a rickety old van parked in a handicapped spot.
If that’s not proof that there IS joy everywhere you turn…
Don’t postpone your joy.
Go out and live, love, and laugh.
That’s the message the universe sent me this morning.
What an amazing Monday.