I am SUCCESSFUL!

I have been trying to curate articles to share with a group of women living in the Awesome Women’s Ensemble (our online community of like-minded & like-hearted gals on a journey to embrace the magical mess of our daily lives) this month for our exploration of Redefining Success and it has been damn near impossible to find the information I am looking for in someone else’s words.

When you hold a thought of a theme like that anywhere in life it always seems to permeate other areas. That’s the power of the subconscious right there! Bringing your attention to the things your mind and heart are seeking. This happens whether we realize it or not and I’ve used this knowing to build the community in AWE and love to work with it in all my offerings to my clients. I say let’s make friends with our subconscious and try to send our thoughts and attention down a path that will serve us, grow us, and expand us!

Every time I sit down to pull words together to share I set an intention for why I am sharing in the first place. Why do I feel like it would benefit someone to read this creation? Why do I feel it has a place in your inbox or on your social media feed? My intention today is to let you know you are not alone. I’ve been in enough conversations with women to know that the most powerful thought shared in nearly everything gathering is ‘Oh my, ME TOO!’ My other, smaller, intention is to let you know that this is the work we do every month in AWE, we grab a topic, see if it fits, twist it around and make it our own. We do this through questions, reflective thinking, community conversations and sharing ‘Oh my, ME TOO!’ over and over again.

So here’s my journey with redefining success this past week…

Lucas had a cold and we basically shut down for a week. Colds in the time of covid sure have been an interesting adventure. I’d say by Thursday, with just the odd nose wipe and lingering barking cough, had it been a few years ago I would have been inclined to send him back to school. It was just a cold, I appreciate the routine of school he now has, other families are counting on me to care for their children so that they can live their work lives, and I was eager to ‘get back to normal’.

And yet I have another thought about this, how much were we rushing back to feeling better enough pre-covid? Are we now giving ourselves, and our littles, the time to heal & rest properly? I had a little chuckle at the beginning of the school year when the supply list was sent out and we were asked to bring a box of Kleenex and the accompanying information regarding the sick policy encouraged everyone to stay home if they had a runny nose. My questioning was confirmed when I shared this with a teacher, and she said that they hadn’t even touched the supply of Kleenex that the previous Kindergarten group had supplied.

So, we hunkered down for a week and gave the boy the time he needed to heal and rest. I was really great at the cuddles for about a day and then I noticed an irritation building in me. I was feeling pulled, rushed, tired, stressed, hurried, all in days that were much slower now than what they usually are. Thanks to a fairly strong practice of noticing and reflecting I felt an awareness of being in this exact situation before, actually more times than I can count, I was quicker to name it, accept it and live in it.

I was ‘should-ing’ all over myself. What was happening was that I was equating my time when I am home with just my littles, and none of our extras, as time off for me, like holidays. Times when I have less kids to care for so I can get other things done. Times when there is less strain on my body and brain and I should be able to organize that dreaded basement, spend days getting ahead on meal prep, clean behind the stove, create a new financial plan for our family, all of those things that just don’t seem to get done during normal life. And then these things didn’t get done and I got so freakin’ mad at myself and the moodiness set in. I got tired, irritable, snappy….on a week where one of my little beings needed me to be soft, and snuggly, and warm. Hello misalignment!!

Thankfully, due to the conversations with a fabulous group of women I realized that this was a great opportunity for me to guide my thoughts back to my redefinition of success.

I am successful because I have created a life that allows me to stop when I need to.

I have this time for him, and eventually her, as soon as this nasty little cold bug jumps across their shared bedroom in the middle of the night. I have the opportunity to quite easily shut down our lives and give them the time that they need. I’d like to acknowledge here that this ease also comes with the guilt of not being there for the extra families that count on me and that has been a whole other journey in setting the boundaries needed to trust that I am trusted and also a knowing that not all guilt is horrible and should be banished from our lives. That some guilt can come from a place of love and may always just be there.

I am successful because I can let my boy lay on the cough, sneeze in my face, run my heads through his beautiful brown hair and scratch his back because those are the things that calm him, that’s what he is needing right now. Just his Mom, by his side, allowing him to be sick, allowing his little body to do it’s job and not rushing him through this. Not making his being sick a burden on myself.

One thing that has been heartbreaking to watch over the past couple of years has been the load of life put on women, on Moms, during this and I’m not going to share anything new and shocking here reminding you how over worked many women are. There is a thread that I would like to highlight that I am hearing in many conversations, and it goes something like this ‘I’m so glad my company let’s me work from home because now I can be home when my kids are sick, when they need me.’ Wouldn’t it be lovely if the conversation went like this ‘I am so glad that my company respects me and my family enough to give me the time off required to be with my little ones, or to rest myself, when rest is what is needed most’. And wouldn’t it be even more lovely if the conversation went like this ‘I honor myself enough to ask for what I need. I recognize the time and space I need to remain connected to myself through times when others need me and I celebrate the fact that I take that time!’…ok, baby steps!

I don’t know how we get there, but I do know nothing will be given to us unless we ask for it. I am happy for those that feel they can balance it all, that can be on the conference call and administering medicine or plugging in the humidifier but where are you? Are you present on the call or are you present tucking them in? Was I present on the couch running my fingers through his sweaty hair while I was worried about not finishing organizing the pantry before I wanted to get dinner on the stove?

There is so much shame and guilt that comes with always questioning whether or not we are in the ‘right’ place that it fills up all the space that could be used questioning what our right place is, that choice is ours…not theirs!

And you do not have to have kids to feel this way. Think about the last time you were feeling unwell, how unwell do you actually have to feel before you stop? How much work did you take home because you thought you might not make it in the next day?

There are some media messages that really get under my skin, like make me want to turn off the TV mad. Luckily thanks to streaming I don’t see a lot of them anymore but one that is still stuck in the pit of my stomach is the Nyquil add that says, “Mom’s don’t take sick days, Moms take Nyquil”. NO, MOMS TAKE SICK DAYS IF THEY NEED IT GOD DAMN IT! Stop making us think that powering through is success!

So, what does this past week of my life have to do with success? It was a successful mindful moment reminder for me. When I started to feel my heart racing and my brain get fuzzy and my breath was all the way up in my throat, I pushed my breath further down in to my stomach and asked myself, ‘What is success right now, in this minute?’ And always the answer wasn’t finishing this blog (which I am finally sitting down at 5 am to write because I could get up early because finally everyone slept through the night) it wasn’t scrubbing the walls or filling the freezer. Success this past week was watching him play Minecraft, it was laying on the floor and coloring, it was doing makeovers with his little sister’s makeup, it was sleeping over in his room for the night, and it was just being there with a smile and a knowing that this was the most important work.

Success was the flow between questioning and knowing. I think that will always be success in any situation I find myself in, fulfilling or draining, stressful or exciting, fast or slow. We are successful when we find our own answers.  

What does success mean to you? Finish this statement in 5 different ways, I am successful when ________________ .