In the past few weeks, I have been faced with some triumphs and some failures.
…My daughter is finally grabbing her sippee cup and saying Momma (heaven). She runs to me, grabs my legs, looks into my eye…smiles…My hubby and I are becoming more spontaneous…and tonight we were able to go out to dinner with our little one year old AND have a conversation
…I read 3 whole chapters in a book that I have been trying to read for months. I saw a student FINALLY understand addition and subtraction with an unknown number after crying days prior because he just did not get it… (oh how he beamed with joy)
…I organized an entire closet to ready myself for the mountains of work that lie before me to complete this internship. I cooked my ass off, and I completed most of my holiday shopping… I wrote in my journal—truly and thoughtfully, AND I wrote in my daughter’s journal.
And then I felt these failures. The kind of failures that made me question WHAT!!! I am doing, where I am going…??? And, how the hell am I going to get there!!?? But then, I thought about what I WANT to do, and I thought about HOW do I make that happen…and that is when the light shone—and I began to build an action plan.
I started thinking about how we are really all replaceable. You know, when I quit working at the Gap, they just found another t-shirt folder. When I broke up with Bobby, he found another girlfriend. My friendship has been filled by new friends, and last year, I learned just how replaceable I am in my own career.
….I mean, I am not a superhero or anything…I don’t have powers…I am replaceable.
When I started thinking about this, I felt a sense of release. I simply cannot be “it all.”
And even though we have all grown since high school (it was like sooo long ago, yet oddly still resurfaces from time to time), and we have all had our huge epiphany: “I don’t want to be like the crowd-I’m glad I didn’t follow THAT…”—the truth is we all still want to be accepted-to belong.
I started thinking about that…
Damnit, I know who I am. Deep down.
And I DON’T want to be like everyone else. I can’t think of a single person I know that I wish I was…well, ok, maybe Julia Roberts. But, the truth is, while I **admire** certain qualities about certain people in my life-I actually like who I am. And I am damn proud of the evolution I have made in this past year-despite some of the broken pieces.
For me to let toys to be everywhere, crumbs stay on the floor, and my closet to be slightly disorganized…and NOT freak out—that’s progress, people. For me to not take work home because my daughter deserves my undivided time (esp when she goes to bed at 7)—that’s progress. For me to stop obcessing about every pound I have gained or lost this past year—that’s progress…I’m even beginning to slip in my pop culture knowledge, and I don’t care. …I think these small pieces of “letting it go” have made me a better person in some ways. I believe this because my dearest of friends have noticed, commented, and last week, when my husband was in my classroom with my daughter for a surprise visit, he said I was different with the kids…more at ease, less rigid (well…. ). J
But, then…the more I thought about it, as replaceable as I may be in some areas…there are others that only I, me…can be. Like to my husband…to my mother, father, brother…to my closest of closest friends-the ones who will always stand by me…and to my daughter-who will only ever have one mommy, me. I owe it to them to let my triumphs shine…and shine.
Ahhh, an action plan…
"You have to be going somewhere to have the energy to get there."
— Dr. Mehmet Oz
