What Lessons Did You Learn in 2013?

What lessons did the year 2013 bring for me?

I've been thinking hard about this since the new year began and it's only now that I can put it  into words. It's said that you cannot change anyone else and at some level, most of us know that it is true. Still, it doesn't stop many of us from trying to change others to what we want them to be.   We may do it with our partners, our children and even our parents. Heck, even our pets are cajoled and scolded until they are trained to how we think they should be!

I think that when we feel the need to change someone, it's coming from our deepest insecure fearful selves. We are  trying to change the things about them that scare us because they are actually a reflection of things we ourselves might need to change. They are things that make us feel unsafe and different.  It may also be that we worry what others think and this brings insecurities to the fore. We become stressed and fearful because we may not have what we perceive as the same secure life as other people.  We forget that life itself is insecure. and we forget that we are not all the same. After all, it feels safer to be part of a group, doesn't it? Even if we forget that within that group there may be someone who doesn't entirely fit the mould.

I see that we are one in a human sense concerning the things we actually need like food and love, but we also have different personalities and desires.  Therefore one size does not fit all and we do not have to conform in the way we sometimes allow ourselves to feel we should. We set ourselves up for stress and upset by our constant wanting to change others to do things the way we think  they should be done and be the way we want them to be. While I have always intrinsically known this, now I have proved this truth to myself.

I have been experimenting on and off with the path of least resistance, trying to only be motivated by love. When I have used it, life has been peaceful but when I have reverted to my usual railing against the way things are,all hell breaks lose. Currently, I am biting my tongue, avoiding confrontation, avoiding giving my negative opinions and refusing to get riled up by jokes or comments. I am also pausing and responding mindfully rather than mindlessly reacting and already it's working better for me than the constant railing against people or conditions. I had a huge opportunity to put all this into practice just yesterday and it was nice to come away feeling positive and calm. 

When I mentioned all this to someone just this morning, they suggested that behaving like this was a 'cop out' and people acting this way were allowing themselves to be doormats. I can see what they are trying to say but I feel that not accepting what is and constantly railing against it is even more damaging. For me it is damaging to my nerves, my emotions, my physical being and my soul. Changing my own behaviours rather than constantly fighting against others,is a better path, at least it is for me. I am not saying that we should accept life the way it is and that's that. I am saying that we could accept it for what it is and see it as a work in progress, always growing and improving things as we go. We could just do it in a quieter, calmer and hopefully more effective way. I see it as a letting go of the behaviours and attitudes that don't serve me. I see that only a change and shift within myself can bring about a lasting change to dump the turmoil.

So far, following this path of least resistance, while also calmy speaking my needs, while not reacting to barbs and comments, is bringing different reactions from other people. In a way, some of the changes I originally wanted to force are coming about simply by changing or shifting something within myself.

One of the lessons that I finally learned as 2013 came to a close was that trying to change other people is trying to control them. I spent two whole days reflecting on this truth at every given moment and realised that it really is true that the only person we can change is ourselves.

So for 2014, I hope to have learned enough that I can speak calmy my needs as a mother, wife, daughter, sister and do it from a calm place. I will not volunteer too much information, let others manipulate me or try to do it to them, not feel that I have to constantly explain myself to others and strive to be quietly effective in the things I set out to do .

I had an upsetting end to the year 2013 and the beginning of 2014 but it's served to finally teach me a few things. It is said that the same things will keep happening to you over and over until you finally learn the lesson! Aint that the truth!

What have you learned in 2013?
x

The Stare

I'm standing by the living room door. He's playing happily with his toys. He asks why I am staring at him. I only realise I'm doing it when he asks the question.  He asks me to stop because he doesn't like it. I think how my mother often does the same to me.

I don't like when she does it either. I worry it makes her wistful, nostalgic or scared in some way. I also feel she may be criticising things about me. She's eighty and she's my mother and I want her to stay strong. She's my mother. Even though I'm grown I need her to be the Mother in my life still.

But I'm a mother now myself and there's no getting away from the fact that I do that staring thing too.  When I do it, my thoughts travel. They travel to the future and they travel to the past. Probably in just the same way as my mother's thoughts do. When I lived abroad for a time, my flat mate said I worried too much about what my mother thought. I still do.

I'm thinking as I stare, of what a magical miracle he is. I'm hoping that he's not lonely  and I'm wishing that I could  have given him a sibling.  I can only try to keep him close to his cousins and friends as compensation for that. I think I'm doing ok.  We don't see his cousins all the time but he knows each and every one of them. We talk about each of them and look at photographs. That's more than I did, growing up. But I had four brothers and that's the difference.

I'm hoping for the future that he will be well adjusted even though I've never followed any child rearing books. Oh yes, I've googled stuff but exploring theories and then practicing them are two very different things. I tend to have a more flexible, play it by ear approach. When the midwives were forcing the breastfeeding policy on to me, I stopped as soon as we got home.  Some may think thats selfish but I was so horrified by that whole experience of people and things pulling and pushing at me, I couldn't bond with my baby.  As far as I was concerned, once he got the Colostrom, that was it. I felt it was better for him to have a functioning mother, than one who was weeping all the time because she felt pressured into breastfeeding him.    It doesn't seem to have physically harmed him. He's rarely sick and has only ever vomited three or four times in his six years of life. 

When others were force feeding their kids at three months or six months because the book had told them to, I knew he wasn't ready. He was seven months when he went onto solids and he had no problems at all. Like me, he is a late bloomer. He didn't walk or get his first tooth until fifteen months old. I didn't worry though. I knew he would do it in his own time. He was a great sleeper. We were lucky. No pacing the floor throughout the night and no bleary heads in the mornings.

When I stare, although I hope I have done some things right, I feel the guilt of the times I haven't been the mother I  aim to be. The times I've lost my temper, lost my patience and almost lost my mind. The time he was barely two years old and he caught his finger in the hinge of the kitchen door. He'd been clinging  to my leg and I swung the door closed not realising his hand was there. A trip to the hospital in an ambulance. An operation to sew his fingertip back on. His vulnerability as he was wheeled back to me unconscious.  The feeling that I had put him there. His Dad had been away on business. If hasn't been for my fantastic sister in law and next door neighbours, I would have felt like the worst mother in the world.

His behaviour isn't always all it could be but he's only just turned Six. I know he's pushing boundaries etc. I don't need the books to tell me that. Its listening to other people that makes me worry about his behaviour but its also listening to other people that makes me stop. We've all pushed the boundaries at certain points in our lives and come out the other side.  He's strong willed and I understand that now and can change my own behaviour accordingly.  I'm hoping that the boundaries we do put in place will be just what he needs.

 I'm hoping for the future that I haven't transferred my over-sensitivity to him, that my relationship with his father, my husband won't impact negatively on him. We're doing our best with what we ourselves learned from our own parents .Sometimes it's effortless but more often than not it's hard work. But that's okay. Life is a lifelong learning process as I prove everyday.

Everything about him is magical, the fact that he's part me and part his Dad. I hope he gets his Dad's brains. And not my tendency to veer away from the logical and drive myself crazy looking for the answer to life's mysteries.

How can I explain all this to him, the miracle of becoming his mother in my forties? How can I explainThe reasons why I often stare at him? How can I tell him how lucky we are that he is in this world at all? Will he hate me if and when he finds out that at one time I thought I didn't want kids because I was scared to embrace motherhood and new life. 

He once asked me if I was glad he picked me as his mother. I didn't understand what he meant. Then he told me that when he was up in heaven, before he was born, he picked me. He says he saw me putting out the bins and he looked down and told Holy God that he wanted THAT Mammy and THAT Daddy.  He said he told my father, his Grandad Pat, who he never actually met, that he wanted him to fly him down and magic him into that lady's tummy! He says Grandad Pats job in heaven is to fly babies down into the tummies of the mothers they pick! I love his imagination and I love his take on things. And Yes! I can safely say that I'm very glad he picked me.

There will be a time when my own mother is no longer around. When that time inevitably comes, I will be more than a mother.  I will be THE  mother in mine and my sons life. While I have my own mother I still  feel mothered and protected, as if I havent fully grown into the idea I'm a mother myself. I just hope that when it happens, I can do half as good a job as her, stare or no stare.

My father used to call her stare 'the look' but 'the look' was reserved for him and that's a whole different story!

I know now I've been unfair when I've berated my mother for staring at me. Rather than think it might possibly be a negative thing, as I have often done, I want my son to know that the 'stare' just means I love him more than I can say.

Can Love Of Work Become Work Of Love?

The other day my little boy came home from school and asked me why I didn't work. He said a boy at school had asked him what I worked at and he had told them 'nothing'!

I explained to him that I don't work outside the home at the current time but that I do work every day. I may be on a career break from my job but that didn't mean that I was doing nothing. I told him that cooking, cleaning, taking care of him, his Dad, his Granny and our cats all qualifies as work.  He looked so sad and turned away from me. I had to coax him to tell me why my answer had upset him so.

It transpires that he was disappointed to find that I thought of looking after him as being work.  I think he has a point. I love looking after him and my family so maybe I should 't be thinking of what I do for them in this way.  After all if you are doing something you love, can it be classified as work?  I think it was Confucius who first realised this thousands of years ago. And here I am, having to be reminded of this by my five year old (sorry, five and three quarters!) son.

'Speaking' of work, I then asked him if he had any thoughts of what he would like to work at when he is a grown up.He used to say he wanted to be a doctor so he could fix people and make them better. Indeed, any time we had a doctor visit, he insisted on going all dressed up in his doctors outfit, carrying his bag of equipment. Apparently he no longer wants to be a doctor or a vet as he heard that in training you have to look at dead bodies and brains and things and anyway he wouldn't like to have to to blood tests!

The other thing that he often talked about being was a bin man.  That idea is also out the window as he thinks it would be too hard to be working out in rain and snow and sun.

He put on his thinking face and then said he had a great idea.  He wouldn't work at all, he would do something he loves too and still make money.  When I asked him what the idea was, I could hardly contain my giggles.  He said he will just keep doing runs and walks and a bit of playing and get people to sponsor him.  He would go round all the neighbours and relatives and get them to sponsor him to do these things all the time. Then he would be doing something he loves and make money too. The poor child was so so disappointed when I explained to him, that people usually got sponsored to donate the money to charity and that he would have to give it all away.

Whatever happens in his future, I sincerely hope that he will have a love for whatever 'work' he does and so the work will become the work of love.

What about you? Do you love your work, whatever it may be?

Go For It! Don't Wait A Moment Longer!

Go For It!  Don't wait!

A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault. John Henry Newman

I started this blog in May 2010 when I was feeling a little lonely. I started this blog when I felt I wanted to reach out to others in the same position as me.  I also started this blog to indulge my love of writing.

When I put the blog out there, a friend commented that she thought I was brave to do it. She  felt that she would not be able to write well enough to share her experiences with the world.  I knew exactly what she meant. I felt just the same. However, I remembered John Henry Newman's quote above and decided I would go ahead with my plan. I love quotes and before sharing them regularly on my Facebook page, I collected them in a journal. These wise words have stayed with me and so, I decided, that even if my writing didn't appeal to everyone, I would forge ahead.

Naturally, as is the human condition, it is inevitable that some people will find fault.  However, I think that no matter what we choose to do in life there will always be people who support us and people who don't, people who agree with us and people who disagree.  That's just life and the way it is.  I know that now and I can accept that now.  But I didn't always feel this way. I didn't always 'know' this. Just one person finding fault would have sent me on a downward spiral.  A bad comment would have confirmed to me how terrible I really was.

As a forty something first time mum of a now five year old boy, I have done most things later in life than many of my peers.  I was in my thirties when I got married, late thirties when I learned to drive, thirty nine when I set up a small petminding business, almost forty when I learned to swim, forty one when I bought a house, forty four when I took up my yoga and blogging lifestyle and almost forty two when I became a parent!

I used to put things off through lack of confidence and a belief that I wouldn't be able to cope like other people. I used to worry that people would find fault with whatever I did.  I even put off motherhood through fear and lack of self esteem and self worth.  Luckily for me, I woke up and got on with all the above things before it really did get too late.

I learned that you cannot wait until you can do it so well that nobody could find fault. I learned that there will always be people like this and they should not hold the key to your happiness..  So I urge you, no matter what age you are, what stage of life you're at, what dream you hold dear, what you want to achieve, GO FOR IT and DON'T WAIT!

Happy Schooldays and Happy Halloween

Since I last posted here, my little boy's first day at school has come and gone.  That day filled me with delight and pride for the little 'big' boy that he has become but also with tears and nostalgia for the little 'baby' boy he no longer is.

On his first day, he got into his uniform reluctantly and held both our hands tightly as he entered the classroom with trepidation. He joined in with the other children at a round table adorned with crayons and playthings. Although he looked happy enough, it was such a wrench to leave him, that even my normally controlled husband had a tear in his eye!


We need not have worried ourselves in the least about him.  After his first day, he was bursting with excitement and really happy that one of his best friends and  a few from his preschool were in his class.When I took him to visit his Granny in his uniform, he was so proud of himself and so exuberant about it all.

I couldn't help but think back to my own first day, many moons ago (approximately 42!) and let me say, it was very very different. I didn't like the shirt and tie, the green checked duffle coat and the heavy schoolbag. I was terrified to be thrust into this noisy, crowded unfamiliar room with a bunch of strangers.  I wailed loudly when my mother left me.  I still remember sitting at my individual wooden desk with the inkwell and measurements on it,( inherited from the dark ages it seemed) and feeling so desolate and confused. To make matters even stranger, many of the teachers and staff were nuns and in those days, wore full regalia!  Nowadays, the children are seated in a circle together, given crayons and things to play with and gently introduced to their new world.  Most children have had some experience of preschool too, so it makes for an easier transition all round.  In my day, nobody but the privileged few had done this.

Now that Halloween is nearly upon us, the nightly sounds of bangers and fireworks going off is becoming a familiar sound.  I can't say that it is a time of year that I particularly enjoy, mainly for the reason that it's a scary time for the animals.  However, it is an exciting time for the children so I am begrudgingly throwing myself into things for the sake of my five year old son.  He dressed up as a ghost last year and as he has an imaginary friend in Casper the Ghost, this was very apt.  This year he is obsessed with Spiderman and will probably wear the costume his Granny Joan (my mother) got him.  We will go to a Halloween party on Monday and then he will go to visit his cousins for trick or treating on Halloween itself.

When I was an child, we didn't have fancy shop bought costumes but made our own out of black binliners and old sheets and blankets.  I used to wear a wig of my mothers that had survived from the sixties and I looked forward to wearing it each year. We then went around a few friends and neighbours in disguise chanting our mantra 'help the halloween party'.  As far as I know this was something we said here in Ireland when they were saying 'trick or treat' in other places. It was a phrase that guilted your neighbours into giving you lots of treats although the treats back then were much healthier.  We mainly received apples, oranges, bananas, coconuts and peanuts where nowadays they seem to get a lot of sugary things!

I would love to hear some of your memories of your first day at school and your childhood Halloween rituals so feel free to share!

Sisters or Friends? Who Do You Turn To?

The best thing about having a sister was that I always had a friend - Calie Rae Turner

For as long as I can remember, I have always wished for a  sister.  And never more so, as now that I am older.  I sometimes feel quite lonely even though I have a husband, child, brothers, mother and pets. When I was young I used to pretend that my best friend was my sister.  She didn't have to do that as she had two of her own.

Oh sure, I have some close friends but we are  not as involved in each others lives as we would be if we were related.  I feel that this is true in most cases, though, I accept, not all. I do have a friend who never got along with her sister growing up and that has never changed.

But as far as I can see, that type of thing usually reverses itself. Some of my friends, though their relationships with their sisters might have been competitive and fractured growing up, are now the closest people I know. They  have become closer as they have had families and grown older.  They support each other and they count on each other as the  person/people they can really rely on, apart from themselves.

Most of my friends had children before I did and although we always met from time to time and are still in touch, we drifted apart a little. I fear I am mostly responsible for this, through my own insecurities about not having children. These insecurities meant that I distanced myself rather more than I had intended to.

Then at the advanced age of almost forty two, I had my child, only to find that my friends were at a different stage of life. I imagine that I now feel how my friends who had children when I didn't, felt, when I seemed to show little interest. 

One of my good friends has three sisters and although they are all totally different personalities, they are completely there for each other.  She agrees that growing up they might have had fights but they also swapped clothes and had lots of great nights out together.  Now that they are older, with families of their own, they meet up at least once a week for brunch as well as at family get togethers. She is also delighted that their own children have that same closeness growing up together as they did.  I  don't think I am a jealous person but I admit that I sometimes feel envious when I see them all together. 

I have cousins who are sisters and I sometimes feel like an outsider when we meet. I know they would never want me to feel like that but it's there. They know all each others little secrets and foibles and can communicate with each other in ways that I cannot. I know twin sisters who are so close, I feel as if there is really something missing in my life, when I see them. When I recently asked one of them how she felt about her sister she said ' She is my right arm. She is my best friend. I could tell her anything, no matter how bad and know she would still love me. She is the one person I would trust completely with my kids if anything were to happen to me.  I would be lost without her. In short, she is the other half of me'.  

I have four brothers who have terrific partners and although I love them all and get on with them, I wouldn't say that we are exceptionally close.  Again, I feel it's more to do with my own past insecurities than with anything they do or do not do. I have two wonderful sister-in-laws but their lives are so busy, we don't get the time to get together much.

I feel that people who have close relationships with their sisters are very blessed. The same goes for people who feel that sisterly bond with their friends.


What I am wondering about you all out there is.....  who is it you turn to in times of need?  Your Sisters or your Friends?  Do you count your sisters as your best friends or indeed your friends as your sisters?  

Can You Ever Get Enough Hugs? How do you feel?

Can you ever get enough hugs?  The answer for some, would be a resounding yes because they don't consider themselves to be huggy people. They are uncomfortable with touchy, feely people and so they retreat from, rather than respond to the hugs.

The answer for others, like my mother and other senior citizens that I have asked, would be no, because they simply do not get many, if any at all.

I would consider myself to be slightly resistant to hugs. I feel a little uncomfortable and find it hard to hug back. My brothers, who were never particularly huggy growing up, now greet and say goodbye with one. At a kiddie's party the other week, it was as if people could sense this from me as they didn't greet me with a hug as they did with others. I always feel a certain caginess about hugging and I wonder why, since I do feel good when I am given one.  I wonder if it's because of my background or if its just something inert in me.  As my Dad got older he used to give us what we called 'bone crusher' hugs, but I can't remember him doing that when we were younger. My mother hugged us a lot as children, but not so much when we grew up.

Yet, as a mother, I have no difficulty in accepting hugs from my little son.  There is nothing that fills me with so much joy as a hug from those little arms.  My mother loves to get hugs from her grandchildren as do many of her friends with theirs.  They say they simply don't get as many these days.  As their spouses and close relatives and friends are passing on, the hugs are few and far between.  Since I heard this, I have been making efforts to hug my mother much more. Sometimes it's hard, after a conversation where I am being criticised as only mothers can do with their daughters, but I do it anyway. Though she wants and accepts the hugs and always seems delighted, I can still sense a kind of reticence where she wants to respond but holds back.  If we get hugged less as we get older, I better start giving and receiving more now!

Once, on a family holiday to France, we passed through Barcelona.  In the square, at the Cathedral, it felt like such a happy place.  There were people hanging around with signs offering 'free hugs' and there were people just going up to avail of them.

For someone who is slightly nervous of being hugged,  I felt compelled to give and receive one.  The feeling was very strong and I thought I might actually do it.  Then I looked at my parents-in-law who are quite reserved and knew they wouldn't approve.  My father in law thought they were weirdos and since I often suspect he thinks I am too, I decided against it!  They were more interested in entering the Cathedral for the latin mass so that is what I ended up doing too.  It was beautiful but I would have preferred a free hug, given that I am usually so reserved about them.

There is even a facebook page and a website dedicated to the 'Free Hugs'. You can see an example here.

There is a woman known as 'Amma' who travels the world hugging people.  She believes in the loving healing power of the hug.  Apparently she has hugged more than 20 million people in all parts of the world.  Now there is someone who is not afraid of hugs!

Am I alone with my feelings on this?  How do you feel about hugs?