The work.

First things first, wow (seriously, WOW) and THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH. Apologies for the aggressive use of all CAPS but sometimes it's just the only way a girl can make her point. I'm blown away by all the love I felt after sharing that first post.

I truly felt like I was on a high from the response I received. I was encouraged and energized and committed and ready to spill my guts on a daily basis. My mind was bouncing from idea to idea and there was no way I was going to lose that momentum.

Then life happened. You know- work, relationships, maintaining healthy routines, self sabotage. Oh, self sabotage isn't a part of your daily routine? (Yes, I'm laying the sarcasm on thick but there is a point in here somewhere.)

In the week following my mom's birthday shit hit the fan. And by shit hit the fan I mean I deliberately and strategically threw crap directly into the center of the spinning blades creating a horrific mess I'm still in the midst of mopping up. It's an excessive analogy, yes, but I need to drive my point home here.

I have a history of this behavior and have my entire life. I can say with some level of certainty that many other people out there struggle with the same pattern (I'm lookin' at you, martyrs). The difference here for me is that because of the grief work I'm doing, I'm at least a teeny, tiny bit quicker to observe what's happening. Unfortunately sometimes it's not soon enough.

Brief side note on the whole "grief work" thing. In my humble opinion that no one asked for, "grief work" is just "work". It's the work every person on this planet should be doing to better themselves and humanity. I truly believe that to my core. I refer to my work as grief work because loss is what opened me up to this awakening and triggered the need for change in my life. Of course it's not the only catalyst for change.

You'll notice I use the term awakening a lot. Before my mom's death I was operating from an egocentric, unconscious, auto-pilot state. It's like that cliché saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That's where I was. Repeating toxic relationship patterns and unaware of why I continued to struggle.

The dark beauty of experiencing loss is that you become totally raw and exposed. You have less tolerance for things that are inauthentic. Your energy has to be reserved for yourself. That space allows for deep exploration but can also feel isolating and lonely. The “beauty” piece is that if you choose to explore the discomfort and pain, you can move through that unconscious operating mode and begin to wake up and live life intentionally.

The "work" (are you tired of hearing that yet?) is in debunking core beliefs. I am a human with learned behaviors, patterns and core beliefs. You are too. From the moment we were all little bitty peanuts, our minds functioned like sponges. We took on the happenings of the world around us and our egos created stories to protect those beliefs and ourselves.

The ego gets a bad rap. Ego stories don't necessarily equate to wrong or right. Those stories exist for a reason. For example, look at fear. Fear helps me make smart decisions like not walking home alone at 2 in the morning (way to go fear- thanks for keeping me safe). But fear can also show up in sneaky ways when it's not needed and take over. Fear can keep you in an unhealthy relationship or hold you back from quitting the job you can't stand. You follow?

When we start looking inward and digging around, energy shifts and creates a vibration that in turn puts things in motion. More often than not when I start poking around I'm very unaware of that energy shift. The week of mom's birthday I moved and mixed and did all the things to shift energy when I wrote that first blog post, and I did it blindly (read unconsciously). Then my own fear-based ego story (who I fondly refer to as Fanny Fear) took over.

When I'm "awake" and operating from a place of clarity I know to tell Fanny she can kick rocks and I'll call her when I need her. Unfortunately I was operating from a highly emotional space and told Fanny to hop in the drivers seat and gun-it to crazy town. From there I continued to live in a space of scarcity and resorted right back to my unconscious behavior patterns picking at people closest to me. Doing so created a false sense of control and therefore safety.

The lesson in this very vague situation I'm describing is that it's called work for a reason. It's difficult and messy and just because you've been in therapy for 2 years doesn't mean you've got it figured out (ahem, talking to myself here). The work has to become a habit. You have to retrain your operating system and reverse 30 years of learned behaviors. You have to bring awareness to everything you do which can feel exhausting.

I can continue this work for the rest of my life and I will undoubtedly still fuck up. And that's because I'm human. And that's also OK. The point isn't to be perfect, it's to learn and grow. In that process is learning lessons of self compassion and grace. It's not a matter of getting it all right, it's a matter of coping with difficulties using healthier responses.

It's about being aware of those old habits that trigger ego responses. When Fanny shows up I can choose to greet her, laugh at her (and myself because naming emotions- what am I five?) and in turn disarm her. Sometimes I'll see her immediately, sometimes I need my partner to help me disarm her, and sometimes I invite her in and we throw all the shit in the fan together until a week later when I come to.

We all have a choice in everything we do. We can choose to be critical and stunt our growth, or we can choose to laugh and embrace what's brought us to where we are today. Queen martyr over here knows how miserable it is to be negative and choose isolation. I don't always choose it first, but I'm learning the laugh at yourself route is always SO much easier.

I promised I had a point, and I think there's one in here somewhere. Full disclosure, I wrote this post over the course of several days. I kept revisiting what I’d written trying to accurately sum up what I wanted to say. I tweaked and revised and finally felt like I perfected my message. I left my laptop open to go start cooking dinner and when I returned to publish my post my auto save failed me and all my words were gone. Poof. See ya never.

And then I cried in defeat and made myself a cocktail.

So as I’m back to finish and post, I think that was my mom fucking with me and my high and mighty message about grace and self compassion. “Preach all you want but how are you gonna handle this one?”

I’m choosing to move on and let go of perfection. I‘m choosing to add back in the use of “fuck” I deleted several times at risk of sounding crass (I am my mother’s daughter and if we‘ve ever spoken in person you know very well I‘m an avid user of colorful language). I’m choosing to let this be. I‘m choosing to push publish and go to bed.

TTFN (that one‘s for all my millennial AIM users).