2020 WTF

When I think back on 2020 I am inclined to say, it was a great year for me. I am also inclined to say, saying that feels weird because 2020 was a shit show! I am not even sure where I was March-September. I know I was in school and I know the kids were not. What I do remember is it all working out somehow and yet still not sure how it all fell into place so well, in such a chaotic time….but it did.

The kids were home, Leo was home, and I was home. ALL of us together, under the same roof for at least three months. Then I was able to return to clinics, but Leo was now graduated from school and could stay home while I did my school and clinics, because they had a hiring freeze at the hospital during that time. It was the perfect way for it to work out, and yet it was a frustrating time to be me because I would get up and go to school all day, do clinics as well and then come home to a house of people that LITERALLY just sat there all day on their asses….and then get asked what’s the plan for dinner. I was studying non-stop and still the kids would be knocking on my door when they needed something, while Leo laid on the couch. I was still doing the boys laundry, folding it, putting it all away. I was still doing all the grocery shopping and cooking, and on the weekends I was cleaning the fucking house. 2020 WTF, but 2020 didn’t really have anything to do with that. This was something that had been created. What that was, was disrespect.

Disrespect by me…because what was I teaching my boys? That their wives should be “taking care of them”? What a worn out train of thought. We take care of each other…..by doing that we operate as a team. It was disrespect by me TO me! Why was I demanding so much of myself? Why did I feel guilty taking a bath or going to the beach? Why did I disrespect my own body so much as to try to make her go, go, go? Why did I feel guilt when I wasn’t doing that to myself? I have lived most of our marriage as a stay at home wife/mother. I was damn good at it, but it created a dynamic in my life that I was always going to do it, so why did they even have to try. That was what was happening. But by being presented with this problem, 2020 allowed me to heal it. Leo now plans dinner more, the boys do their own laundry and I put away the guilt attached to self-love. So, that is how 2020 became a great year for me. Each time I was presented with an issue that seemed to be “against” me in some way….I just told myself it wasn’t and dug into healing it. Anything happening in my life could not be against me…if I grew from it.

That is how I did it….but it wasn’t easy. It is the hardest thing to change your mind set. It takes lots of practice and patience (which I have none). It takes, sitting with each of the feeling and working through if they are reasonable thoughts or if they are based in fear. Once you figure that out then you have to put action behind your findings. If they are fear based then you have to do it scared, if the feelings are valid, then you have to figure out how to heal them. Speak your truth, know your boundaries, live life in the now. You must live your life from love….never fear. If the fear creeps in you may have to sit with it. What are you afraid of, why does that scare you? You may have to analyze it and dissect it. But I promise if you do you will either watch the fear fall away or you will understand that this is one of those moments, where life is about to challenge you to “do it scared” and after doing the said thing “scared” you will redirect your life closer to your true purpose.

2020 was filled with those moments, not just for me personally but as a country….as a world. Moments where we sit in fear, what are our choices? Where can we be helpful in this chaos? What can we offer to bring more peace? Can we make a difference? I believe we can. I believe the world is a huge rolling wave of energy and you can change the ripple with just one person doing better. We are all so connected, we are one! So, by each of us taking 2020 and learning from those moments, we can change the world. Healing those inner struggles, whether from fear or trauma, healing is a langue based in love. Love is the way we change the world. Not just love for others, but love for yourself! The quickest way to find love for others is through finding acceptance for yourself.

Oh, that is a hard one! Remember that stupid saying “No one will ever love you if you don’t love yourself” Man, I always hated that saying. Like, WTF does that even mean? Well, I learned what it means, because if we are all connected then the way you love yourself is a reflection of the way you think other will love you. So, if you do not love yourself, how can you imagine others loving you? It is kind of deep but it makes sense. 2020 taught me to love myself. It asked more of my physical body than any other year. It asked more and in order to step up to this “do it scared” moment in my own life, I had to start appreciating what my body did for me each day. When I started massage therapy school I wanted to learn to massage….but it presented me with so much more than that! It gave me knowledge of how my body was working. It gave me so many ah ha moments. Like, wide eyed and in awe moments. When I realized how absolutely amazing the human body was, it was life changing. When I realized how connected it all was, mind, brain, nerves, the muscles and joints. It opened up a world of healing I never knew I could have access to. It could have also broke me down, because school has been hard. It is a physical job and I work at what some would consider a disadvantage (I would have too last year at this same time). I focused my mind set on healing and love….and I won. In loving myself fully, I then required that from those around me, because once I loved myself I knew what that should feel like.

I became a version of myself I didn’t know was there. I love working out and taking that time for myself. When I feel cute, I really feel cute. It is so funny, as a women I have run the range of emotions over my body. I have felt some negative way about my body since I can remember. I have always looked at myself and criticized myself in some way. Not enough here, too much there. Hair not the right texture, eyes not the right size. My smile has always bothered me…..I am all teeth! I have wrinkles and sagging skin. I have scars all over my body from different surgeries/accidents and I have titanium in my back. I have either always felt too skinny or too fat. Never satisfied. My poor mental health was a mess. I started using gratitude to heal that problem, and it has worked wonders! But ya know what I noticed…..when I was complaining about my life (health, body, depression, marriage….) people would tell me I should see myself as good enough. They said “count your blessings” They would encourage me to be more kind to myself and to see my beauty. Now that I do, they all want me to shut up. Haha People are never happy.

“Women should love themselves as they are!” –Women love themselves- “No, not like that……that makes us uncomfortable!”

“You should count your blessings!” –I start counting my blessings- “No, not like that…..that is bragging!”

“You should get a job to support yourself!” – I go back to school to learn a craft- “No, not like that…..you cannot do that for a living.”

“You should speak your truth!” –I speak all my truths and sound like a weirdo- “No, not like that…..that is not something we want to hear!”

“You should….you should….you should…..!” UGH!!!!! Shut up already! haha Humans are weird!

This is where 2020 taught me about boundaries! Look, people want to love you. Why would they not want to love you, look at you, you are amazing! But people want to love you the way they want you. They put these expectations on you and they ask you to measure up. They ask you to be more this, and less that. They want you to be happy but not happier than them because then that makes them feel a certain way. They want to bask in your light but then dim it when they think you are shining too bright. They ask you to show up in your best version again and again but they do not show up in your worse. I imagine most people do not do this because they are “bad” people or even because they do not love you. They just do not know how to love. Maybe they love themselves that same way and so that is how they show others love. If we are a reflection of ourselves, imagine how sad it must be to treat yourself like that…..and yet most of us do. We ask so much of ourselves, that that is what we then ask of others….and it is not very fair. I was struggling with this earlier in the year and I was talking to a friend. I asked them how I love others without expectations and still get so hurt when they let me down. If I really have no expectations from them, then their absence would not hurt so much, right? They said “Expectations and boundaries are not the same thing.” HUH - what a smart man. But it gave me a way to heal.

Boundaries are hard, because I do not want to put expectations on my friends. I want to love them fully as they are, and some of them are harder to love. They have walls built up around themselves and it is hard to breakthrough. I want to love them exactly like that…I never want them to feel like they need to be something different. I love them just as they are, and that is truth. The problem is this, loving someone who really doesn’t let you fully in, is hard. Especially for someone like me who is so in your face with my love. I am “a lot” in that department. So, I end up continually trying to love them enough that they love me back the same way, and they don’t because that is who they are and no amount of my love is going to change that. So, in trying to love them harder, am I not then expecting them to love me the same? And isn’t that then having an expectation of them? It doesn’t sound like a bad thing. Asking others to love you the way you love them. To love you as big as you love. 2020 taught me it is NOT wrong to ask for that in return, but what is wrong is to not understand where your boundaries are in how much “lack of love” you will put up with?

Loving someone bigger than they love you is something I have always struggled with. I am not sure if this is a “truth” or a “perspective” thing. Maybe people do love me as big, but because of past trauma I cannot feel it, or maybe it is just perceived that way because of the way we love. Maybe it isn’t “less” but instead “different”. I am not sure how to heal this yet but I think boundaries play a big role in it. I cannot continue to pour into people that never pour anything back in. It is draining. It is draining to keep trying to “prove” yourself to people. There are literally people that will never like you. It will have nothing to do with you, but instead their own stuff. Why keep trying to get them to see you as special? If they cannot see it, does it make it untrue? Ahhh, there is was…..if they do not see that I am special, am I then not special? The answer is no, just because they do not see you as special it doesn’t mean you are not special. Because for each one of those people that don’t see you as special, there are a whole bunch that do….and you know what, that STILL isn’t what makes you special. You are special because YOU SEE YOURSELF AS SPECIAL!! You are special because of the way you love, the way you serve, the way you make other smile and laugh. You are special because you were made special. Whether others see/feel it or not will never change what it is…but you decide what it is, no one else!

2020 has been a wild ride and I still often find myself thinking death is the only place peace can be found. But more often than that I find myself feeling peace at the times when “old me” would never see it. When “2019 me” would spend days upon days crying and feeling terrible, “2020 me” sits with my feelings and we become friends. They tell me what they need to not be scared. They whisper in my ear all their desires in love and relationships. I sit with the feelings and they show me what they want in the future. They tell me all the ways we “shouldn’t” do it because those ways are scary….then we decide to do it that way because sometimes you have to “do it scared”. We sit and we cry while we call to us all the powers that be. We call in all the angels and magic. We pray to God and we ask to be lead in ways that sever our greatest purpose. I sit and in the end, everything falls into place. It doesn’t mean it is easy, because sometimes the right choices are the hardest ones to make. Sometimes the right doesn’t equal easy….instead it equals truth and purpose. The right choice is mostly the hard one. We cannot grow where we are comfortable. We must do the hard things….without them we get stagnant. 2020 pushed me to grow! But man, what a wild ride!

In closing….not just this blog post but this year in general, I think it important to remember. 2020, or any other year is just that….any other year. Each year we deal with trials and tribulations. Every time we think we have it figured out, life will deliver us to a fork in the road….and both trails look like a spooky forest. No matter if it is 2020 or 2021, life is hard. It will make you feel like peace is never to be found. It makes you wish for “easy” but no one said it was going to be easy. No one said easy was the right choice. Do the hard stuff! Do the stuff that makes you scared. Do it alone or find someone to do it with….just do it! Yes, it is about to be a new year….but in all actuality next year will just be more of the same, and the only way to make it different is to do things differently. To respond in a better way. To grow from the place you have started to grow stagnant. To let the hard things shape you into a person that finds peace here, in each moment. 2020 or any other year, has possibilities for amazing adventures. So, yes make this coming year the most….because it will also be hard. Make it your best one because as much as it could be the best year ever, it has the same possibilities of being the worse.....and it is really all up to you.