Tag Archives: changing life

THIRTEEN

My first-born son is now a teenager. This has both he and I spinning. I HAVE A TEENAGE SON. How this happened I don’t know because I still feel like a teenager myself.

My sweet boy has resisted growing older every step of the way. He has always told us he does not want to grow up – even as young as 3 years old he knew that childhood was the best of times. I guess maybe his father and I have not made adulthood seem like much fun.

In his observation at skate parks and out in the world, teenagers have been both extremely annoying and also terrifying to him. He did not want to become a teenager. He was truly sad about the inevitability of it. Did I mention that neither of us can believe it actually happened? Here we are. With the growth spurts and puberty and cracking voice and big feet and interest in girls and changing vocabulary and eye rolling and everything.

I asked him on his birthday if he felt any different and he actually sat and contemplated this for a few minutes and finally told me the he did feel different. He said he feels SAFER.

SAFER! I mean…WOW. And obviously I asked him why and he told me that he is not a child any more so he is safer. He is a teenager. More responsible and equipped to take care of himself.

God, I could just cry my face off. Why does this seem so profound to me? This recognition that he has reached a new level of independence and it is so real to him? It has always been my job to keep him safe, and of course still is, but he also feels that he has a role to play in is own safety and he is up for the task.

How can he be so self-aware?

And why don’t I ever feel safer? I mean, safer because of my own self and not external forces like a police officer is standing nearby or I have a life jacket on.  If anything I feel less safe as time goes on. More vulnerable. More fragile. More mortal.

Part of me wants to open the can of worms about gender – is feeling safe a right of passage for boys? A natural state? So many questions beg to be asked but I am tired. I am busy. I don’t have the capacity to got there right now and I also wonder if that is a fundamental issue in our society. All of us women are too tapped out to rail against a modern civilized world in which being a female is still considered a weakness. The older I get the clearer it is to me, the more I see it and hear it. This pervasive tone of sexism here in our own very progressive country. AND how to describe the outrage I feel on behalf of all women who are living under total oppression all around the world, and I would go so far as to say hated in their societies. Unable to drive, receive an education, have independence. Made to cover themselves. Made to feel shame. I am ashamed. Ashamed that I do nothing to fight it but feel pissed off and blow off steam in what is essentially a secret blog.

Well, not nothing. I am a Mother to boys. I have a very serious and real responsibility to raise them to understand and respect the differences between women and men, and to shatter every myth that exists in our society about women and their inferiority. It overwhelms me at times. Like now.

I guess what is sinking in for me is that I don’t have much time. Childhood is so FLEETING. Life is a blink of an eye. I feel very urgent right now about reorganizing my priorities and where I put my energy and thoughts and effort. I am working on it.

For now, I take every chance I get to hug that kid as hard as I can AND he lets me. He has never been a particularly huggy kid, but I think he knows our hugging days are numbered, or maybe he knows I need it right now, or maybe someone gave him a stern lecture but I get to hug him and I do not take that for granted.

Holy Shit. Thirteen.

 

 

 

 

Word Power

So I have been thinking about how I keep using the word crisis to describe my current state of life. It is nagging away at me because the word is just so extreme and not at all accurate for how I really feel. I feel so bratty and ungrateful every time I write it.

Because all over the world people are experiencing real crisis. The millions of Syrians fleeing violence and destruction. The wonderfully kind people of Istanbul who are under increasing threat from ISIS suicide bombers.   The guy I went to high school with who told us on my facebook that his wife died this morning. The little boy with terminal cancer that the community is fundraising for.

I imagine any one of them reading this blog…I cringe. Poor me. I hate my pores and I don’t want to wear a bra anymore. BOO FUCKING HOO. I am basically a monster.

I have learned in the past how powerful words can be. A little while ago my bank card was compromised. I had to reset my PIN number and I froze up at the pin pad and said to the teller “HELP”, I didn’t think about this! I don’t know what to make it that I will remember!” And then, I was inspired by the very words I had just said and I made my pin# 4357 which spells HELP. I use my bank card for everything. Several times a day. The more I used my bank card, the more pathetic I felt. It took my a while to clue in that my PIN # was seriously bringing me down. When I finally realized it was negatively impacting my life  I changed it again. To 4673 which spells HOPE, and all of a sudden I was being uplifted throughout the day. It made a remarkable difference for me.

(FYI my card got compromised AGAIN. So I changed it again. Don’t try to guess.)

Part of my job involves periodically proof reading the work of my team, normally proposals and final reports, sometimes emails.  One of my talents is wordsmithing other people’s writing.  (My own…Meh. Not so much.) I hunt out insecure words like I just, or I think, inserting confident words and partnership words. Replacing words like Challenge with Opportunity.  I absolutely love transforming the tone of business writing to better reflect the values and culture of our company. I want the reader to have a positive experience, feel inspired, know they made the right choice to work with us, and keep working with us.

In a million years I would not let a document out the door that contained the word crisis (Actually, in the context of climate change I do allow it, but that is another conversation) so why would I allow myself to throw it around so casually in relation to myself?

When I met my husband he was using positive affirmations every day and it totally worked out amazingly for him, after all, he found the woman of his dreams!

I know a few other people who have testified to the power of positive affirmations. I myself have never really gone there…I really suck at talking to myself. I can’t even thank myself for giving my body the gift of yoga at the end of class when the instructor suggests it. Maybe this is something I need to work on. Here, I’ll try right now:

 

 

Nope. And No. Not there yet. Maybe not there ever. Maybe it is the cheesy posters that I can’t get behind?

Here is my personal truth. My affirmation for today.

I am blessed. I have so much more than I need. My body mostly works great. I know all the best people (yup, me and the Donald). I have a loving husband and healthy children and a beautiful extended family and the best friends a girl could want or need.

To even suggest something is out of sorts feels profoundly selfish. But yet, something is out of sorts.

Bottom line is that even if technically I am having a midlife crisis, it is not sitting well with my to call it that. To repeatedly say that makes me feel desperate and sick and sad instead of just searching.

So if not a crisis what?  A midlife scavenger hunt? A midlife transition? An awakening? An adjustment? A conversion?  Renewal? Shift? Transformation?

When I figure it out I will let you know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

42

Happy Birthday to me!

All signs indicate that I am in the throws of a classic midlife crisis. Those signs being my 12 year old son and the internet telling me so (because 12 year old boys know everything and those buzzfeed quizzes are never wrong). And probably other people might agree if I asked them. (Question, how do you close comments on this thing?)

My hours of research for a cure have been simultaneously reassuring and terrifying. Reassuring is the fact that I am NOT crazy, even though I feel a little bonkers, restless, and reckless. Even though I have spent several hours on the internet looking at full torso tattoos of cherry blossoms and pricing them out, or googling shit like “How to disappear without a trace and start a new life”. Just kidding. I didn’t do that last one. But I did start doing drugs again. Sort of.

By doing drugs, I don’t actually mean I have been doing real drugs. I was being dramatic so you would be more intrigued.  I mean I have been eating these pot laced lollipops (not technically drugs, at least here in Canada) someone gave me that were made for cancer patients and hardly have any THC and instead of being fun and enlightening it makes me either obsessively reorganize my cupboards, or lie in bed slightly paranoid and very drowsily hiding from everyone. Yup, crashing and burning in a spectacular fashion over here folks.

Back to NOT being crazy. It turns out all of those classic symptoms are a really healthy signal from the soul that I am not “living my personal truth” and it is time to get real. Which brings me to the terrifying part. What is my personal truth? And how do I live it without blowing our lives up to smithereens? And where do I get the courage to do that?

So now, on my 42nd birthday I am going to start a list of things that are true about me, but I don’t live them. Yet.

***Spoiler alert. Not starting off too deep here. That will come later. I think.

1/ I want to sing Karaoke but never have because am completely ashamed of my singing voice which is truly awful. But fuck it. I want to do it.

2/ I don’t want to wear bras anymore. I have tiny boobs and they are holding up ok. Not great, but ok. One is visibly larger the other, but still, technically I don’t need a bra. I have been wearing stupid push up bras my whole bra wearing life, that make me appear to have super nice symmetrical boobs two cup sizes bigger than they actually are. Like, I feel so stupid!!! Make my boobs look terrific, so a dude will want me, only to discover the great deception, and not actually care. I locked Chuck in to the situation 15 years ago, and so who is the push up bra really for? I wear metal and padding on my chest for society in general? It is so fucked up. I just feel like if I stopped now people would be shocked by the real me and it might be scandalous. Plus nipples. They aren’t in right now. UG.

3/ Speaking of wearing things… I want to wear clothes I actually like every day of the week. I am a business woman with corporate clients, and even though business is fairly casual these days…still. I can’t wear yoga pants or ripped jeans to work. Doc martens don’t work with a dress the way they used to back in the day.  And flip flops. Am I right?

4/ Coffee. I want to drink coffee anytime of the day or night instead of just one in the morning because if I have more than one or drink it after noon I am awake all night long freaking out and counting down the hours I have left to sleep and then I don’t and I can’t function and do my job the next day. Friday is my favourite day for many reasons but a biggie is that I can drink coffee in the afternoon. This needs to not feel so special. It is just sad. I guess the bigger issue here is that I have a bedtime. I HAVE A BEDTIME. I don’t want to have a bedtime guys.

5/ I hate winter. Like a lot. My whole life. It is soul destroying for me. Enough with this shit!

Today however the weather is GORGEOUS. Like perfection. So I am leaving it here for now and going outside. My goal is to keep adding to this list and hopefully start making some good progress towards living my personal truth. Stay tuned!