Today…Bertha has given me an assignment…she must be feeling a little teacherly…since we went to the school Christmas party Friday night…schmoozing with the teachers and all…but I digress…and…wait…who am I kidding…she got teacherly with me…long before I started working at a school…geez…
Anyway…today’s assignment is to write about letting go…trusting…and setting boundaries…and it sounds easy…but…I’m finding it a bit challenging…probably the three most difficult areas of my life…do I really want to talk about them…
Not really…it’s vulnerable…it’s peeling the artichoke…it will get hairy before I get to the heart of it…and when I’m there…do I really want to share…not so sure…couldn’t I just go to the store and buy an artichoke…
Bertha calls class to attention…1…2…3…eyes on me…in her most kindergarten teacherly voice…time to start…
Funny…since I’ve started this blog this morning…I’ve had a few phone calls…and each conversation has led to letting go in some way or another…so…I know this is what I need to talk about…here goes…
Letting go…there’s a finesse to letting go…I’m getting better at it…okay there was that pair of worn out sandals that I held on to for two years after they were no longer wearable…well…they might develop a cure for flip flop blow-out one day…and they were my favorite…and it’s not like I was trying to wear them or anything…I just looked at them from time to time…with fond memories…
If your room suddenly got brighter…it was my light bulb turning on…
Trusting…challenging at best…how do you trust someone who has seemingly led you down the primrose path…where you are gobbled up by a monster…at least one time too many…and…in case there’s any doubt…I’m talking about me…
But…you know…that’s exactly why I can trust myself…every time I took that path…got gobbled up by the monster…even though my gut was saying…RUN…I proved my instincts were good…they were right…I can trust them…if I hadn’t taken the path…I’d never have known if there was a gobbling monster or not…
Oh…the light is getting brighter…
Setting Boundaries…I wrote about this in Bertha-Size Your Life…cute little story about Bertha in a Mardi Gras gown…sweeping the kitchen floor…because the dirt was over her limit…
But…in reality…this has been the most challenging for me…it feels cold and lonely…like one of those chain link fences with the barbed wire on top…like search lights and border patrols…and blood hounds in the swamp…
Bertha laughs…says it’s much softer than all that…
She says that it’s just living my truth…that every time…I’m honest with myself…and others…about who I am…that I’ve set a boundary…she says that boundaries aren’t walls to keep me in or others out…boundaries…are just being who I am…
Well…what can I say…the room is fully lit now…and Bertha was right…this was what I needed to write…I just hope she gets out of teacherly mode now…I just saw her go by with a paddle…and it wasn’t for a canoe…if you know what I mean…
Jane
This one speaks to me. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that, Betty. It was actually a difficult piece for me to write...it took two days...and I think I will spend a few more hours in the contemplation chair before I'm done.
ReplyDeleteIt helps to know that you found it useful as well.