Day 89: Passing on the right stuff
Okay, so there are a few different things I could write about, but honestly the most pressing issue (and also the most difficult to pin down) is Cambria and teaching her how to be the "best Cambria" she can be.
Let me start by saying how much I love and appreciate my family. Growing up I was influenced by both nature and nurture (anyone else?). And as with everything, there were good and bad attributes from both. One of the bigger challenges were that mental illness ran in my family, so in terms of nature, I had those odds against me.
In terms of nurture, I consider myself very lucky to have parents who love me so much and my siblings and I really did have a good childhood. But once I became an adult, I learned that for me personally, I couldn't deal with my emotions by either sweeping them under the rug or letting them completely overwhelm me until I was debilitated. I needed to find my own way of handling my issues, and observing my parents and friends handling their issues in ways that may have worked for them, wasn't giving me enough options to help myself.
While I still struggle...since I am alive and human...I am proud of my growth and learnings. I feel like I'm in a pretty solid place and even when I get off track, I know how to find my way back.
The timing couldn't be better because now I've got a 9-year-old who is beginning her journey of exploring her own feelings, emotions and issues and ways of dealing with them. My biggest worry is that I won't equip her with the tools she needs to be happy, healthy and strong. I know what works for me or my Mom or my Dad or anyone else may not work for her. But I want to give her my best shot so she's got a stable foundation to work from.
I think if I focus on her - knowing that she's so carefully watching me (way more than she's actually listening to me) - than that helps motivate me more than anything to work on myself and be aware of how I'm dealing with my issues. No one expects perfection here, but there is a strong expectation of effort and progress. That's all I want from her, and that's all I want from myself.
I started writing this after we had a bit of an issue. I was putting together her new bed frame and she was supposed to be cleaning her room at the same time. But she seemed to lack the motivation to really work hard and kept getting distracted. So every time I noticed her "taking a break," I decided I should take a break too. After all, why should I be working for her if she can't even work for her?
Finally after she displayed a brilliant performance of "Well I just don't know what to do!", I decided I could spend my time in a better way and left her room. As I started getting ready for bed and starting up my computer for my post, she would appear on multiple occasions with an emotionally-charged request that I give her attention in one way or another, likely wanting me to indulge her in more of her award-winning role of "The Victim". When her small efforts for big returns wasn't paying off like she hoped, she went back into her room and waited.
I collected my thoughts and decided it wasn't okay to have both of us go to bed in the current state, so I set my computer down, went into her room, gave her a 2 minute talk about how it's difficult, but imperative to overcome our pride and stubbornness, and that it's still admirable to apologize after-the-fact if we can't seem to change our route of negativity in the present (which is definitely something I can relate to), listened to her talk about something related to our discussion and then something completely unrelated...
And then I laid down with her in bed and read part of her new book - The One and Only Ivan. Which I think is going to be a big hit.
Let me start by saying how much I love and appreciate my family. Growing up I was influenced by both nature and nurture (anyone else?). And as with everything, there were good and bad attributes from both. One of the bigger challenges were that mental illness ran in my family, so in terms of nature, I had those odds against me.
In terms of nurture, I consider myself very lucky to have parents who love me so much and my siblings and I really did have a good childhood. But once I became an adult, I learned that for me personally, I couldn't deal with my emotions by either sweeping them under the rug or letting them completely overwhelm me until I was debilitated. I needed to find my own way of handling my issues, and observing my parents and friends handling their issues in ways that may have worked for them, wasn't giving me enough options to help myself.
While I still struggle...since I am alive and human...I am proud of my growth and learnings. I feel like I'm in a pretty solid place and even when I get off track, I know how to find my way back.
The timing couldn't be better because now I've got a 9-year-old who is beginning her journey of exploring her own feelings, emotions and issues and ways of dealing with them. My biggest worry is that I won't equip her with the tools she needs to be happy, healthy and strong. I know what works for me or my Mom or my Dad or anyone else may not work for her. But I want to give her my best shot so she's got a stable foundation to work from.
I think if I focus on her - knowing that she's so carefully watching me (way more than she's actually listening to me) - than that helps motivate me more than anything to work on myself and be aware of how I'm dealing with my issues. No one expects perfection here, but there is a strong expectation of effort and progress. That's all I want from her, and that's all I want from myself.
I started writing this after we had a bit of an issue. I was putting together her new bed frame and she was supposed to be cleaning her room at the same time. But she seemed to lack the motivation to really work hard and kept getting distracted. So every time I noticed her "taking a break," I decided I should take a break too. After all, why should I be working for her if she can't even work for her?
Finally after she displayed a brilliant performance of "Well I just don't know what to do!", I decided I could spend my time in a better way and left her room. As I started getting ready for bed and starting up my computer for my post, she would appear on multiple occasions with an emotionally-charged request that I give her attention in one way or another, likely wanting me to indulge her in more of her award-winning role of "The Victim". When her small efforts for big returns wasn't paying off like she hoped, she went back into her room and waited.
I collected my thoughts and decided it wasn't okay to have both of us go to bed in the current state, so I set my computer down, went into her room, gave her a 2 minute talk about how it's difficult, but imperative to overcome our pride and stubbornness, and that it's still admirable to apologize after-the-fact if we can't seem to change our route of negativity in the present (which is definitely something I can relate to), listened to her talk about something related to our discussion and then something completely unrelated...
And then I laid down with her in bed and read part of her new book - The One and Only Ivan. Which I think is going to be a big hit.
Comments
Post a Comment