I was not an easy child. No, I wasn't "naughty" nor was I a discipline problem, but I was not exactly a dream-come-true of a little girl and so much of that carried me through my developmental years, and into my early adulthood. I've done so much of the self-analysis stuff and have filtered out the pieces that are no longer important to recall or to further analyze. What I do carry with me however, is the understanding that change was never an easy task for me and I was not ever allowed to build up resistance to it or to master the skills necessary to come out of the end of a tunnel unscathed. As soon as the words "I'm not happy" slid off my lips, my mother bailed me out without encouraging me to "give it a try" or "wait it out". So, to this day, I am not well-equipped for changes and I do continue to wonder what it's all about. Can't knock a gal for trying.
So much of it has to do with fear. Fear of the loss of control. Fear of the inability to manipulate my environment, on the smallest and largest scales. When I taught childbirth classes, many years ago, I carefully explained that it was fear that was at the heart and soul of the perception of child-birthing as a painful process. While I knew that I could never, ever replace the pain of contractions, I knew that it was possible to mitigate this by breaking up that fear-tension-pain syndrome. Amazingly, in a lot of cases, it worked. Loss of control. Huge. Change. Huge.
It's been almost a month since we moved into our new home. We worked together as a team, for weeks before and then, during the time of the actual move, and we're still at it. We amazed ourselves at how hard we worked and how strong we proved we were, and are. With only the assistance of a set of strong men who, on the move in day, transported our largest pieces of furniture, we did it all by ourselves and neither of us suffered so much as an ache or pain. What validation! We're in now, getting more and more "settled" in what I refer to as our "interim" move. We have no idea of our future, we're not unique for who does? But it feels better for me when I look at this new life as maybe not forever.
Each day gets better, feels more like "me" living here. We're getting to know our new home and we're making friends with it. The noises coming from our neighbor's and their weekends with friends on the patio adjacent to our bedroom window, are fading from my list of things that are going to rob me of my happiness. Little did we ever expect that we would be forced into making our bedroom into a "cocoon" with special drapes that block out light and attenuate sound. It's turning out to be an absolutely lovely place, getting more and more Zen each day and by the time the season is over and the neighbors have returned to Florida for the rest of the year, we will have created a space that would never have been had we not been forced to take control or our environment.
Change. It's huge. I wish I had known that it was a process, that it required thought and dedication and that it was and always will be, simply a vector, a swift arrow that points to a better place and that control is never lost, it can only be given away.
So much of it has to do with fear. Fear of the loss of control. Fear of the inability to manipulate my environment, on the smallest and largest scales. When I taught childbirth classes, many years ago, I carefully explained that it was fear that was at the heart and soul of the perception of child-birthing as a painful process. While I knew that I could never, ever replace the pain of contractions, I knew that it was possible to mitigate this by breaking up that fear-tension-pain syndrome. Amazingly, in a lot of cases, it worked. Loss of control. Huge. Change. Huge.
It's been almost a month since we moved into our new home. We worked together as a team, for weeks before and then, during the time of the actual move, and we're still at it. We amazed ourselves at how hard we worked and how strong we proved we were, and are. With only the assistance of a set of strong men who, on the move in day, transported our largest pieces of furniture, we did it all by ourselves and neither of us suffered so much as an ache or pain. What validation! We're in now, getting more and more "settled" in what I refer to as our "interim" move. We have no idea of our future, we're not unique for who does? But it feels better for me when I look at this new life as maybe not forever.
Each day gets better, feels more like "me" living here. We're getting to know our new home and we're making friends with it. The noises coming from our neighbor's and their weekends with friends on the patio adjacent to our bedroom window, are fading from my list of things that are going to rob me of my happiness. Little did we ever expect that we would be forced into making our bedroom into a "cocoon" with special drapes that block out light and attenuate sound. It's turning out to be an absolutely lovely place, getting more and more Zen each day and by the time the season is over and the neighbors have returned to Florida for the rest of the year, we will have created a space that would never have been had we not been forced to take control or our environment.
Change. It's huge. I wish I had known that it was a process, that it required thought and dedication and that it was and always will be, simply a vector, a swift arrow that points to a better place and that control is never lost, it can only be given away.
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