5 LESSONS LEARNED FROM A CHALLENGING YEAR
Hello, April. Your colors, sounds, and smells feel like Spring (sans the snow) and I’m ready for it! In March, I celebrated 46 trips around the sun. On my birthday each year, I spend some time reflecting on where I’ve been, what I’ve learned, and what I look forward to in the upcoming year. This week, I’m sharing some reflections from life over the past year. Last year was a challenging year in parenting and also responsible for so many gifts and growth I’ll carry with me forever.
5 Lessons Learned from a Challenging Year
Balance the tension between leading and letting go. The letting go part has been my greatest opportunity for growth. Whether they are six or sixteen, each season invites new ways of learning how to step from the front of the line and walk beside them instead. As parents, we want to protect them. But protecting them is not trying to fix, deflect, or explain away the hard parts of life. They don’t learn resilience without experiencing struggle and discovering their own strength and wisdom to get through it.
Trust what they are trying to tell you. We are busy and distracted so much of the time, it can be easy to miss what isn’t being said. Easy to blow by those in between moments that are trying to tell us where we are needed most and what we need to do, next. Staying present and awake to all the parts of life is a daily practice. It requires deep attention, a conscious slow down to listen and ask better questions.
Seek to know them. We are called to be the teacher and the student. Seek to better know who they are, separate from your image of them. Believe what they say. Validate them and their perspective, even when you don’t yet understand. We can give someone the gift of feeling seen and known without fully understanding or maybe even agreeing, let both things be true. Our perspective or what we value most won’t always be their truth. Validation, really seeing and hearing someone begins with surrendering to our own beliefs and understanding of how we think things (or someone) “should” be. This takes immense courage and curiosity. Authentic validation is deep nourishment for a relationship and will change everything.
Do your own growth work. Surrender to your struggle. The first call for support will be the hardest. Learning that it’s ok to not be ok is a lesson I continue to learn over and over in this life. Asking for help, connecting with other parents who had or were experiencing similar struggle was the singlest most important decision I made for myself and for her. When we sit beside someone we love who is going through a difficult season, there is an opportunity for our parallel learning and growth. We are having our own experience along side of them. One full of opportunity for learning, unlearning, and relearning. We don’t have to carry the hard stuff alone, we aren’t designed to do so. Ask for help, make the call. Deep connection and community are strengthened through shared struggle.
Keep returning to grace and discernment. Rinse and repeat, forever and ever. In the beginning, middle, and in the rebuilding. There will never be too much grace and discernment, for others or for ourselves. Grace and discernment are slow, thoughtful, and heart centered. There’s a calm, respectful, and confident presence when we are exercising grace and discernment. They operate on a higher frequency than its opposite, which is judgment. There’s rich complexity and nuance to the art of grace and discernment, it takes effort. A conscious curiosity to stay open in the face of whatever is in front of you. Amid the building or rebuilding, grace and discernment are a portal to what is possible, the path to a place where something new can exist.
These are a few of my big takeaways from 2022. If this email finds you in the shadow side of a season, be kind and tender with yourself, take care of you. Thanks for showing up and being here, you inspire me to do and be better. Go spread your light this week, we need you! As always, stay open, brave, and on-purpose.