The biggest blockage in learning and growing is blaming someone else for our discomfort, misfortune. We are dealt the cards we are dealt and we can play the game, adjust as we go, adapt, with courage and humility, with gratitude and poise.
I have held my breath at times, often times, aware that my mood, my exhaustion, my frustration could seep into my family.
They demanded much of me. My attention, my presence, my whole being, skill, communication, driving, cleaning, while exploring their own development and testing their own boundaries of growth.
I have been numbed, sad, depressed. Even as I tried with all my might to be warm and present and good. In my imperfection in didn’t give up, i didn’t turn away. I regret getting so irritated as to yell at my kids who didn’t seem to be able to listen otherwise. We are in a different stage now maybe because we’ve been in the pit and climbed out. I never seem to raise my voice anymore. Because I’ve done it and we all learned how it feels to do so. I don’t get angry these days. These years. I get annoyed but not lose my cool.
One day as i shook my head in disbelief to something that the girls did, and pondered, there was a reflective silence in the house, in the room, sometime later they asked me: “mom, do you ever regret adopting us?” The question would disipate any trace of frustration and made me laugh. It forced me to face the truth: I love my kids and have no regrets. I told them so. This is normal parenting and life. This friction, this back and forth. As long as we have a baseline of trust, of love, a landing for truth and emotions to be shared respectfully, we can do hard things.
I love the present. J has become more aware of her life, her self, I see her transform under my eyes, into a young lady, with dreams, hopes, fears, questions, but even as we are at odds sometimes, the connection we’ve nurtured over the last decade, it’s not in vain. I see how we draw from warm memories when cold winds chill us. And we remember and we come back. We learned to speak the truth in the small years so we could know and walk the same path on the teen years.
It’s tempting to blame others, to blame circumstances, to blame the world. It is not a path I ever walked on and i shall not let my kids slide into self pity or blame others for their perceived misfortunes.