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Saying No & saying Yes to Self-Love

Saying NO without an explanation is the greatest gift you can give yourself.

I said Yes to everything.   It’s how I ended up in two marriages I knew weren’t going to be good for me and in jobs that made me miserable.  I really committed to my Yes.  Then I was mad at everyone but me, not realizing I had all the power to change it.

I’d say Yes to almost anything.   A dinner that I didn’t want to go to.  A task I didn’t want to do.  An errand I didn’t have time to run.  A family reunion I knew I should avoid.  Yes.  Sure.  Ok.  Words that so easily popped out of my mouth.

Brain is saying, “Stop it.  Say No”.   Mouth is saying, “Absolutely, I’d love to do that for you”.

The struggle is real.60024135_125x125

 

I’d like to say I’ve totally got this one in the bag now.  I don’t.  But it’s getting better.

Pause.  Let Go of the urge to just say Yes, because it’s the easy way out.  Press my lips together as I consciously review if saying Yes is going to ‘cost me’ and if I have the energy reserves to do it without resentment.

I’ve also learned that a simple and kind, “Oh I can’t”  shuts the door on any attempts to convince you that you can and you will.   If you give People excuses or little white lies they’ll see a crack.  They’ll poke their foot in and start wiggling that door open.  They’ll get out the mighty ‘sword of guilt’, and chop the door hinges off.

Once that little excuse or lie comes out of your mouth you’ve really just said Maybe, and will soon be using up extra energy bucks to stomp around the house mad again.

As a child I was taught to do what other people wanted me to do, without question.  ‘No’ was met with a swift smack on the head.  It was disrespectful and rude.   It was Selfish.  

This is a truth I’ve had to un-tell myself.  It’s work.   But it’s worth it.

Saying NO, with no explanation why it doesn’t work for you, is a quick boundary we should never be afraid to put up.

It’s an expression of Self Love.

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Are you an emotional thief?

Are you taking emotions that don’t belong to you?  Sucking them through the air, wrapping them around you like a wool cloak, letting nothing else in.  Wearing it as if it was yours in the first place.

When they are happy joyful emotions it can lift you up when you are feeling down and blah.  But if it’s not yours you can end up feeling emptier than you were in the first place.   Hollow like a chocolate egg.  Easy to crack open and see that there’s nothing but emptiness inside.

Sad, angry or depressed emotions are even harder to shake off.  They penetrate and lay just under the surface.  Thick enough to confuse you into thinking they might be yours.

When I get a surge of any emotion I like to pause, look at it and make sure it really belongs to me.  Examine the circumstances.  Ask the questions, “Am I really angry?”.  “Does this make my heart feel happy and content?”.  “Why am I sad?”

“Is this mine?”

If the answer is No, bat it away like a beach ball that has been flung at you.  Say to yourself, “Nope.  Not Mine”.

You can have empathy for other people.  You can feel happy or sad for them.  But if you wrap it around your shoulders and pack it through your day, you won’t have the energy to pack your own.

Beach ball.   Not Mine.  Not today.

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Energy Bucks

zoebug

Every day we wake up with Energy Bucks and we start spending them the second we put our feet on the floor.

Making Coffee, 5 Bucks.   Brushing Teeth, 5 Bucks.  Getting Dressed, 10 Bucks.  Reading emails, 40 Bucks.  Trying on that pair of jeans you know won’t fit.  Boom.  Out of Energy Bucks.

I figure I have about 100 Energy Bucks for the day.  Most days I’ve spent that before noon.

I used to just pretend to myself that I had more Energy than I did.  I’d march forward like a martyr on a mission.  I had tasks to complete and people to make happy.   Pushing myself through the day with a ‘can do’ attitude.  Waiting for that “second wind”, that usually came just before bedtime.

Until I just couldn’t anymore.  When my Mom died my legs got kicked out from under me and my brain said, “No More. We’re empty.  Rest Me and we’ll start fresh in about 6 months”.  

I had to start counting my Energy bucks and using them wisely.

I learned what ‘cost’ me and how to decide what I needed to say No to.

I started to find ways to add to my Energy Bank by doing things that fulfilled me.  Yoga.  Meditation. Drinking Water.  Consciously breathing.  Journaling.  Stopping to listen to a favorite song, the whole thing, not just blips as I ran around the house cleaning.

 Five minutes with the sun on my face.  Feeling Gratitude.  Really taking the time to close my eyes and FEEL it.  Send the message to every cell.

I create and prioritize the time to take care of myself.  Every day.  Because not only do I deserve it, I need it.

No one can run on empty forever.

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You can’t pray it away

Old deserted House

So she’s not dead.  I thought she was when I first walked in.   Slumped over in the frame of the chair, her body motionless and grey.  Empty, like a dilapidated building, once filled with Life.  Where beauty still lingered but only because of Memories that you imagine might have happened there once.

 It strangely hurt my heart more than I had prepared myself for it to hurt, even after all the years of practicing for the inevitable.

Almost 20 years of Prescription Pills and Alcohol.  Each overdose somehow coming as a surprise.  It’s been ‘Food Poisoning’, ‘A stroke’, ‘The Flu’,  a multitude of ailments that we all know aren’t real but no one has the energy to call out.  Again.

I’ve felt like I was standing in some kind of Fog or Mist Horror Story, where no one was willing to admit there was a Monster lurking.  Only me.  Every time I screamed ‘Monster’ another member of the family would disown me.  How dare I be so disrespectful.  Those are ‘good’ people.  ‘Great Friends’.  God Bless them and we’ll pray for them.

They lived in a beautiful perfect home that could have been put together by Martha Stewart herself.  Not anymore.  The money is gone.  Not even enough to finish the small cabin in the woods they are trying to build.  Sleeping on a mattress without sheets and sitting on camp chairs by the woodstove, which is their only source of heat.  Walls and ceiling half finished.  A pantry full of canned Pork & Beans and soup.  A refrigerator full of nothing but beer and wine, no real food.  A washing machine full of folded clothes and shoes, because at some point there was major confusion on how to do a load of laundry.

We talked about it in secret, when no one else was listening because no one else wanted to hear it.  No one wanted to clean up that mess.  In all fairness maybe no one knew how.

You don’t pray away an Opioid & Alcohol addiction.  You don’t sober them up with coffee and a couple AA meetings, or apparently 22 years of them either.  That Monster just lingers in the Mist waiting for the door to be opened.  Waiting for its friend Death to join him at the Party.

This time though, it brought me and my sisters into a room, together, for the first time in 20 years and we all were in agreement on how to proceed.  We left the elephant back at the shack.  We locked arms around the Tree of Life and we talked about being Sisters and we imagined what that might mean now.

We had an amazing shift, where Love was shared.  THAT was a beautiful and unexpected gift.

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The Fear of Loss

No matter what happens around me, or to me, as long as I am alive enough to see the sun and the moon rising I can still grow and love and life is amazing regardless of Loss.


This week I stood, once again, over a hospital bed watching my Mom recover from an over indulgence of Doctor Prescribed Medication and Budweiser.  Her face a puffy caricature of the  beautiful high cheek-boned person I knew.   Once perfect lips, dry and cracked and almost undetectable except for the tongue that keeps darting out as she tries to form what I can only guess are words, a hopelessly failed attempt to convince the doctor she has Food Poisoning.  Her eyes yellowed and blood shot, an obvious cry of help from a Liver that seems almost ready to take a permanent vacation from a body that has become way too much work to maintain.  Nicotine stained fingers tinged with a hint of blue, her lungs are not awake enough to take in air but not dead enough to completely stop.

I just want to go home.

I stand there looking at My Dad, who is studying the lines on the floor as if they are going to give him the secret answer to the Universe and think, “You watch her sober up or die.  Not me.  You are the one lying to the doctors.  You know the Truth.  Why will you not share it?”  He catches me staring and I see Fear.  It has rendered him speechless.  I want to slap him.

So I walk to the nurses station and tell them her real story.  The truth that she has been struggling with prescription drug addiction for 15+ years.

Plenty of Fluids later and she has recovered miraculously from ‘Food Poisoning’.  They are going to walk her and then she will be released.  It’s no longer an emergency.  This time I don’t beg the doctor to send her to rehab.  I’m not angry.  I’m not really anything except tired.

The next day we have our ‘day after’ talk where I tell her she’s going to die and ask if that’s the Legacy she wishes to leave behind.  I remind her that her mother died from a cocktail of alcohol and pills.  She cries.  She tells me she’s sorry and it won’t happen again.

It’s the same as always. The only difference this time is that I have let go of the Fear of losing her.  I have let go of the responsibility to try to make her sober.  I have let go.

I hug her like it might be the last time I ever see her, because it might.  I look into her hungover eyes and will her to understand that she is loved.

I walk away without any Fear of Loss and I walk back to my life where the birds are chirping, bees are buzzing, my dog is farting, my kids are calling and my husband is hammering on something in the kitchen.

No loss, except my own life, will kill me.  There is Freedom in that Truth.

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