Victory

Last week I made dinner for some people new in town. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it? And yet it was.

Snapshot: Me as a kid. Always hungry. My mother portioned out food and I always got the least. Even when I was the one cooking it. When I went off to college I gained 30 pounds and I was STILL underweight!

Adulthood: Me, still underweight though I don’t want to be. Finding it very hard to cook for other people and offer them food. Hating to entertain. Believing it’s directly because of being starved as a kid and something wrong with me that I didn’t want company over.

Last week: Daughter’s friend and mother new in town. I offer to fix them dinner. I have a lovely time and really enjoy myself—and so do they.

That’s victory. It shows how far we can come, how much we can grow.

As I was sharing this with a friend, I realized that there were other factors going on, too. I realized that it makes a huge difference when you can clean up the house and the people around you don’t instantly mess it up. It makes a huge difference when no one is second guessing everything you do or the food you serve or how you fix it. It makes a huge difference when you aren’t worrying what anyone in your family will say or do.

In other words, I stopped and questioned the assumption that my reluctance to entertain for so many years and to cook for people was a flaw in me. I looked at the past and realized that until recently (i.e. after my divorce), there was never a time in my live—NEVER—when I didn’t have someone second guessing everything I did, messing up the home around me, and sometimes saying and doing things that were really offensive to other people.

I realized that on my own, I LIKE entertaining, I LIKE fixing dinner, I LIKE being sociable.

That was both a huge revelation for me and a huge victory.

As I have said so many times, it is the assumptions we never think to question that so often limit us unnecessarily. What assumptions could you question and rethink today that might make your life better if you did?

Wishing each of you your own victories this week and sending safe and gentle (((((((hugs))))))),

April_optimist