Patterns and Priorities

What are the priorities in your life? Or maybe I should ask Who are the priorities in your life.

I ask because it's come up for me. As I adjust to the idea of my daughter moving across country, I realize my sense of self is shifting and so are my priorities. I'm realizing that as long as she's been living near me, these past two years, I've made her convenience a priority over mine. I've put plans on hold and not done things because she MIGHT want to see me. I've asked myself what would please her as opposed to what would please me.

Now I'm not saying I never want to do that! I do value my relationship with my daughter and I want to be willing to take her feelings and wishes into consideration. At the same time, though, I'm realizing that I've cheated BOTH of us by not giving at least equal weight to what I want and how I feel. I haven't given her a chance to know who I really am when I am fully ME.

It's also a shock to realize that I've been thinking I've thought about myself in terms of “Am I being a good enough mother?” as opposed to: “Am I being a good enough ME?” Already I find myself shifting back from focusing on my role as mother to my role as a professional in my field. I'm remembering that one of the greatest gifts I can give my daughter is to model the possibility of being happy and successful doing what one loves.

All of this reminds me to be aware of patterns in my life. To ask myself in what situations do I play out this pattern with other people as well? How might I want to change these patterns?

The great thing is that as I play with these questions, I open up the possibility for changes that will enhance not only my life, but the lives of those I care about as well.

So....what are the patterns and priorities in your life and do you want to play with the idea of changing any of them? Sending blessings and safe and gentle (((((((hugs))))))).

April_optimist

An Award!

Thank you to Jumping in Puddles at Life Spacings who has given me The LOVE YA award:“These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

Jumping in Puddles was kind enough to say:

April from http://thriverstoolbox.blogspot.com/ often we visit april because she is so clever at enveloping stories of herself into lessons she has learnt and then goes from there to questions for the readers. The journey she takes us on by doing this is a journey of self discovery and growth. Sometimes we have spent days pondering one of Aprils blogs thus reminding ourselves on how much we can still learn.

So now it's my turn. There are people I might have chosen if I didn't know they'd already been tagged. Since the idea is to spread the sense of community and introduce each other to perhaps bloggers our regular readers don't know this is actually probably a good thing. So I'm choosing:

Gypsy-Heart for her joyful approach to life and beautiful artwork.

Grace for her profound sense of faith and her gratitude posts.

Karma for her honesty about the challenges she faces.

Mile 191 for her faith and her thoughtful posts.

Leah for her awareness and sharing about abuse and how other survivors have coped.

Just Be Real for her determination to be true to herself and for her deep faith.

Metamorphosis/Peppermint Patty for the tools she offers bloggers on her website.

State of Grace for her reminder that we can be survivors and blog about lots of things not even remotely related to healing, having been abused, etc.

I love that the internet lets us all connect with each other and discover so many different ways that one can cope with, survive and triumph over abuse.

Sending blessings and safe and gentle (((((((hugs)))))))),
April_optimist

PS If you haven't seen this already, I hope you'll go take a look. It's a reminder that dreams can come true. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Loss

I'll be back in a day or three to post a longer post. I know I'm running really late and didn't want anyone to worry. It's just that....a friend died suddenly on Sunday. I didn't even know he'd been sick.

It couldn't have been easy growing up gay in a small Texas town, but my friend greeted life with love and joy. He cared about everyone and I never heard him judge anyone. He was one of the most spiritual people I've ever met (he was studying to become a minister) and he truly believed there was a spark of good in everyone—even if they had trouble finding it at times. I will miss him deeply.

In death he brought together people who had not spoken to each other in over a year and between whom had been bitter feelings. At his funeral they hugged and spoke with mutual affection of the man we lost. He was young, much too young to die. But he did. I will miss him and I will miss his ability to be joyful in all situations.