It's Better to Give than What?

Caring for family…Friend in trouble… Client in need… Spouse over-worked… Child wants help with homework… Another Mom can’t do carpool... PRESTO!

There we are, the “I’ll-be-there-for-you” women…super-hero giver, offering comfort, advice, support, food…no matter what we are in the middle of, no matter if we, ourselves, are in need….no matter what.

Does this describe you?

You believe it’s better to give than to receive.

You feel great satisfaction in being selfless.

You like to show your love by giving to others.

You get secret comfort from being in control.

You think people will like you.

You have a hard time asking for what you need…for what you want.

This has certainly has been me.  For most of my life.

Consider this…by receiving, you give much

A year ago I had a physical injury – and it brought me to a standstill...enforced stillness.  I couldn’t exercise, I couldn’t clean the house, I could not bend my knee...difficulty walking, difficulty standing for long periods, difficulty sleeping without pain unless I was very still.  Some days, I couldn’t even drive.  I couldn't do all the things I had planned to help my son prepare for his move to college - his freshman year!

I.did.not.like. 

I could barely tolerate the mere thought of letting my family do everything that I normally do.

But they were eager.  EAGER to be able to give to me in the way I always gave to them.  EAGER to be able to take care of me for a change - to show, in a different than the usual way, their love for me – their ability to care for and nurture and support me, physically and emotionally.

And that’s when it became crystal clear…

One of the biggest gifts I could give them, and myself, was to let them do this and accept it graciously and with much love.  When I received from them the kind of caring that I am usually the master of, it let them see a side of themselves they liked.  It showed them they are capable of nurturing and supporting in the most basic, physical sense, and it added to their power-base of human-ness.  And it helped me heal in a profound way...many ways.

My ability, reluctantly at first, to receive turned into a gift of love and caring - without any action on my part – for both myself and my family.

The ability to receive can be one of the most loving gifts you can give.  I'm not perfect at it yet.  Far from.  But it's getting easier.

Try it, with sensitivity that it's a new way of being for you, and it may take a little while for you and those who love you to get comfortable with it.

Now...about being able to ask…working on that!  ;-)

Again, a letting go

Grab the Kleenex. When my new friend, Audrey Wilson Andrysick (Audrey Wilson Coaching) sent a few of us mom’s this poem, I started tearing up at the first 3 words.   Lin Eleoff calls this the sappy gene.

Again, for the second year, my son is off to college today.  This time it’s a little different from the first year in that I know I will be fine (the person I was most  worried about the first year, lol!), he will be fine (and he was – more than fine), and that my husband and I will continue on our path of rediscovering the depth of our own relationship – just the two of us again, after so many years of the 3 of us.  But it’s also different because he is moving into his own place with friends…off campus…rent, utility bills, grocery shopping...the next steps to really rocking his own life - adult baby steps.

For all of you who are seeing your children off to Day Care for the first time, Pre-school, Kindergarten, First Grade, High School (you get the picture), enjoy the following poem and remember to enjoy every first – it all goes by very quickly, and soon you will be wondering where the years went.

And for all of you who are seeing your kids off to adult-hood, enjoy and give thanks that you’ve done such a good (enough) job to enable this beautiful transition.

(This poem was originally written by Mary W. Abel and posted in Dear Abby)

Don’t forget the Kleenex.

"Hold fast the summer. It is the beauty of the day and all it contains. The laughter and work and finally the sleep. The quiet. Oh September, do not put your weight upon my mind. For I know he will be going. This son of mine who is now a man — he must go. Time will lace my thoughts with joyous years. The walls will echo his “Hello.” His caring will be around each corner. His tears will be tucked into our memory book. Life calls him beyond our reach — to different walls. New faces, shiny halls, shy smiles, many places. Greater learning — he must go. But wait, before he leaves, be sure he knows you love him. Hide the lump in your throat as you hug him. He will soon be home again — but he will be different. The little boy will have disappeared. How I wished I could take September and shake it, for it came too soon I must look to the beauty of each new day, and silently give thanks."

Virtual Reality

I pick up my son up from college this week to bring him home for the summer...can't wait for him to be home for 3 months!  We have missed him and have managed to see him several times during his first year away. I made it through the first year of empty-nest...Better than I had hoped.

I realize I have a new normal - one where our son is not living under our roof -  which I think is great progress in such a short time.

But a funny thing happened during the year to help me along.  I had a true revelation right after the holidays.

I wanted a better way than texts and phone calls to stay in touch with my son.  A subtle way.  So, even though I didn’t know if he would play, I challenged him to a 'Words With Friends’  (iPhone app) competition scrabble game.  A few days went by with no response, and I thought "Nah, he’s too busy;  he doesn’t want to play;  he’s distancing himself; he’s separating…it’s ok...(sigh)."

Then…a hit!!  And he accepted.  The game began.

It was a great game - one of my best. (I’m getting a little better at it :)).  You can chat on WWF, and I tentatively sent him a short ‘good one!’ after he scored a bunch of points, and he responded.

Then I created a high-point word, and he chatted that he was still going to beat me…ah, ha!!! The competition was on!  After I created a particularly good 54 point word, he chatted back ‘uh, maybe I won’t win!’

It was great fun. 

Sometimes days would go by before he’d play his turn.  Sometimes at least 1 WHOLE day would go by before before I’d play mine, lol!  I’d get his word late at night, sometimes in the morning…sometimes in the middle of the night (we are in the same time-zone so that told me a lot about when he went to bed!).  So even if we hadn’t skyped or texted for days, it was so nice to be ‘in touch.’  And though I ‘know’ he’s ok, this is just a little bit of confirmation that he is there.  It was fun way of knowing he’s fine and giving him TONS of space.

I didn’t even think about missing him.

Except….

I wasn’t playing with my son…not my son!  I was playing with ‘golfer72’ – my son’s WWF id is ‘golferking72’ – slight error on my part!  Who was I playing with?  Good lord...

Wait…I had created my own reality all this time…MY OWN REALITY!!!

From thinking he didn't want to play, all the way to having a great game with him...in my own mind!  It was a beautiful thing.  It was funny.  I laughed…my husband laughed…my son laughed.  And it was SHOCKING.  THE best example I can give anyone about how we create our own truth, our own reality, our own life.  I know this to my core now.

And yes, my son truly was ok the whole time.  And now I know it even if we aren’t playing WWF’s!

By the way, golfer72 asked for a rematch.  I declined ;) .

********* My dear friend, Lin Eleoff, aka The Worst Mother, drew the following picture for me in honor of my newsletter launch – her rendition of the blog post you just read.  I think she caught it perfectly.  I love her.  And she’s freakin’ brilliantly hilarious.  Don’t miss her weekly wisdom at www.theworstmother.com.   Thank you, Lin! xoxo

One more thing! sign up for the newsletter - see link in the upper right column :)

Now What?

We dropped our son off at CalPoly yesterday.  Ok, let’s reword that…We did NOT drop him off - we moved him in.  Started around 9:30, left at 4…not quite a drop off! We had read we should just drop him off, unpack, let him sort out his room.  Instead, I asked our son what he would like.  “Do you want us to help unpack?”  “Do you want me to put your clothes away?”  and “I really want to make your bed for you, is that ok?”

Once he and his roommate figured out the layout of the room, getting creative because of, yes, the lack of electrical outlets, we got busy ‘setting him up.’

The 3 of us unpacked, put things away, organized drawers, decided where lamps went, took out snacks, stored things under the bed.  His dad helped him set up the computer.

And I made the bed…made it as comfy as possible with a mattress topper (oh, those ugly navy blue vinyl mattresses), fluffy mattress pad, new cotton knit sheets, soft comforter.

Making his bed was important to me, above and beyond the rest - it had to do with his comfort, and how well he would sleep (which makes me laugh knowing he will probably be up all night and only getting very few hours of sleep…but those hours will be comfortable and warm and cozy – like home!)

And as I wandered the dorm, passed other rooms, talked to other parents, watched his roommate’s mom, I noticed making the bed seemed to be an important task to every other mom on the floor.

Important to bring an intimate ‘piece’ of home for our boys, trying to replicate a bit of the place where we had read to them, sang to them, stroked their hair, cuddled them, often gently waking them up to get ready for school as they got older, and even recently, where we still had some of the best conversations at the end of the day, or the middle of the night when we got up to go to the bathroom and noticed their light still on in their rooms.

… It was the best day.  Six hours went by quickly.  We were done.  It was time to go.  Our son asked us to close his dorm room door so we could have some privacy.

He hugged us both so tightly and told us how much he will miss us.  How different this will be.  How excited he was about being there.  How nice his room looked.  How comfy the bed looked :).  And how he liked being sandwiched between 2 floors of all girls :) !  He said how much he loved us.  He got tears in his eyes.  We all did.

But I did not get the ugly face (I did that yesterday in the privacy of our own home, telling him how excited I was for him, how big a piece of my heart he has, and how I will miss him.)

He put drops in his eyes, and he walked us to our car for one last hug - “this feels like it happened all of a sudden,” he said.

Yes.  Suddenly after 18 years.  Then here he is, a man, on his own, excited (and maybe a teeny bit nervous.)

With much love and pride, we watched him go back across the street and up the stairs.  We looked at each other, smiled, sighed, and left the CalPoly campus.

3 hour-drive, on to the next chapter, talking with each other almost the whole way, and not at all totally about our son.  Got Chipotle takeout and came home...to a slightly emptier space.

Now what?  I’m not totally sure.

But I do, with certainty, know that we are all ok.