my therapist reminded me that it’s quite possible that i am currently in a season of “being” in my life. a season where my main priority can very well be simply being content at the end of each day knowing that my family and i are happy and well and that we all did our best. a season where we can savor and enjoy playing outside after school, or cooking dinner together on a wednesday, and staying in bed late on saturday mornings with nothing on the agenda but loving each other well. so, maybe instead of searching for something to do, i should just be here.

i’ve said it before, and i’m sure i’ll say plenty of times, i was wired for challenges. before getting married, most of my challenges had to do with leadership, work, and academics. man, why couldn’t my challenges be fitness related. haha actually, i did have a short running and yoga phase for a few months. that was cool. short lived, but cool. haha

now, when i met jesse, my challenges took a sharp turn and had virtually everything to do with finding my own self worth in nothing more than who i was by simply being me. they no longer had to do with anything else. it took a lot of heart work to get to a place where i could find true happiness that wasn’t linked to feeling like i had to prove myself by my outwardly accomplishments. so, my desires in life became so different than what i thought they would be as a young adult prior to having a family of my own. what’s funny is that i am only now realizing that i haven’t given myself enough credit for the work that it took for me to make that huge life transition. have you given yourself enough credit for how far you’ve come?

instead of a career driven life full of recognition and accolades, i wanted to create a calm and peaceful family life for us. even though i didn’t realize it then, once i was pregnant for Eleanor, THIS became my new challenge; rewiring my conditioning and healing my own trauma so that i could create for my baby what i felt i didn’t have myself: stability, communication, transparency, security, and quality time together. i was wired for stress and chaos and i grew up thriving in it. it’s funny how whatever environment you grow up in you become comfortable to regardless of whether or not it’s a safe and stable environment. our minds and bodies get accustomed to what they live with and so any drastic change becomes difficult to adapt to. i was determined to adapt though because i knew it would lead to true and genuine happiness. this challenge came with lots of learning to ask for help, a lot of relearning how to communicate, and also a lot of speaking up for myself. i also became determined to create a non-toxic home, literally and figuratively. i became determined to not allow my work to get in the way of my time with my family. i became determined to use all the most physiologically natural ways to raise my daughter which meant that i did everything i had to to succeed at breastfeeding, baby led weaning, insert all hippie parenting methods here. haha this all went against my childhood wiring. basically, i was relearning and reregulating my own mental and emotional homeostasis so that my trauma wouldn’t project or latch onto my kids. during that phase in my life, though, instead of giving myself credit for or feeling proud for what I was accomplishing given my own past, i picked apart every decision i made and questioned whether or not i was doing anything right at all. this is still a huge area of growth for me.

having eleanor was one of the greatest joys of my life. i kept busy doing everything i could to be the best mom to her that i could. then when she was a year old, i went back to work and created familiar challenges for myself there. a few years later, i became a distributor for a network marketing company in addition to having a family and working a full time job. it was challenging because it required so much of me in the little time i had to spare. i loved that time in my life because it was all so rewarding and because for the first time in a really long time my mind and body had a taste of that familiar stress and chaos that it was conditioned to living in so long ago. but then, my full time job began to really affect my home life. i was coming home stressed and sad and annoyed and it was affecting my ability to take care of my family. so, i quit. things felt easier for a while. part of me loved it, but the other part of me felt scared and actually kind of bored. so once again, i was at a cross roads of feeling peace (which went against my conditioning) but also not feeling challenged enough (all conditioning), never once acknowledging that all of what I was doing was the “challenge” and the “accomplishments.” anyway, i allowed myself to be there in that quiet and “bored” space for several months when jesse’s mom asked me to take on some responsibility at the driving school. it was perfect. i was making enough money to not stress about our finances. it allowed me to spend time with jesse. it allowed us the flexibility to travel all together as a family when we wanted to. life was easy and peaceful again, with just a touch of challenge.

then, i felt the pull to grow our family. are you starting to notice a pattern here? i am. i didn’t realize it until last week, but it’s so clear to me now. as soon as i feel like i can breathe easy and feel at peace with the world around me, i become antsy and like i’m not doing enough. conditioning. i am a firm believer in continuous growth, but is it really necessary to create struggles or unnecessary challenges for ourselves to feel like we’re growing? why can we not, instead, understand that there is so much growth to be had by standing still and just being? that’s a lesson that i need reminding of so often. maybe that’s why i have a tattoo on my side of a tree and the words that read “grow, live, give what you can, and be happy.” maybe mid-20’s ellie knew that i would need the reminder.

i got pregnant in the summer of 2019, penelope was born in february of 2020, life turned upside down for the whole entire planet in march of 2020, things started going back to normal after about a year, and then the eye of a category 5 hurricane hovered over our town leaving devastation that seemed to last for months in august of 2021. the holidays came with some chaos, but now we’re back to a place where life is good, i have nothing to complain about, our family is thriving, and we have a lot of really fun things coming up. i’m learning to really be more in control of my emotions during challenging times (read: bath time, dinner time, etc.) . i’m learning to slow down. i’m learning to savor the moments where we can slow down.

why, then, am i feeling like i should be doing more? why, then, does peace and calm in my life feel almost like failure? why, then, does it feel so strange for me to lean into a season of being? in theory, a season where life feels easy and calm is more than anyone could ever hope for, right? please don’t mistake this for being ungrateful. i so very much know that i have so much to find gratitude for. and trust that the gratitude IS there. every single day, i feel like the luckiest girl in the world. not all day everyday, but certainly every day. i guess what i’m saying is that my new challenge, which i fully accept, will be to just sit here in this space and allow myself to be. allow myself to know that i don’t have to search for anyone else’s approval. allow myself to move through life no longer feeling like chaos and stress equates hard work and success. what if, instead, i understand that the hard work came from breaking down my limiting beliefs and my trauma and what came next was the reward. the reward is what i’m living every day. this day, this moment, it’s all such a beautiful reward for allowing ourselves to be and to grow exactly in the way that we have.

i believe our trauma and life’s conditioning can define the paths we take in life. for some people, their conditioning holds them back from doing great things. for me, it was pushing me away from contentedness and doing things that were “great” simply to gain the recognition from others. our true happiness, though, will always be rooted in allowing our truest selves to emerge and become what dictates our daily life.

in this season of being, i think it will be important to accept and hold close the trauma driven parts of me, the parts of me that have guided me and protected me. but i’m very excited to really lean into the loved and parasympathetic parts of me that i’ve pushed away for so long. what season are you in? how are you giving yourself grace in this season? i hope so badly that you can see how far you’ve come and how much you’ve accomplished. i’m finally starting to see that, and you should know that there’s no greater feeling than the pride we can have for ourselves for just being in a state of acceptance and gratitude and being perfectly ok with standing still. besides, there’s always another season to prepare for and it’ll serve us to be present in the one we’re in here and now.