Breaking the cycle

 

What is generational trauma? It’s the undealt with trauma that passes through families and generations until it is dealt with. Carl Jung once said “I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there is an impersonal karma within a family that is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.” 

 

Being a parent who comes from generations of grandparents and parents who have a trauma background, who also has a significant trauma history myself, makes life so hard. Life feels impossible to navigate and live through sometimes. Stopping generational trauma in its tracks is overwhelming, and it feels like you're holding back this dam full of water. And the thing with generational trauma is that it's not just my past and my history that I'm dealing with. I'm dealing with generations of trauma. Generations of things built into genetics that are actively playing out in my body and my brain. I'm dealing with grandparents and parents who have never dealt with their own trauma, and the ways that they choose to live their lives and interact with me and my children. I'm dealing with my own trauma background and healing from those events in my past.  I'm also dealing with my kids’ trauma that I have passed on to them. Things that I have possibly done to them as children while I was stuck in my own trauma that I was not aware of yet and I didn't understand the full potential of what I was doing. Genetics that I have passed on to them because they were passed on to me by my parents and grandparents. The things that I did not take care of before they were born, were passed onto them. My kids did not ask for this, they did not ask to be born. I chose to bring them into this world & impose upon them all my “stuff”.  So, dealing with generational trauma feels a lot like you're holding back a dam full of water but on both sides. It's like you're being crushed from everywhere. It’s unbearable at times and completely suffocating. You're holding back all your stuff from the past while trying to stop all the things that you've passed on to your kids in their tracks and help your kids heal and be better and healthier human beings moving forward. While trying to hold all this back, you are trying to deal with your own stuff. you're trying to heal your own wounds, parent yourself, and change the neural Pathways of your brain and your genetics so that you don't keep doing the harm that has been done in the past by you and by previous family members. It's exhausting. I'm exhausted all the time. 

 

I feel like I walk around every day with a massive boulder on my back, and I'm so withered down that the simplest things stop me in my tracks. It's humiliating to run into other professionals, teachers that my children have, people from church, etc. who expect that I should be able to do basic normal life things. Things that I'm not doing as well as I should. I walk around masking all the time but feel completely incompetent in most of what society expects me to do. 

 

What I wish people could see is the absolute mountain that I carry around daily. I wish that they could have an outline of the past few years of my life and see all the different battles I'm still fighting, and all the demons that I'm shutting down, holding back, and trying to change into something completely different. These bigger unseen things feel like I have no choice but to deal with them and fight them. They are massive and in my face all the time. They haunt me, they show up in my dreams, they consume my thoughts and worries, and it feels impossible to see past them. I feel like I work so hard to keep everybody afloat, and everybody alive, that there is no actual time to live life. So, when it comes to just basic everyday life, basic needs, and what most people consider normal behavior, I can't keep up with it. Keeping my house clean, making sure my kids get their homework done, making sure my kids who also suffer from mental illness are showering or brushing their teeth, attending church, and participating in that area of my life… all of these things society sees as basic and easy to do things. But I can't do them consistently. I also can't go around explaining to people or showing people the burden that I carry every day and why I can't behave in these “normal ways” they feel like I should be able to behave. It's not appropriate to wander around telling everybody I come in contact with about my childhood trauma, or the ways that my immediate family has been traumatized in the past few years, or how I’m so depressed that I don't care that I’m not getting out of bed, or that my kids don't do their homework, and I don't care that I haven't gone grocery shopping in over a week and there's no food in my house, and I don't care that my house is a mess.

 

I wish the healing work that people spend their lives doing was more apparent on the outside. Like you know how when you download something & there is that bar that shows up that shows how complete the download is…. I wish we had something sort of like that following us around so we could see our own progress. So that society and others can see how hard we are working & see that we are in fact doing things. So that we could measure our own worth based on how hard we are working to heal ourselves and our families, and not by how good we can “fake it” to the world. I wish that this progress bar was present all the time, so we aren’t expected to have to ask for help or fight so hard just to be seen and treated with grace and compassion. Asking for basic common courtesies, for help, or just to be treated as a human being can get so exhausting…. Why is it our burden to have to prove that we deserve these things, instead of just being a basic human right? 

 

The author of the book titled “It Didn’t Start With You” is Mark Wolynn, he says “The healing we do in ourselves becomes the healing we bring into the world”. This is my goal. To be a better human! To be the best version of myself, to be a better spouse, mom, friend, and fellow human that I can to everyone I come in contact with… but most days I feel like I am losing that battle. The battle feels too hard when the only thing I feel like I can accomplish is maybe holding up both sides of the dam that feels like it’s doing its best to crush me.

The Luxury of Being Allowed to be Depressed

 The title of this feels a little bit like dark humor, although it's not. If I were to say this out loud I would probably be saying this to someone with a little bit of a smirk on my face because what will become of us if we cannot make light of, just a little, of our own mental health struggles. However, in this context, I really do mean what I say. It is a luxury to be allowed to be and feel depressed when that is the emotional state we are in. 

It is a luxury to have a spouse that allows you to feel depressed. I don't really like the use of the word "allow", but if I am being honest that is how I have experienced my depression in relation to other people. I never felt like those around me would allow it, would allow me to acknowledge and feel my depression. I spent my life masking & pretending to be someone completely different than who I really am. The people pleaser in me learned at a very young age that if I was happy, joyful, uplifting, and making sure the people around me were okay then I was accepted. I was good. I was not going to be abandoned. I was safe. Depression was that awful thing lurking in the background, in the shadows, that broke through every now & then when I let my guard down. The fight I had to fight to shove this giant monster back into the shadows was so exhausting, and not something I could handle doing very often, so I got good at just never letting my guard down. Never acknowledging what I was actually feeling. It's crazy that I put all of this effort and energy into never being abandoned, left, or unsafe, and this whole time I was abandoning and leaving myself on a daily basis. I was doing the very things to myself that I spent all of my time trying to prevent.

Back to that word "allowed". Why aren't we allowed to feel what we feel? To acknowledge what we are feeling & experiencing? I personally feel it's because it makes those around us uncomfortable. There was just no room in my life for anything that wasn't making everyone else happy and comfortable. It also makes us uncomfortable... to feel sad and alone in a world full of people. That feels like a problem that can never be solved. Like you are the problem and there is something so fundamentally wrong with you and you can never be fixed. In my eyes, the "fix" to the problem was all around me, I was always surrounded by people. I should have been able to be fine. But I wasn't. So if the perceived "cure" couldn't cure me, then there was no hope. There is also the acknowledgment of just how depressed we are when we allow ourselves to really feel what we are feeling. I don't like that version of myself. I don't like looking in the mirror and seeing her. Allowing myself to really see my depression is like looking into the eyes of my "shadow self" and really seeing her. Telling myself that if I am going to heal, I have to learn to love her too. Learning to love this shell of a person who hasn't showered or washed her hair in days, has bags under her eyes, can't get out of her sweats, and has no willpower to exercise or eat healthy. She is exhausted all of the time, she can't stop crying and it's a real struggle to get out of bed. I look at myself in the mirror in this state and I usually can't stand myself. Having someone who will stick with you in this state, someone who can stand to be around you even when you can't is a luxury!! 

What happens when you lose the ability to keep that monster in the shadows? Because it will happen. I don't care who you are. It doesn't matter how much money you make or don't make.  How much education you have, or don't have.  How much time you have spent making all the right decisions, ect. Life will eventually pummel you to the ground. There is no escaping it. If you are lucky it will leave some shreds of who you used to be as a person, but you will come out of that pummeling unrecognizable. It is not sustainable to be masking & pretending all of the time. At least for me, it wasn't. I just couldn't do it. 

I have a spouse that allows me to acknowledge and feel my depression. It is hard to put into words what this does for me. To be able to say to the person who I am the most worried about abandoning me that "I'm depressed and I'm just not handling life great right now", It's like I've been buried alive and he's digging me out. To be able to have this side of me seen and acknowledged is like being alone in suffocating darkness, and they shine a light on you. When you have a spouse who can say to you in these moments "What can I do today to make your day better" or "Thank you for letting me know what is going on" or "It's completely reasonable for you to be feeling this way". For me, these are some of the most healing things that he can do to help me pull through. I no longer have to work at belonging, I am accepted. There is a difference between belonging and acceptance. I spent most of my life masking, aka trying to fit in and belong. Saying exactly how I am feeling when I am feeling it and having my spouse love and support me through it.... that = acceptance. 

Allowing my depression to be someone in the room that is seen and acknowledged allows me to use less energy to manage my depression and to use less energy to recover. I recover faster. My episodes don't seem to be as low or last as long. There is not this mountain of anxiety lurking in the background wondering if he will notice I'm not okay, or if he will be annoyed that I am not my bubbly, happy self. I have openly acknowledged that I am not okay, and he has openly accepted that. We work together as a team to do what needs to be done for everyone to feel like their needs are being met. There is no judgment, resentment, or blame being thrown. Just acceptance of where I am at and where he is at. This also allows me to not be so defensive, and to be able to see outside of myself to understand and acknowledge just how much he does for me, and for my kids. It's easier for me to be able to see how I can help him, even through a lens of depression. I don't have to be 100% okay in order to be helpful, and he is willing to accept what I can give. He is grateful for what I can give him in these moments, and it helps heal me when I have something to give that is accepted. 

I will forever be grateful that we have made it to this point in our relationship. He lifts me up and helps me to want to be a better person. 

Losing friends

 The world doesn't talk about how to break up with a friend. No one talks about how painful it is to have to walk away from a good friend, or how much it hurts to be left by a good friend.  There is so much focus on how to break up with a partner, and how to grieve and move on from those types of romantic relationships. But no one really talks about what to do with the grief of losing a friend.  It's normal for someone to struggle through a breakup of a partner, there is sympathy and understanding that come from the world around us. But if I was honest with the world around me about how I struggled to get out of bed, and how I was dragged down into a deep depression because I had to make the choice to walk away from a friend, everyone would look at me like I was crazy. 

Friend relationships are different from romantic ones, but that does not mean that they mean less to us... it's just different. There are different levels of friend relationships too. There are regular friends that we get along with and interact with on and off, and they come and go but it's not really painful. That connection is much more of a surface connection. But close friend relationships are on a different level. These people have been allowed into your safe spaces and they have been allowed to see parts of your soul. They "get you" and they accept you for who you are at any point in life. 

I think it's a little unexpected how hard it hits you when you have to let a friend go. I think it's the actively choosing to let them go that really makes things hard. If you are letting them go, you are already at some place of acceptance that they are just not anything that is good for you. For someone like me, choosing myself over someone who I cared about and who for a long time I believed cared about me, is not behavior I am used to or comfortable with. Willingly causing harm to another person for the sake of my own mental health has never been anything I have been interested in entertaining until recently. And then there is the major fear that "What if I am not actually causing them harm? What if I made everything up & it was all in my head? What if they never cared for me the way I believed, and my leaving them doesn't phase them at all?" I don't know what's worse.... causing harm to another person, or learning the awful truth that they never cared for you to begin with. Maybe this is why we stay in relationships and friendships that do not serve us, because the rejection we would face when we stop and look at the truth would kill us. We would rather exist in a pretend world where we are being used and exploited, just to feel a shred of acceptance, even if it's fake than to accept that we are not wanted by the people we believed cared for us and that we put so much of ourselves into. 

Maybe I just get too attached to "my people". Maybe I just need to learn to connect on a more shallow level. Then losing people wouldn't be so painful. Rejection wouldn't be so painful. Maybe if I was less invested and connected I'd be less surprised when they turn out to be completely different people than who they were showing me they were for years. Maybe I just refuse to see anything other than the good parts of people so I am always proving to myself that I have made a good decision and that I am safe. Maybe I am the problem. Maybe....

Who really knows though. It could be any of these things or all of them. Every relationship is 2 sided. I can only control my side of things. I can control how I act, and react, and how I choose to treat them and myself. I can choose to analyze what I feel went wrong and grow from a hard experience. I can choose to see what was good, and how this relationship helped me and benefitted me, even if its ending is painful. There was still some good, even if I don't fully know the intentions of the other person. I have learned and been taught and made changes that have helped me become a better person because of this relationship. Now that I am choosing to walk away, I am also learning from the pain, and making changes that will benefit myself and the people I choose to stay in contact with going forward. There is always something to learn. 

Making the choice to leave a toxic relationship, whether a friendship or a romantic relationship, is a courageous act of self-love. It is scary to step out onto that ledge for the first time and to actually stay away. I always thought that the leaving part is the hardest, but I am finding that "staying away" after you have left is much more difficult. That is where resiliency comes in. Leaving in a moment of courage, or frustration gives you a boost to do what needs to be done, but that boost doesn't last. It's during those calm, quiet moments of reflection that really test your strength and courage. Resiliency is built up in those moments when your nervous system and brain are saying "Oh shit! I messed up. I overreacted. Things weren't really as bad as I imagined them to be. I need to apologize and fix this. ect...." The continuous choosing of ourselves over the other person in these moments is what will build resilience and self-love. The constant thoughts of questioning ourselves get a little quieter every time we are successful in staying away and choosing ourselves. The constant need for reassurance, acceptance, and validation from that other person slowly starts to fade. Reassurance, acceptance, and validation from ourselves start to become enough and all that we need. That magnetic pull we feel, that is our brain trying to get us back to the level of toxicity we were existing in with this person because that is what we are used to, slowly starts to lose power. With every small battle like this that we win, we are one step closer and it gets easier to win the war.

It is exhausting, life feels heavy, and this path is full of anger, frustration, depression, and sadness. Never underestimate the powerful connection that comes from having a good friend in your life. Give yourself grace in these moments. Validate yourself, and acknowledge how hard it is to lose people you cared about. Losing connections like this changes us in ways that will stay with us forever. One cannot simply get over it and move on. You have to find a new path and a new way of existing in the world. It just takes time. 

The Junk Drawers of Our Minds

 Do you have a junk drawer in your house? You know... that random drawer where things go that don't really have a home or that are broken but you don't have time to deal with or fix them? So you stuff everything in that drawer with every intention to get to them "later". Although, have you noticed that later never comes?

If you have no idea what I am talking about & you don't have a junk drawer, then we are on opposite ends of the universe. I actually have several junk drawers, cupboards, shelves, ect..... I'm just that girl that is organizationally challenged! I am a hot mess ALL of the time. I make people like you twitch... we will probably never be friends. 

Actually.... this is a lie.... my best friend is a total neat freak. Everything in her house has a "home". Her house is always organized & clean. She loves me & I love her. So we can probably still be friends, you'll just have to lower your standards a little bit & slum it up when you hang out with me! I can be your dirty little secret, it will be fun!  :) 

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. Junk Drawers! I flooded my house 6 weeks ago, (no I'm not getting distracted & off-topic again, just wait for it!) It was my birthday. If you want to know how to for sure ruin your own birthday, then you need to leave the water running in the laundry room sink for 2.5 hours. It will ruin your day & your house. 

Since then we have been remodeling several rooms in my house. We gutted my mudroom and laundry room. We had to move out of the main level of my house 2 weeks ago, for 7 days, so that our hardwood floors could get refinished. We've been doing a lot of moving things out & organizing & cleaning & dejunking. 

When it came time for us to come back home after our floors were refinished, we walked back into our house & it felt like a completely different place. Not just because the floors were completely different, but because the house was empty & spacious. It wasn't cluttered & full of "stuff". You could take a deep breath. The majority of my main level was a clean slate & I could do whatever I needed to in order to keep my house feeling this way. 

Everything we have done to my house since the flood has been very well thought out and intentional. We have spent a bunch of time remodeling and repairing broken things. We have spent countless hours looking at paint colors, cabinets, tile, and wood stains. We want to make sure that we get things just right and the way we want them this time. We have been very careful about what we are allowing back in the house. We have questioned every piece of furniture & wondered if it was helping us feel relaxed & organized. We have gotten rid of a lot of things, and we have replaced a lot of things with smaller, more compact versions. We are going for the "less is more" approach this time. 

I have noticed that I feel better physically, mentally & emotionally in my own house. I have always loved my house. It's my happy & safe place. I never realized that it needed this much work to really feel like more of a home. 

This has got me thinking.... what if our minds are just as full & crammed as our houses? What if we all have these massive "junk drawers" in our minds that are taking up an insane amount of space and energy? Just typing this feels overwhelming and exhausting.

When was the last time we actually took stock of what we have hidden in the dark corners of our minds? Everyone has hard, awful things that we don't want to think about our deal with. Even people who say they don't, they do! No one can escape this life without some type of trauma. We need to be taking a mental inventory of our minds every once in a while at least & "dejunking". We need to be dealing with the hard stuff, so we can clear it out. 

If you just take all of the "hard stuff" in life and shove them in your mental junk drawer, eventually that drawer feels up. Then you start shoving the "hard stuff" into other places until eventually, that is all that fills your mind. We will spend an insane amount of energy trying to avoid dealing with the hard things that we have filled our minds with because we can't deal with them and let them go. 

Once we have filled our minds with all of the stuff we wish we could just forget, and avoiding them becomes a full-time job, then our unhealthy coping mechanisms come out to play. We get to a point where we either have to deal with the dark, scary corners of our minds, or we have to numb them & shut them down. Any mental health problems we might have will spiral out of control, addictions come to the surface & take over, impulsive behaviors become more frequent and harder to control, ect. There is a list a mile long of how people are numbing their minds and emotions. 

I get it, cleaning out your mental "junk drawer" is terrifying. It's scary to make the decision to dive in & start that process. Opening that drawer is like opening the flood gates. Once it's open, you'll never really be able to shut it again without causing some serious damage. There are things in there that you know are there, and are the worst things ever. There is a reason you are choosing not to deal with them. There are things in there that you know you have forgotten about & you are grateful that you don't remember them. Why would you ever want to remember any of this stuff again? It's the fear of the "unknown" & it's powerful. 

I want you to do one thing for me right now. Close your eyes & take a few deep breaths. Now, try to imaging how much better you will feel when you are no longer afraid. When there are no dark corners or "junk drawers" in your mind. When you make that decision for yourself to stop avoiding and to start "dejunking".

When everything is out in the open then you know what you are fighting. It's no longer a scary mystery. It's still scary to face things head-on, I'm not saying it will be a walk in the park. But once you shine a light in all of the dark spaces & see what they are hiding then you can start forming a plan of how to deal with them. Imagine your mind, instead of cluttered and full of "stuff", as a big, open & bright place. 

We all need to start dejunking our minds. We don't have to start with anything monumental, it could be something as simple as starting 1 thing that is just for us. Pick 1 thing you know you need to do for yourself on a daily basis & just start with that. Sometimes "dejunking" is about bringing in the tools we need to start organizing. Pick 1 small thing that feels the least hard, then we will build on that. We aren't going to climb our "Mount Everest" on the first try, especially if we have never even taken any kind of hike up a small mountain. 

So let's get started. Just 1 foot in front of the other. Even if you have to start out crawling, you are still moving forward and making progress. 

You've got this! I've got this! We are amazing!! Good Luck!!

- Jess

Broken

The word broken comes with a lot of negativity, but I don't really see it that way.

If you think about it, when something breaks & then is put back together, it is different than it was before it was broken & it will never go back to being perfect. It will never go back to how it was before. It is forever changed.

Broken things have character & a little bit of charm to them. They stand out & they don't "fit the mold" anymore. They are unique from the second they break.

People are the same way... there are a lot of stigmas & negative connotations surrounding people who appear to be "broken". But if you think about it, everyone is broken in some way. No one can really escape it. People may pretend to be perfect & unblemished, but everyone is broken in some way.

That is the beauty of humanity... it makes us all different. Our broken pieces make us all unique and one of a kind. There is literally no one else on earth just like you or me.

Since this is the case, why are we all so scared of being broken & showing other people our broken pieces. Why is there so much shame surrounding this? Why do we look for how other people are broken, so we can feel better about ourselves? Why do we compare our broken selves & put others down who we perceive to be more broken than us? Why do we try to hide who we really are?

I personally feel that the more broken we are, the more valuable we become. With every break we learn something. We experience something so hard, that it breaks us, and we come out of it a little wiser on the other side.

I feel that these cracks and breaks aren't flaws, but they are a way for the light & love of God to shine through us. A way for us to be able to touch other people's lives & help make them better. With each break we gain understanding, compassion, empathy, love, ect.

This life has never been about who can make it back to our Heavenly Father unchanged and perfect. Although our ultimate goal is to make it back to him as perfect as we can be, I feel that the only path to perfection is through these experiences that will break us, change us, and mold us into what our Heavenly Father knows we can become. The path to perfection is meant to break us.


So if you are feeling broken & your self worth is suffering because of this.... just know that you are amazing & beautiful. You are completely unique & there is no one in this world that could ever be just like you.

If you are feeling shame because you don't "fit the mold" just know that we were created to break the mold & come out a better version of ourselves. You can't "break the mold" without a few cracks.

- Jess

It Is Well with My Soul

It is well with my soul.....

Just saying these words make me take a big sigh. I'm sighing because to get to where this is who I am all of the time would be amazingly peaceful. I'm also sighing because it feels like an impossible goal to reach, it's a bigger mountain to climb than I have the strength to do.

I have been thinking about this concept for a while, and recently it has been on my mind a lot. How do you actually get to the point where most of the things that are going on in our mortal journey sit well with our souls?

Maybe it's just me, maybe everyone is pretty close to this and I've missed something important. But lately it feels like there are a lot of things that aren't "well with my soul" and I'm struggling.

People we love dying, addictions, divorce, chronic illness, mental health issues, trauma, abuse, suicide.... whatever it is that is going on in our lives right now that is hard. How do we reconcile our souls to be "okay" with whatever life is giving us?

Maybe "okay" is not even the right word to be using. How can anyone be "okay" with any of this? Maybe a better word for it is "acceptance".  How do we accept life just as it is?

To find acceptance I feel that we need to look for understanding. We need to look at why things are happening. Why people are making the decisions they make, why something hurts us so much, why am I reacting the way that I am? The better we understand, the easier it is for us to find acceptance.

Finding understanding is really hard though.... painfully hard sometimes. It forces us to step outside and think outside the box. To really look at things from another perspective. Then we need to feel things from these different perspectives. To realize that our view & understanding of the world is specific to only us. There is no way we could ever really know what someone else is thinking or feeling. Even if we have been through the same experience, it's still different for everyone. Everyone's lives are different, their thoughts & perceptions are different. Every experience is different for everyone and we all handle and react differently to everything.

Then there is also the part where I know that God could change all of this in a heartbeat & he doesn't. He literally has the power to take away all of our pain and suffering. Some days understanding and acceptance of this concept are hard for me.... if I'm being honest, most days this concept is hard for me. This isn't always well with my soul.

Why do good people have to get sick and die? Why do people have to suffer at the hands of other people? Why can't we understand just how much we are loved and really know our own self worth? Why can't God just heal all of his children? Why, Why, Why..... if you dwell on these questions too long you will eventually go crazy.

It's not that God isn't willing to heal his children, it's that we need these experiences to help us get to the understanding and the acceptance. This is really the only way we can learn anything. God's healing comes to us as we are learning to understand the chaos around us. He's teaching us empathy and compassion. He is teaching us to see the world through his eyes. As we learn to accept all of the things that are happening and that is out of our control, we take on the characteristics of God, and he helps us heal.

I feel that our purpose here on this earth is to become like God. We need to learn to understand God. Learn to understand his will and his specific plan for us. Then we need to accept what is expected of us. True and lasting healing comes to us the closer we become to being like God.

Only then can we fully understand and accept the harshness of this life. Even if we don't like what is happening and we wish things were different. Even if we feel that this life is too hard to navigate at times. We can at least gain the knowledge God wants us to have so that at some point in the middle of the mess we call life, we can say "it is well with my soul!"

I don't know if any of this makes sense.... It feels like a jumbled mess that came bursting out of my brain. I have a lot going on in my mind right now & this bit felt like it was trying the hardest to escape. I hope this is helpful to someone other than myself.

Take care of yourselves,

Jess

messy emotions

Hi friends.... it's been a while... like 7 years.... sorry.

I'm extremely non-committal when it comes to online stuff like blogs, social media, ect. I'm just kind of a private person & I don't like putting myself out there to the world. I am also a HUGE introvert, and all of this combined makes me terrible at all online communication.

I'm writing again for a few reasons. One, I think I just need an outlet right now. Things are crazy... this COVID-19 pandemic is really throwing everyone for a loop. If the virus doesn't kill us, all of the chaos that comes with it might. (I'm currently laughing because that is what I do in difficult situations to cope with life). Another reason I'm writing is that I do feel that it is important to document or journal your life in times like these. I am terrible at actually writing in a journal with actual paper and pen. I know I won't do it. But typing on the computer seems easier, so this is where I've decided to journal my life.

I might decide to not even tell anyone that I am blogging again, so I can still keep my life and thoughts to myself, while still getting out of this blog what I want to get out of it. On one hand, that sentence feels very selfish, to just keep things to myself & not share anything with anyone. On the other hand, who am I to feel that anything I think, feel, or say would or should matter to anyone else? No one is asking for my advice & I have no business giving it out to the masses if it isn't wanted.

Tonight I'm writing about a lesson I am learning as a mom that is a hard lesson for me to wrap my head around. I know what I should do in this situation, it's just painful learning lessons like this, and actually doing what is best in the end for everyone.

Here's what's going on.... we have been quarantined for a few weeks now. I think it's been around 2.5 weeks, but I'm not 100% sure. I'm already losing track of time, and my days are all running together. For the first week or so we did okay. My kids, for the most part, didn't mind staying home. Most of us are introverts, so this wasn't that hard. We are doing pretty good at the home school thing. My middle child is struggling the most with focus & motivation. But I think we have her somewhat back on track. Anyways, the past few days we have hit that wall. The ship is sinking and we are all going down with it. People are moody, edgy, and fighting pretty consistently. Today I do feel was a breaking point, and my youngest child even said (after stomping off to his room declaring he hated having to be stuck in this house with his family all of the time) that he didn't' think he would survive the quarantine. That this is too hard (I know buddy, I know).

My middle child cried on and off all day today. She is my laid back, happy, relaxed child and she can't handle it either. She is the most social one out of all of us. She loves her friends, she loves her teachers, she loves getting out of the house. She is an extrovert, living in a house mostly full of introverts. She is really getting beat up by life right now.

I don't know about everyone else, but I am that mom that gets a lot of anxiety when my kids are unhappy. I get stuck in this rut thinking that I need to do something to make them happy again. I need to fix all of their emotions. Logically I know that these feelings and emotions are perfectly fine and normal. But there is something in my brain that flips a switch and puts me in panic mode until I can see them smiling & laughing again. I will work at making them happy until I'm sure I hit the point of becoming too annoying to be around.

As I laid down with my son on his bed tonight, helping him calm down from his meltdown, it hit me. I need to stop trying to fix their emotions. They need to fully feel what they are feeling and deal with it. They need to learn to handle all of the emotions coming their way without someone (me) coming in to try and fix everything. They need to know that it's okay to just "sit and be" in those emotions, and not try and dismiss them as soon as possible. If you are sad, then acknowledge it, feel it, and let it move on. We need to do this for every emotion! Frustration, anger, exhaustion, grief, ect. Whatever it is they, or we, are feeling, we need to just let it happen. I think that by always trying to change how they feel, I am causing them to feel a lot of shame. I'm making my home a place that isn't safe to feel anything but happy and okay. This realization feels like a huge weight sitting right on my chest. It makes it hard to breathe.

I need to learn to be the mom that will just sit with them in whatever feelings they are experiencing right then & not make them feel shame or anxiety for how they are feeling. I need to be fully accepting of them in these moments which = letting them feel how they want or need to, feel without my anxiety taking over and trying to change them.

This also means that I am going to have to "sit and be" when it comes to my anxiety. I can't deal with it or dismiss it as soon as possible either as I have been doing. This whole mess has been all about me up until tonight. I have been a huge contributor to this problem by letting my anxiety control me. I have been acting out of fear and panic, and that needs to stop. This feels too hard as well.

So I laid with my son in his bed and I didn't try to make him laugh, I didn't try to change the subject, or tell him all of the reasons he has to be grateful or happy. I just agreed with him. I said that I knew that this was really hard and that it does feel like it will never end sometimes. We talked about how he was feeling and we gave his emotion a name... Frustration!! He's frustrated because he can't really leave the house. He can't see his friends. He's stuck with his sisters ALL DAY LONG.

Name the emotion!! It takes all of the power away from it. It's no longer this enemy that is lurking in the dark & you have no idea what you are supposed to be fighting. Once you name it, you can take control. It feels less scary and overwhelming. You can stop being afraid. You can come up with a game plan to beat it when you know what you are up against.

This week's game plan... to "sit and be" in our emotions. As uncomfortable as this is going to be, I'm hopeful we will all come out on the other side of this quarantine a little more emotionally mature, and with a little more compassion for our neighbors and friends.

Friends, stay safe. Recognize, name, and feel all of your emotions. You've got this!

-Just Jess