Feel the fear and make it up!

Part of being a (recovering) perfectionist is a fear of getting things wrong.

Big things (like diving head-first off the tallest board in the pool), but also seemingly little things (like eating alone in a restaurant or inventing a story on the spot).⠀ ⠀

Embarrassingly, this last example has paralysed me into inaction for the past 6 years. Ever since my eldest child was old enough to ask for a story that wasn’t in a book, that is. ⠀ ⠀

I get the attraction - we all enjoy a bit of bespoke, it makes us feel special - the problem is, improvisation requires confidence in a logical (and well-received) outcome, as well as spontaneous trust in your own creative abilities. And there are no second chances nor opportunities to revise, hone or improve output - essential pre-requisites for any self-respecting perfectionist. ⠀ ⠀

So usually when asked to improvise, I call in the support team. Even when it’s an audience of one, aged 6. How bad could it really be? I’m too scared to find out. “That’s what daddy does, let’s ask him. Mummy reads books”, I say sheepishly. ⠀

But last week something stopped me. I said yes. Feel the fear and do it anyway and all that. ⠀ ⠀

And, though I say it myself, I rocked! I surprised myself and delighted my daughter. ⠀ ⠀

Probably just as much because I had made the effort to overcome a secret block that she probably already knew I was avoiding (kids know everything) than because of the content itself. I even went for a trilogy (I was on a roll). ⠀ ⠀

We encountered a small self-confidence hiccup yesterday when creative proceedings were halted by the audience who asked for more “ excitement” in the story: the fear crept back in, the throat went dry, the shoulders hunched. ⠀ ⠀

But I wasn’t deterred. I took it like a true BoboMama and got back on the wagon. The story ended on a cliff-hanger and I think this little fear may just have been crossed off the list...⠀ ⠀

To all the recovering perfectionists out there, what really scares you? And could you conceive of pushing yourself past it? Just for a laugh? To see what would happen? If I can do it, YOU CAN. I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!

⠀Are you fulfilling your greatest potential, mama? Are you getting paid to do what you love whilst parenting in a calm and positive way? Are you feeling happy and fulfilled both at work and at home? Because you deserve to! Book a complimentary discovery session with me on skype and we can explore taking concrete steps towards creating a life in which you feel motivated and in control once more!  

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On navigating the triggers of parenting...

(My latest blog has been featured on the Women's Network. I'm super excited to be included as one of their storytellers! Click on the READ MORE link below for the entire story). It has taken me a while to accept that life is a journey of ups and downs. Mainly because I hate being down. But whilst I would love to feel eternally connected, centred and serene, I have come to appreciate that the triggers that cause the downs in life, are actually gifts. I have learnt to see them as opportunities to restore the spiritual imbalance which is presenting itself for attention (when I am willing, that is).

Somehow though, these potential lessons always seem to catch me unawares, despite being the parent of three small kids who provide me with perfect trigger-fodder on an almost daily basis. After all, they know exactly which buttons to press, they don’t ever let up, and I’m kind of stuck with them.

Last week was a particularly bad example. I’d had enough of being greeted at the school gate with a sulk. I was really fed up with restoring the living room to its normal state after daily ‘den-building’ exercises and I was finding them particularly boisterous, demanding and ungrateful. I was also premenstrual. And as a rule, the more stressed I am, the less present I am as a parent, so I was not being particularly patient, kind nor nurturing. Which made me feel even worse.

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On connecting...

Yesterday’s yoga class was about staying connected. It was my first proper Yin class as opposed to a restorative one, and jeez, was it tough! We started by sitting on our knees with our toes bent back underneath us. I have only ever done this once before in a pregnancy yoga class designed to help you “get used to” the agony that is labour. In actual fact, whilst it may be a technique that works to great effect in Thailand where it originated, it did nothing of the sort for me. It is a pose with which I do not wish to get more acquainted. The following one - pigeon (or sleeping swan as our Aussie teacher called it, held for over 5 minutes each side in order to help us “melt into it”) - was not to be taken lightly either. My contorted body resembled neither that of a pigeon nor a swan, sleeping or awake. As a distraction from the pain, I focused on the theme for the class and the reason behind this particular series of asanas: that the increasingly common sense of emptiness we are all prone to feeling (which is encouraged by our consumerist, capitalist societies - after all, you will only buy yet more stuff if you think you 'need' it to feel whole), is the result of a disconnect with our earth element.

According to traditional Chinese medicine, each of us holds the energy of all five elements within us (wood, earth, fire, metal and water) although one will be more dominant than the others. That of the earth helps us feel grounded and safe. And when it is out of balance, we can feel empty, needy, obsessive, worry unnecessarily about the future as well as suffer from digestive issues. Whilst many of us may unconsciously turn to addictive behaviours or substances in an attempt to numb these uncomfortable feelings, it is only through reconnecting with and rebalancing the earth element that we can reach a longer-lasting sense of calm.

This struck a chord with me because I have recently been feeling pretty empty and needy myself. Unhappy and feeling like I'm missing something, despite living in a gorgeous villa in a stunning setting in a tropical, welcoming and beautiful country. Which has been very frustrating when I know only too well how much there is to be grateful for and happy about. A classic case of shonky earth element.

Usually for me, the most effective way of looking behind what is really going on is to parent my child energy (more about this in my next blog). But when your earth element is out of whack, this becomes tricky because it is precisely this which allows us to inner parent. As the Institute of Classical Five-Element Acupuncture writes "the Earth element grants us the ability to internalize the mother by learning to nourish and care for ourselves".

So instead of doing the deep inner work necessary to make me feel better, I've been relying on the quick fix of other people behaving in a certain way or on my surroundings to be ‘just right’ in order to feel calm. (It's so much easier to blame others or external circumstances, don't you think?) The problem with this is that it does not deliver a quick fix: other people and things can never really be counted on. Selfishly, they tend only to be concerned with themselves. So you end up having to do the work anyway.

Luckily there are also other ways to restore the connection: by practising yoga (and in particular, a form that focuses on opening up the spleen meridian), by communing with Nature, or by doing anything that takes us out of our heads and puts us firmly back into our bodies in this present moment (such as meditation, dance or sport).

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So as a reminder to me to connect to my earth element, and to come back to the 'present' next time I am feeling particularly needy or empty, I retrieved a beautiful stone from the bottom of my rucksack that was pilfered in September from a beach on Ikaria. I have decided to carry it around with me as a sort of talisman. For not only are stones the natural symbol for the earth element but this one in particular probably has its own unique healing power, drawn from its exposure to the transformative “radioenergy” of the thermal springs near which it was found. It is also a lovely yellow which is a reminder of the light within us all. So far so New Age - that's the Bohemian half : )

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Image: Christian Schloe

On acceptance...

Today was my younger daughter’s Nativity play. This is her first year at school and she turned four only the week before term started so she is still little. Only the first two years of the school perform a nativity play and it is considered one of the highlights of the calendar. Not for her. And as a result, not for me. Whilst very gregarious at any other time, when told to “perform”, she freezes. Not just out of shyness (her explanation) but also I think because of the sheer weight of expectation being placed on her little shoulders. Since performances began at nursery – concerts, singalongs, plays – we have been the only parents waving and giving the thumbs up encouraging her to join in, grinning demonically in order to get her to copy but to no avail. We are greeted with a sulky bottom lip, a glare and a frown. Other parents usually think it is funny. Not me. So to avoid this today, I thought I would entice her with the idea of a meal out – a treat to celebrate her saying her one line out loud and joining in with the others. I thought I’d nailed it – she was excited about the two theoretical balls of strawberry ice cream that would materialise for pudding. But no. Sadly, today was no exception. I will add the photos of one silent, sulking angel surrounded by a host of beatific ones to the family album.

At first I felt angry. That this should have happened, again, despite my incentive. I’d failed. And I also felt embarrassed. Why my child when all the others seemed to be in their element on stage, giggling and showing off for their proud parents? But then I realised my reaction was far more about my awkwardness than about her: I was ashamed that my child had stood out for the wrong reasons; I was resentful that my proud parent moment had been snatched. So I channelled my inner empath and put on a “I’m so proud of you” face. After all, parenting is no different to most other walks of life: you fake it until you feel it. She was happy and so was I.

When I got home, I read the latest email sent from Bethany Webster on Welcoming the Divine Child Within You. Serendipidously (of course), the very first paragraph struck a chord: “There is power and nourishment in simply being and resting. This is what healthy bonding looks like between a mom and her child: to be welcomed, to be cherished not for what we do and what we produce, but by fully being who we are, in all our complexity... Often the most powerful need of all is to have your existence seen as good; to be welcomed and honoured as you are.” It resonated so deeply because it revealed that I had just felt the opposite: by being angry at my daughter for not fitting in, I was telling her it was not ok to be who she is. I was offering only conditional love: for what I wanted her to do instead of cherishing her for who she was. I felt very humbled.

This lesson can of course be applied to us all: there are parts to each of us that either we or others feel do not conform. To the current demands of our society, our culture, our upbringing or to our own impossibly high standards. But these parts need to be loved equally along with those that do fit in, not judged and pushed out. If we can accept ourselves and others IN ALL OUR COMPLEXITY we allow ourselves the freedom to flourish. From that, flows the energy and happiness that comes from being truly authentic. That may not create the perfect school nativity cast but it will allow for a magnificent diversity of thriving personalities.

As for my daughter, her next challenge (and therefore mine) will be class assembly, performed in front of the whole school and parents. I have decided that I will let go of any expectations: I will be in the background smiling whether she delivers or not; accepting her for whoever she decides to be on that day. And in the meantime, I’m off to organise those two balls of strawberry ice cream....

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On women and their mothers...

The “mother wound”. It’s kind of taboo to even write that let alone admit that it resonates. Because the bond between a woman and her mother is often considered sacrosanct – too important to be interfered with. But it is precisely because it is so important that it must be interfered with. Or at least looked at, to see whether it is allowing both parties to live lives according to their fullest potential or whether it is holding both parties back in an unconscious contract that requires them to hide their light and act ‘small’ to fit in or be accepted by each other. I have been exploring this concept having come across the amazing work of Bethany Webster who has made the mother wound the core part of her offering. It is both fascinating and challenging work which I hope to learn more about soon by following her online course. As a mother myself, I want to make sure that I can clear as much generational baggage as I can so that my children are in the best position they can be to become authentic, happy people. I believe this is the cornerstone to all female innerwork.

Generational baggage is even stronger for women because it is passed on physically as well as through the usual unconscious patterns of behaviour we inherit as children learning to navigate the world. It always amazes me when I reflect that I was already present in my grandmother’s womb. Yes, physically! As women we are born with a fully functioning set of ovaries and all the eggs we will ever produce throughout our lives. Thus I was already fully immersed into the matriarchal line as an egg in my mother’s womb as my grandmother was pregnant with her. Crazy, eh?!

And where does the wound come from? In a nutshell, historically women and feminine energies in both men and women have been oppressed. This has traditionally caused women to segregate and compete for available resources. The degree to which our female ancestors felt “less than” has dictated the depth of the wound that is unconsciously passed on through the generations. There is no blame in this because they simply did not have the tools to release the trauma this created. We do.

As part of a larger female collective awakening we are in a unique position to use our feminine energies and means of connection: movement, song, touch as well as meditation and reflection to clear this baggage. But it must start with the very difficult admission that on some level there IS a wound: our mothers may not have been there for us in all the ways we wanted her to be. Probably because they simply couldn’t be.

This acknowledgement alone allows us to free up the energy that was spent trying to fill the void in unconstructive ways – either through addictions, inappropriate relationships or work – and begin to give ourselves what we felt was lacking. Through parenting ourselves, we are free to become our authentic selves. We can begin to live our lives according to our own, unique set of beliefs rather than according to a book of beliefs we were handed as children by our parents, our culture, society as a whole.

This is necessary work. Because without a healthy relationship to our female ancestral line (however independent and modern we think we are!) we cannot have a healthy relationship to ourselves or to our children. We are the generation who can take an honest look at our inherited beliefs and take unprecedented steps to clear generational baggage by rejecting those that do not truly belong to us.

I therefore challenge you to ask yourself the following questions: Are you carrying negative stories passed down from before that are not truly yours to pass on? Are you caretaking inherited beliefs that do not actually resonate with your authentic self? Is the bond with your mother one that allows you both to flourish?

This is deep and scary work that goes to the core of how we see ourselves. But it is exciting too because it is liberating. It requires courage. I’m going to summon my Warrior to dive in – will you?

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