After the girls were born and I left my corporate job to be home with them, my "self" got flipped on it's head and I found myself in a position I'd never been before. I was insecure about parenting (cloth vs disposable diapers, when to start solids, to let them cry or not), physically unfit and exhausted all. the. time. I ran on auto-pilot, with no end in sight. It was hard and I was tired. I wasn't reading or running or thinking about anything except for who needed to eat what, and when. Once the dust began to settle and I started sleeping a lot more, I realized that not only had my confidence left me but so had my voice. I wondered if I even had anything to say anymore. Slowly people started to nudge me into participation with the world again and it began to dawn on me that I was going to have to work hard to get back to my old ways. It has now been about 3 years since this realization and I'm tired of being patient and slowly "leaning in" to what I might have to say. I have got to take back my voice and find a way to get it out. At this point, I don't even honestly care where it goes, it just needs to get out. I know I have something to say and I firmly believe that our stories are what makes us human and what makes us individual. What we say is how we leave a mark on humanity to say, 'I was here." That just may all we're all after anyway. I, along with millions, are inspired by people who tell their stories. Brene Brown, Hope Jahren, and Trevor Noah all spoke to me this last year and pushed me to see that stories are all worth hearing. Their stories are the kind of stories that all of us can identify with. Their stories are 'just' stories of a life, but because they are released into the world, it's like they're given wings and set to music, appearing shiny and different. But scratch off the surface and they're all just like your story and just like mine.
After hearing back from so many people in response to my annual letter, it is obvious that my own voice has just as much power. We are all composed of stories and traits and identities of those who came before us. This is how we grow and change and learn as families and societies and eventually as humans. From those first cave drawings, telling of a glorious hunt to the 140 character tweets that now fill our lives with a different kind of story, we have always wanted to use our voice. The stories of my own ancestors who watched the Boston Tea Party from an upstairs window or wrote poems about a hard life off the coast of Scotland assure me of my place in this river of life. The pioneers who crossed the country in covered wagons, while not my own bloodline, are certainly voices that echo off our canyon walls and reveal nuggets of a longer lasting gold. They say we stand on the shoulders of giants, but the only way we know about them is because they told their stories.
If we just sit back and let others do the talking, there will be a time when we look up and realize we're not on the same page anymore. Silence is acceptance. Silence is the belief that someone has our back and will do the hard work for us. Silence is letting other people's stories matter more than our own. Silence is bowing out. In Egyptian culture, a person dies for the last time when their name is gone from the living's memory. A voice is silenced.
Figuring out where and how to use this voice is my challenge this year. I'm not saying I will publish a book of my life story or go on a national speaking tour, but I will keep up this blog and find some other ways to push myself out into the world. Our lives are walled in and colored by what we hear and read on social media. We let others control that to the point that we may not even realize the things on which we differ or in ways that we are all the same. From now on, my voice will be among the fray.
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Sunday, January 1, 2017
Freedom
I grew up in the high desert of Northern New Mexico. The actual boundaries of 'my' place included 21,000 acres, and it was all National Forest and more land around us. We had miles and miles of nature's playground for as far as we could go. My sister and I thought it would be fun to get lost, so when we were about 7 & 8, we tied up hobo sticks and headed for the hills. We packed some band aids, a snack and maybe a jacket, to make sure we had what we'd need. As soon as we lost sight of our house, we tied the bandannas over our eyes and spun around until we fell down, dizzy. Then, we stood up and look around, just hoping we were lost. Alas, with huge landmarks looming on every horizon, we always knew how to find our way back home.
I was thinking about this story recently when I was talking to my girls about "how it was when I was growing up." The freedom we had to bike/walk/hike/horseback ride was, of course, just what I knew at that point. The ranch I grew up on is a conference center where families vacation together for one week at a time, all summer long. Every Monday a new group of people would show up at the ranch and my sister and I would take stock of our friends for the week. Those kids were usually from the city. They had all sorts of rules about how far they could go and how long they could be gone before they had to check in with their parents. My sister and I would have left the house on June 1 and not come back until school started if we could have managed without a bed or shower for that long. We were always amazed at how scared the other kids were. They always needed flashlights for anything in the dark and carried around extra water and first aid kits with bug spray and extra sunscreen. We walked home over half a mile in the pitch black, every single night but wouldn't have been caught dead with a flashlight (this does include countless nights of sprinting, full speed ahead for the last couple of hundred feet and slamming into the front door consumed with fear of what sort of ghost could be right behind, but hey, we figured that out too!) We knew the ranch inside and out, in daylight and darkness and much better than the backs of our hands. I know what kind of 'trouble' we worked our selves into and I know we always worked ourselves out of it too. The things we learned while we were on our own are part of what makes us as adults. Knowing that I could figure out how to clean my own scraped up knee or how to figure out where we were and how to get home translates easily into getting through adult life.
My girls just watched 'Home Alone' for the first time and we had a hilarious discussion about what would happen if either of them were home, by themselves for three days. Sure, it's a different world but I struggle with giving them the time and space to figure things out on their own. This freedom is something I wish I could offer without the fear of Child Protective Services knocking at my door. I'm honestly not afraid for them, I am quite satisfied with the relative safety of our neighborhood and surrounding area and with the responsibility and know-how the girls have. It's not them, it's me! A good friend of mine ducked in to run an errand and left her kiddos in the car (on a cool day, with the windows cracked and a dog in the car for heaven's sake!) for less than 5 minutes and came back to a cop waiting for her. No one popped their head in the store to ask where the mom was, no one asked the kids if they were alright or how long they'd been there, they just called the police. Seriously? It seems not to be about the safety and independence of the children at that point, but rather a way to catch 'bad parents.' It is now 'suggested' that we don't leave kids at home alone until they're around 12, when they can, all of a sudden, start babysitting (Thankfully the law is a little more vague, so we do have some wiggle room as parents, but still.) So, we're supposed to assume that overnight they will be comfortable enough to stay in someone else's home, with responsibility for someone else's child when they've not even been alone in their own home?
Where is the balance?
Where is the path I can point the girls down and then let them walk without me?
How are they supposed to figure this stuff out when I am not allowed to let them go?
I was thinking about this story recently when I was talking to my girls about "how it was when I was growing up." The freedom we had to bike/walk/hike/horseback ride was, of course, just what I knew at that point. The ranch I grew up on is a conference center where families vacation together for one week at a time, all summer long. Every Monday a new group of people would show up at the ranch and my sister and I would take stock of our friends for the week. Those kids were usually from the city. They had all sorts of rules about how far they could go and how long they could be gone before they had to check in with their parents. My sister and I would have left the house on June 1 and not come back until school started if we could have managed without a bed or shower for that long. We were always amazed at how scared the other kids were. They always needed flashlights for anything in the dark and carried around extra water and first aid kits with bug spray and extra sunscreen. We walked home over half a mile in the pitch black, every single night but wouldn't have been caught dead with a flashlight (this does include countless nights of sprinting, full speed ahead for the last couple of hundred feet and slamming into the front door consumed with fear of what sort of ghost could be right behind, but hey, we figured that out too!) We knew the ranch inside and out, in daylight and darkness and much better than the backs of our hands. I know what kind of 'trouble' we worked our selves into and I know we always worked ourselves out of it too. The things we learned while we were on our own are part of what makes us as adults. Knowing that I could figure out how to clean my own scraped up knee or how to figure out where we were and how to get home translates easily into getting through adult life.
My girls just watched 'Home Alone' for the first time and we had a hilarious discussion about what would happen if either of them were home, by themselves for three days. Sure, it's a different world but I struggle with giving them the time and space to figure things out on their own. This freedom is something I wish I could offer without the fear of Child Protective Services knocking at my door. I'm honestly not afraid for them, I am quite satisfied with the relative safety of our neighborhood and surrounding area and with the responsibility and know-how the girls have. It's not them, it's me! A good friend of mine ducked in to run an errand and left her kiddos in the car (on a cool day, with the windows cracked and a dog in the car for heaven's sake!) for less than 5 minutes and came back to a cop waiting for her. No one popped their head in the store to ask where the mom was, no one asked the kids if they were alright or how long they'd been there, they just called the police. Seriously? It seems not to be about the safety and independence of the children at that point, but rather a way to catch 'bad parents.' It is now 'suggested' that we don't leave kids at home alone until they're around 12, when they can, all of a sudden, start babysitting (Thankfully the law is a little more vague, so we do have some wiggle room as parents, but still.) So, we're supposed to assume that overnight they will be comfortable enough to stay in someone else's home, with responsibility for someone else's child when they've not even been alone in their own home?
Where is the balance?
Where is the path I can point the girls down and then let them walk without me?
How are they supposed to figure this stuff out when I am not allowed to let them go?
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