Putting Down the Mantle
This weekend I put down a mantle. I wrapped up a five year stint as the committee chair for a big annual event in our town. It’s the kind of event steeped in tradition and history and it carries the weight of “getting it right”. When I first took on the position, I was trying to find more holiday cheer while getting more connected to my community. Turns out I am not built for holiday cheer. But I did connect to my community. I met people and learned things that I never would have otherwise. And that is important and getting involved is exactly what I would still recommend to anyone who wants more connection.
What I would like to talk about, though, is my decision to move on. On New Year’s Day, as I looked back over the last year, I got discouraged at how little progress I’ve made. My life looks a whole lot like what it looked like last year at this time. I was distraught and upset with myself. The more I sat with those feelings, the more I realized that what is visible to the outside is the same but the inside of me? A whole new world. I have spent so much time working on unearthing and overcoming my own limitations this year that I truly am not the same human I was 365 days ago. It was a long and arduous journey. Some not flattering patterns came up. I learned that I am hypervigilant to the emotions of others because of how I grew up. I learned I am financially codependent. I also apparently have a tendency to take up projects/people/roles so I don’t have to look at my own shit.
And that brings us back to the mantle. Leading that committee was no longer something that served me or helped move me forward. I was spending significant time on a volunteer project that I now know I took on so I didn’t have time to work on myself. It wasn’t just this role. Turns out there are multiple places in my life I distracted myself in this way.
Once I figured out this trickery I was doing, I decided that I would no longer continue to do anything out of obligation or fear of other people’s reactions or some misplaced sense of if-I-don’t-do-it-no-one-else-will. I’m done doing things because I think I should or I have to. I’m done with the things that no longer fit into the life I am building. These were not easily made decisions. And the courage to make changes took me a Really. Long. Time.
There’s a lot of talk during the new year about what you want to do going forward, what you don’t want to do, etc. I don’t think these are things you can just fill out on some New Year New You worksheet and move on. It’s hard, so hard, to hear yourself. Then, once you do get a little whisper of your own voice in your head, having the courage to listen to what it’s telling you is the next obstacle. And I’m going to guess this is not a one-time process. This is something that probably needs to be revisited time and again.
If you find yourself in a place where you know something is missing or needs to change, I encourage you to try to hear yourself for the first time in a long time. Not in some “find your inner child’ way but in trying to remember who you were before you let everyone else have a say. Use those whispers as a guide to what to do next. Listen to yourself and have the courage to do just one thing. Start small. Ask yourself every morning, what do I want today? It could be as inconsequential as wanting an acai bowl for lunch. (That was mine today.) With every small request, you are practicing giving yourself what you need and that builds self trust. When you trust yourself, you have more courage because you know you have your own back.
So, what do you want? What do you need to pick up? What do you need to put down? What does that quiet voice inside you have to say? What would it look like to give priority to that voice today?
