Doing

As I said in my last post, I recently lost someone who meant the world to me.  And I had also mentioned how this isn’t my first rodeo.  But even if you’ve been through the grieving process a hundred times or more, it’s still going to be new.  It’s still going to be a new loss.  It’s going to affect you in different ways, sometimes unpredictable ways, and that can be a really good thing… or a really bad thing. 

There’s always some things that hit you harder than others, but different each time.  This most recent loss has just really thrown me for a loop.  She was part of my normal and my normal has to shift again. 
One thing that’s hitting me really hard is that we had plans. 
Lots of plans. 
We were going to do this.
And as soon as this other thing happened we were going to do this thing.
And then we were going to do this.
And then someday we were going to do that. 

Just as soon as I can get to it. 

A few of those things were things we’d do together.  But mostly they were just personal goals. 
Projects… ventures… ideas..
Things we planned and worked towards, but didn’t get to the doing part as quickly as we’d like. 
Her fibro and recent surgeries had been her very valid reasons for putting things off a bit more.
I have a teen, a toddler, and a husband.  Life gets busy sometimes. 
But now she can’t do any of it.  Not the joint ventures or the personal ones. 
She won’t figure out for sure where she was going to move to, because she didn’t get there. 
She won’t know if that new idea would pan out, because it hadn’t had time to be created. 

It’s easy to talk about doing.  It really is. 
I think a lot of what holds us back is fear of failure.  Honey badger might not give a shit… but it kind of does.  Failure sucks, whether you think of it as each rung on the ladder to success or not, it stings every single time.  It can make you feel defeated and each time can make you hesitate to put yourself out there that next time.  That can apply to a million different things too. 
We hold ourselves back.  We make excuses, and we justify those excuses. 

Yes, I have a husband and kids and a house to take care of; bills to pay, meals to plan and prepare, schedules to keep with appointments and routines. 

But when a friend writes me because they need to vent or they need some advice… I don’t even hesitate to listen.  It doesn’t matter what I was planning on doing for that next chunk of time, I found the time.  I made the time.  They matter to me and so I didn’t hesitate. 
So why do I hesitate to make time for myself?
Why does it feel so selfish? 

I should be doing this.  I should be cleaning that. 
I think being a stay at home mom contributes in that I’m always at home, but I’m also always at work.  There’s no feeling of coming home after work that day.  So my to do list is always in my face and that makes it really difficult to relax.  And with kids it’s very easy to get sidetracked.  And with a family it’s very easy to put yourself on the back burner. 
But what advice do we give other people?  A lot of times when people ask me for advice I just ask them that question.  If they’re a parent, “What if that was your kid, grown up, asking you what to do.  What would you tell them to do?” Because it’s often the thing you know is the right thing to do, or at least what you truly believe to be the right thing to do, even if it’s not what you want to hear or do.
If they don’t have kids, their spouse or their best friend; someone that they want nothing but the best for. 
Then you know what you truly feel you need to do. 
I would tell my friends that you cannot serve from an empty vessel.  That it’s not selfish to take care of yourself, it’s necessary.  You cannot do the things you need to do for those you care for if you have nothing left in you to give. 
You can only run so long on fumes.  Eventually you’re going to break down. 

If we can so easily make the time for those we care for, we need to do that for ourselves too. 
We find the time to peruse social media.  We find the time to play a game or two on our phones and crush some candy, dashing through diners, playing god, and tossing words back and forth with friends.  And I think the issue, at least with me, is in large part because I can do those things because they don’t take up long periods of time.  They’re short bursts when I find a minute for myself. 
Some days I can have hours to get things done while she naps.
But other days she just outright refuses to nap, because… toddlers. 
You can take a toddler to bed, but you cannot make it sleep. 
But then there’s time after she goes to bed.  There’s an hour after the toddler goes to bed where we hang out with the teen for some solo time.  And my husband and I make a point of spending time together each evening, alone.  We don’t have a lot of help nearby, hardly any really, so we don’t get to go out on date nights or anything.  So we feel that time together is important.  But I joke that at least half of it is spent doing parallel play.  He’s writing his music and half the time I’m laughing about memes on the interwebz.  So it’s not that I don’t have the time, it’s that I don’t make it for myself consciously. 

Writing my first blog post was a big deal.  I’ve had that blog up for years without a single post. 
But I’m trying to work on doing instead of talking about doing. 
So I did it. 

And I’d like to keep doing this, at least from time to time.  The goal would be some type of regular basis but for now I’m just content that I did it.  I got the first post up and here goes a second one. 

But I’m going to do the next thing, and the thing after that, too. 

She didn’t get to do those things she planned.  I don’t get to do the things I planned with her, at least not the same way.  And that realization is what is motivating me to start my own doing. 
I’ve planned enough. 

I had done a tarot reading for her just a matter of weeks before she died.  The main theme ended up being about doing instead of planning. 

It was something we had talked about a lot in recent months.  It was something we touched on regularly, but it was really something that dominated our conversations this year.  So I guess if I’m to honor her, it would be to do what she wanted for me. 
She wanted me to write.  I used to write for her and we had been working on getting her site back up to continue that.  I wasn’t going to blog for her again but I had agreed to occasionally guest blog to appease her. 
So write I shall. 
She wanted us to motivate each other to ‘do’ more.  Now it’s just a different way of hearing her cheering for me.  I have no doubt she’ll spend a lot of her visits here to cheer for the people she loved.  She was such a great cheerleader. 
She loved my crafts.  I have dozens on my to do list that I just haven't gotten to yet.  A lot of that is that the toddler likes to play with my craft things so things end up lost before I can use them.
But craft I will.  One thing at a time, starting with the things I have the supplies for already, I will do them.  They will get done.

How do you honor the people you’ve lost?  How do you honor their memories and the impact they made on your life? 

What are the things that you talk about doing that you want to just do? 

Let's make the time.
Let’s do them.