You're entering new territory. Now it's a place of your own and full time work. The demands of your daily grind while you are still setting and surpassing goals and reaching for your dreams can be overwhelming. You're no longer those two adorable children who dreamed of being an actor and a musician. You're adults with dreams within reach but learning to balance it all is tough for even the most accomplished among us. Hold steady. Don't panic. Breathe. Look up.
And, while you're looking up you may realize that the rope is thin, tenuous, close to breaking. How do you strengthen your hold on life and dreams?
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought" -Buddha
Fill your brain with positivity and gratefulness. Fill it to the brim. Fill it so full that the doubts, the negativity and the thoughts that beat you up are diminished and then decimated. Start your day with positive affirmations. Talk to yourselves in the mirror like the wonderful and crazy people I know you are. Give yourself the gift of good thoughts and then pass the goodness along to others.
While you're passing that goodness around you must learn the art of guarding your hearts but keeping them open. From my own life: Moving to Los Angeles was terrifying for me. Thrown into the mix of fear and loneliness is the the fact that it's hard to make true friends out here. A few years ago I was "settling" in the friend department. I let people into my life that, quite honestly, I had a nagging and unsettling gut feeling about. I opened my heart, my family and my friendship to them. When they were ousted from my life I did not grieve because they were gone, I grieved because I had ignored my own instincts.
Be better than me. Good parents do the best they can but when our children are grown there is not a parent alive that doesn't look back and think they could have done better. We learn to parent from our own parents. Deep down we may know what we're doing wrong and what we're doing right when raising little souls but we find it hard to uproot our own deeply rooted angst. Please embrace the good and accept my apology for the bad.
It's hard to change and change is hard. As I write, I am surrounded by stacks of big brown boxes that hold our memories of the last 5 years in this home. In the beginning, I refused to embrace this upcoming move. So many changes coming all at once. I am taking my own advice: Hold on, breathe, look up.
Max, I walk through the apartment and see a big black smudge of dirt where your desk stood and your flip flops rested against the wall. You were at that desk almost every night strumming a guitar and mixing music. A lone sock, a half dozen or so guitar picks, and the window screen off and propped against the balcony wall (who needs doors when you can just step outside your window) are the only visible remnants of your life living with us. Haley, your room still has some boxes stacked against the wall. One holds a mish mash of hats; earrings that have lost their twins; boots, boots and more boots; your elusive health insurance card; the checkbook that was misplaced; and snips of paper with notes from friends and snaps of shots cataloging our move from Texas and your decade in Los Angeles.
Our parental goal was to raise you up to be kind people, to choose life paths that made you happy and to make sure that you moved out of our home and into your own. It's done. But, never forget that I'm still here for hugs and help. Those hugs are probably more for me than you.
The letting go is like dark chocolate; bittersweet and good for all of us.
No comments:
Post a Comment