Moving Up from the Abyss

Yesterday was an extremely down day for me. First, I began thinking about the phone call from my brother letting me know that Dad had died, on my way to work. So I cried halfway there. I thought about my blogpost much of the day... and about how I could move beyond the guilt.

When I got home, it all turned around. I got off a little bit early to transport the boys all around. One son went and did an activity that he really wanted to do, the other 2 made homemade rootbeer. We bought all the bottles, caps, and supplies and set up an assembly line. We should know in about 10 days how that turned out! I talked with them a bit, and it made me realize that they harbor no ill will... their life has been great. I struggled through that marriage, and I protected them. So it seems that it's just a matter of working through my own crap now (isn't that how it usually is?).

Today I'm taking some more leaps of faith and contacting select sites about advertising my journals on there. Life is good, sometimes I just have to remind myself!

So This is the Deal

My life is absolutely amazing right now. I have everything I could need. There is so much love in it. And opportunities are coming to me... like I'm innertubing in a stream of opportunity, and they are moseying all around me, for me to grab at will. And I'm grabbing, believe me!

I've gotten comfortable with 'leap of faith' mode and trust it completely. I can absolutely see the yellow brick road and all the goodness before me and I know I'm on the right track.

But life just can't be that easy. Perhaps it has to have some roadblocks so that we can appreciate all the good. My roadblock right now is guilt. It's coming at me full force, and instead of batting it away, instead of ignoring it, I'm at a space where I want to deal with it.

I am a mother of 3 amazing teenage sons. Their father and I have been divorced for 8 years or so. He and I have an amazing relationship, and we never argue or bicker about anything, least of all the boys. But between that marriage and now, I had a bad marriage. One where that husband was completely self centered and even complained when the boys would "eat all the food". I stayed for reasons that made a little sense at the time, and now that that is over, life is so amazing and drama free. We have absolutely everything we could need. We enjoy each other's company and have wonderful times.

Yet the guilt of that relationship. Of that unhappy time for my boys (and even that wasn't all that bad, we always had one another and had fun)... it's surfacing. And I'm ready to deal with it. The only trick I know right now to deal with this is self-love. But how is the best way to deal with guilt and regret? How do you deal when you are the only one not forgiving yourself?

Guilt

I don't feel like I have been very productive for several days. I have a couple journals in the works that I haven't been able to finish for one reason or another. I don't have finished products to show for my time. And, I have sat idle. Yep, me. The queen of busy. I have sat, doing nothing. Well, thinking about how I should be making stuff. But physically still. That's good right? I mean, it can be. It can be good to sit and be still. Unless you let the guilt creep in, like I have.

This evening, after work, I will be more mindful of the guilt. Not to let it win, but to find a balance. A balance where I'm not running around like a chicken with my head cut off. A balance where I'm smoothly creating, and I'm enjoying it. Not just a production machine.

That's my plan. What monster do you deal with?

Guilt

I could have very easily lost a friend this week due to guilt. I did lose a sister for 7 years due to guilt. Guilt is a powerful force in our lives. We feel guilt if we work too much, we feel guilt if we don't work enough. We feel guilt if dinner isn't ready exactly at a specified time. We feel guilt if that special shirt isn't clean (even if it was never put in the hamper).

What is the deal??? Why does guilt have such a hold on us? I have one very good friend who feels very little guilt. Well, I mean, all the unnecessary crap we all feel. If one of my shirts hadn't been laundered and I tried to make him feel guilty of that (he was the last to do the laundry), he'd put it right back in my lap and not feel a twinge of guilt.

So... um... maybe I hit on something there. He refused to own the guilt that I tried to put on him. So many games out there, so many "guilt trips" as people say. I don't want to exclude men today, but honestly, as women, we seem to own a lot of extra guilt. Other women lay it on us, men sometimes lay it on us, our children definitely do, as do our parents. Out of fairness to my dad, he has NEVER tried to guilt me about a thing. But I've heard a lot of stories about parents laying on the guilt.

But why do we so readily own it. If we have a child who acts out, we own the guilt for that automatically. We wonder what we did wrong, or how we could have prevented it. If we have a spouse who is depressed, angry, withdrawn, we wonder what we did to cause that.

As long as we own all this guilt, every one of these people has immense control over us and our own happiness. You can't go skipping through the tulips if you are hunkered down with all the guilt people have been piling on top of you.

I have started imagining a shield in my hands. You know, like in midievel times. I see my loved ones fling that guilt my way and I deflect it. It gets tossed onto the floor where it will just be vacuumed up later. But if I discover that I am actually feeling it, I have a talk with myself to see why. If I need to change something in my day to day, or need to make a note of, I do so. You can acknowledge a transgression and fix the problem without then carrying around all the guilt.

I wish that we could wage a revolt. A war against all these guilt trips. A battle against emotional manipulation. What we can do is start with ourselves. Start by making a conscious choice to NOT toss any guilt at anyone. And we can start by not owning guilt thrown our way.