Tag: self-compassion

1 Year Later

Takoma Park, Maryland

“Make new friends, but keep the old.
One is silver, the other is gold.

A circle is round, it has no end.
That’s how long, I will be your friend.

A fire burns bright, it warms the heart.
We’ve been friends, from the very start.

You have one hand, I have the other.
Put them together, we have each other.

Silver is precious, gold is too.
I am precious, and so are you.

You help me and I’ll help you
and together we will see it through…
Girl Scouts of the USA

Friday, June 14, 2024. What would have been a typical Friday. Dropping my daughter off at school. Staying for an Early Childhood (EC) Shabbat morning gathering at her preschool. But today, in a mere moment, I’m catapulted into a time machine. I drop my daughter off at her “old” school for the summer. (It is a family run daycare that has a preschool within it). She will attend from mid-June to mid-August, just barely two months. No big deal, right? It was a logistical decision really, to bridge us from one school year to the next at our new Jewish community day school, where our daughter has thrived this past school year. She’s grown by leaps and bounds. There have of course been some bumps but we have ridden the waves of transition and she has settled into a new “home.”

Finding ourselves back at the doorstep of our “old” school is like putting a mirror in front of us where I’m unexpectedly reflecting back on myself and this past year. Am I proud of what we have accomplished? Can everyone see my wrinkled forehead now? Why does it feel like we continue to ride the waves of a new family? The transitions just keep coming…

And this “old school” is the school where we first dropped our daughter off when she had barely started walking, at about 14 months old. She was known for her “babbling,” going on and on and on with gibberish before she learned to put her words together. Before she started singing Moanna lyrics and dancing to her new beats. This is where her teachers picked her up to change a diaper on the large wooden changing table and slobbered sunscreen on her before going outside. Where she had her first skinned knees. Where we learned she was a “jokester,” egging on the other students to join her in a mischievous rebellion. Where we learned from her teachers that she was incredibly bright and hard-willed. Standing in the center of the room, refusing to leave when the rest of the group was transitioning from one activity to the next. “I don’t want to X, Y, Z!” she would exclaim. Transitions have always been hard for her (and now I know where she gets that from).

Last summer when we said goodbye to her old school, she had just turned three. She was so brave and went with the flow as we moved her in July for her birthday to a new preschool room within the school and then again at the end of August to a whole new school. She looks around the room this morning, following my eyes looking nervously around the room too. Wondering perhaps, where do I put my lunchbox here? I hang my backpack on a hook and not in a cubby? My parents come inside for drop off instead of saying goodbye outside? All seemingly innocuous, trivial concerns, but in the head of a toddler, not insignificant at all.

Our daughter’s time at the “old” school last summer was a fog. A blurry haze. On June 15, 2023 I broke my ankle in a freak accident. One week later I had major surgery and two weeks later I started a new full time job. I stumbled into this school on my crutches most of the summer to do drop off. 

And today I find myself asking, what have I been present for in the last year? What has changed? What has stayed the same?

It’s now summer 2024…I’m jogging (albeit slowly) again. I’m more confident working full time again since having my daughter. I have colleagues I respect. We’ve weathered (and continue to weather) deep, deep trauma from upheaval in Israel and Gaza…the existential threats and panic it’s brought to our bodies and our people. It has been all-consuming. And yet, after a year attending a Jewish day school, our daughter can now recite the prayers on Shabbat. She hums and mumbles tunes in Hebrew, without being aware that I’m listening. My heart warms for the community she’s created and the safety and comfort of her “new” school. 

AND I can be grateful that she will be held in safety this summer too. She will step back and forward at the same time. She will continue to stretch and grow, even with the time machine we’ve placed before her. 

I stand back in awe as she points out letters on the carpet she knows and peers through the window at the gaping playground she just barely remembers climbing on as a 3 year old. “I remember that playground. I love that playground,” she says. My heart constricts and then releases. And I remember, we are okay. We have been through a lot this year, AND we are okay. 

We can take two steps forward and two steps back at the same time. This is not a contradiction. Or perhaps it is and then life is a moving target of contradictions. 

And rather than resist and make sense of all the waves intellectually, we can exhale and let go of the resistance and the constriction. I will accept that this summer will bring with it a new journey for her and for us. A new plethora of trail heads. All pointing in different directions. And our daughter will bravely explore them all. With gratitude for new beginnings and old memories all seeped into one. I’m still a bit hesitant but grateful to be welcomed back. 

Perhaps our reflections and “time travel” do not need to be projected on our children. Our waves of emotions and dizziness at times do not have to dictate their journeys. 

As I exhale and buckle in for this next chapter, I draw wisdom from this classic campfire song I started singing last week when explaining that she was going to a “new/old school” this summer… “Make new friends, But keep the old. Some are silver and the other gold.”

May we lean into each day at this “new/old school,” making new memories, built upon layers and layers of old ones, that form a foundation on which we keep moving forward.

1 Year Later: Mindset Matters

“Perfection is the mountain that has no peak.”

Emma Norris

If you had told me last year I would be celebrating New Years Eve 2022 embarking on the joys of potty training I would have probably said, “that sounds like a cruel joke.”

Today we introduced our daughter to “big girl underwear.” Getting to choose among patterns including owls, mermaids, tropical fruit and trucks was a really BIG deal. In full transparency, I was dreading this process. It brings up in me all my angst around ceding control, embracing messiness (literally and figuratively) and transitions. Moreover, asking a toddler to give up a security blanket (the diaper), which is often all they have known since birth is a tall order. It’s scary and uncomfortable and not intuitive in the least. And yet, our children have to learn eventually (my older, wiser friends have promised me they won’t go to college in diapers).

As I reflect back on 2022 and what lies ahead in the new year, I continue to see my daughter and parenting as my biggest teachers. It’s been a year and counting since I started this blog. From the get go, I’ve struggled with issues of productivity and perfectionism. Through my research and writing I’ve come to see just how deep-seated these traits are in our modern culture and way of being. I touched upon this theme in one of my first blog entries, noting how tied up our sense of self-worth is with our notion of accomplishing and chasing that illusive something, whether it be a job, relationship or some idea of happiness.

Gradually, I’ve spent this last year slowing down and scaling back what is possible to produce or accomplish. Through this process I’ve recognized how habitual my “need to please” is. Whether it be through seeking validation on a parenting choice or trying to fit my life into a perfect mold of what I think it “should” look like, I continue to put increasing pressure on myself to “get it right.” Contemplating the next right move professionally, personally and spiritually consumes my thoughts most days. Making a decision about what preschool to send our daughter to next year has been like asking me to choose just one sushi roll off an entire menu. Impossible! You can’t make a perfect decision. There is no such thing and even if there was, it won’t live up to the ideal I have conjured up in my head.

At the end of the day, most of this pressure is self-imposed. We want to “do right” by our loved ones and set ourselves and them up for success. And, yet, we have to balance that idea of success with the excruciating truth that life will be hard. We will fall down, a lot. We will have “accidents” (pun intended) and there is no prescribed school or methodology that will shield us from this truth.

Perhaps then our growth comes from learning to relate differently to our pain and worries. How do we respond and react when things get hard and there is no template for how to move forward? How do we hold compassion for ourselves in the process?

Can we begin by accepting that we don’t know all the answers, nor should we? We do not need to decipher every possible outcome and algorithm when making a decision. Instead, what would it feel like to connect with humility to the messy, tangled process of living itself?

In this New Year, may a “good day” or a “good choice” be measured not by what we’ve accomplished, but instead by how we’ve related to ourselves. Did we revel in picking out the best pattern of underwear (or socks) in the morning and then remember to laugh at our bumps and “boo boos” along the way.

To all my friends and readers, happy 2023 and happy stumbling.