Half century reflections

 Hi There,

In my previous posts you have seen we took a very special trip to Moab and Zion to celebrate my 50th birthday. Until now our 2021 Yellowstone and Grand Teton were my favorite mountain memories, and I really will cherish those for the rest of my life. This trip was very symbolic for me because of Angels Landing I knew that it was on Craig's bucket list but was it really on mine? This trip was a compromise because I really wanted to visit Moab and Craig really wanted to Visit Zion.  The selfish and narcissistic part of me was thinking but it's my birthday it should be all about me......

Well here is what I know about being in a relationship for 27 years and being married for close to 25 is that it is not all about me. As a matter of fact, I would say that the past 5 to 6 years have been about me shifting from a narcissistic nature to living a life with minimal strife where I am not the center of my world. It really started when I was eliminated from the longest job I had. I knew that I was very good at what I did for a living and had always been results oriented by nature. When I went into my next job I had an entitled attitude and everything had to be about me. When your focus is on you here are the behavior you exhibit:

• Conversations, interactions, and all communication ends up about you no matter what is going on with others
• You're defensive, live by your emotions, and are easily upset when things don't go your way
• You're never satisfied or accountable for your actions
• You surround yourself with people that don't challenge or inspire you to be better, you put down, judge people that intimidate you, and you talk badly about those people 
• Your all "talk and no action" In fact you continually justify your talking

Those are just some of the "awesome" qualities that I had and the first thing that life threw at me to humble me was our oldest daughter moving out. It is a part of life and it is bound to happen, but this didn't happen the way we had planned or expected. When our daughter moved out it was when I was at work, and my husband was asleep from working all night.  There have been a lot of things in my life that hurt me, but that hit me hard for so many reasons and I was very angry at her for abandoning us. There is a lot more to this that is inappropriate for me to get into, and my focus is on how that shaped me not shifting blame. Shifting blame used to be my favorite thing to hold over somebody. Well, how do you hold that over someone when they're gone? You don't. I had to understand what I did wrong in the relationship, learn from that, forgive her and myself, and do better. 

Shortly after that, I ended up switching jobs which is another thing that I used to be judgemental about until I had to switch jobs myself. Things in life happen businesses get sold or companies decide that they want to lay off people. It really is not beneficial for me to even get upset about that because I learned so many lessons from all of those experiences. That also helped me understand that I was living by my emotions and had something to learn. Craig and I had an epiphany at the end of 2019 which I believe is a God thing to get out of debt and learn to live on one income. Before that, a budget was a four-letter word to me. It was very hard but we learned to live on one income when we had one or when we had two. I had people cut me out when I decided to stop being a negative gossip, but frugal living was the nail in the coffin. 

I was never satisfied and always had someone around which meant I was funding a lot of those interactions. When I simply stopped certain people did what I used to do which was gossip about me. Especially those that I invested the most in; what happens when you don't get a return on your investment? I had to overcome, heal, evaluate, and ultimately forgive everyone. To do this I had to go way back to my very first memories even to my childhood, that really wasn't fun and still makes me sad, but I can't sit there and focus on the bad things that happened or who did what. We all have baggage every last one of us. 

What I learned was that I had developed a hard defensive perimeter that was formed by the abuse of an older sister, the loss of my mother, the complete emotional disconnect of a father, an angry confused stepmother, and a male chauvinistic environment. No wonder I was so messed up inside. My job used to be my escape but I was in between jobs so I had to deal with it and there were some very dark emotional times. As I healed I became comforted by food, especially during the pandemic. I didn't pay attention to what I ate and went back to work. I did very low intense workouts and when we went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton we were accompanied by babies and fellow over wight except for Craig and Cambria. There was a lot of hiking but only one semi-intensive one. 

As I mentioned in my last blog I was scared but I ended up going for it which is where I am now. I have completely done the work to be healed mentally, physically, and spiritually. I have no ill feelings toward anyone at all. The other important aspect for me is to live my life without strife so if you embody the traits above chances are that I am going to be keeping my distance. Some people have cut me off and that is ok because we had our season and we have both moved on. I literally want nothing but the best for you, and my prayer for you is many many blessings. I have conquered Angels Landing and am super excited for my next, Be blessed, and until the next blog.