January's Hard Passes and Happy Yeses
This month involved being compassionately present to mental health challenges, doing new things without overthinking, being someone who preps *some* meals in advance, and acknowledging progress.
Hello, I’m Natalie, and I’m a recovering people pleaser figuring out what does and doesn’t work for me as I lean into being more of who I really am through more honest yes and no. At the end of each month, I share some of my hard passes and happy yeses for that month, including insight into what’s behind them or the aftermath. I hope it will encourage some of you to share yours, too.
Hard Passes
Giving myself a hard time about my kid’s struggles
We’ve been going through a challenging time as a family, as our youngest daughter hasn’t been in school for most of this month. I won’t go into the ins and outs of it, but it’s heartbreaking when your child is going through a tough time emotionally and school is the trigger. We’ve been navigating her anxiety since the start of COVID, and I cannot overstate the impact of the last four years on children around the world.
When you realise your child is struggling, you experience a myriad of emotions. Panic, self-blame, self-doubt, anxiety, worry, overwhelm, guilt, frustration, and more, gripped me. It didn’t help that I was also initially grappling with the worst jet lag I’ve ever experienced after our Thailand trip. I quickly realised that I don’t have the bandwidth to 1) get sucked into the tide of emotions or 2) default to people pleasing and attempting to carry all the emotional load. She needs us; I need myself, and we all need each other.
So I’ve led with compassion all round and not made what she’s going through about how I should have been SuperMother. I’ve also noticed where I assume it’s down to me to sort things - the many calls, emails and appointments, never mind navigating teen moods - and letting Em take the lead on some of it. It’s also helped both of us to talk about what’s happening and not only have friends and family be there for us but also discover that quite a few people we know are also going through similar situations. We wouldn’t have discovered this if we hadn’t all given ourselves a bit of grace to muddle our way through together.
Overthinking being the interviewer
I’ve been thinking about interviewing people for ages and even chatted about it with
when we got to hang out in Brooklyn in the autumn, but, of course, I overcomplicated it in my head. Overthinkers be overthinking. Then, over dinner in November, my friend asked me to interview her in front of journalists over breakfast for the press event for her new book, Women Who Work Too Much (a fab read that’s available for pre-order).I’d not interviewed someone before as I had a solo podcast, and I’m also always the interviewee, but my gut said to say yes. Of course, as the event neared, I was like, Argh! What’s the way to do this? as if I were supposed to do it in a preordained, perfect way. It’s the perennial fear of making a tit of myself. After a tentative internet search for interviewing tips, I heard myself saying, “Do it your way, Nat,” and abandoned the search. I prepped some questions in advance and then had a heart-led, informative conversation that went down really well. Yay to learning new things!
Happy Yeses
Committing to a six-week personal training program
After a year of having low energy and not feeling up to exercising beyond my few minutes of daily sun salutations and walks with Chester, I feel ready to give it another try. Rather than cater to a fantasy that I will become a regular gym-goer, I made the smaller commitment of signing up for a six-week program that another couple of my exercise-averse and perimenopausal pals are doing.
I’ve realised I need some outer accountability and direction for exercise and even surprised myself by enjoying being part of a small group at my first session yesterday. I typically experience social anxiety around groups of unfamiliar women, but I was fine. Once there, I didn’t have to brood about the dynamics in the room. A few times, I thought, Ah, yeah, this is grand. Piece of cake!, and then a minute later, I was wondering when that exercise would be over. I am so achy today 😆, but I will persevere.
Meal prep
I realised this month that I need and enjoy a spot of small planning when I made overnight oats and also prepped lunch in advance. While I almost always have breakfast (typically a Graze bar or granola with dairy-free yoghurt and fruit), lunch is a bit of a mixed-bag affair. It’s the meal where, if I don’t have a plan or leftovers or Em isn’t making something, I will cut corners, leave it until later after losing the run of my schedule, and sometimes pacify the beginning of hangry feelings with crisps and a chocolate bar while doing errands.
After keeping a food diary and noticing how I felt after breakfast, I realised that my body was not too happy with my eating granola. I seized on this knowledge to change my breakfast habits rather than flailing about not knowing what to eat instead.
Generally speaking, knowing what I’m going to eat for the next week or month doesn’t turn me on. It’s possibly because it would involve my planning it, and that’s not my strong suit. What I’ve learned from this is to figure out the context where something does suit you. It doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing.
Celebrating myself
Today marks sixteen years of self-employment. Yikes! I also moved over to England from Dublin twenty-three years ago. Clearly, this is an auspicious date! I often remember the date but then just go about my day. After a year, though, of slowing down and re-examining my relationship with work while also realising that the sky hasn’t fallen down in the process, I felt the need to acknowledge it and how much I’ve changed over this time of going it alone. People honestly thought I was “mad” to go leave a “good job” to blog and write full-time, yet here I am.
Compassionately exploring what’s making me ‘freeze’ creatively
I’m happiest when I get to express myself creatively in my way, not trying to follow other people’s formulas and blueprints for doing stuff. And yet, I’ve also had to acknowledge that I experience a lot of freezing up somewhere between the making of things and putting them out there.
I know I’m a recovering people pleaser, perfectionist and overthinker who’s tended to overgive and be over-responsible. For the first 5-6 years of self-employment, I was my most free creatively and didn’t get hung up on ‘success’ and ‘failure’. I made what I felt like, put it out there, invited people along. If something didn’t work, I moved on. No self-recrimination and brooding.
But something changed along the way and my head got very busy and cluttered. I listened to lots of ‘business advice’ and ‘best practices’ and suddenly it felt like there’s a Right Way To Do Things. I worried about shite like being “behind”, “an outsider”, and that I was “blocking myself” and “failing”. I felt like I used to with my mother, that nothing I did was enough. In between all of this, I’ve navigated grief after dad died and burnout, so I can also see where other aspects of my life have impacted, too.
I’ve done a lot of working through this stuff and feel in a much better place. And I’m also experiencing the freezing. So, I’m going to dig deeper, but I also know that sharing what I’m going through is part of putting myself out there a bit more.
I’d love to know what you’ve said about a hard pass and a joyful yes to this month.
Yes to talk I g about kids with anxiety post-Covid. My son still struggles with being in a crowd or surrounded by people at school.
I enjoyed reading your open heart here. Hard pass: feeling inferior in public as a family. Happy yes: feeling loved & supported & welcomed as a family in a variety of spaces! All this came from our family trip to Disney World that opened me up after a year of turbulent postpartum & a newborn! Sending love!