Real Talk: The Importance of a Safe Space

Real life - not staged perfection - is really important to me.  As a kid who got to grow up outside of social media, I can see how important it can be to see life as it is, especially in coping emotionally with our place in the world.  When we believe the carefully crafted photos actually depict the quality of relationships on the ride home or in the bathroom before bed, we start applying a standard to our own life that is unreasonable at best.  Social media aside, there is a lot of pressure to give the impression that everything in our life is great! Holiday events and parties are stressful for a lot of reasons, but largely because we want all of our insecurities and failures to instantly disappear, leaving only the best elements of us on display.  Some of the most iconic television or movie scenes involve sore attempts to deceive family into thinking the main character isn't single/broke/failing/etc.  Our culture loves a good hiding of the truth, doesn't it?

As a person who just wants to cut to the chase and have some real talk in every conversation, I have learned that not every situation can handle real talk.  Some people don't care.  Sometimes there's not enough time.  Some people can't handle that much reality.  But for you friend, there must be a place where you can have some real talk with real feedback that you aren't going to start a royal war over.  Why? Growth will abound when we can honestly process our experiences in a safe environment.  Without this real talk, growth just doesn't happen very quickly, if at all because so much of our time is spent trying to keep the illusion going that everything is fine.  So many of us are carrying around emotional burdens that quickly become too much, but we keep suffering and often cause real damage to ourselves and others.  It's easy to underestimate how important just talking to someone about what we're dealing with, but it can be one of the most freeing experiences you can have - especially when you are struggling with something heavy. 

If you are blessed with a friendship that is safe and honest, take advantage of it! Many people don't.  If you are blessed financially (insurance benefits or otherwise), take advantage of professional counseling!  There is zero reason it should have a stigma attached to it anymore because it is often as simple as just having a conversation about what's troubling you.  It can be no different than chatting with  an emotionally available mother that warmly invites you to tell her all about it.  And for those times in your life when there just isn't anyone able to listen, pull out some paper and pen and just write.  Write until the tears come and then write until there aren't anymore.  If you can't bear the thought of it being read or you don't want to keep it, feel free to immediately burn it.  The important part is that it is now outside of you and decreasing the pressure place on your heart.

I'm not a professional counselor (though I've thought about it before) and I do not have all the answers, but I'm always happy to listen when someone needs to talk.  If you need to chat or help finding someone you feel comfortable talking with, I would love to help you.  Rich or poor, young or old, we all just need help understanding what's going on in our world and inside of us. 

October Reset: Friendship

I put off writing this October Reset post because it made me nervous.  Friendship is a sensitive and difficult subject for me.  I am not really good at friendship, yet I crave it like water.  I am motivated most by relationship, but I'm terrified of others coming face-to-face with my flaws and insane quirks.  So, a friendship reset is something I've needed to do for years, but it seems so deeply rutted that I'm overwhelmed at where to start. 

First things first I guess.  I love deep meaningful relationships where loyalty and authenticity are mandatory.  As a kid and through adolescence I usually felt deeper (or at least more loyal) about my friendships than the friends did.  I was always a bit of a know-it-all which meant not really a barrel of laughs, but got a lot of people asking me for advice.  And truth be told, who doesn't like being asked for their 'expert' advice, right?  But when the crisis was over, most would move on to their regular friends.  Before you think I'm throwing a pity party or something, understand that I have been blessed with some amazing people in my life where I've spent some amazing weekends of fun with. 

I seem to remember a crazy weekend with some beautiful Bradford girls that involved way too many accidents and emergencies, but made for some great laughs and stories.  Whenever the subject of no friends would come up, my mom would always advise us to look for others who needed a friend.  I remember a couple of sweet Tidmore girls recently back from living in Honduras for a few years that became fast friends at first because we all didn't really know anyone.  Teenage years into my twenties brought some really great people close to home that were the building blocks to so many adventures - Melissa, Annette, Darcy, Olivia, Brandi, Andrea, Jessica, Afton, Stephanie and I could just keep going.  

So, yes I was blessed with friends, but friendship is complicated and then adulthood starts happening.  People get real jobs, get married, children take over and before you know it, an introverted, easily-overwhelmed girl who was always scared to really put herself out there first anyway, finds herself drifting farther and farther away from true friendships.  Why? Because life for one thing.  If you don't see each other on a weekly basis, then staying in touch requires more.  If your timelines in life (if you marry, age of your kids, values, etc.) don't align, it requires even more commitment.  And then there is me:  All of that plus my life and kids taking up a lot of the limited free space in my brain.  I go to bed longing to be closer to people - to be invited or included in things, but figuring a random text message at 11:00 probably won't be welcome or bring me that much closer to them.

The snowball of drifting away from friendships is sometimes impossible to avoid.  When you have a baby (and then two and then three), your life has to change.  For better and worse, you have a new job in guiding that little soul.  Your priorities have to shift.  And that's a lot of what has happened to me.  I take my job seriously as a mom and before I knew it friends were changing.  And then I want to do friendship perfectly or effortlessly - both of which never happens.  So I tend to give up before I try because it can't be either.  Thus, arms length or whenever its easy, which can be really unfulfilling. 

So, a friendship reset for me involves starting over from this new normal.  This new normal has 3 children, awkward introductions, 40 lbs of baby weight to lose, and a mountain of things to be grateful for.  My desire for friendship to be perfect or easy always required me to be the perfect friend.  If I was thinner, if I was funnier, if I was more stylish, if I was a million other things, then maybe friendship would be easier.  The first reset truth is that friendship requires work and maintenance, things I've resisted in so many areas of my life over the years.   The second truth is that I'm not perfect and neither is anyone else that I might be friends with.  I have to be okay with both of those things.

This month has really turned a corner in my heart with recovery from the really rough first half of this year and my little racecar's first 6 months.  I'm feeling more hopeful and joyful than I have in several months.  Ladies, motherhood makes so many other things in life hard.  Now may not be the right season for seeking friendship beyond what is already available to you.  That's a reality that we must accept sometimes.  I've been a lousy friend on multiple occasions - and knew it - but just never seem to have enough energy or brain power to fix it.  Now my season of life, especially with the racecar being our last planned pregnancy, is shifting.  I'm not exactly declaring I'll be everyone's best friend in 30 days or less, but I am committing to the pursuit of real, deeper friendship.  You might not be in the right place for this kind of reset right now, but tuck it away for another day when the time is right.  Isolation and arms length is just not how we were designed to live.  

If you find yourself in the presence of an awkward exchange or a nervous invitation from me or anyone else, try to have mercy on us.  Even if we aren't your forever friend, you might be just the practice we're needing to not give up!

It Only Takes One: Letting Go of Longing

If you were one of those favored people that everyone wanted to date or be like, then feel free to skip this post because you might not understand where I'm coming from.  For the rest of us, I expect you'll know what I mean.  We all had a time - and maybe still live there - where we longed to be that popular and interesting person that seemed to have all the cool friends and get all the dates.  Contentment with ourselves seemed impossible and no matter who paid us attention, we just weren't satisfied.  For most people it is simply an adolescent phase, though a few drag it into adulthood and beyond.  Regardless of how real it feels, it isn't a healthy place to live.

I was (am) most certainly that girl with the super sensitive feelings who noticed when all the boys paid attention to miss beautiful and all the girls didn't mind me if there was no one more interesting around.  The longing and discontentment, while maybe I hid it well - not sure, followed me around like a dark cloud.  I've been married 10 1/2 years to quite my uncomfortable opposite that has forced me to learn and grow more than anyone in my life.  It has certainly not always been fun, easy or even felt good (because growing is hard), but friends I just want to say something.  It only takes one relationship, maybe a best friend, maybe a husband, or maybe just a committed relationship with God, to satisfy those longings our adolescent conjures up.  It doesn't take attention from ALL the boys or all the popular kids, it just takes one faithful, authentic relationship to heal old wounds and teach the heart true commitment and devotion.  It's so easy to get a perfectionistic view of what we want or demand in a relationship that distorts truth as well, but it only takes one good one to realize how unnecessary all that fixating is.

There is a lot that I dislike about this picture.  It is NOT a perfect shot of us.  

But it doesn't take perfect to fill up the soul.

Tomorrow marks 3 weeks since my third child was born and the closing of a most stressful and trying adventure.  There's much to say about that, but I'll save it for another post.  What is significant is that Mr. Butler is and was the most amazing faithful friend and partner I could have had in all of the things we had to do.  He was the perfect strength in my weakness.  We have weathered all kinds of storms together so it didn't surprise me when we stared down this one together.  However, it did overwhelm me how far the 14 year old girl I sometimes still carried around in my heart had come.  It only took my (aged and purified) relationship with Mr. Butler to stamp out the foolish comparisons and longings of my youth.  So, whether you find yourself stuck in a cycle of longing or as our children grow through these stages, let's remember how many lies adolescent sneaks in. It doesn't take the popular crowd or the cutest boy or even the perfect 15 friends to satisfy our hearts.  It just takes one relationship of truth and stability to ground us where all others can come and go for the best without constantly pulling us out of orbit.