Ready for the whirlwind? John and I, left late on a Thursday night around 11pm. It was an all night drive. We arrived in Iowa early Friday morning… Did I say exhausted but excited? Everyone always need food and my brother-in-law had made a delicious breakfast so we grabbed some. Then the errands began and assignments started rolling in with John stepping up to help my brother – in- law on their house.
My part was helping take care of kids….. this is a huge bonus and I also didn’t have to help on the house… Soooo a win win in my book.
Saturday rolled around and it was family Christmas on Johns side…. Let’s take a
moment to note that this is family upon family on John’s side so I had to do
some pre intervention work. One of my things is a lot of people and noise is a
trigger for anxiety, it tends to overstimulate. So I prepared by routing out a place that I could go to be able to have a few quiet moments so that I could center and regroup. It all came together perfectly and I did not allow those sneaky thoughts like I would be missed to sway me of my plan and guess what? IT WORKED.
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The journey is still going and Sunday was Christmas with Johns kids and grand kids….. Which we love of course!
A person can plan but the universe will laugh….. Why? Well because the next week was a blizzard…. Burrrrrr……
Let’s chat about traveling for a moment. This seems to not get the recognition it should. Especially, traveling in a pickup! Does anyone ever talk about the hiccups of this along the way…. Also, Has anyone been to Iowa? They have a lot of gravel roads soooo one word TOTES!!!! They are a life saver and thank goodness since weather was NOT on our side so it kept all gifts and goodies safe.
We had a great day of candy fun at the sisters house with candies for munchies…. Thanks to the Totes!
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One of my day dreaming moments when we were hustling from here to there was…. I Wonder what it would be like to not have to travel for Christmas and have everyone at my house in one place?
Travel travel travel travel….. and on our way home we stopped in with my adopted parents and it was great to see them. It was short but we had people coming for New Years and had to get going so we were go go go yet again and with that we finally arrived home early Thursday morning, Decembr 26th.
I love being with family, but me being at home and in my space is so welcoming
We brought in the New Year with close friends and that lives me recapping and wanting to thank each of you for the humbling support of my article that was published, it showed me how loved and appreciated that I am…. Which
lets be real sometimes we are hard on ourselves and at the end of the year it
was a welcoming reminder that it is for each of you that I keep going forward.
So in all things new for the new year and me sharing I thought it would be neat to share the challenges and wins from the trip. Since these are things that resurfaced for me I felt led to let each of you know that we all have our challenges. Saying it is still a work in progress is an understatement, but also I had some WINS.
Wins and challenges:
Do you ever feel anxious about the family stuff. It is so much fun to see everyone but it was almost an overwhelming thing at the same time. I realized that I was unsettled and had an off feeling and took a moment to center my energy and that’s when it hit me! My anxiety about things was sneaking in and was stealing my joy of being in the moment!
What did I do? I recognized the feelings, I self talked, allowing acceptance of the feelings. I asked why they were showing up and to show me in reference to what I was anticipating. It was brought that the large family event is a trigger. I realized that the over stimulation from those events were driving the emotions of anxiousness. So, here goes the self talk again and asked what I needed to do. I planned having a quiet place in the back of the house that I could go for a few minutes to re-center and allow the extra sensory items and loud noises to leave me so that I could focus and love the people in my life and be present in the moment. This in itself was a huge WIN!!! I overcame and did not allow my anxiousness to rob me of family time….
This opened up to another win along the way. I set some boundaries and allowed for things to flow.
Let me set the stage for you.
In the past I would go in and no matter what happened I would just make sure everyone was in a place, that they were having fun, and this usually came with no regard to what it was doing to me emotionally. I would even give up my own decisions and preferences regarding what I wanted to do for what the other people wanted.
This has been a huge challenge in my life. Some people call it the “People Pleasing Syndrome” So let me give you an example and how it went for me….
My wonderful adopted parents and I had decided on Thursday as the evening we would meet up. Remember the Blizzard? The thing was the night they picked was also the same night that the blizzard rolled in. We had already planned Christmas day and I almost gave in seeing them on Christmas Day. Which would have done what to plans already made? See the problem….My WIN was, I kept Christmas day the way we planned and chose to meet them on the way home so that we still could fit it all in. We could call this foreign to me but I gave myself grace and did not let that little voice in to say anything but good job to not disrupting what was already there and to keep healthy boundaries.
This will always be a work in progress for me and I thought it would be a great way to share my hurdles and struggles with all of you to know that growth is always evolving even for those who seem to have it figured out. We are not alone in the journey and each of us are on our own path.
One of my goals for 2023 is to be transparent with each of you through the struggles. This is so you have a place to come back to and learn how I process and evolve so that it may potentially help you evolve and not feel alone in this crazy world we are in.
Balancing diverse families is a struggle and for the first time I allowed for myself to flow even though I was up against some hills, I let them be just that and went with it. It ended up being a great Christmas break that supported growth in who I am becoming.