I have been procrastinating on a couple of my projects. I am frustrated by this aspect. With my book “Beyond the Trach” I am stuck on the chapter on making choices. I am doing what I normally do when I get stuck on a subject and I am resisting writing or doing something. I start journaling it out. I start out with the question “why am I resisting writing this?” Making a choice and follow through has been a challenge for me my entire life. When I was a kid, my choices were made for me by adults who were spiraling out of control and weren’t truly thinking of my own well-being as well as their own. I didn’t trust them and their choices and therefore learned not to trust my own choices. Complicated, a huge giant mess, right? Now you can see my quantum.
I had these same thoughts over my negative thoughts list that I am putting together for my Healing Voices project. So I journaled about it, my fears, why I am doing this project, why I am so passionate about it? And it helped. I decided that my first step was to actually open up a word document called “negative thoughts”. You see I had some slips of paper that I had written down some negative thoughts on, not nearly enough in my opinion, since we are all so different and think so different and I need more for my project.
Last night while I was sitting in the lobby I met another stranger there and we started talking. He is from Saudi Arabia and we started talking about his culture and his blindness. Since my apartment is only 2 blocks away from the State School For The Blind there are a few blind individuals here who are amazing and I have become friends with a couple of them. What I found truly amazing about this gentlemen is that he is trailblazing a new path of freedom for himself and his family. His culture dictates that he get married and have kids, but he wants to go to school and play music. The negative thoughts that go on in his head that keep him in fear instead of pursuing the passion that God instilled in his heart is what is keeping him from fully living the life God planned for him. This got me to thinking, fear gets in the way. Fear has stopped me dead in my tracks so many times in my life. When I was teenager, I to, was told being a wife and mother was what I was supposed to be, not the thriving therapist I wanted to be. I couldn’t see myself as a mother. I couldn’t picture myself raising a child, especially after the tragic events of my life that I didn’t want to pass down to my own child. I am glad that this was one choice that I have made and stuck to in my life, not having children. Do not get me wrong, children are amazing, creative, and beautiful. I just didn’t want to put my own fears, resentments, bitterness, and abuses onto this precious being and be a mommy dearest type. I didn’t want to be the abusive mother that I was shown by my own mother, so I abstained. I have loved and still love being an aunt to my sibling’s children and my friend’s children, but I had the freedom to walk away when I needed to. I am thankful that was a decision I made and stuck to, because in my current health condition having children would not have worked out so well. Beliefs about one’s self and what family culture’s dictate is one of the hardest things to overcome. We are all trailblazers in changing the family dynamics that we are taught, fear makes us take the offense when someone is not in agreement with us, so we get loud, we get mean, and we get to the punisher mode of you will believe what I do or else. This bothers me, it always has. When I am confronted with obstacles like these I tend to stand my ground and become a vicious lady and that is not the value I want to show people. I want to show everyone how valuable they are. I don’t like to be the aggressor, though often I have found myself in that mode even when I don’t realize I am. It is an awful feeling.
Fear does not show value to anyone. It hinders it. I came home last night after talking to my new found lobby friend and added more to my list and I thanked God for a new perspective that I hadn’t truly seen before. How culture can dictate fear and therefore devaluing of human beings no matter their gender. My eyes are now wide open to a new way of being.
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