Learning to forgive...

At the beginning of the month i attended Liz's Create Magic retreat in the beautiful pacific northwest. After the retreat was over my sister-in-law came up to meet me in Seattle and we spent a few days between there and Victoria, BC before heading home.

I have to admit, I am just now (3 weeks later) getting my footing since getting back home. After being among the laughter, the rain, the luscious greens, the creativity, the support of amazing women, the photography, the painting, the silence and the comfort of friends, I came home ready to put the changes I felt into action. Instead, I basically railed against every detail of my life. I had been taken out of a warm supportive environment and thrown into the cold reality of my life and I was not a happy camper. I set about trying to to 'fix' everything in such a way that I completely exhausted myself and (I am sure) those around me. It got to the point where I could not remember things and it was then that i realized that I was spinning my wheels and that, actually, by trying to get too much done, I wasn't getting much done at all.

A couple of things happened next:

I read Celina's post on being kind and gentle with herself, Kate's post on the war within and I picked up some dvd's that I had just had some old videos of the kids transferred to.

It was then that I realized that I was being way too harsh on myself and those around me and that it was time to be a lot more forgiving of us all. I saw how I set standards so high that they can't possibly be reached by myself or my kids (and maintain our sanity and connection). And watching the videos showed me how quickly time goes by and that a house in order (run by a mad woman) is not what we all want to remember of these days.

So it is with this all in mind that I am learning to let go of the feeling that I need to control every aspect of everyone's life, along with the weather and to be more forgiving of us all. I know it's going to be hard. But just yesterday when I ended up spending the whole morning volunteering at the school when I wanted to be at home painting, I let go. It was then that I realized that it was my son's lunchtime. The smile on his face when I showed up was priceless. Now that's the kind of memory I want to create.