by Renee leNobel | Oct 18, 2016 | Divorce, Parenting
The following post was written when I was recently separated and had two young children. At the time of writing, I was consumed with feelings of grief and anger. I primarily directed my anger towards my ex-spouse and felt like I had no control over my life. I was also resentful that the value parents bring to the world was not recognized. It was only when I accepted my life, including my former spouse and his role as a parent, that I stopped blaming myself and became a better parent to my kids.
Have you ever thought of yourself as a bad mother? I know I have. In fact, “I’m a bad mother” is like a tagline that accompanies all my parenting mistakes. Despite knowing that parenting is challenging and I couldn’t possibly be expected to get it right the first time, I still beat myself up when parenting does not go as expected.
I can remember almost weekly instances of calling myself “A BAD MOTHER” since my oldest was born ten years ago. I took him outside without a hat. I’m a bad mother. I yelled at him when I found him irritating – bad mother again. Didn’t tell your child to look both ways when crossing the street? BAD MOTHER! My friend and I were going to get matching t-shirts that said “dumb mum.” “Oy,” as she would say.
We are wired to beat ourselves up over our decisions and actions as a species. We forgive others, but we do not forgive ourselves.
I have also realized that calling myself a bad mother serves no purpose. In fact, it does incredible damage.
I was reminded of this again this past weekend.
My children’s dad asked me to parent the kids for him this past weekend.
He asked me on Wednesday. I was flooded with work and was determined not to work on the weekend.
My answer should have been a clear no. I already had plans for the weekend; I was looking forward to having some time and space to get recharged. “No” seemed so simple to say.
Yet it wasn’t.
No was on my lips (or the tips of my fingers as I started to reply to his email request), but something stopped me.
What stopped me?
This thought: “I’m a bad mother.”
Imagine not wanting to be with my kids!
Their dad was asking for help. How could I even contemplate not supporting my co-parent?
How could I put my interests before my children’s?
Yup – it all screamed BAD MOTHER!
And so, instead of saying no, I said yes.
I cancelled my plans and told myself that the thoughts rattling around about the time I needed were selfish. I am a selfish and bad mother.
I’m wondering if you can guess what kind of weekend my children and I had.
I will say, not good.
It all started to go south when my youngest called me at 2:30 on Friday from school. He had a tummy ache.
ARGH.
I knew he did not. I knew it was an emotional tummy ache. He does not like last-minute changes, and just switching up the parenting schedule is enough to give him an emotional tummy ache. What’s the saying? The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He needs time to process change, just like his mum does.
I had been planning to use all the time until I had to get them from after-school care to get my work done, and I just lost 3 hours of very efficient work hours.
I was thrown into a situation I did not have time to prepare for emotionally.
I got to school, and the first words out of my mouth to my seven-year-old were, “Do you really have a tummy ache?”
As I heard the words come out of my mouth, I heard the tagline that fast approached on their heels.
“I am a BAD MOTHER”
And then I spent the rest of my weekend with my kids, taking out my terrible mood on them.
And that is how our weekend went.
And then I beat myself when they left by calling myself a bad mother yet again. I had been bad. I had not said no to their dad even though I knew better. I knew I needed that time. I had been bad in so many ways. I thought I had shaken that people-pleasing tendency of mine, but clearly, I had not, as I had said yes when I should have said no. How could I have not learned this lesson by now? BAD, DUMB, STUPID ME. You get the picture.
I added the tagline “I am a bad mother” to every single decision I made and every action I took this past weekend.
When did the lightbulb go off?
Monday morning.
When the kids were gone, I had time and space to process my thoughts again.
I cried as I realized how I had beaten myself up all weekend.
I cried as I realized I still had work to do and didn’t want to do it as I felt sad and terrible.
Then I started to write, and I realized something.
I realized I had just gotten some life-changing proof.
I had just gotten first-hand confirmation that I had to retire my I’m a BAD MOTHER tagline forever.
As it dawned on me what I had learned this past weekend, I started to feel grateful.
What was I grateful for? My crappy weekend.
I looked back on this past weekend and said, “Thank you, incredibly crappy weekend.”
I am going to remember you always, crappy weekend.
Weekend – you were the nail in the coffin for the tagline “I am a BAD MOTHER” and all the other taglines I’ve used to beat myself up with.
Thank you crappy weekend.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 3, 2016 | Divorce
I like to find answers to the problems in life. I realize that this is impossible and I will drive myself crazy trying to find one answer to life but this week I really feel like I’m getting close.
Really. Close.
This week I’ve decided that when we get into a rough patch it’s all Blame’s fault.
Blame was being quite obnoxious this past week.
There was Blame when my children were pounding on each other in the back of the car when all I was trying to do was get them to school on time. I know you know what this looks like. “He looked at me funny!” “His arm was on my side of the car!”
(Not surprisingly Blame was also there when I yelled at my children in response. I am such a bad mother, why can’t I talk calmly to my children?)
There was Blame again when I discovered I had made more than one mistake at work in the beginning of September. It was all back to school’s fault – there was just way too much to do.
Blame cropped up in every conversation I had last week.
It cropped up in the conversations I had with people in the middle of a divorce.
It cropped up in multiple conversations with friends who were blaming themselves for their misery.
Blame sidetracked and diverted me from getting anything done last week.
Everyday I tried to tackle Blame in a blog post and every day it thwarted me. It would just not submit. Darn you Blame!
But I think I’ve finally gotten the best of Blame. Oh yes Blame – I’ve got your number.
I’m not going to you anymore. You can take a hike and this is why.
Everytime you turn up you distract everyone from what is really going on.
Blame – you’re a trickster and you steal the show. You are like some piece of glitter that we cannot turn our eyes away from.
Blame – you trap people. You suck people into trying to prove that you are wrong. The person on the other side of you is dodging and weaving trying to get away from you instead of working with the person that is using you like a shield and a sword.
Blame – you lock people into believing there is one answer. The world is not black and white Blame.
And the worst thing you do Blame? You are the weapon people use to hurt themselves.
Get out of the way Blame – move aside. It’s time to make room for communication, understanding and forgiveness.
I’m done with you Blame. I’m moving on.
by Renee leNobel | Sep 26, 2016 | Divorce
If not, there’s a good reason.
My divorce was a Collaborative Divorce. What does that mean? On the surface, it means that you agree to keep your divorce out of the courts. That was one of the reasons why I agreed to try the process when I was getting a divorce from my husband. There had been more talk about the Collaborative Approach to Divorce at the time of our separation as the family law in British Columbia was undergoing a change and as part of that change, lawyers were required to begin informing their clients about Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR – an acronym that lawyers use a fair bit – did you know what it means?).
So we heard from many at that time that the Collaborative Approach to divorce was the new way to get a divorce. It was the better way and so those two concepts (new and better) convinced me and my husband at the time to try it to get our separation agreement so we could get a divorce.
So we tried it.
And I really did not like it.
Of course, divorce is incredibly stressful and trying to come to an agreement with someone that you are in conflict with is already a challenge so it is no wonder I didn’t like it. But I think I hated it even more than what I imagined the alternative was, which was to have a no holds barred fight.
I had been trained all my life to avoid conflict. Many of us are. I had also been trained to think I was a reasonable person that could deal with almost any situation. What this meant for me was that I tended to let things go a lot. But I didn’t really let them go. Instead, I buried them and sat on them and then tended to explode when I couldn’t do that anymore. That was where I was at when I finally separated from my spouse and had to figure out a way to now come to agreement so we could get a divorce.
The Collaborative Approach is the opposite of the all consuming war that I had been training up for and which I have to say many of us envisage when we think divorce. We think fight. We think courts and nasty revenge. We think there will be at least one loser in this war and often there are two. We have been trained by society (TV really) to have a certain picture of what divorce looks like.
The first four way meeting in our Collaborative Divorce we went to with our lawyers I almost had a coronary. I should explain what a four way meeting is. It’s a meeting with you, your spouse, your lawyer and your spouse’s lawyer present. You get to a separation agreement by way of these four way meetings. I don’t know if either of our lawyers could have talked any slower. And the stuff that was coming out of their mouths? Seriously? I felt like I was back in kindergarten where I was being told how important it was to share. At the same time I was thinking “this is costing us two hourly lawyer rates to sit here and learn about manners.”
I already knew what the answer to our problem was and so sat through this “Collaborative Approach.” for 8 months until we got there. In the end, the agreement we got was pretty close to what I had wanted. “Hey – I guess the Collaborative Approach worked for us” is what I thought at the time.
Little did I know that I never really understood “Collaborative” even after we were done.
Why is that? How could I have spent 8 months in meetings with 4 different professionals that practiced the Collaborative Approach to divorce and still not understand how it was supposed to work? They had all explained how it was supposed to work – at the beginning of the process, during all the meetings and at the end where they said – “see, we have an agreement – it all came together.” And when I think back on it now, out from the fog of emotion, I know that they did. They were explaining it clearly but something was preventing me from hearing and understanding it.
How did that happen?
Well, I think part of the reason that happened is that I had each spent 40 years learning a different way to resolve conflict. I had spent my life learning how to avoid conflict. Then I had learned that if the conflict was still there and bothering me, I had to really stand up for myself and battle through to make that conflict go away. My belief about myself was that I don’t get all bent out of shape over minor issues but watch out if someone crosses me. I switch from being an avoider to being a highly motivated person who is going to win at all costs.
So instead of seeing how we had just resolved our conflict a different way than I knew; because how can you learn a new way of doing conflict in 8 months after spending your entire life training a different way to do conflict, I slotted our divorce into my old way of seeing things. I had avoided separating from my husband and then when I realized it was unavoidable, I found a solution and hammered it through. Because deep down, I felt like I had been the one driving our agreement process. I had made sure the meetings happened, I made sure my ex did the “homework” and I made sure our agreement got signed.
And….
How can you learn a new way of doing conflict when you are at your most emotional point in life? I was not calm or rational. I was alternating between being sad and angry on a minute by minute basis. The only thing I was focused on was revenge. I could not hear a thing those professionals were telling me. I was living in an extremely stressful situation where I was sharing a house with a person I did not want to have anything to do with anymore and I had two small children that I was extremely worried about. I was not at my best for learning new concepts.
So, while we used the Collaborative Approach to divorce, it was only on the surface. We stayed out of court. Oh wait – no we didn’t. We ended up in court after we were separated and divorced.
Our agreement allowed us to get a divorce but we were still in conflict and were still not able to resolve it. We reverted to our old patterns and styles of managing conflict as soon as we were released from our professional team.
I think this is what it is like for many people. Everyone has learned a certain style of conflict. Some people may have learned a more collaborative approach to resolving conflict and when they enter the Collaborative Approach to divorce, they get it and things progress and it works.
So what about the rest of us? Those of us who have been trained throughout life not to do things collaboratively?
We need more help. We have to be told again and again what it means and how it works because it is a difficult concept to grasp when you are in the midst of emotional upheaval and have years of resolving conflict in a different way.
I myself only started to understand what it meant about a year after my divorce was finalized and after I had started to train to become a Collaborative professional myself. Here is part 1 and part 2 of posts I wrote when I finally did start to understand what Collaborative means.
Now I find myself helping people with their own Collaborative Divorces. I have heard them say exactly what I said during my divorce: the meetings with the Collaborative professionals are slow, it doesn’t seem like actual issues are being addressed and the divorce is not progressing.
These words have become signals for me to sit up and pay attention. I have to remind myself how much time it took me to understand how Collaborative works. I realize that the best way I can help people is to help them gain that understanding too. I have to fight my natural inclination to go back to my life training to be a problem solver and solve these people’s problems and remember instead I am helping to facilitate a Collaborative process so they can figure out the best way to move forward with hope.
by Renee leNobel | Sep 18, 2016 | Divorce
I was trained to believe that being busy means you are important. This wasn’t overt training. It was training I chose to believe from observing the world around me. OK, there was a bit of overt training in school. I see it now when I see what I’m doing to my children at the start of the school year. The school year has started and the pressure to sign my children up for all sorts of extra-curricular activities has begun. And I have bought in. My older child is resisting hard and I think I’d better let him win this one (after I sign him up for a few things – swimming, choir, cross country – hey it’s only a month and I’m only doing it so he gets the bus ride home to the park near where we live). I am in such a quandary over signing him up for dance though.
I put him in dance a couple of years ago because he does not appear to like the team sport thing. Plus, whenever we were at the beach – a place he claims to hate with a passion – he would break out in dance. I decided that dance was the happy place he needed to go to so I figured he would love it as an extra-curricular activity. So I put him in dance and he did well and frankly I loved the year end concerts and hearing that he was a natural from his teacher. But he doesn’t want to do dance. He tells me that it is boring – they repeat the same moves over and over again and it has become a chore for him. Just one more thing to do to please people, including me, the woman who runs the dance studio and the world. Despite knowing this, I still want to sign him up because if I don’t, how is he ever going to figure out what he loves in life if he doesn’t try it and keep practicing it? He is going to get left behind by his peers. He is going to lose the thing he loves!
Yes, this is the argument that is going on in my head that is leading to me badgering my child to sign up for dance again. Sometimes I really hate self-awareness.
Yet self-awareness is hitting me over the head with a hammer this weekend.
Why?
I am alone.
Why am I alone?
Well, I was supposed to go on a big hiking trip with some friends but then it turned into a torrential rain weekend (of course it did – it was the start of soccer season) and we decided it is not much fun camping and hiking in a torrential downpour.
So I have no kids – they are with their dad this weekend – and I have no plans.
This is a place I found myself in A LOT when I was freshly separated. It was a place I really could not mentally handle at the time. When I was freshly separated and alone I spent a lot of time crying. A lot. I equated being alone and not busy with being useless and a failure. I had no career to bury myself in, I had no kids to take care of (they were with their dad) and all my friends were extremely busy with their families.
It sucked big time and drove me to depression.
Then my coach helped me understand the importance of alone time (especially for introverts like me and my son). She told me it was OK to sit on the couch and cry. She told me eventually I would get tired of it and move on to something else. She also told me to start figuring out what it was I enjoyed doing and to just start doing it when I had that alone time. She told me to recognize the guilt that would crop up when I was doing something that I enjoyed that I didn’t think was a “valuable use of my time” according to the old rules I had taught myself. She told me to push through that guilt and not let it stop me from doing what I enjoyed.
The great thing about this for me was that she prescribed alone time and fun time for me. I am a rule follower, a lot of us are as we are trained to be in life. So I did what I was told and sat very uncomfortably in my alone time because she told me to. I also started to go out and do things that I had enjoyed in the past. Because at that point in my life I didn’t enjoy anything. I was depressed. I repeated this prescription for a couple of years and in fact sometimes I have to go and get a new prescription for it.
This weekend I got a new prescription for it.
It is amazing because even knowing that being alone is OK now I still can’t quite handle it. I still equate being alone with many bad things and it takes me a lot of (wait for it…ALONE) time to realize how important being alone is.
So on Saturday I woke up and stared alone in the face again and started to get antsy.
I texted my friend that I was supposed to go hiking with to see if she was up for a hike even though it was pouring. Nope. So I sat on the couch and started to see the weekend stretch out before me. I RAN to my closet and put on my exercise gear, hopped in my car and drove myself to the Grouse Grind. I did that, drove home and started to work. I did that for a while until I started to beat myself up again for having no life outside of work and exercise and then I started to text all my friends. My dear friend recognized I was sliding a bit and offered me the opportunity to come over and help her prepare some healthy food.
Um. I hate cooking. I can do it and I can do it well and it has taken me many years to admit that I hate cooking. My family are all fabulous cooks and foodies. My sister reads cookbooks for fun. I should like cooking. Shopping for healthy food at the local markets, cooking and healthy eating are all the rage. OK – this is turning into another post but when my friend asked me if I wanted to come over and help her cook I realized I would rather be alone. Heh. She heard me recognize that and told me to just go make lists of everything I have to do (because I do have work I could be doing) and she knew that would give me something to do so I would’t be obsess about being alone AND I would get something done which I still haven’t let go of as being important.
This is turning into a very long blog post. Is anyone still with me? I work out the analytics of things as I write.
So I started to list all the stuff I have to do and then I realized I was losing my alone time. It was vanishing before my eyes. OMG – I have a lot to do and not much time to do it in. I need more alone time!
I decided I had to go to yoga – it is like alone time. It has meditation built in. I went to yoga.
I came out of yoga and my dear friend had asked me over for pizza (that is how first met in life – she randomly asks strangers if they want pizza as they walk by her house).
Of course I wanted pizza (it had bacon and potato on it!) and of course I wanted to hang out with my friend.
Then I came home and it was still Saturday night and I was alone.
It was then that I finally FINALLY recognized how well and truly I have been trained to think that there is something wrong with being alone with nothing to do because I realized I still subconsciously believe this fallacy.
Then I recognized what my alone time that day had brought me.
I had re-learned what is important to me and I got re-charged doing the things I enjoy. I actually got very excited about life again and I was grateful that I had gotten alone time to get reminded of these things. It really was the best day ever. I felt happy when I woke up this morning. Happy.
To bring this post full circle I now recognize what I am doing to my children when I fill up their schedules with extra-curricular activities. I am teaching them that being alone and being bored is bad. I am also not giving my introvert son enough time to figure out what it is he enjoys. He is being told what to do and he does it because he is a rule follower just like me. I am setting him up for a future mid-life crisis. Someday, he will have to learn that being alone is not bad. He will also have to learn what it is that he loves because he will never have had a chance to figure it out for himself.
I subconsciously knew that I was not letting my son be OK with himself and what he wants. I was trying to convince him he is wrong about stopping his dance class. This is the other awareness I had this weekend in my alone time. I realized that though all I’ve ever wanted for my kids is for them to be happy, I’m still following a set of parenting rules that does the opposite. I am still following the rules that I thought I had unlearned.
So, to be clear and because it seems it takes a lot to unlearn 40 years of training, I am reminding myself that alone time is good – not only is it good, it is awesome.
So this is my reminder and I hope it helps you too.
by Renee leNobel | Apr 6, 2016 | Tools & Tips
It’s that time of year again. Busy season for accountants! The Canadian Personal Income Tax filing deadline of April 30, 2016 is approaching quickly!
I was contemplating why it is still so busy for tax preparers as preparing your own taxes is getting easier every year. The tax software is getting cheaper and cheaper (and you can often find free offerings) and it is fairly straight forward to use.
I’ve been wondering why more people don’t prepare their own taxes. I’ve also been on the receiving end of extreme gratitude when I do prepare people’s taxes. The look of relief on some people’s faces when I tell them makes me feel fairly awesome!
I also know a number of people (many people, so don’t think I’m talking about you) that have not prepared their taxes in years. They owe the Canada Revenue Agency many years of tax returns.
Let me be clear, I’m not talking about complicated tax returns. Sometimes if is very wise to hire out to a specialist. It allows you to concentrate on what you are good at. I’m talking about tax returns for people that are employees and/or have a sole proprietorship small business.
What is stopping people from preparing and filing their income tax return?
Everyone has a slightly different excuse or reason, but I think most of them are based in fear.
One fear is that taxes are too hard to prepare, mistakes will be made and the Canada Revenue Agency will come down with heavy penalties and interest for those mistakes.
Other people worry that they may have made too much money during the year and will owe major taxes. On the flip side, some people will realize that they did not make very much money at all and may take that as a indicator of their own self worth. Better just to not think about it as thinking about it leads to painful thoughts!
Another concern is that it preparing taxes will be a lot of work. If you own your own business and you haven’t got a system in place that tracks your revenue and expenses (money coming in and money going out) then it can be fairly daunting to to think about compiling a year’s worth of information! I understand that fear. I have some clients that hand me their receipts in a shoe box and I don’t like doing that type of work so much either. It helps to know that I will get paid.
All these fears stop people from paying attention to a big part of their lives. I’m a firm believer in researching and gathering as much information as possible about things in life. It allows you to make informed decisions, plan better and generally be more successful. If you are burying your head in the sand about your financial situation, it is likely that you are getting yourself stuck and are not as successful as you could be.
So,,, what can you do to get yourself unstuck and start paying attention to your financial situation and taxes?
Well, if it is truly overwhelming, you can hire someone to help you. When choosing an accountant, choose someone that you are comfortable talking to. Ask them to explain what they have done so you could perhaps repeat the process yourself next year or at least start to gain clarity about the process – this often gets rid of fear. Yes, that accountant may charge you by the hour to explain things, but in the long run, you will save yourself lots of money.
I have an even better suggestion though. Why don’t you hire yourself? You would be doing yourself a big favour. Pay yourself to do your taxes. Decide what your time is worth and sit down and tackle those taxes. When you’re done, calculate what you are owed and then go and spend that money on something that is going to make you feel happy. If it makes you happy to put it in the bank account and save it, then do that. That said, one way to get happier is to have memorable experiences, so maybe you can put those earnings towards a fun experience.
Then next year when it comes time to do taxes again you can look forward to it. It’s an opportunity to earn yourself some funds to do something fun.
