What If?

by | Dec 3, 2016 | Divorce and Separation

spdu7yt1o00-matthew-sleeper

What If

What do you normally think right after those two words?

I tend to think: what if… catastrophe.

My propensity to imagine the worst is so deeply ingrained that even after proving to myself, again and again, that the worst case never actually happens, catastrophe is still my automatic first thought whenever something even slightly unusual happens in my life.

I get a letter from the Canada Revenue Agency? Oh no, I’m being audited; I’m going to owe thousands of dollars. It was a certificate thanking me for volunteering to help low-income seniors file their taxes.

My co-parent asks to talk about our parenting schedule? Oh no, he’s going to upend everything we’ve worked hard to build, and my life is about to fall apart as I adjust to some new arrangement. He wanted to swap Sundays because he had an event to go to.

My kid’s teacher wants to schedule a talk? Oh no, my child is a bully. She wanted to ask if I’d come speak to her class about financial literacy.

I first noticed this pattern in the middle of my divorce, imagining every possible horror my post-divorce life might hold. A friend finally said, “Renée, things never turn out the way you imagine. Have you ever once been able to predict the future?”

I scoffed at her. What did she know? She wasn’t in the middle of the horror show I was living. But her words lodged themselves somewhere in my brain anyway, whether because I wanted to prove her wrong or because my analytical brain genuinely wanted to test the theory, I’m still not sure.

So I tested it. And things didn’t turn out anything like I’d imagined. What surprised me more was that they never turned out nearly as bad as I’d feared.

I started paying closer attention: to the dire thought right after “what if,” and then to what actually happened afterward. Every time, the gap between the two was enormous. Turns out I really can’t predict the future. Damn it.

I also noticed how much those dire thoughts cost me. Hours spent worrying about outcomes that never arrived. Once I saw that clearly, I was pretty annoyed with myself. What a colossal waste of time.

Then I noticed something else. I’m not the only one who does this. Almost everyone I know does it. Everyone.

And if you’re in an especially stressful stretch, separating from a spouse, negotiating an agreement, your worst-case machinery runs into overdrive. I get it. I lived it too.

So take it from me, and from the friend who called this out in me first.

It will never be what you imagine. It will probably be considerably better.

And one more thing worth knowing: whatever the future actually turns out to be, you’ll be able to handle it.

Not Enough

by | Nov 24, 2016 | Divorce and Separation, Money

pelskgra2nu-fabian-blank (1)

Not Enough

What’s your relationship with money? I ask because I’ve assumed for a while now that yours looks something like mine. Lately I’ve noticed my assumptions tend to get me into trouble.

Here’s my money history, in case it helps you check.

I’ve always operated from one core fear: there isn’t enough, and it might run out. That thought shows up everywhere. I check my finances compulsively to confirm there’s still enough today. I’m frugal to a fault, hand-me-down queen, proudly. And spending money hurts, whether it’s on something fun or a plumbing bill. All of it stings equally.

Funny enough, I know people with the same fear, not enough money, who respond by spending as fast as they can before it disappears: same fear, opposite behaviour.

My fear came true when I separated from my husband. He’d been the one with the paycheque, and suddenly the money I’d been afraid would stop flowing actually stopped. I believed my savings were gone too, most of it eaten by the lawyer and the split. Nothing is more terrifying than watching your worst fear materialize. It took over my life for a while.

Eventually I had to find a way to let go of “there’s not enough,” because that thought was the thing actually causing the pain, more than the situation itself.

I started permitting myself to spend on things like clothes or eating out, without the usual sting attached. I also started increasing what came in, while still making sure I never spent more than that. Not more spending for its own sake, just less fear attached to the spending I was already doing.

Looking back, my money history wasn’t all bad. My obsessive tracking gave me an unusually precise understanding of exactly what I need to live on. My obsession with an emergency cushion meant I actually had options when the divorce hit. Both of those habits, born from fear, ended up serving me well.

Now my relationship with money is different. My baseline thought is: there’s enough. I still pay attention. Some months I still have to cut back or find new ways to bring money in. I still keep an emergency cushion because the unexpected still happens, two plumbing emergencies in one week recently, and for once I wasn’t even bummed, because the cushion was there.

My relationship with money isn’t a painful one anymore.

So, what’s yours?

Avoid then capitulate

by | Oct 31, 2016 | Communication & Conflict, Divorce and Separation

Avoid, Then Capitulate

Collaboration works through exploration. Here’s what I mean by that.

We’re all a bit like icebergs. A small part of us shows above the surface, but the real mass, the values and experience that actually shape how we respond to things, sits underwater where no one else can see it. Other people only see the tip, and they build assumptions about us from that alone. Most conflict comes from exactly this gap: neither person can see what’s actually driving the other.

To work through conflict, you have to explore what’s under the surface, both yours and theirs. Once you both understand what’s actually going on down there, solutions tend to become obvious, and because you both arrived at it together, you both actually buy into it.

The catch is that almost none of us are trained to be collaborative, and the moment you actually need the skill is usually the moment you’re too emotional to use it. So instead, everyone falls back on whatever style of conflict was trained into them, not through a course, but through personality and life experience layered together over time. Some people are trained to fight and win. Some avoid. Some capitulate.

I was trained to avoid first, then capitulate once avoidance stopped working. I know this about myself. I know it doesn’t serve me. I still fall into it every single time.

Knowing that, I’ve built myself some guardrails.

Rule 1: Never answer right away. Give yourself time to think, even when you feel completely certain, calm, and clear. You’re probably not as settled as you think.

This past weekend, someone asked me a favour. I said I needed time to think, even though I already knew my answer was no. I felt sure of it. I said I needed time anyway, because I’ve surprised myself before.

Rule 2: Don’t poll people outside the conflict. I broke this one almost immediately, because I assumed everyone would agree with me. They didn’t. What I got instead was a pile of other people’s values and beliefs that had nothing to do with mine, which left me more confused and a little guilty, not more decided. Interestingly, the opinions split cleanly along gender lines: the women leaned toward capitulating, and the men said, “Do what makes you happy.”

Confused and stuck, I spent Sunday morning just sitting with each possible answer to see how it felt. Saying yes felt bad, and saying no felt equally bad.

Rule 3: When you start to cry, snap, or turn into someone you don’t like, stop and take a break. So I rode my bike. That should be its own rule. Find your version of the bike ride. It feels indulgent when there’s a conflict to resolve, but it’s not optional. Most of us were trained to think enjoying ourselves is somehow wrong, especially with work left undone.

Rule 4: Once you’ve fallen back into your old pattern, return to the process. After my ride, I felt clear again. This morning I emailed the person who’d asked the favour and asked to meet again, since there’s no clean answer yet. We need to explore what’s actually underneath the request, and what’s underneath my resistance to it. Once we both understand that, a solution will show up that actually works for both of us.

If the other person doesn’t want to meet that way, that’s simply a new conflict, and the only real move is to explore why, using the same process all over again, more practice. Endless practice.

Rule 5: Implement the solution, then go live your life. Sooner or later, another conflict will show up, and you’ll get to do all of this again.

I still don’t know how this particular one turns out. But writing through it, same as the collaborative process itself, has already done what it needed to do.

The BAD MOTHER tagline

by | Oct 18, 2016 | Divorce and Separation, Parenting & Co-Parenting

I wrote the post below back when I was recently separated with two young children, in the thick of grief and anger, most of it aimed at my ex. I felt like I had no control over my own life. photo-1470319149473-af271634cecf

The Bad Mother Tagline

Have you ever thought of yourself as a bad mother? I know I have. “I’m a bad mother” has been the tagline running under nearly every parenting mistake I’ve made since my oldest was born, ten years ago now. Forgot his hat. Bad mother. Yelled at him for being irritating. Bad mother. Forgot to remind him to look both ways when crossing the street. BAD MOTHER. A friend and I once joked about getting matching T-shirts that said “dumb mum.”

We’re wired this way as a species, apparently, quick to forgive everyone except ourselves.

I got a fresh reminder of this a few weekends ago.

My kids’ dad asked if I could take them for the weekend. He asked on Wednesday. I was buried in work and had promised myself I wasn’t working weekends anymore. My answer should have been an easy no. I had plans. I needed the recharge.

No was right there, on the tip of my fingers as I started typing my reply. Then something stopped me.

The thought: I’m a bad mother.

How could I not want to be with my own kids? Their dad needed help. How could I put my own interests ahead of theirs?

So instead of no, I said yes. I cancelled my plans and told myself that wanting that time in the first place had been selfish.

You can probably guess how the weekend went. Not well.

It started going sideways Friday at 2:30, when my youngest called from school with a tummy ache. I knew immediately it wasn’t real, not medically. He hates last-minute changes, and switching up the schedule on short notice was enough to give him an emotional stomachache. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He needed time to process the change. So did I.

I’d been counting on those hours to get my work done before pickup. Instead, I found myself standing in front of my seven-year-old, and the first words out of my mouth were: “Do you really have a tummy ache?”

I heard myself say it, and right behind it came the tagline, on schedule: I am a bad mother.

I spent the rest of the weekend taking my mood out on my kids in small ways I’m not proud of, and by the time they left, I was cycling through the whole tagline lineup. Bad. Hadn’t learned a thing. Still the same people-pleaser I thought I’d outgrown.

Monday morning, kids gone, I finally had space to think. I cried, partly from the weekend itself, partly because I still had work waiting and no energy left for it.

Then I started writing, and something clicked. I’d just gotten the clearest proof I was ever going to need that the “bad mother” tagline had to go. For good.

Looking back at that weekend now, oddly, I’m grateful for it. Thank you, terrible weekend. You were the thing that finally put that tagline in the ground, along with the others I’d been using to beat myself up for years.

Blame’s Fault

by | Oct 3, 2016 | Divorce and Separation

photo-1461855445185-0ee4225d40b5

Blame’s Fault

I like finding answers to the problems in life. I know that’s impossible, and that chasing one single answer to everything will drive me a little crazy, but this week I feel like I’m getting close.

Really. Close.

I’ve decided that when things go sideways, it’s Blame’s fault. Blame was especially obnoxious this past week.

Blame was there when my kids were pounding on each other in the back of the car while I was just trying to get them to school on time. You know the script. “He looked at me funny!” “His arm’s on my side!”

Blame was there again when I found more than one mistake in my own work at the start of September. Obviously it was back-to-school’s fault. Too much going on.

It showed up in nearly every conversation I had last week, with people in the middle of their own separations, with friends blaming themselves for their own misery. It sidetracked me from getting anything done. Every day I tried to write this post about Blame, and every day Blame thwarted me. Wouldn’t submit. Darn you, Blame.

But I think I’ve finally got your number.

I’m done with you. Here’s why.

Every time you show up, you distract everyone from what’s actually going on. You’re a trickster. You steal the show. You’re a piece of glitter nobody can look away from, once you’re in the room, you’re all anyone can see.

You trap people. You get them so busy proving you wrong that they forget the person on the other side of you isn’t actually the enemy, they’re just someone dodging and weaving, trying to get away from you, while you get used as both shield and sword.

You lock people into thinking there’s one right answer. The world isn’t black and white, Blame.

And worst of all, you’re the weapon people turn on themselves.

So move aside. Make room for communication, understanding, forgiveness.

I’m done with you, Blame. I’m moving on.