by Renee leNobel | Nov 26, 2015 | Divorce
I have a friend and she has two sets of what look like playing cards, called Life Cards and Angel Cards. Every once in awhile, she drags them out of the cupboard and we pick one of each (without looking). It’s something that takes about 10 minutes but it is an exercise that drags us back into the present moment and gives us the chance to shift our (usually) future-focused perspectives.
In fact, we have turned this into a semi-weekly fun thing to do so we remember to make time for reflection and pausing in our lives.
Anyhow. This week I pulled the revelation card and the patience card. Every week I seem to pull a card that applies to my life in that particular moment and this week’s choices were scarily relevant. It is also a theme that seems to keep playing over and over in my life. Wait, slow down, let things resolve themselves. I think this theme keeps playing over and over because I haven’t gotten it yet.
The revelation card told me that I should wait for life to reveal itself to me and the patience card just said patience. Patience while I wait for life to reveal itself I guess. Isn’t that weird how these two cards go together ? Completely separate decks. Eerie.
I am not patient and I hate waiting. I like to control the outcome.
What about you?
Are you the type of person that likes to sort life into neat piles and bend it the way you want it to go? Do you look at a problem and immediately start thinking of how you are going to fix that problem? Do you create mental deadlines about when that has to happen by?
I am that type of person and that is what I do.
I am also a bit of a stress case.
I noticed that my tendency to sort life into neat little boxes would just lead me to feeling frustrated when nothing fit.
I noticed that life never matched what my future focus had envisioned.
I would kill myself over work deadlines, stressing out myself and my kids, only to have the work deadline move or not matter anymore. Or the project I was working on would change so dramatically, that the work I had done was no longer relevant.
Logically, I now know this: life never plays out how you expect it will and even if I throw all my energy at something, it is not going to go the way I planned. What I have also learned is that I can handle everything that does come my way. So I can relax, I can take my time and try to live a life according to my own values and beliefs. I can gather information and gain new insight into things but in the end it is the interplay between the circumstances and the people in my life that determines what will be revealed. I know this, yet I don’t live as if I do.
I was just reminded of this when I looked in my oldest son’s bedroom. It is a disaster zone. As usual. Added to the piles of detritus on the floor are all the candy wrappers from this most recently ended Halloween. He likes to save them to remind himself of the good times gone by I guess.
I immediately started grumbling and complaining, saying things like ‘these have got to go.” and “this room is a disaster – you have to clean up.” and he mumbled “I will.”
Yeah – he won’t. He won’t because I never let him get to that point. I start freaking out and yelling until he grudgingly tidies his room.
I’m going to try something different (and all because of those cards). I’m going to be patient and let life reveal itself to me.
Don’t get me wrong. I still want to control the outcome. What I’m hoping will happen is what happened to some friends of mine. In their early twenties they started living together as a couple. One of them was not what you would consider to be a tidy person.
This couple had been living together for about two years. They were living the pattern where their home would get more and more slovenly until the tidier person would freak out and clean up. This kept happening. The tidier person could not wait, she’d reached her limit.
But after two years, I guess she reached her limit on the number of times she could freak out and be upset with the slob she was living with. She was tired of all the arguing. So she stopped. She waited to see what would reveal itself. I love this story.
Well, their place got really bad. Really really bad. Dogs would come over to visit and find a good meal in itself on the floor.
It got so bad, one day, unbelievably, the person who seemed to have no limit to his tolerance for mess, stood in the middle of the room, lifted his arms to the sky and went “AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
He’d noticed the mess.
He started to clean the mess. All without any yelling or cajoling from his partner.
Since that time, he’s never let things go so far again.
So, I’m hoping I can last as long as my friend (which could be a very long time) but I am also curious to see what will be revealed. How will this play out? Will there be a different outcome? Will it make for as good a story?
I’m hopeful that training myself to wait on minor life situations will help me develop a waiting muscle that I can use on the seemingly more serious situations in life.
This is going to be my challenge to myself for the next little while. Will you join me in this challenge? Will you wait to see what is revealed?
by Renee leNobel | Nov 18, 2015 | Divorce
Not sure if many of you watched Seinfeld back in the day it originally aired. I did and there is one episode that really resonates with me right now. What I remember about the episode is the fact that George was in conflict with his two personas: Independent George and Relationship George. Relationship George was killing fun-loving Independent George.
I admit I have the same problem. Relationship Renée (“RR”) is causing all sorts of problems for Independent Renée (“IR”) and IR does not get off so lightly in the blame department either.
IR seems to forget what RR’s life is like the minute the kids walk out the door to spend time with their dad.
IR, in a bid to stave off loneliness, takes on work commitments, volunteer commitments and social commitments. All IR can think is that she must fill the hours that the children are absent. IR must be productive and not wallow in self-pity.
Then the children seem to suddenly descend and IR becomes RR. Suddenly, RR finds herself having to make breakfast, lunch and dinner, ferry kids around to various activities all while trying to finish the work that IR started and did not finish in her free time. In addition, these children are constantly disrupting the peace and quiet of the work space. How is RR supposed to get anything done! The children are no longer with RR, they are with GR – can you guess? Yup. Grumpy Renée.
GR longs for the peaceful solitude that IR had. Seriously, what was IR thinking, lonely? I’ll give you lonely, GR thinks. GR would kill for some lonely time when she is in the thick of getting everything done. GR looks ahead at IR’s calendar and cuts a swath through everything. “That ignorant IR!” thinks GR. “I’ll teach her to overschedule and overcommit. She is not doing anything this weekend when the kids are with their dad. She is going to recharge and lay low and prepare herself for the week ahead when the kids are back.”
Then quicker than you can blink IR is back and staring at the weekend ahead that GR just planned. IR recharges in a day and then peaceful solitude turns to debilitating loneliness. IR adds as many things as she can to stave off loneliness and starts to create rules for RR. RR must go to yoga during the week. RR must do better at getting work done when the kids are in bed. “NO MORE NETFLIX RR!” shouts IR.
Then RR is back and trying to negotiate these rules that IR setup. “IR has not been using that brain of hers again.” She doesn’t know how exhausting it is to work all day, fight with the kids over bedtime routines and now she wants me write blog posts and better myself in the hours of 9 to 11 pm?” I cannot do it, thinks RR. RR gets depressed and wonders what the point is off all this work anyway. Seriously RR says to herself. There must be a better way.
As with everything, communication is key. Much like the movie Mememto, RR and IR have started to leave notes for each other on their shared desk.
These are the notes from RR to IR
- Before taking anything on, ask yourself if it fits your values and beliefs.
- What are you taking this new project on for?
- Would you do this if you were short of time? or are you just doing it to keep busy?
(yes, all the notes are a variation on a theme)
These are the notes from IR to RR
- I am sacrificing some of my weekend fun time to catch up on grunt work. Please make sure you try to let go when you are with the kids and have some fun time with them.
- I am recharging and using this time so you can not turn into GR. Please remember that your time with the kids is brief and the most important thing is to be present with them and take care of yourself.
- Please remember to look for time when you can complete work when you are RR. Schedule a reasonable amount of time for me to complete that work if you don’t and don’t forget to schedule something fun for me to look forward to.
Then IR adds more as she has more time to reflect than RR: “I know it’s tough RR, but remember, you eventually get to have some solitude, think of all the single parents out there that do not have a co-parent. Remember to be grateful.”
Slowly, these messages between IR and RR are starting to get through.
The one common message that they tell the other? “It’s going to take time to get this right, be kind to yourself in the meantime and I will forgive your errors in judgement. Afterall, we learn best from our mistakes!”
by Renee leNobel | Oct 21, 2015 | Divorce
“People turn up in your life when you need them.”
This was said to me by someone recently and she was essentially predicting her appearance in my life.
At the time of our meeting, I was actually thinking: “I do not need
this person at all in my life.” She blew in the door and proceeded to “advise” me on how I should be living my life, and according to her beliefs, I was living my life all wrong.
Within two minutes of meeting her, she decided she had me pegged and told me I was too analytical and that I needed to think with my heart and not my head. Then she went further and told me that being analytical was why I was unhappy.
I was a little taken aback by her statements and immediately started analyzing them because yes, I am analytical. I do like to figure things out and so often take in information, analyze it and then either add it as support to my theories on life or reject it as not valid. She did read me quite well; it was actually quite impressive how she figured me out so quickly.
So I agreed with her, yes, I’m analytical, but actually, I’m pretty happy with that state of affairs so I put that argument back to her that her initial argument was flawed. Thinking with my head is not a recipe to make me unhappy, despite her strong beliefs.
This didn’t sit well with her and she spent the next hour telling me why I was wrong and why I needed to start living according to her beliefs and values system. She even stepped up the pressure by telling me I looked way older than my age and that was due to me being unhappy. Some of you may be wondering why I listened to her go on for so long. I will refer you to my blog post on
maintaining personal boundaries. Yes, in hindsight, it would have been better for me to simply stop defending my belief system to her and walk away; this is something that I will probably have to work on for the rest of my life because the people pleasing gene is strong in me (as Yoda would say).
That said, I did eventually walk away and went to my room to read
How to be a Woman by Caitlin Moran. Actually, I think this book waltzed it’s way into my life when I needed it. The irony was funny as my attacker was telling me I needed to dye my hair and Caitlin Moran was questioning why woman have to focus so much on maintaining their youthful looks when men spend their time worrying about how to get ahead.
My attacker eventually got the message and left me alone and then I got thinking about what had just happened (oh – I’m so analytical :))
What I started thinking about was Coaching compared to Advising.
I started thinking about how coaching worked for me and my life. My coach listened to me and what I have to say. She helped me elucidate what is important to me and what is going to drive me forward in life.
This is very different from someone that already has an idea about how life works and then tries to put those ideas onto someone else.
I can say that coaching worked for me. I don’t have to push myself to do things that I naturally want to do. I can also say that advising seemed to work for a while in my life. I did listen to what people advised me to do for a very long time but eventually the disparity between how I was living and my personal values led me to being stuck in life. I was not moving forward anymore when I was living someone else’s life.
After I had finished thinking about coaching and advising, I realized that this person did have one valid point that I will buy into. People do turn up in life when we need them, but sometimes it takes a little work (and analysis) to recognize this.
by Renee leNobel | Oct 15, 2015 | Divorce
Empathy is an interesting thing. I’ve always felt like I have a bit too much of it. I could easily empathize with someone who was in pain and I would spend a good chunk of my time figuring out how to help that person. If I couldn’t help them, I would feel bad.
I always thought my empathic nature was a benefit to others and just slightly detrimental to me as I spent way too much time trying to solve other people’s problems and then I would feel terrible if I couldn’t help.
Today I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that my empathic nature has been helping me more than I ever realized. What I discovered is that having empathy for others and having an understanding of how their lives have their own hurdles, helps me reflect on my own challenges…which often seem trivial in comparison.
I start to see how my life is actually pretty wonderful and my mood swings towards being grateful for my life circumstances. I become happier and my life flows better.
Why did I have this thought today?
I was recently helping a couple who are separated have a discussion about money. They are trying to map out their financial future going forward as single parents, co-parenting their two children.
One parent is re-entering the workforce after a hiatus of six years to look after their young children. The other parent is taking on half of the parenting burden as they switch to a week on/week off parenting schedule.
The parent re-entering the workforce is uncertain of the future and how to cope with starting a new career while maintaining a hint of her prior life as a stay-at-home parent. She is afraid her kids will think she is abandoning them and she also knows she will miss being with them when they are at their dad’s home.
The parent taking on more parenting could not get past the fact that he would still be contributing money to the other parent while looking after their children 50% the time. He thinks he just took on 50% more work without seeing any benefit at all.
As they talked they got more and more entrenched in their individual positions and I could tell they had stopped listening to each other.
As I watched their dialogue deteriorate, I thought about how their inability to see each other’s perspective was hurting each of them. I don’t know what they were feeling, but their language indicated that they were both feeling like the victim in their current situation. I do know that feeling like a victim often leads to feelings of anger and depression. Before I stopped them, they had gotten to the point where they were searching their memories for other instances where each perceived that they had been treated unfairly. Their focus became who had it harder in life.
Now – this couple is very angry with each other, but I kept thinking – wouldn’t it be nice if they could each see each other’s perspective?
What if they both recognized that the other person had similar fears and concerns? Both of them are starting something new and both have fear of the future. If they could each put themselves in the other’s shoes, they would each stop focusing on the negative aspects of their own lives. Instead of using all their emotional resources to shore up their own feelings of hurt, they might start thinking about how the other person had it equally bad and then maybe, just maybe, they might start trying to think up solutions to help the other person.
This would be natural collaboration. And where did this natural collaboration come from? It came from empathy and understanding of the other person.
I realize that with this couple, this is too big a challenge at this point, they dislike each other too much. So that is why I suggested taking a breather from the discussion. Perhaps time and distance will allow their natural empathies to grow and we can get back on the subject of their hopeful futures another day.
by Renee leNobel | Aug 27, 2015 | Divorce
Are you in the middle of a Transition Day?. Perhaps you feel like ?
There are two types of transition days. The ones where the kids leave to go stay with their other parent and the ones where the kids come back to you.
Let’s deal with the leaving days first…
The first thing to do is ensure your remaining minutes before saying goodbye to your kids are positive. Minutes? Yes, minutes. This is your first challenge, and it is a challenge. Getting your kids packed up and ready to go to the other parent’s house is stressful and added to that, kids rarely (in my experience) cooperate when getting ready. It is hard to remain calm when your kid won’t stop what they are doing to put their shoes on and it is made doubly hard when you would rather they weren’t leaving at all.
So how do you stay calm and not have your remaining minutes with the kids be ones that are filled with yelling? Practice. Practice telling yourself that this a hard situation you are in and practice giving yourself a break if you do yell. Apologise to your child if you yell and tell them why. Then remember to say you love them and that you will see them soon. Then remind yourself that you will get many more times to practice this skill and with time it will get better.
As you are getting your child ready to go to the other parent’s house, be aware of that feeling that may be rising in you that is going to lead to yelling. This is an opportunity to remind yourself that the kids are leaving soon and it doesn’t matter if they forget stuff or are late. It’s also a good time to remember that your kids are smart and this is a perfect opportunity for them to learn about natural consequences. You can help remind them about what they will need, you can help them pack and you can be waiting for them outside for when they are ready to go. Sit down and take deep breaths while you wait.
Establish a rule with your children that they must always look you in the eye to say goodbye. There is nothing worse than having your child run off without looking back when you get to the destination, whether they leave right from your home or a place you drive them to. You do not want your last memory before a 2, 4 day or even a week long stretch without your kids to be the back of your child’s head sprinting away from you as you think to yourself – “I didn’t even get to say goodbye! What if something happens to one of us!”
Then your kids are gone – you may have to be somewhere or not. You may have decided to fill up your time so you don’t think about your missing child or you may have excess time on your hands now that they are gone. If you have excess time, you may find grief starts to seep in. Allow the grief in and sit with it for a while. Powering through an emotion or burying it will mean you never learn to deal with it. Instead, if you face it head on and give yourself a break for being sad, you will find that eventually, with time, these grief periods will get shorter in duration.
Then remind yourself that it will never go according to plan. Things happen, so don’t beat yourself up if the plan you made for “how things are now going to be next time the kids leave” does not go the way you envisioned. After all, you made that plan when the kids weren’t with you and the push and pull of a relationship with kids never goes according to your plans.
That said, don’t give up on making those plans because eventually over time parts of them will begin to creep in (in a good way), to your transition days.
