Just Showing Up is Enough!

August 2019 Blag!

I’m not so happy with the word Blog – it feels like an overweight word. I’d be happier with Blag so "Welcome to my very first Blag"... like a chin wag but one sided (and let's face it, we all blag it sometimes)!

It’s 8 months since I started my road to Wellness after 16 years of focusing on work and not myself.   My only feelings of self-worth were through my professional success. Being good at my job meant that I was being successful in life. I realised a few months ago that this is a by-product of my childhood. I was praised when I did chores and I felt loved when I got praised for helping. Praise or kind sentiments were not dished up at dinner. You had to earn them!

I look back now at all the things I’ve done professionally and I know I’ve had amazing professional experiences but my god, was I stressed most of the time. I was constantly worried there was not enough time to get everything done and disappointing people. I felt wholly responsible for the success of any project and I put the weight of the world on my own shoulders (and consquently my hips).  Well the spin off to this is that I got fat, unhealthy, suffered with insomnia, numbed my feelings with alcohol, cigarettes, shopping and did not pursue any recreational pursuits for fun! The upshot was that I made some amazing friendships, travelled the world and made decent money that has enabled me to have some nice things in my life and gave us the money to conceive our two beautiful IVF children.

It has taken this long to realise my balance was all wrong and that many of the things I spent hours, months and years talking about, stressing about and doing are really just quite meaningless and insignificant in the universe but at the time they were the root of my very existence. Caught up in this state of “working” really cocooned me from what else was important in life and any meaningful personal growth. Real life – relationships, connectedness, supporting, creating, expressing myself in a “non-crazed animal” kind of way.

A year ago, I made a life change that has been the catalyst to a new beginning for me. Where I could leave that “work” person behind me and focus on my “own” person – one that has self-worth and value that isn’t attached to a job. I still have the same job (albeit from a different location) but I have a new perspective. I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons in the past few years as I tried to balance becoming a mum with holding a job, studying and the weight of my own expectations. Expectations are a killer (mentally, physically and emmotionally)!  We expect so much of ourselves as women and mums.

I read a very insightful book this year called "The Gifts of Imperfections" – Brené Brown.   Many things in this book hit home for me but one that stuck is that sometimes, “Just Showing up is Enough!”  

My self-worth is measured by what is in my heart not on spreadsheets or client feedback forms.

I wrote this poem when I was 11. I’ve never forgotten it and it’s very pertinent in my life right now.

My Spirit

I sit here watching day by day,

My life before me pass away,

And even though no one else can see,

At least I know my spirits free.

Thanks for reading my Blag!  

The Wellness Poet – K Regan