I used to do it all – and feel overwhelmed, underappreciated and generally like a failure.
I have a lot of experience trying to do it all. Trying.
The truth? My “doing it all” was not getting much done. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I was busy, I was non-stop busy. I was also all over the map-trying to make sure that everyone was…..riiiiight…..everyone, not me. Doing. Not me. Not for me. I wanted to make sure that everyone-my amazing kids, my amazing spouse and my amazing staff-was doing what they needed to do to make their lives perfect.
I did not understand not-doing. I definitely wasn’t practicing it.
I was so busy doing it all that had misread and misplaced the manual for my life. The truth is that I can do a lot! Twenty-six years ago, when I had a toddler, was pregnant with my second and had an unemployed spouse who suffered from depression, I opened a retail shop. I worked in the shop five or six days a week, I also merchandised, did the buying of stock and supplies, paid the bills, cleaned the toilet, handled advertising, managed all the accounts and more- I did it all.
When my beloved kids were five and eight I separated from their other parent, and had custody four or five days a week depending upon the year. I proved that I could do a lot a lot! I now realize that I can also overdo for others and underdo for myself.
I can be so busy doing that I lose all sight of my ultimate goal, which is not perfection, but to live a happy, contented life. To model that for my kids.
Finding balance, while parenting teens takes a lot of practice.
As anyone who has read my blogs knows I meditate 7 minutes every morning, and yes that is not-doing, and yes that has changed my life.
That also leaves me with 1433 minutes for me to do-do-do!!!
Not-doing is a very hard thing to do!! Not-doing can be doing, while not doing. Have I confused you?
For some people walking is doing. For me it all depends on how and why I am walking. Am I getting from point A to point B with purpose? Then I am doing. When I randomly decided to walk from Columbus Circle to Brooklyn in December that was not-doing. That might be doing to some people, for me it was 6 miles of not-doing, just being. Have I mentioned: this is personal, and it is a lifelong practice, working the not-doing muscle. I even add “stop. don’t do” to my to-do list and I never take it off.
Before I learned, there were several things which hit the not-do button for me. The first was an MS flare that literally paralyzed me. Fourteen years later the pandemic shifted everything again, literally overnight. I went back to doing it all, well, most of it all, with Quinn doing the financial part-no small job in a pandemic! In January 2021 I passed out, fell flat forward on my face and broke my nose. I thankfully regained consciousness almost immediately. It did give me another pause though, to practice not-doing, so I didn’t fall again.
Practicing not-doing is not doing nothing. We are all doing something most of the time. Are you pausing to consider what you are doing?
There are some places in which most of us do do “it all”, because it is actually our responsibility! What is our responsibility changes. This is particularly true when we are parenting teens. There are some things which they really want to take responsibility for, and others not so much. I have learned, as a parent and as a person, that there are some things which make sense to engage, or simply ask, others to do.
Experience has given me the data, should I take the time to look at it, that things do fall into place-when I let them. Oh, sometimes life gets stirred up, sometimes things get thrown down, sometimes things get thrown up in the air like a pizza…or a tornado.
What did “doing it all” mean when my kids were teens? Oh honey! What didn’t I do? I tried really hard to do it all and do it right so my kids would feel safe and loved. Pick the kid up every time they call no matter what I was in the middle of? Listening to another doctor or book and trying the next medication because my kid didn’t like the last one for reasons which were not entirely clear to me and that I never took the time to really listen to his feelings about, because I was so busy doing? Not listening to that kids’ older sibling telling me that we should absolutely not put their sibling on medication at all. And, yes, that older sibling can remember exactly where we were on the 280 when I did not do with my ears what they were meant to do.
I could go on and on with all the things that I was busy doing. Listening was not on the list. Asking questions was not on the list. Asking for help was not on the list. The wonderful thing is this: I changed. My kids have seen and experienced it all. And it wasn’t all pretty. We all know we can’t change the past; for my family we don’t have to dwell in it, and they and I can acknowledge it when it comes up. Sometimes there are tears, sometimes there are eye rolls and then we move on. Lots of hugs happen.
In dinner conversation with my older child recently we were talking about the past, and how it impacts us in the present. I said that I could write a not-slim book on all the ways that I erred, made mistakes, did too much, did too little, basically did a lot wrong, and a lot right, and that simply put, I was sorry. This is something I’ve said before and no doubt will say again. I am not begging forgiveness, just acknowledging impact. We hugged.
I was afraid to not-do.
I was afraid everything would fall apart. It won’t. It didn’t. It does fall into place.
I have no plans to write a book listing the vast number of things that I would do differently if I had it to do over again. I would practice not-doing more. FYI, I cannot go back and change the past. I will also not make them read my notes for that book, nor ask them to edit it, rewrite it and then burn it all to make me feel okay. They knew that they were loved by three imperfect human parents who loved them. We f’d them up plenty, in a culture which does its best and does it’s best to do the same, in a society which wants what is best and is super confusing. Those adults- who will forever be my children – are magnificent in ways that I truly never could have imagined.
All photos above were taken while I was practicing not-doing.
I can fly above the clouds(with a pilot), walk among the stones and aside the birds, and put my feet up and observe the earth.
