Dreams, goals and a clean slate

This morning I was listening to my 9 year old niece talk to my 17 year old daughter. She was talking about all the things that she wanted to be when she grew up. The list of possibilities was a mile long as she kept on naming them. A pharmacist, a veterinarian, an actor, a singer..... she said she just couldn't decide.
My 17 year old has a countdown on her phone counting down the days, the hours and the minutes until she turns 18. She's been reminding me on a daily basis how much longer she has. I, on the other hand, reach the age of 47 just 3 days before she reaches her milestone of the 18th birthday. That isn't nearly as exciting as turning 18 trust me!
I was folding the laundry while I was listening to their conversations about being excited about growing up and getting older. I just sat there silently taking it all in while I couldn't help but smile at some of the notions that they had. My daughter (Kailee) was giving my niece a very serious lecture on how before long she will need to start being more decisive about what she wants to be when she grows up.
I, in my silence, was thinking about how fast life goes by and how it only seems like yesterday that I was trying to decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had made plans at that age of being a psychologist and solving all the world's problems one person at a time. But life happens and plans change sometimes along the way. I took a different course in life going into college the summer of my senior year and got burnt out fast on school. I started a new job, shortly after got married and then right off had a baby.
Getting out into the real world wasn't nearly what I thought it was going to be and all those dreams and fantasies of becoming a rich and famous doctor of the mind quickly faded away into oblivion. Don't get me wrong, I love the life that I have lived and have been very blessed along the way. I have 3 beautiful and amazing children to show for my decisions that I have made in life and I wouldn't trade them for any degree that hangs in a frame on an office wall with a black leather couch that is for the next appointment to walk in the door. Are there some things I would have done differently? Of course there are. But life consists of "what if's" and regrets of things that we should have done or not done. They are the lessons that we learn along the way.
It would be nice in life if we had a giant eraser that we could use when we look back on our past that we could simply use to wipe away things and do it over. I thought about that as I sat there and listened to the girls talk about their future and thought to myself how nice it would be to be their age and have basically a clean slate before me that I could chart out the plans for the years ahead and know then what I know now. I wanted to chime into the conversation and ask them if they knew how lucky they were that their lives are just starting and that they have so many choices to chose from and so many different paths that they can take. Kailee has known since before she started high school what she wanted to do with her life and has made plans and choices along the way to procure that dream of becoming an oncologist. She has never wavered from her charted path and is more determined every day to achieve that goal. While I am so extremely proud of her for working so hard towards making her dream come true - I am so glad that she has an open venue of choices in life that she can make because this new stage in her life is a brand new beginning.
Now I know that I can tell her and the other kids that being an adult is not all it's cracked up to be. That life is hard and the struggles are real. That turning the magic number of 18 is a big deal, but there are also a lot of consequences that come with becoming responsible for your own actions. I can sit them down for hours upon hours and tell them the things that I did wrong and hope that they learn from what I tell them. But I tried that one time with my oldest daughter Jess when she was making a choice that I knew in my heart what the end result would be. Her response to me? "Mom I have to make my own mistakes and learn my own lessons. Learning from your mistakes won't make me the person I need to be - but learning from my own will make me the person that you have become."
So....with that lesson learned I continued to sit there and let a 9 year old and a 17 year dwell on their dreams and let them believe that they can be whatever they want to be - because they can be. That's the whole purpose of having your whole life ahead of you - a blank slate to put on it whatever you want and to make your dreams come true.
Nope - growing up isn't what I thought it would be - but I am who I am for a reason and so shall they be.

Life, liberation and the pursuit of my happiness

One of the things that I have always admired in my 17 year old daughter is that she has never been afraid to pursue the things in life that make her happy. For as far back as I can remember she has always been a person (even as a small child) who chartered out her course and then found the best possible way to pursue it. She has never been one to walk over top of others to get to where she was going; she merely figured out what was best for her and what would make her happy. It’s pretty much a fail-proof strategy to get through life; but yet in the same – not as easy as it may sound some times.

There are and always will be people in our lives that play a certain role along the way; those that are a stumbling block and those that are stepping stones. I have come to the realization though that what they are is not determined by them, but one’s own self who allows them to be one or the other. Unfortunately though in my case, I am my worst stumbling block. I create the limitations that I put on myself and then I try to find someone else to [for a lack of a better word] blame.

It has taken me a long time to finally realize that the person solely responsible for my being happy is no one other than me. It took me 47 years to realize it – but I guess better late than never. I have spent the better part of my life worrying about putting myself first and fretting over thinking that someone would consider me selfish if I put my own needs before someone else’s. My best friend has told me for as long as I can remember – “You have to take care of YOU before you take care of anyone else! Because if you aren’t happy – how can you make someone else happy?”

So what does that mean? It means I had to stop worrying if it would make someone mad if I opted to go shopping by myself; it means that I had to stop stressing myself out over whether or not someone would get upset with me for going out with friends. It meant that if something was important TO me then it was important enough FOR me to pursue it. Those were big steps to take for someone who had spent all her life trying to please everyone else instead of herself. It took someone repeatedly telling me – “It’s okay to do something for April – really it is!” This revelation has nothing to do with a break-up or anything of that nature. It has to do with me realizing that life is not about always feeling like the politically correct thing to do is pleasing other people. It's okay to take care of "you" from time to time.

With another birthday lurking around the corner and the milestone of the big 5-0 getting one year closer, I think it has set my mind into a tailspin of a lot of “what if” thinking. So with the new year just arriving I have put myself into a new mindset. I’ve made the decision that I’m going to start taking better care of me. I’m going to start thinking of me more often and at the same time convincing my inner goddess that it’s okay to do that and for her not to make me feel bad about myself for it.

I refuse to let myself anymore be a passenger in the backseat or riding shotgun with someone else being in the driver’s seat of my life. It’s time for me to climb in the driver’s seat and put my life on cruise control as I continue this journey on the pursuit to happiness.