July 7, 2022

Quote: “We are not meant to be everything to everyone.  Find what you love and do it, and the right people will join you for the ride.”

Writing is bliss, social media, not so much.  While I love keeping up with the kids and families I moved away from when we came south, I worry about the younger generations and whether their tie to social media will have an adverse effect on their self worth.  I worry that they can’t live freely, taking in experiences, posting what they want to, and still know how to enjoy the present.  How do they learn that likes are not tied to worth, and that while being kind is first on the good life list, we are all left knowing that the only feelings that we should and can manage are our own.  Boundaries…what a lesson.  

I have journalled for over 20 years to bring clarity and healing to my life, so it’s not like this writing thing was a hobby I picked up recently.  Today though, I use social media to put my words out there, so I have had to spend some time with my relationship with likes and followers in my own head so that it doesn’t feel like the ASB election I lost as a junior in high school, or the one before that in 5th grade where I got beat by a 4th grader.  Unlike my dad, I don’t think I’ve ever won an election in my life…so for me, likes need not become votes or I’m in trouble. 

I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out who it is I am writing to, besides myself, when I pen these blogs.  I feel it in certain spaces, when women share their stories about their kids and we make an instant “me too” connection and leave with a hug after talking for less than 5 minutes.  It’s in the graduation stories, life transitions, and the emails that come from far away about these rites of passage that seem so regular in American life, but shake us to our core.  It’s in the conversations about broken relationships, and what we’ve learned from them, that gives way to healing and makes life a more real, and still beautiful place to be.  In the end, I want my words to make other people feel understood…because to me that is one of the best feelings in the world.

Daily Action: Stop and listen to learn today, instead of listening to respond. Be the reason someone feels understood.  

Daily Reframe: We don’t have to know the answer, we just need to have open ears.  

With Optimism,

Wendy