A birthday to remember

Posted by admin in Blog (Weekly), Blogs

Oct
17

“We could spend our whole lives waiting for someone to apologize, or take responsibility for how they hurt us before we decide to let go. But the problem with that scenario is we have made someone else in charge of how and when we heal. If we truly want to break a cycle and heal, we have to forget about what the other person is or isn’t doing and focus entirely on our process.” Unknown

This truly was a birthday to remember! It almost felt like a rite of passage. It’s taken me ¾ of a century to set myself FREE. The greatest gift I’ve given myself is to know I AM THE ONE I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR! After many years of disappointments, because I didn’t get what I thought I wanted and needed, it feels like a cycle has been broken. The past is gone and I will no longer let past patterns and other’s behaviors define me. Today I am celebrating ME.

Spirit has shown me how much needless suffering I’ve caused myself over the years. I gave my power away and lost my peace when I looked outside of myself for validation from my children. I wanted their approval and praise to feel good about myself and feel worthy and deserving of love. When I didn’t get what I thought I needed and wanted, especially around my birthday, I judged myself that I had done something wrong and wasn’t a good enough mother. Have you ever done this?

I invite you to take this opportunity to set yourself free and look inside and discover where you give your power away to others? It may be to your parents, spouse, significant other, boss, or friends.

I love the book, The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman. They are words of affirmation, quality time with one another, acts of service, physical touch, and gifts. Although each is very important in a relationship and can change over time in importance, I especially appreciate gifts and cards. I love to give and receive small gifts and meaningful cards. The tricky part in any relationship is when you don’t know one another’s love language and have different love languages. Of course, we all have different love languages and everyone is doing the best they can.

For most of my 30-year marriage, it wasn’t important to my ex-husband to celebrate birthdays or anniversaries and he would often forget my birthday. I felt angry and devastated that he forgot to honor and celebrate me year after year on my birthday.

I spent a few hours at the ocean the day before my birthday releasing beliefs that weren’t true and no longer served me. I forgave myself for:

· Giving my power away and expecting children to validate and praise me

· Judging myself and making myself wrong and not good enough

· Judging children when they didn’t have the same love language

· Not giving myself what I needed and expecting them to give it to me

· Blaming myself for other’s dysfunctional behaviors

What I know in my heart is that I am responsible for my own happiness and peace of mind. I cannot depend on others to make me happy and make me feel good about myself. I am responsible for saving myself FROM MYSELF.

Something deep has shifted inside of me and I feel grateful, free, and lighter. I am choosing to give myself what I need and crave from others: respect, approval, praise, and love. I am no longer DEPENDENT on others for self-worth and approval.

It was a great birthday and I felt loved and appreciated. I started my birthday celebration with ALEXA singing happy birthday and Larry and I dancing to oldies in the living room. We ordered lunch from our favorite restaurant, Kula Bistro, and had a picnic with our dog, Kobe. I received beautiful red roses, gifts, cards, emails, texts from friends and family.

As the quote, in the beginning, stated: “If we truly want to break a cycle and heal, we have to forget about what the other person is or isn’t doing and focus entirely on our process.”

I had let go of what no longer served me and had no expectations or agenda from my children for my birthday. I felt free to allow them to do whatever they wanted to do or didn’t want to do without judgment. They all honored me with gifts and calls to wish me a happy birthday and I felt loved.

The icing on the cake was when I opened the gift from my son, Tim when we returned from lunch. It was a beautiful, soft, burgundy blanket that read:

BLESSED TO HAVE A MOM LIKE YOU: Compassionate, beautiful, strong. You know me the best and love me the most. Dried my tears, held my hand, gave me wings, raised me up, the purest love, supportive, gracious, inspirational, wonderful, always with me, a heart of gold, taught me, love. I’m proud to call you mom. Guiding light. You helped me grow, cheered me on, first friend, best friend, forever friend. Grateful for your unconditional love. THANK YOU MOM