File Under: What I’m Learning

I assume I am average in everything. Thus- what works for me should work for most. Turns out, neither of those things are true.

This is a shame for everyone who isn’t me, because I am unusually resourceful and high functioning. Call me a braggart if you want, but the professionals I have employed to help me navigate the recent upending of my life have had to tell me this and I’ve had to learn it. I was not a quick study. My eldest hit me with it as well: “Mom, you are the most functional person I know, And because you are so functional and you think you are average, you think that what works for you will work for everyone else. But the truth is that not everyone’s calculations, raw materials, values, damage and proclivities are in the same balance as yours.”

I understand myself and my life as mostly made of small practices and habits and I cultivate those carefully (from what I eat to how I listen, to how I get daily tasks done, to how I think.) And because I am average and so are you- cultivating practices is also how you should also address a life situation with which you are unsatisfied.

When Hot Swede got sick, I was desperate to have my partner return to connection and wholeness, even in the midst of multiple difficulties. I assumed that if he adopted a smattering of my practices he would start to feel better, and that caused a lot of irritation for Hot Swede. I was overwhelming and distressing. It caused me desperation because I did not understand why he would not do the things that I knew would help.

I have done this to my kids. To be fair, as their mom it is my actual job to give them tools, scaffolding, and practices. It is not my job to parent my husband. Nevertheless, it is called “nagging” by my children and “suggesting” by my husband. They don’t like it and don’t do the things. Apparently, other people address their problems differently, which is hard for me, because I see them struggling with things that I have under better control and I want to ask them, “Is your way working? No? THEN TRY MY WAY” I am told this is not how it works. (It should be how it works.)

This should not have taken me this long to begin to learn this, but it did, and I am clearly still struggling with it. The harder lesson for me is that the people I love have to figure shit out on their own and I can only walk alongside them, if they let me. This truth gives me mental and sometimes physical hives.

Some people hate advice when they are in a pickle, whereas I seek it out. If something is unsatisfactory, I want to be told how to do it so it will suck less. (Ex: I told a new therapist that I didn’t need her empathy as much as I needed her to point out where I was wrong. She has brutally done just that.) But I guess others don’t like ready solutions, or are very experiential learners who have to learn from their own slow and painful mistakes. *shudder*

This lesson is a work in progress for me- two steps forward, one step back. Turns out, I am an average learner.