The Best Gift Unsolicited Advice Has Given Me
I'm not going to lie, this past year has been one of the most challenging in my lifetime. Okay, okay, scratch that. This past year has been an EDUCATIONAL year for me. Whew, that feels better to say out loud. It's been a year of rebirth, reestablishment, and emergence from a fog of denial and distrust of my own instincts.
What I care about most, is this right here.
I've discovered so much in the last 12 months about myself and how I engage with those around me. At times it has felt like my head is exploding with newfound awareness. The feeling reminds me of when I graduated from high school and moved out. My sister and I decided to move in together in Laguna Beach, CA--three hours away from our small home town in the mountains. She was sixteen, and I was eighteen--yep, you read that right. We had no plan. We had no jobs. We had $1,000 to our names and no effing clue what we were getting ourselves into! But we knew we wanted more. More than the small town we grew up in could give us. More than we were being told we could have. So we took a leap of faith!
That first couple of months, we ate a ton of cheap pasta and crappy spaghetti sauce. We smoked cigarettes at the neighborhood coffee shop (wait, what? I never smoked…), lounged on the beach, and naively squandered our cash. It was marvelous. And we needed that time.
Then reality set it. I needed cash, a plan, and suddenly had to grow up quick. I needed to get a degree. I wanted to make sure I was actually supporting myself and my sister (who wasn't yet an adult). Life lessons at eighteen-years-old can be the pits. But I did get my act together, and I'm so glad for the leap of faith we took at that young age.
Anyhow, this year has been an emotional replica of that time. You see, I took on a full-time corporate job in 2018. The plan was for my hubby and me to split the workload and the needs of our young kiddos to keep up with his full-time job, and make my corporate job work. I had owned a business before that and thought going back to corporate would calm things down. It was a perfect plan...until it wasn't. I believe it was around January or February (six months into our new life) that the system started to break down. We were relying on house cleaners, babysitters, and the grace of each of our company's to make the whole ecosystem stay afloat. But in spite of outsourcing everything, and being available for almost nothing at home, we were sinking.
My daughter, who was in the first grade at the time, was breaking down weekly, and every time she did have a breakdown, she would remind me of how much she 'hated my new job.' My son, a three-year-old, begged me to stay home multiple times a week--a request we just couldn't accommodate. Every time one of them was sick, and we were forced to stay home, my work or my husband's would suffer. And the weekends, well those were just a sh*t show.
I was at my breaking point.
I had just returned from a week-long conference away from the family. I was exhausted. I couldn't do anything right. I was continually letting my company down or disappointing my kids, and the household was being held together by tape and glue (metaphorically speaking). Amid this storm, I went to a networking event with my husband. That night, I just wanted to be home. But I was there instead. The kids were with another babysitter. I was drained and thinking about the long list of projects that were behind schedule at work when someone in a group I was talking with asked me "how work was going."
Side note: I always wonder why that question is phrased in that way. No really wants to know the truth about "how work is going."
The question hit me really hard, and I decided to say a semi-truth. "Work is going great! But managing a family with the hours I'm working is its own beast!" That's when the unsolicited-advice-giver spoke up. This person knows me 'well' and I guess that's why they didn't think before saying what they said. I say 'didn't think' because anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am the ultimate type-A perfectionist with a sprinkle of OCD to top it all off. What causes me the most anxiety and stress is having a lack of control and disorder in my life. I care A LOT about my children, and my mission is to provide for them and have enough time to be able to put my family's needs first. This person was totally confident when they said to me, in front of the group, "Well, it sounds like you're making it work. Sometimes you just need to CARE A LITTLE LESS." Those words are in caps because the comment literally took the wind out of me, like a punch to the gut, and simultaneously made me want to sock this individual in the eye, right then and there.
I did not sock them in the eye, of course. That would have been immature. But I definitely slow-played the desire to do so out in my head. Not only was their comment insensitive, but it was also baseless. I am not a mother who wants to CARE LESS for my kids or my lifestyle, or my marriage...okay, okay, I'll stop bashing and move on to the point.
Here's the point:
I was starving for support, encouragement, and guidance. Instead, at every turn, I was receiving feedback that was critical, insensitive, or just plain illogical. I was UNDERWATER, as a mother, a professional woman, and a wife. And the more I tried to kick my legs to reach the surface, the more I felt sucked down.
But there is a silver lining to this story. That event and the unsolicited advice I received there woke me up inside. It prompted me to kick harder and ultimately break through the surface of indecision. I can thank the unsolicited-advice for being the trigger I needed. And I realized something profound; I don't want to CARE LESS. I don't want to care less about my kids, my career, my health, my marriage. I aspire to CARE MORE.
“I am not a mother who wants to CARE LESS for my kids or my lifestyle, or my marriage...okay, okay, I’ll stop bashing and move on to the point.”
I got my sh*t together.
I quit my stifling corporate job. I took a leap of faith for the fifth time in my life and went back out into the workforce as a consultant and writer. And I haven't looked back for one second with regret. There has been no moment since that I have thought, "hmm, I should just care a little less." In fact, when in doubt, I now ask myself, "Lis, will this choice allow you to CARE for what's most dear to you?" If not, I don't even consider it for a second.
Life is a lot calmer right now, and focused, and caring. The profound lesson I learned is that no one can make you care less about the path you choose to be on in this life. You get to decide how much you care. And, unsolicited advice, as unwelcome as it may be, can at times be the catalyst to push you where you need to go next!
So here's my unsolicited advice:
Don't ever take lousy advice to heart, and for God's sake, don't let it crush your spirit. That said, every conversation and encounter has some form of a lesson in it. I know that for damn sure. Take what you can and leave the rest.
Xoxo
EM 💜
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