.....and breathe

As a child I struggled with my anger and dealing with my emotions. I was an angry mess for a long time as a lot of children are as they battle hormones, puberty, identity and their place in the world. But with age came wisdom and maturity and I was able to gain control to the point where I am fully aware of what I will and won’t accept and can control what I allow to upset me or make me angry. Now that may seem like I am void of emotion and almost robot like, but that could not be further from the truth. I have just developed an awareness of how in the past I would give my personal power away enabling others to affect me and as such I would then develop negative reactions. Whereas now I am in control and I make a conscious decision about how much I allow others to influence my mood. I don’t have the time or the energy to give negativity space in my life. That being said there are only two people in this world that can negatively affect my mood, my babies. I love my babies unconditionally, but that does not mean that I have to always like everything they do or say. The aspects of their personalities that I struggle with the most are the very same parts of my personality that I don’t like or do not feel comfortable with. It stands to reason that the things we dislike in others are the very parts of ourselves that we do not like. In the beginning when the boys were small and they did something that would make me angry I could never understand why a big part of their apology would also involve telling me over and over again “I love you mummy.” In time I began to realize that this was extremely important to them because children instinctively do not like to disappoint their parent(s) and for them there was little to no understanding that just because mum was angry, this did not mean that my love somehow diminished. It made me realize that if it took me years to work this out, then how long would it take for their minds to realize that we can distinguish between loving someone but not liking their actions? From that point on, regardless of how often they are able to make me lose my shit, (and believe me it is good week if I only lose my shit once), I always reassure them that at that precise moment I may not like their actions or words but I will forever love them with the same sincerity, consistency and intensity as always. Now that they are older and I irritate them too, they have a better understanding that love is not altered by a negative emotion induced by a loved one but rather that the two entities of, person/love and action, can be separated. Of course it is natural that the people closest to us are the ones that can cause us the most distress, it is also natural for conflicts to arise but as long as communication is an integral part of your relationship then conflict does not necessarily have to be a negative thing. Often opinions differ, choices made are not always to our liking and our children will inevitably make their own mistakes that can and will affect us, but we have to overcome these issues in order to make us stronger as a family and individually. Often our best lessons come from adversity and I always teach the boys that whether we fight or disagree, this in no way weakens our love for each other because the bonds we have ensure that it is a safe and secure environment. But conflict is healthy, through good communication and resolve we can only become a stronger unit full of love and a better understanding of one another. But I still have to “whooooosaaaaaaaaa” every once in a while.