Let It Be

I was so freaking excited.

I finally started one simple thing for this business I’ve wanted to build.

An email.

That’s it.

Once a week I sit down and share what life is teaching me with whoever wants to listen.

They opt in and boom — maybe my words, my experiences, my perspective have a positive impact on the person on the other side of them.

Maybe she feels seen.

Understood.

Or for once like she isn’t broken.

And I had actually gotten the thing working.

Email written.

Opt in created.

Even though the tech part was definitely not my wheelhouse, I had figured it out.

And then my business coach said, let’s make this just a little bit better.

Let’s put the letters on a blog too.

Okay.

I can do that.

I had a blog ten years ago.

How much could it have changed?

A lot, apparently.

Because I spent HOURS trying to figure out how to make one stupid black area smaller.

But I was determined to figure it out.

Until the phone call came.

Mom mode.

Which meant work was done for the day.

Pick up the kid.

Run him here and there and everywhere.

Dinner.

Sparkle appointments.

There was no getting back to that computer anytime soon.

Except my brain was NOT done.

It was screaming at me to fix it.

Finish it.

Get back to the computer and finish the blog so we can stop feeling this restless unfinished feeling.

I could feel that urgency in my whole body.

And the familiar pull to do something — anything — so I didn’t have to feel it anymore.

Maybe I could find 17 minutes to sit down and somehow finish a project that was gonna require way more than 17 minutes.

Maybe I could grab my phone and scroll for a while so I didn’t have to think about the damn blog.

Or maybe I could remind myself what a great day I’d had and how much I’d already accomplished and try to talk myself out of being frustrated in the first place.

Anything but just feel it.

But this time I saw it.

Ahhh.

There it is.

That’s what my brain is doing.

It’s trying to get this feeling to go away.

And I just drove my kid where he needed to go.

Still irritated.

Still wanting to get back to the computer.

But not obeying it by acting on it.

Because the frustration wasn’t a sign that something outside of me was wrong and needed to be fixed.

And it wasn’t a sign that I was wrong for feeling frustrated either.

I was FEELING frustration.

That’s it.

And it made perfect sense.

My brain wanted resolved.

I couldn’t get to resolved right then.

I could just feel freaking frustrated.

And go to the Y with the unfinished blog.

So I did.

The blog came with me.

It rode in the passenger seat begging me to fix it for good.

And I didn’t turn the car around.

Maybe that’s what learning to feel our feelings actually looks like sometimes.

Not making them mean something has gone wrong.

Not making ourselves wrong for having them.

And not obeying them, resisting them, avoiding them or stuffing them away just because they’re uncomfortable.

And I wonder how many times I’ve done exactly that without ever realizing what I was actually trying to do.

I thought I was fixing the problem.

A lot of the time, I was just trying to stop feeling the feeling.

My brain wanted resolved.

Resolved wasn’t available right then.

So I let it be unresolved.

Turns out the feeling eventually fades.

You don’t die.

And the blog will still be there tomorrow.

With you,

Still learning.

Still coming home.

— Stacie