obstacles

On Crushes, Rejection, and Daring Greatly

| Coleen Patrick

 vulnerability_opt

Last week one of my kids asked me how they could get the courage to talk to someone they have a crush on.

Now I only have one high school Crush Story where I exhibited bravery. It was at a high school graduation party and I approached the boy I’d been crushing on for two years and asked him to dance.

He said no.

On the surface, it’s not such a great story.

Except for the part where I actually asked the boy I’d been crushing on to dance.

That was huge. Major bravery. And yeah, while I know all my kid wants right now is for this other kid to like them back, there is value in vulnerability.

Being vulnerable is how we open ourselves to the good stuff.

Okay so the good stuff doesn’t always show up, and risking emotional exposure can be terrifying. It’s not easy to be ALL IN.

But I know that the times I’ve risked rejection, disappointment, and embarrassment, it’s because I’ve been listening to my heart. Being me. And I don’t know, my arms get tired holding up those walls of protection.

Sure, there are days (lots of them) when all I want to do is hide, but eventually what I end up wanting to remember, is that it’s not the win or the loss that counts, but how we listen to our hearts, and allow ourselves the opportunity for joy.

 Roosevelt daring greatly_opt

 

How do you muster courage? Do you have any crush advice?

HAPPY MONDAY. 🙂

 

 

The Heart of the Matter: What Grounds You?

| Coleen Patrick

 

So all last week I found myself thinking about a button.

button heart_opt

 

 

My son decided he wanted to go to prom (a week before prom, mind you), which meant a last minute run for prom tickets, a boutonniere, a corsage, and a tux.

My husband suggested he try on his tux. His twenty year old wedding tuxedo.

 

 

 

The tux fit. It was a tad roomy, but all it really needed was a new button.

I put mending on my to-do list, but the button stayed on my mind. Somehow that button represented happy nostalgia: twenty years of marriage, family, and kids being almost all grown up.

Of course, all this symbolic button thinking took place amidst the back drop of crazy, tragic things happening in Boston and all over the world.

But I had the luxury of thinking about that button.

And then this weekend we had our own bit of crazy to deal with, when some neighborhood kids thought it would be funny to rig up what looked like a homemade bomb on the steering wheel of my daughter’s car.

My daughter drives a retired Crown Victoria police interceptor and while we wondered if this thing in her car was a stupid prank, we also couldn’t help but worry whether this contraption rigged not only to her steering wheel, but attached to the door and the outside mirror, was some threatening message aimed at the police.

So we called the non-emergency police line and an officer came to the house. He was perplexed, cautious, and called his supervisor…

Who then called the bomb squad.

And then began the process of securing the roads around our neighborhood.

And then an officer asked us if we wanted to leave our house because this could be a very dangerous situation.

At this point, one of the kids responsible, came over and confessed. My daughter instantly burst into tears. She was relieved, but very hurt someone wanted to purposefully scare her like that.

I was mad. Because while it may have been a joke–and everyone was safe–our fear had been REAL.

You may think what I did next is a strange reaction, because while the bomb squad took the stupid contraption out of my daughter’s car (they still had to consider it a threat until they knew otherwise), I went inside the house and sewed the button on that tux jacket. I didn’t know what else to do with my confusion, my anger. Maybe because I’d been thinking about that button all week, that button somehow become some sort of fastener for my thoughts. It helped to ground me.

I mean what do you do when you get tangled and tripped up by the web of someone else’s stupidity?

You can’t control it. You can’t change their thinking. All you really can do is control your own actions (and somehow resist a response that might make you a contributing member to the spectrum of stupidity).

So I shifted my focus to the things that ground me.

Turns out, one hand me down tuxedo, plus one button, equals lots of love and support.

prom smile borrowed tux_opt

My son wearing his dad’s wedding tux.

 perfect troll face goes to prom_opt

The “perfect troll face” goes to prom. 🙂  My family grounds me, but also lifts my spirit. 

 

And because I couldn’t find a great quote for this post, I’m sharing this absurdly funny one.

funny quote computer beat me at chess_opt

 

What grounds you when your world gets shaky? 

Have a great week,

The Beauty and the Beast of Optimism

| Coleen Patrick

eeyore optimism

Each week I aim for optimism in my posts.

But some weeks I feel like gloomy Eeyore.  I doubt the positive message.  I feel like a poser, or a Pollyanna.  I wonder if you’ll think,
 

Who is this woman handing me these rose-colored glasses?

 
Because sometimes behind that optimistic message I feel defeated, frustrated.

 

These were supposed to be stars and other assorted cut out cookies.

 

This past week was no exception.  There was a moment where I found myself jumping up and down because I was so excited (news for a future post!), and then there was one where I cried tears of frustration.

Now before you write me a prescription, this wasn’t one big massive mood swing (although can’t say I’m immune to those either).  This week it was two unrelated things.

And way more frustrating than a crappy batch of cookies.

Enough to make me feel like I suddenly had no business writing about optimism.

Then while perusing the food blogs in my Google reader (never underestimate the power of a pretty picture of monkey bread), I read some posts from a blogger who recently gave birth to her second child.  In between posts on yummy confections she updated readers on the ups and downs of getting to know her infant. The sleepless nights, the tricks that work and don’t work, and the worry.

The opening notes to The Beauty and the Beast of Motherhood.

And in her story, I recognized myself and my daughter, how our first night home from the hospital (many, many moons ago) my daughter cried and cried no matter how many times I changed her, fed her, swaddled her, held her. I remember staring at her and thinking (and crying), just tell me what you want.

But we don’t always get the answers. Sometimes after life shifts, or plans derail, it takes time to figure out what works.  Eventually I figured out that my daughter loved her swing and white noise.  She’d sleep and so would I.  Then that would pass and there would be something new and equally exhausting to figure out.

 

My daughter, the gift.  She also inspired me to write songs with lyrics like, Please go to sleep.

 

And as I thought about the new baby posts and the super cute photos of this tiny new baby girl and her mother’s face glowing with happy exhaustion,  I remembered the joy.  Eventually, light seeps through.   We learn to deal.

It reminded me that my current confusion will pass too.  Maybe I haven’t figured it out yet, but at least I know I’ve done it before.

And I hope that by focusing on the light seeping through each week, maybe I can inspire someone else to remember the joy too.

A big thank you to Kristan over at Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and her tiny new daughter. Their story was the one I needed this week to remind me to keep on keeping on.

Oh and just in case you’re wondering, this is what I did with that funky batch of sugar cookies:
 

Cookie dough truffles.

 

Where do you turn to get a dose of optimism?  

xoxo

 **If you enjoyed this post, you can subscribe to my mailing list to receive my new posts straight to your inbox.  Just add your email in the space at the top of the right sidebar under my photo.