The more I take on the more I think I am helping. I started a company when I had a three year old and 8 month old sons. I thought I would make millions of dollars and then be able to have adventures with my kids. When it became evident that I was not making millions of dollars and the pathway to do that would be to minimize my role as a mother, I took a long look at what I was doing. Even though the company was profitable. I completed it and took on what mattered to me, my kids and my writing.
Even in my writing however, I thought Oh! I love writing. I will do that to make millions of dollars. Then we will be able to have the adventures with our kids.
I have been, as a Mom and wife, trying to help to provide income for our family. In other words I have been not trusting my husband to do that.
"Helping" my family by "doing it all" comes from love and care. I love what I did. And I would love to write and make millions of dollars. But to write only because I want to make millions of dollars is not empowering. It is not inspiring and doesn't work. (Writing about what matters to you is authentic,inspiring and works) To write, or do anything, to take on more, only to help my family/husband isn't effective or empowering. There is a certain result that must be obtained through a certain path and it is limiting.It gives others, and myself, less of me and I get less of them, not more.
It doesn't empower people to "help" them. This may be counter intuitive to many. Helping, when you get authentic about it, is seeing the person as small, as unable to handle the situation themselves (we are taking about able bodied adults here) and helping continues the pattern of whatever they are doing that doesn't work or doesn't work as well as we would like it to. What really empowers is being a listening for the person to transform themselves and the situation. This means listening to them as GREAT. Standing for them being GREAT. Sharing with them what is possible, listening to them create what they see as possible and then stepping back and creating a space for them to choose it.
Recently I got that I was busy working/writing etc to make million of dollars so I could have adventures with my kids...well why not just have adventures with my kids?
I trust my husband to provide, and he does. A wonderful life!
And, guess what, it doesn't take millions of dollars to have adventures...that is just an ideal. Ideals or standards or even dreams that we chase and allow to run our lives don't empower us. Creating in the moment does.
Yearning, wishing, doing less IS having MORE.
Rather than planning several weeks of camp, creating time and space for my sons to create their own adventures transforms their lives. A dirt pile is an adventure. Ants are an adventure.The ocean for a few hours is an adventure. The hot desert is an adventure. A new park and stacking rocks is an adventure. Letting go and letting them shoot the arrow without coaching or hammer the wood themselves at Scout Camp is an empowering and wondrous adventure! Camping in nature is the holiest of adventures.
As a Mom, I am taking on not helping, but transforming life, and that starts with me. I give up doing more, needing to help make money and take on being a Mom and doing less...and simply what matters to me (and us).
Through taking this on, I have found that some of my best writing is simply about having adventures with my kids!
This year, at New Years, we sat as a family around our Japanese wishing pot that my husband got as a gift for me on his travels. We all took turns writing down on the small curled up scroll, what we wanted to create for the year before us and who we are being.
The word I wrote for 2012 was "Adventure!" and I am moved to tears to realize that the adventure I was craving is not out there, somewhere, to find and pay for with millions of dollars, but inside, right now, simply in my perspective and being present to exactly the life I have.
Zen Honeycutt
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