Waiting for the shitstorm to pass

Had a lovely, relaxing and chilled weekend and wasn’t it? so much for the friggin weather forecast? Clear and dry? My arse, Nah, it wa frigging raining, sleeting and Baltic. The best part of my whole weekend was catching up with friends and loved ones, I spent a rare night in with the youngest Friday night who is over from Manchester, went walking on Saturday a spontaneous arrangement made a couple of days before, I visited my lil sis for a catch up, helped out with babysitting duties then the old man came home from his weekend away, Sunday dinner, Sunday siesta, Sunday night film, and poof the weekend went just like that!

Saturday morning started well, well as well as can be expected, I do not miss the early morning tantrums and mardiness from me kid, who is 26 by the way? I wonder if they just revert back to being a kid when they are back at home? So after refusing to take my youngest to Maccy dee’s, because the lazy shit didn’t get up early enough, being called the worst mom ever, me accusing my youngest of being just another entitled millennial, all banter of course lol. I went to pick Ollie an old friend up to meet Sarah a newish friend for a walk in ecci woods.

Chewing the fat with Sarah, Ollie and the dog of course who names escapes me, but that doesn’t matter cos I weren’t talking to the dog.  This was the first time that Sarah and Ollie had met, both have a mutual interest in research and academia, I guessed they would get on and guess what I was right!

Between us we talked about bleeding all sorts, from kids, parenting, entitlement, millennial’s, work, partners, attitude, gratitude, personal interests, reiki, racism, writing, stigma, NLP, alcoholism, drug addiction, social media, press, recovery, arrogant academics, meditation, other peoples egos and our own, other dog walkers, education, fears, anxieties, future goals and aspirations, our values, you name it, we covered a lot of shit. The walk was finished off at the local cafe, freezing our tits off sat outside putting the world to rights. What was meant to be a two hour walk, turned into three but it was good to do something different. 

Whilst all our experiences and stories were different. we have all weathered our own personal shit storms, we all agreed on one thing and that was despite everything that we had been through previously, we had all between us learned some very valuable life lessons

• The importance of looking after ourselves
• The importance of checking in on ourselves
• The importance to make time for ourselves
• The importance of taking responsibility for ourselves 
• Being able to reflect without blaming 
• Being at a stage in our lives where we don’t feel like we are responsible for everything 
• Knowing our personal boundaries and learning how not to comprise them for the sake of others 
• The importance of letting go
• Recognising the challenges that come from learning to let go
• Accepting and acknowledging that shit happens

But what I loved most about it was there was no shaming, (well apart from the academics) there was no blaming others and being able to recognise that after years of being spoon fed bullshit from a blame and shame society we finally feel like we are working out how to have a better relationship with ourselves, thinking for ourselves, working shit out for ourselves 

Working out our own shit without needing permission from others. learning not to get sucked into societies illusion or the consumer culture that is very good at manipulating us to want more, more, more. Underneath all the hype and marketing is the implication that more is always better. I bought into this idea for years and quite frankly I am starting to understand that less is more. Blaming and shaming gets no fucker anywhere. Plus it generates such a negative vibe/energy.  It was so nice and liberating to be able to share some of our fuck ups and be ok with it, because we all recognised and more importantly that #shithappens all the friggin time and all we can do is deal with it the best we can, so when the shit storm hits you just have to trust yourself, weather the storm until it passes, because it always passes. 

if you are in the middle of a shit storm, remember you will have weathered plenty before and they always pass.