The World According to Aunt Courtney (Part 2)

This post is a continuation and the second installment in a series of advice I wrote  for my niece's 16th birthday. You can catch up here.

 

Be mature enough to respect the rules, but courageous enough to break them and make your own.  I think at the time I was not referring to actual rules or laws, but rather universal and/or societal ideals and expectations. I am not telling you to pull a Rory Gilmore and steal a yacht because you have a bad day. I am however, inviting you to jump! If a certain path or box doesn’t feel right, if it does not align with your heart… for the love of gawd, JUMP! In Omnia Paratus! Be OPEN (because you won’t always be ready) TO ALL THINGS.  You may not know for a while yet what ideal(s) / expectation(s) you feel inherently resistant to, but when and/or if you do, fuck em and create your own.  #thanksbutnothanks

I was a weird kid in a lot of ways, and I knew I was weird.  I was okay with that. I took pride in it when kids at school would say I was weird with a disgusted look on their face or call me Kooky Courtney.  I had dolls, but not ‘baby’ dolls. I never pretended to be their mother. My dolls were my friends not my children. I knew even then that I did not want children.

As I got older I kept waiting for that biological clock to start ticking. I kept waiting to look at a baby and think their drunken sailor lolling and drooling was adorable. I kept waiting to want to hold friends’ babies. Nope.  The thought just persisted to shut me down, and imagining being pregnant was the stuff of nightmares. I did not come factory installed with said biological clock. It missed me completely. Any time I was late with my period in my mid-twenties, I had a full on melt-down. Like nuclear. There was never even a millisecond of “Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.” I have nothing but the utmost respect for my fellow sisters and goddess warriors who choose to bring life into this world because it is important and so awe- inspiring. It is just not for me. Creating a mini Court is not how I am meant to leave a legacy. One month before my 30^th birthday I went in for surgery to close off my fallopian tubes so that any chance of me getting pregnant was removed. My friend Rochelle brought me home (which was a garage at the time – we’ll get to that later) afterwards. I was on pain medication so I was slightly more emotionally susceptible, but that in no way reduces the magnitude of the moment. I sat outside and ugly cried for an hour. I did not cry because I was sad or felt regret.  I cried because it felt soooo right. I felt relieved. I felt strong and empowered. Ironically, I felt more like a woman than I ever had before… because I honored the kind of woman I am. It goes sprinting in the opposite direction of the feminine ideal and universal expectation. I have been pitied. I have demeaned for my choice by other women … and men (lots of men actually).  I don’t care though. I was and still am damn proud of being brave enough to be myself.  I have done a lot of things that go against the grain of expectation, but this is probably the biggest. There is no doubt in my mind that I can still be a mother of sorts in many other ways; to you and Nathan, to my fur babies, to friends, to lovers, and in service of some sort to the world.

 

Your parents’ shortcomings are blessings and not an excuse to play the victim. No one is perfect. We all are battling ourselves at one point or another, insecurities and the lot. Parents included. Their growth process does not stop; their issues do not magically disappear when they become parents. In fact, they probably intensify in some ways. And literally everyone has felt the brunt in some form or another of their parent’s baggage. These things are blessings. They also do not have to be inherited. You are not doomed to repeat their patterns. Use them as a guide and detour. When you see your parents as humans doing the best they can, you have more patience and understanding. You can sift through the bits and pieces you do want to take away from their experience and the bits that really don’t need to be part of your story. You examine them, you figure out how they have affected you, and then you set those bits aside. It is not your burden to carry or continue. There will be traits you may not love about yourself that come from your parent’s example. When you can recognize those things, you can make a different choice. You do not just resign yourself to “Well, that’s what my mother does…” or “That’s how my dad always made me feel.” In the original piece I wrote I said, “View your parents' shortcomings as blessings rather than hours of therapy.” I did not mean this negatively. Therapy is brilliant! I highly recommend it if you are ever going through a really hard time in your life. It is incredibly freeing. I was in Jungian analysis for a year in order to deal with a really rough patch in my early twenties. It taught me how to make different choices so I could change the pattern and literally rewrite my story. Obviously, the story doesn’t change. Facts about my back-story did not vanish - but the perspective shifted. It’s like going from first to third person.

Never lose sight of the people and experiences of your past, and never stop being excited about the future BUT never forget that the present is all we truly have control over and all that matters.

It really is about the journey and not the destination.  Sure, some years will be better than others. Thirty-one was a spectacular year for me. 36 has been a little more difficult. It does not serve me though to be nostalgic about five years ago. It serves me to be grateful for right fucking now, to be excited about the endless possibilities of starting over (*sigh* AGAIN).  I have no idea where I will be or what I will be doing 365 days from today. I DO know that I have a choice to find something about my present that makes me smile and that makes me grateful. I DO have the ability to control the balance of my emotions. I’m nervous at this point in time because there is a lot of uncertainty about my circumstances, there is even some self-doubt. That is okay though. It is healthy to be able to sit with and bear the tension of that not knowing, and say “Ok Universe, I trust you. I trust ME. In Omnia Paratus. I am ready for all things.”  Do not wish your life away. Do not wish to be anywhere apart from where you are. It goes fast enough as it is… and if you’re trying to escape and press rewind or fast forward – then you are missing IT.

 

 

The first 100 days of anything will tell you A LOT.  Most commonly this frame of reference is using in preemptively judging a presidency; the things they do, bills they sign in their first 100 days. I have found though that this is a really solid amount of time to get an intuitive sense about situations like new jobs, relationships, new towns, etc etc. If you are able to really get quiet and listen to that still small voice inside you, you will instinctively have a sense of how your current course is going to plot out. You may not like the answer or sense that you receive. That’s ok…. which brings me to my next point….

Listen to your intuition. That still, small voice I mentioned above, that “gut” feeling, that hunch you can’t explain, your Spidey sense … THAT is your intuition and will serve you greatly if you learn to listen to and trust it. The closer you listen to it, the louder it gets. The more you trust it, the more it speaks to you. It is pretty cool. So, when I said above that you may not like the answer or sense you receive about how a situation is going to play out during your first 100 days …it is ok because your intuition will guide you through it. It’ll tell you when you need to just suck it up and bear the tension for a while and when it’s time for you to exit stage left. There is no right or wrong… intuition is just a compass to help you make choices.

Remember, it is all about you. Remember too, a thing called karma.I know this comes across very selfish, it’s why I added the bit in about karma. Obviously you’re not going to walk all over people, use them to get what you want or burn bridges. This does mean though that your life is about you. It is about what YOU want and how YOU want to decorate it. You should not be living your life solely for someone else, because of someone else or based solely on someone else’s opinions of swatch colors. If you knowingly make decisions that are not right for you it will bite you in the ass. You will lose yourself slowly at first, then all at once and you won’t recognize the person you’ve become. There is a reason that the safety orientation on a plane very explicitly asks that you put the oxygen mask on yourself FIRST before helping anyone around you. You literally cannot help anyone else or be any good to or for anyone else in your life unless you are taking care of yourself first. Period.

 

A good day is one in which you laugh and cry. This doesn’t mean that this should be the goal of each and every day… it won’t always shake out like that. It does mean however to not be afraid of your emotions… or of expressing them. You said to me recently that “sometimes you get so overwhelmed that it’s like the only way your body knows how to deal with it is to cry.” There is power in knowing and owning that. Don’t get so stuck in the sadness though that you can’t find a reason to smile or laugh at the same time.

Breathe deep, FEEL YOUR FEET and turn your face toward the sun. Don’t check out of your body, ever… and especially when things are hard or scary. Stay present. Stay grounded. Feel. Your. Feet.

 

 

 

.....To be continued in Part 3 .... 

XOXO