A Joyous Perspective on Your Life Story: How being a Mom rewrites your life.

It’s the Friday of Mother’s day weekend, and time for another Friday Night Thought Tale hour at the Henderson’s. I’ve been thinking about motherhood and the moms around me, especially the new ones, and it never ceases to amaze me how these people who come into our lives through the miracle of birth offer us so much more than we ever imagine when we played with dolls or mused about being a mom. These humans, who we really don’t know on a conscious level until we see them for the first time, become a part of our life story that we really do not have complete control over. Oh, we think we have control over them and that we will navigate their lives - but really - they are often the surprise in our storyline. And for me, my children and grandchildren have been a real Godsend. In many ways, they have saved me from allowing myself to live a life less worthy. They have forced me to step up. 

They gave me a new ending to my story...

“Every moment of your life is a second chance.” 

~Rick Price

We are always telling ourselves stories about who we are and what we are capable of achieving. These stories are sometimes the nostalgia of once-upon-a-time that whispers longingly to us. The stories can be the remnants of hardened pain that want us to trace over the lines of old scars. They can also be the tales we invent about imagined futures, what we think will happen. All of the narratives that we repeat to ourselves, both of the fiction and nonfiction varieties, are what we internalize and use to create self-identity.

The stories we tell ourselves about our shortcomings and failures fuel the negative self-talk that leads us to accept the myth of a single narrative: A belief in only one version of what our life can look like. We cast ourselves as a character locked in an inescapable maze, saddled with baggage we cannot remove, riddled with flaws and insurmountable challenges. It’s our interpretation of the past and how we project the future that determines the roads we take to all of our tomorrows. These stories can either lift us up or lock us down. They inspire us to reach for more, or they make us stuck. The narratives inevitably shape who we become.

Our storytelling begins at a young age.

There’s the narrative of your childhood dreams, the one where a kid like me thought she’d become a singer or an Olympic ice skater, own a house in Malibu, and have a Barbie doll body and an endless supply of money and youth. Of course, I neglected to consider the fact that I couldn’t sing or ice skate, had no desire to learn, and that Barbie’s body is make-believe. None of that would have deterred six-year-old me though. I felt genuinely unstoppable during my childhood.

But it passed in the blink of an eye.

And then we grew up… And we started telling ourselves the most ridiculous stories:
I’m a failure.

I’m too ugly.

I don’t deserve it.

Not smart enough.

I’m unlucky.

I make bad choices.

It’s not my turn yet.

I can never do that.

I will never have that.

On and on and on...

We perpetuate a narrative of hopelessness that makes us believe we are victims with problems that are unique to us. Scarcity mentality tricks us into believing that we can never have what we want. We think we are abnormal and defective and forget that we are merely human. The terrible stories win. Those are the ones we become attached to and believe.

They are us.

We are them.

It is challenging to separate who we are apart from those narratives because we spend so much time repeating those stories over and over again. 

Until lightning strikes and we are forced to make edits.

I was only 21 years old when I became a mother for the very first

time. It was then that I think I realized for the first time that I could no longer hold on to those stories. You see, I now had not one, but TWO small humans who were depending on me to be the very opposite of all of those statements I listed and lived by above…

There’s something to be said of becoming a mother at a young age, because those two little humans, and the two that followed them, and the three who came to me unexpectedly, and the other five who now call me Grammy Joy - well, they never let me settle.

I now know that I needed something to help me understand why that even when I did everything I was supposed to do in my life, bad things can happen. But behind the bad were these lives that continued on and required my presence. My often flawed, but still willing, presence.

Motherhood put me in a place where I observed small growing humans experiencing all of the pains and doubts I had experienced. I found myself asking my kids, “What if we just flat out said no to a narrative that we didn’t want to believe? What if we rejected terrible narratives about ourselves?” What if you just let it go? 
Because you can be the author and editor of your life.

The life you wanted. 

Not an experience that you got stuck in. 

And that was a message for me...

My children have helped me to see that at any given moment, we can make the next choice to move us closer to our personal goals. It doesn’t have to be a great choice. It can be just a tiny baby step in the direction of where your goal sits brightly on the horizon.

It doesn’t mean that life will necessarily go as planned. It doesn’t mean that we won’t ever experience bad things.

We will.

Over and over and over again.

And when something changes and the story isn’t what you want any more, you can keep writing new ones. You don’t have to be a hostage to any narrative. Give yourself permission. Tell yourself the stories about those times when you were courageous. Tell stories about your strength, perseverance, and resilience. Tell stories about how strong you are. Tell the stories of your survival. The ones where you got through the hardest of times and experienced joy again. The stories where you knew in your bones that life was worth living.

You have those stories. Those are the ones to repeat. 

My kids tell them to me, and I acknowledge mine to them.

Tell them over and over again, so you never forget who you really are.

So tonight, Chris and I will be drinking something I call “A Good Story,” and toasting to the good tales to come in our lives. May the weekend find you being grateful for your role as a Mother, or for the Mother you were given who plays a significant role in your story. Cheers.

Joy's A Good Story Cocktail***
4 oz Champagne
1 splash Campari bitters
1 sugar cube
1 drop Angostura bitters

Place a drop of Angostura bitters on a sugar cube and drop into a champagne flute. Add champagne and splash of Campari.

***Always drink responsibly