Daily Summary: 

The weekend has been decent. Definitely better than I expected, and that’s including having cramps of death from the curse of being female. 

Lil’ Ox was super excited that I was at the house. Over the course of Saturday and Sunday Ox, Lil’ Ox and I played two whole chapters of Stuffed Fables. It was a lot of fun for all of us. I even did a few games of Uno AND talked to Mama Ox a bit. Look at me being all extroverted and shit. 

Ox’s ex-wife had her parol hearing Friday morning. She was released to go to the center she was accepted into. She and I have been talking a lot over the past months. I don’t remember how much I wrote about that before “The Event”. 

I truly am happy for her and proud of the changes and progress she has made for her own well-being. That is one area I have yet to broach, how my actions affected her. It led to hurt feelings when I shared my blog with her. It led to a conversation where I tried to explain that I wasn’t willfully ignoring that aspect of my actions or trying to keep my connection with her a secret…

I can only write about so much for so long. In my first writing, I didn’t have it in me to go further into other areas. I hurt. I faced a lot in a single sitting. I needed to step away and come back to write more at a later time. Hopefully, I was able to communicate that to her. Hopefully, that helped ease some of the hurt feelings she experienced. All I can do is try to write without the fear of judgment and talk about whatever emotions my writings may instill in others. 

With her being out of the system, she is able to chat more with Ox and me. There were a few video calls mixed into all of the other social aspects of the weekend. Being terrified of video chats, I’m proud of myself for engaging in them. 

Ox was kind and worked with me to find periods of time where I could be undisturbed in the bedroom as a way to decompress. I checked out a couple of audiobooks from the library and stitched while I listened to them. I finished “Almost Adulting” by Arden Rose. It was a good book, well written and full of character. I started Rising Strong as a Spiritual Practice by Brene Brown. I haven’t gotten very far into it, but I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of her stories. 

Currently, I am at the house, writing as a way to kill time before I am allowed to eat. Curse you Synthroid. ;-;

The cats are yelling at me for their wet food. I brought them with me to the house so they wouldn’t be alone at the rental all weekend. It took a little while for them to adjust to being around the other cats again, but by the end of Friday evening, they had both settled in. Ox and I are kicking the idea around of this being a new weekend routine. I pack up Friday night and spend the weekend at the house with the cats. Monday, my later day for work, I pack back up and head to the rental for my work week. 

We are still trying to figure out what works for us with my schedule being opposite of his. I’ve been having a lot of very positive meetings with leadership at Nelnet. The current idea is to get me into the Global Training and Development team either leading classes or creating the computer-based content. Those are two sub-teams on that team, and oh look, I can do both sides of it, so I’m going to break their model. /flex

Anywho, I’m going to stop rambling for now and get on to writing for my prompt. I’m sort of looking forward to the week. I’m not as tired and drained as I thought I would be. I’m hesitant feeling and I’m not sure why. I’m also not going to let that stop me from trying to have a productive day.

Random Ramblings: Prompt 3-31
Who’s your biggest champion? Who do they say you are? Why?

This writing is going to be painful, for different reasons than addressing the aspect of my biggest critic and while I am more ok with what this writing will most likely end up being, it will still contain hard truths that will hurt. I worry they will hurt Ox or Bunny. I am reminding myself as I type that this is my safe space and I cannot control the emotions of others. All I can do is be honest with and for myself because ultimately that is what these writings are for. To show to me, reveal to me, what my inner-thinking and feelings are. To provide clarity so I can acknowledge and accept or understand and work to change things that get buried under the avalanche of mundane routine of surviving Life. 

My biggest champion was my mom. 

She said I was strong. That she was proud of me. That I was beautiful. That I was capable and resourceful. She said I was kind. 

Why did she say these things? Part of it was most likely because she was my mother. While I have never experienced it personally, I do think the bond between a mother and child is something special. Something which, when healthy, can defy all other dynamics within our lives. It is not beholden to the same rules or expectations. 

I remember some of the stories mom told me about when she was a nurse. How patients would ask about the mother’s ring I had made for her and she would get to gush about her “three perfect blue-eyed children” and how she would tell them “if any of them turned out to be murderers I would be slightly disappointed”. 

She loved me so fully, so unconditionally. She never made me feel bad for being quiet or for not wanting to go out with the other kids. She read “Are You My Mother?” to me so many times that the pages began to fall out of the book. She let me read books well above my reading level when I began to read on my own. She proofread every essay I ever wrote up to her hospitalization. She let me come home any time I needed a temporary escape from my life to figure out what I needed to do. She supported me all through my educational career, never discouraging me from the paths I wanted to take. No, “That’s dumb. You should go to school for a real degree.”

She nurtured my passions and when I began to doubt myself, she would always know just what to say. 

“I believe in you.”

“That does sound like a really hard issue. I know you’ll figure it out.”

“I love you.”

No step by step action plan for fixing my problems. No stepping in and saving me from myself. Just quiet acknowledgment that, yep, there was a problem and unshakable belief that I could and would get through it. 

While being my mother may have factored into her perspective, I think it was something deeper than motherhood alone. 

She watched me grow into the person I was before her death. She saw me work through the hardships I had faced up to that point in time. She saw me fall down and stand back up. She saw me do all of these incredibly hard and scary things. She was able to have an outside perspective and to watch me lead a life that made her proud to say she was my mother. 

I think that more than anything is why she was able to say and think all of those things and have them feel like truths. My historical record made her affirmations genuine rather than just motherly platitudes. 

I feel like I don’t have a champion right now. Mom is dead. She can’t call me. We can’t visit each other. We can’t do all of these things we used to do. And so it feels like I am alone, without a champion to help me fight against my biggest critic. 

Ox and I talked a little about this writing prompt. I told him it would be coming up. Tears stung my eyes as I apologized. Shouldn’t I think of Ox as my biggest champion? Didn’t this prove, yet again, that I wasn’t worthy of his love? 

“I can never compete with your mom. She’s still your champion.”

His words have been floating in my head since our conversation. 

I know mom is still spiritually with me, regardless of her physical presence or lack of it. I know she still influences my life when I allow myself to be open and receptive to universal energies. I know, regardless of where she is or what she is doing, that she still cares for me, loves me, and wishes me nothing but peace and the strength to live a full life. 

I feel mom showed me what a true champion could and should be. I feel I need to be those things for myself as if her death passed the mantle of champion to me. 

I feel I have not been any of those things she showed me a champion should be.

And I suppose that’s not fully true… I have been my champion at different points in my life, but not the way mom was. I fall short, give up, and revert back to negative thinking patterns way, way more often than I stand with and fight for myself. 

It makes me wonder if I can be my biggest critic and biggest champion simultaneously or if to be one I have to unlearn the other. 

I do not have an answer for that, and I might never have one. 

This is something I think I need to be more aware of going forward in my life. I feel this is part of learning and “growing up”. I am no longer the young, insecure girl I was in high school. I cannot keep assuming the role of biggest critic because my place in this season of life is to be my biggest champion. 

Maybe I never should have assumed the role of biggest critic… I don’t know. 

I’m not saying I should ignore reality and only focus on the positive aspects of things. That’s not what mom did. She definitely didn’t have a problem calling me out on my shit. She never told me I was a horrible person while doing it, though. She never, ever, said I was a failure. 

She kept me grounded in reality while shifting my awareness from the negative worry consuming my mind to the positive capability within myself. She acknowledged the problems while supporting my problem-solving abilities with past experiences and objective observations from previous situations. 

She never lied about what I was able to do just to make me feel better. She never downplayed the situation or glossed over it with unrealistic optimism to soothe my feelings. 

Mom was real. Very real. 

That’s what I need to be for myself, and in some ways, I feel I am at times. It’s more that I need to learn to be this role, my champion, even when things are dark and scary. I need to give my critic less air time because she doesn’t deserve to be the only one talking in my head. 

She can have her moment. Her emotions are valid. But she needs to be held accountable for her word choice, too. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom of repercussions. If she starts being vicious and cruel, I have the right to cut her mic. I have the right to disinvite her to the debate inside my head. I have the right to not accept her statements as truths and leave them in the realm of subjective opinion. 

I control my inner discussion between my Id and Super Ego. I control my emotions. I control my actions, even my mental ones which may not be physically noticeable. Me, the Ego, is the moderator, and I owe it to myself to actually moderate what the fuck is being said on the stage of my mind. To filter and fact check and slam down the ban hammer when shit gets out of hand. 

I deserve that. I owe myself that. I deserve the champion my mom showed me how to be. Instead of shrinking away from that role and thinking other people will help me through the hard, dark, scary times the way mom did; instead of waiting for other people to save me from myself, I could and should do it. 

I can and will be my own champion. 

I owe myself that much. I owe myself support, love, and compassion because that’s how I would show up for other people. 

So that’s what I’m going to start endeavoring to do. I’m going to move forward with a conscious awareness that I am now my biggest champion and that negative self-talk is an un-invitable offense when at the discussion round table inside my head. 

Crazy Attic Ladies be warned, the ban hammer is out.