I Am Enough. We Are Enough.

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness.  It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.  It’s going to bed at night thinking, “Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.” 

     Brené Brown

Any parent with small children understands how hard it can be to raise them at times.  You love them more than you can ever say.  But some days can be brutally tiring, challenging and draining.  When my (Michael’s) three sons were small, I remember so well what it was like just to get through each day.  With three boys within five years, sometimes it was simply enough, as my wife has said … Just to get them dressed and make sure they got enough to eat.  In doing that it didn’t necessarily mean that we were able to get enough to eat or get properly dressed.  And we certainly rarely got enough rest or sleep.

It was especially challenging with a son living with disabilities.  But one thing he did give us short periods of welcome respite from the very intense care he often needed.  Matthew had the ability to fall asleep wherever he felt like it – often in the middle of the floor, usually right in the center of activity that day.  He didn’t sleep there for long.  But his little catnaps of 15 – 20 minutes gave us the opportunity to do a few quick things that needed to be done or just to sit down ourselves and relax for a time.

One of his favorite places to sleep was the bathtub.

He liked it because the porcelain was cool and refreshing to him.  So, he’d often crawl in the empty tub and sleep there for a while.

One afternoon when both my wife and I needed to be away we had a kindly grandmother down the street watch the boys for us.   She’d cared for them before on occasion when we needed someone for a short time.  That particular day, Matthew decided that the tub was that place to be for his quick nap.  But when the boys’ sitter saw him there she panicked.   She called for Matthew’s brothers to help her rescue him from the tub.

But when they saw him there, they said,

He’s okay.  Our Mom lets him sleep there all the time.

The sitter was horrified and promptly exclaimed,

Oh, she would never do that!

But oh yes, she would and she did.  So did I.  The few moments of respite we received from wherever Matthew would nap were oases of relief and help to us.  As long as he wasn’t in any danger or doing harm to himself we didn’t care if he slept in his bed or not.  To pick him up to put him there would only have wakened him and then he’d never go back to sleep again.  Believe me; we tried that enough times to frustrating avail.  So, we learned to let him lie wherever he was comfortable at those times, the bathtub included.

At age 25 he doesn’t crawl in the tub anymore.  But he does still catnap from time to time in the middle of the floor, often right where we are doing something.  We still let him be in those moments.  They still give us respite and momentary relief.

But the fact is that well-meaning grandmotherly sitter effectively made us feel guilty and at fault for caring for our son the way we did.  Her exclamation of disbelief and to be sure – judgment – made us reluctant to share with her or anyone else that Matthew sometimes chose the tub in which to sleep.  Just in the days in which we really needed to talk about and find encouragement for the challenges with which we were (and still are) living, we pulled back for fear of condemnation and criticism.  Just when we needed the support and help of others to care for our son and his special needs we received the message that what we were doing was somehow lacking, irresponsible, wrong.  It’s the last thing we needed in those really tough days.

But don’t we do that to one another all the time?  Don’t we make judging comments about things and circumstances for which we know very little?  Often we don’t even know that we are doing it.

There is nothing more freeing and empowering than being able to share something very personal, very intimate, about our daily lives and having someone respond in a way that is knowing and understanding.  There is nothing that gives us more permission than knowing that we are safe with another person, that our best interest is what they want, that they only want to encourage and help us.  When that happens we are inclined to share and unburden ourselves even more.  But on the other hand, when we share something very personal, very intimate, and someone becomes critical or judgmental or tries to fix us when we’re not asking to be fixed or offers advice that we aren’t looking for or tells us what they think we should do (without ever having been in our position) we shut down and it puts up walls between us.  Those walls do none of us much, if any, good.

When I (Tom) was first married I wasn’t always the best listener for my wife.   I wasn’t always as patient or supportive as I could have been.  I was still learning how to live in partnership with someone and to be the safe place she needed.  Because of that, she was like a turtle, living in a shell at times, popping its head out to share something, but often quickly retreating back inside her shell based on my responses.  I wasn’t the safest person to share with; I didn’t always allow her to express herself openly and honestly.  It’s interesting that I have gone on to a professional career in which I provide a place of safety for others to share from their hearts, and yet early on I had to learn how to do that for my wife.  I’ve come a long way since I was first married.  And now I do believe that my wife is able to share her fears and emotions and vulnerabilities in safety because I have come to that place in my own development in which I can model safety and understanding with her – and everyone else I encounter, too.

Those walls have come down and I celebrate that they have.

Those walls can come down for all of us.  We all have the right to know that we are of sacred and of vital worth.   A place of safety is what all of us need.  And when we can find that place we can truly be the people we are all meant to be.

Photo by Rux Centea on Unsplash