Pondered Perspectives

Wrestling with resistance, craving approval, and learning to move through it

Lately, I’ve been feeling like I’m trudging through molasses. My body aching to move forward while some invisible force holds me back.. The thoughts race through my head way faster than I can tap my fingers across the keyboard and simultaneously I stare off into the distance. Stuck. Fixated on a blurry image in the room so deeply mesmerized by these peculiar notions dancing in my mind until a little voice says, “Mommy, Mommy!” And I snap out of it and back into the parenting shuffle (a new phrase coined by a dear friend of mine).

This has been happening a lot lately. Though when it happens in the shower, the water somehow washes over the glaze and I can clearly push out my pondered perspective onto the page. Over this past weekend, just after a classified cleansing, my nimble notes read:

I was raised by people who feel like it’s truly only appropriate to cry when people die. That tears are a sign of weakness. But now I’m old enough to know that their resistance to healing doesn’t have to be mine. These were the people that I looked to teach me emotional intelligence, even when I didn’t know what that was called. I had to step out of the shower and write this as the thought came to me early this morning. It’s a lot to carry. It’s a lot to feel. It’s a lot to hold, but I refuse to keep it in. Even things like writing about them in any other light not near perfection is taboo. But I was sent to change the mold, God placed me on this earth to walk a different way. And somewhere along my journey, I chose to go and find a different path because the one they pointed me in the direction of didn’t feel right for me. Even as I write this, I have a sense of urgency to preface that they’re not bad people. Like somehow, writing my truth may bruise their egos so terribly that they’d turn against me. Give me the silent treatment, denounce me or try to embarrass me in someway. It’s unsettling, thinking that the people who I once trusted the most to keep me safe could feel like such terrifying threats to my mental health…and in the same sentence if I’m being quite honest, I still crave their approval, their presence in my life, their secure embrace both physically and emotionally even at the age of 37. Looking up in the sky I think, “is this what it feels like to still long for approval from people who couldn’t give me what I needed? Am I still caught up in a cycle of doing that throughout my life?” I thought I had done the work. Hmm. I put on some vocal jazz to clear my palette as I needed to focus on prepping my little family for our weekend trip ahead. Didn’t want to forget anything due to tripping over these seemingly evergreen thoughts.

I still find it hard to believe I put all of that into writing. And then I had a profound therapy session today in which I felt as if God was speaking through my therapist to deliver a very vital message to me. What did my brain go to? Immediately thinking about what my parents would think or say if I told them that I had gotten a “word” through my therapist?? I guess I am only assuming but I have reason to believe that my assumptions are absolutely accurate. Anyways, as I comb through all of these feelings, thoughts and emotions, I land in a place where I can clearly pinpoint where I still need healing and THAT is really reassuring. It brings a sense of comfort as the resistant force, this molasses I’m sensing, fights to oppose me. And though it’s a slow and sticky struggle, I gotta keep pushing forward. Right now I’m embracing how the molasses slows me but it will not stop me.