A few pieces of my mind

“Why start sharing now?

I recently turned 44 & I celebrated by getting drunk with my 18-year-old daughter & 3 awesome lady friends because I could….. see - only joking. Those few photos are just for us!

I am a people pleaser who has to consciously choose NOT to care about what people think of me 99% of the time. My reality is this because I am a people pleaser; I can not overstate how much of a MASSIVE defining facet this has always been of who I am!

This means that no matter how many times I have; broken bad habits / reformed my daily rituals / redefined my core values / made oaths, and then broken those same oaths……. I spend a good portion of my free time in a messy/hateful/hurtful war with ME! (My solution for the first 34 years of my life was to live an INSANELY busy life with minimal downtime - the last 9.5 years, my free time has grown in substantial increments to now being the vast majority of my daily life - which I have decided MUST CHANGE NOW).

I often wonder, “Why am I a people pleaser when I fail so miserably at making everyone around me happy?”. I am described as a pleasant, kind, empathetic, caring person with a few tough life challenges thrown her way and sometimes a bit of a temper (a constant work in progress).

A surprising number of my closest friends frequently comment that “I am the strongest person she/he/they know”, and every single time I hear it, it repeats on an endless loop at the back of my mind with new adjectives thrown in by my subconscious, always hurtful/hateful/destructive adjectives until I finally here the exact opposite of what I was initially told and I rip a new gaping hole in my own heart that pushes me back onto the slippery slope to my very own rock bottom at the speed of light.

The other significant defining facet of my identity is that I am a SOLUTION SEEKER. From a very young age, it became my own tried and true self-prescribed solution to being a people pleaser. To please those I loved and everybody I encountered, I discovered that helping people find solutions to their problems came quickly to

“From a very young age, it became my own tried and true self-prescribed solution to being a people pleaser. To please those I loved and everybody I encountered, I discovered that helping people find solutions to their problems came quickly to me, usually involving one conversation offering a different perspective. I would receive an extremely enthusiastic “thank you; I feel so much better”, and by the time I hit my teen years, I had people of all ages bearing their souls to me, disclosing their deepest secrets to me whilst thanking me for helping them to feel lighter and more accessible. Meanwhiles, I started to feel heavier, learn darker aspects of humanity and bear the weight of carrying other people’s pain…. (Please do not for one moment interpret that last statement as a complaint - it is the truth “of why I matured so swiftly and thoroughly and has added immeasurable fortitude and strength to who I am).”

“Ladies have a lot going on all the time, every second of every day, and I am only referring to what it takes to be who you choose to be when you are NOT changing your world for the betterment of everyone it touches each day. Because I am a Solution Seeker….I want to make everyone happy, and I NEED to feel like I am making this world a better place for my children and their children (especially during each age /stage my children reach). The reality of that feeling drives every decision I have made, from budgeting responsibly to driving change through the power of consciously buying ethically sourced/environmentally friendly/animal cruelty-free products within whatever budget and time constraints I am facing in each moment CRAZY HARD. Eventually, I learned that it is better than okay because as soon as I discovered that being broken by life & promptly being forced to rebuild myself from my unshakeable foundations up ‘in a hurry’ made me only keep what I needed, allowing me to get rid of a whole lot of that heavy, negative self-criticism and nastiness that had built up a massive backlog running on repeat in my subconscious!

Then I gained momentum and got into a rhythm (not a routine), but I am again racing through my life, hearing my internal rhythm pushing me on when I need to make the impossible a reality. Because I did it more often than not, I swiftly moved onwards and upwards, revealing far more complicated and reaching solutions. This led to me stretching myself too thinly, over-committing and letting someone down! Which always taught me to beat myself up for letting that person down to such an extent that I let every other person/project/aspect in my life at that moment down, EPICALLY grinding to a complete standstill - hitting rock bottom at the speed of light and exploding into a gazillion fractured raw pieces of guilt/shame/humiliation/self-loathing/anxiety/pain fuelled depression! The older I became and the more often I repeated this cycle, the lower “, the lower rock bottom has dropped, the smaller my fractured pieces have become, and the more intense my self-loathing has felt. The longer & harsher my internal litany sounded.“You knew this was going to happen; this is why you are such a mess, GG; you are so broken, GG; this is why you feel miserable and alone most of the time, GG. It would be best if you had never dared to dream of the possibility that you could serve any real purpose in this world, GG. You know this already, GG. You have been here so many times before, and you will be here so many times again in the future, GG. So why bother? Why not just end it all now, and stop role-modelling such terrible life choices/habits/behaviours/repetitive mistakes to your children? They have so much of their own to deal with, GG.”

“OH, MY CHILDREN"…Suddenly, my internal monologue will change with those three words, “oh, my children….

“Oh my children, my beautiful girls, I wish I could be showing them through my daily actions how to be the happiest, healthiest, kindest, strongest, most loving and self-respecting versions of themselves that they are willing and able to be….. That is exactly what you can AND WILL DO, GG! Moving forward, you will reprioritise their current needs in this ever-changing world and pull yourself together, GG. Because it is better than okay to be broken by life & promptly be forced to rebuild yourself from my unshakeable foundations back up again ‘still in a hurry’ forcing me only to keep what I need, allowing me to let go of a whole lot of that heavy, toxic negative self-criticism and nastiness that has built up a massive backlog running on repeat in your subconscious again GG!” (Sound familiar - it is a process I have repeatedly refined with excellent results - I promise!).”

“ What solution is GG seeking now?

Wow, thank you! I am so glad you asked! I am hopeful you have had a chuckle reading this and can relate to some of what I wrote above. I have over the years, both professionally and personally, presented in both large & small group formats as well as in guest speaker roles informally & sometimes more formally about some of my more challenging lived experiences and the weird/wacky or profitable lessons they have taught me I have happily passed on whatever I could to help other’s deal with their own struggles/hardships/obstacles/roadblocks/crisis and now that I have officially acclimated to being a “totally & permanently physically disabled” but still fabulous lady.

I can openly share my name & some of the details about my journey, and I hope to help someone in some way feel HOPE.

Be kinder to yourself and remember to embrace it all, the good, the bad, and the painful, every day truly is a gift, and I hope you make the most of it!

Cheers GG xx