13/07/2024
Good morning beautiful 🤩 souls. Years ago, before GPS, I drove to visit my mother from Maryland to Indiana. I plotted my route on a map and followed that route. It was just me and Avery. When we got there, my mom asked me how I did it- “all that driving by myself.” I told her I plotted the route, then followed it, the highway signs, and the exit signs. She said it was “too much,” and she could never do all that. She never did either. My mother never visited any of my homes anywhere I lived. There were other reasons she didn’t want to leave her home for extended periods of time, but one of the main reasons was “all that damn driving.”
My father, on the other hand, came EVERYWHERE I was to see my homes and the people I was living around and working with in those locations. Although I bought him a GPS, he ONLY used maps every time to do “all that driving.” He always traveled alone.
The moral of the story is not a comparison of my parents, but to reiterate that there wil be times all of us will have to do things even when there’s no one to do them with us. If you get in the habit of waiting for people to do things you want to do, odds are you’ll never do all that you want to do. I wanted to visit my mom all those years ago. I was married to an abusive alcoholic who started a fight right before we were supposed to leave just so he didn’t have to go. He wanted to keep me isolated from my family. He never thought I would go with my daughter by myself, but I did.
I’ve made it a habit of not waiting on people. I may invite or ask someone, but if they say no, I’m still doing whatever it is I want to do- run a race, go for a hike, travel, take a course, go eat, etc. That one experience so many years ago empowered me to trust myself to do for myself. You give away your power when you rely on other people’s participation to determine whether you’ll take the next step. This is not to say you shouldn’t “consider” people in your life, you absolutely should, just don’t hang your hat on allowing them to be the single determining factor of your next step. Once you do things even if you’re afraid or alone enough times, you’ll become unstoppable. ❤️
