Are You Mad?

My youngest daughter asks us the same question many times throughout the day. “Are you mad?”

Most of the time we’re not. Maybe our voices raised, but out of excitement or just trying to be heard in a house with five humans. Sometimes we are and we tell her that, always making sure to include the why. 

I often ask her to look at my face. I smile at her. I tell her that this is mama’s happy face. I have her touch it. I tell her I love her. I want her to see and feel what happy is. 

I just thought about this as I was sitting down to write this post. This post that is about to be based on other people’s opinions of me. This post stems from me asking people around me the same exact question. 

Are you mad? 

As I sat down to title this piece, Addison's little voice popped into my head. Her sweet, innocent little face, looking to me for explanation of what I am feeling or how she should feel. 

It was in that moment that I realized that the tone of this post needs to shift. Why? Because of her. Because I don’t want her, or my other two daughters to put so much energy and power into other people's approval, or disapproval of them like I do. 

I grew up with a limiting belief that is obviously still sitting with me. 

“When they get mad, they leave.” 

That was my truth for a lot of my life. That is what I believed as a child, young adult and even as a full grown woman, married with children. 

When you do something to upset them, they leave. 

I have since connected this to the reason behind why this pandemic has shaken me to my core. Throughout the course of the last year relationships that I had thought were for a lifetime have ended. Our values did not align, which unfortunately caused angst in many relationships. That’s not saying that they can’t be mended in the future, but in this moment that limiting belief held true. 

“When they get mad, they leave.”

The people pleaser in me struggles with this. The people pleaser in me wants to conform to what others want so that there won’t be waves. So that everything will be what it once was, because that, that was normal, right? That is how it is supposed to be? Right? 

The people pleaser in me wants to pretend like everything is okay and that once life settles it will look just as it did before. 

But the realist in me acknowledges that there is the potential that this is not the truth and that is hard to come to terms with. 

There is going to need to be some grieving that will need to happen. There is going to need to be some true soul searching as to what I am going to allow back into my life that is healthy and aligns with what is best for me and my family.

I have lived most of my life with the mindset that I have needed others approval in order to feel worthy. That if I “disappointed them,” that I was not worthy of much of anything. That people sitting in the cheap seats of my life had more of a say of my worth then my own self. And it wasn’t until the moment that I sat down to write this post that I realized that I was about to start this narrative over again with my daughters. 

I will not allow the world to put my girls into a box that they need to receive others approval on how they should live their lives. I will not allow my daughters to believe that they must mold and fit into what others want and believe for them in order to feel loved or worthy. I will not allow them to forget about their own feelings, wants, desires and needs, in order to please or make others happy. And that includes me, as their parent. 

Yes, we need to love and be kind to one another. But we also need self love and self respect. And that comes at a price too. Giving others all of our energy, all of our power, that does not serve us. That depletes ourselves and makes us bend and fold to others expectations of who they think we are supposed to be. 

I don’t want my daughters to grow up feeling like they need to be “good girls.” That they need to make everyone else happy. That they need to adapt and change themselves to fit in the box that someone else has made for them. I want them to grow up being kind, loving, confident and happy. I want them to know that at the end of each day they did the best they could. I want them to know that if they made a choice they wish they hadn’t, that tomorrow is a new day and not to fret over it. I want them to love themselves unconditionally and thrive to make the world a better place, just by being themselves. 

The next time Addie asks me if I am mad, what I want to say is, “Yes, I might be upset, but I’m not going anywhere. I love you.”