This blog needs to be bold!

Reading my daily words of wisdom from Tama Kieves, I had to smile when she spoke today, April 29th, of people who make her sad.  I relate.  Today is my mother’s birthday.  She died in 2005 at the age of 86.  She would have been 98, and I believed for years she would outlive me.  She was a crusty oldest child of the Depression era.  She was a narcissist, and she was the daughter of alcoholic parents.  She was not a nurturing mother, and it took me years to understand and forgive her, at least mostly forgive her.

My early waking hours are spent initially to wake up with social media happenings from the day before, and then I find my peaceful place in meditation.  Today was day 20 of Deepak Chopra’s latest meditation series on hope.  The particular topic was on how forgiveness gives us hope.  And I finally realized, I have totally forgiven her, and I wished her happy birthday.  But I am glad that I no longer have to constantly forgive her which is what I did while she was living.  I hope she is enjoying her immortal life!

More interesting, though, is how today will be spent with many people who make me sad, who I have forgiven time and time again for what I feel they did in my life.  I should say they have made me sad for over the last years I have come to understand that they are who they are.  I am who I am as well.  Forgiving comes before anything else, but it also becomes less and less frequent for several reasons.  People do not change, and no matter who they are, I try to accept them for who they are as I want to be accepted for who I am.  Many, even when I try to reforge a relationship still act the same way that broke the relationship.  It is at times like these that I forgive myself for believing they could change their behaviors that bother me.  They cannot.  It is my expectations that are unmet that make me sad.  So no more sad people in my life.  No more rainy people.  Rain should nurture not sour life.  

Back to today and sad people, some of whom are family.  I love them all, and I want the best for them.  They just do not appear to want the best for themselves.  They can be rainy people, but they are also family.

One of Deepak’s lines in his after thoughts of meditation today was that we ourselves can be intimidating when we forgive people, when we want the best for them.  We have to come to them softly on their terms; that is forgiveness as well.  Even one of my sons has stated that I can be intimidating.  He admits I do not try, it is just who I am.  The other son refers to it as being “Snarky”.  I have no idea what it means but the word connotes to me “a sarcastic snot”, and I must admit that I do have to watch that part of my personality.

But in forgiving myself for being “snarky”, I have to go back to my childhood beginning as an only child, as all oldest children are at one time or another.  There was no nurturing.  Period.  I must have been 10 years when I was 10 months, and I never went back.  My mother had to nurture herself, which she did not do well, to get through any day.  She was always the victim, even through her pregnancy with me.  I have talked with a lot of folks–professional and otherwise –to learn this.  My father spent his life trying to keep my mother happy, and that was not very successful either.  So he definitely was not my nurturer even though he did try at times.  I learned survival skills at an early age.  I was wise before my time but without many social skills–dysfunctional families create children who are fearful of trusting others especially outside of their home.  In their home, they know to expect the unexpected, and I was no exception.  Our goal is to grow up and leave.  In the meantime, we raise other siblings, like them or not.  When I left, one of the siblings created her own story which lives to this day that I abandoned her.  The sisters are rainy people for me.  But like the rain in nature, I have come to appreciate them.

Having the background I have, I have become successful anyway.  It was my goal to learn to nurture myself, and I do.  I have learned to accept family, and I do.  My next milestone will be to totally accept my adult children as they are, and they are very different because of their own stories.  But in this case, I have finally learned to forgive my ex-husband while beginning to really understand that my children are also a product of their father’s story.  Interesting!

But all of this forgiveness, understanding, and appreciation of rain and rainy day people is a benefit in working with my clients who are rainy day people with their sad money relationships.  All of this affects your energy, and your energy affects your money, not the other way around.  Money is energy, but it is your energy being reflected back just like a reflection in the pool of water left after a rainstorm.  You know that your energy needs work, but the puddle dries up, the rainbow appears for a moment, and you go back to the everyday life of low energy creating a low energy money relationship.  Begin to appreciate the rain long after the rainbow disappears.  That is what I do with people who make me sad…the rainy day people!