How Can You Be Happy With Yourself When Others Aren't?

My six year old daughter has a similar energetic constitution to mine. She will let someone hurt her (physically or emotionally) and not tell them it hurts her, or stand for herself in any way, for one reason only.

She doesn't want to hurt them.

At all familiar?

She'll make herself uncomfortable to ensure the comfort of every-body; but her own.

So, I was on a fourth play date with a mutual homeschooling mom and her two littles the same age as mine, when I saw her kid pulling at my daughter. Watching my daughter try to push the kids hand off of her when she was only grabbing one wrist, the kid then grabbed the wrist she was using to push her away and yanked her really hard.

I said calmly but firmly, "Hey (name), please do not touch Hayven like that. I can see that hurt her from all the way back here."

Hayven's pink flushed to white face trying not to cry in front of her new friend, should've said it all to her friend when her words didn't.

Well, my request scared the girl and she ran behind her mother, who excused it by saying she plays rough with her dad. Sure, I get it. Mutual roughness...great (but nerve-wracking). One sided...not so great.

When I saw a lesser aggressive but similar thing happen a couple minute later I said, "That's the touch I'm talking about, please don't do that." Again, she ran to her mother who instantly said from behind an art structure, "I didn't even see you grab her," as if that meant she didn't.

I'm not a blamer, or a shamer. Toward others anyway.

Mistakes are normal, natural, necessary parts of growth, and so is healthy shame when one is made.

But basically this kids mom blamed me, for her daughters momentary experience of shame, so her kid, never got to feel it, likely learned to become afraid of it (perfectionism in the making), and to use blame...instead of it.

Meanwhile my kid re-learns, don't tell the truth because the people hurting you will be hurt, and they won't like you anymore and that'll mean...you're the bad one.

Despite my two attempts at repair with the child, the mom held space for her kid for so long without an apology to mine, that we left at how wildly awkward it was. She made it feel like we went from being a butterfly floating on the breeze for a few weeks to splat on a windshield in about one second (though she'd likely assert, I "did that").

Still, I reached out in a text to say "Sorry it went down that way. Upset was never my intent. I hope it mended well."

A day later, she texted me with an obvious one reason goal; to make me wrong.

She told me her daughters feelings were hurt. Again, never apologizing. She excused the behavior with intent, saying her kids intention was to play and I shouldn't have "scolded her" as someone she doesn't know. Her kids intentions didn't match her actions; that's what I was hoping to address in a redirection when she was hurting my kid (accidentally or intentionally). She said she knows my kid is sensitive, but hers is too.

All these things, years ago would've had me in a shame spiral swearing I'd never speak again because my truth...hurts people, causes people not to like me, and makes me...bad.

But I want to show my daughter a different lesson.

This was never about my kid being self-sensitive, it was about her being physically manipulated against her will in a way which anyone in their right mind would've seen and re-directed.

It was about my kid being too sensitive to her kids feelings, and not her own by not telling the truth.

Sometimes...the truth hurts. Sucks, but true.

My daughter, like myself, would like to avoid this fact for the sake of other people.

The thing is...when I drove off the lot, despite my daughter repeatedly wondering out loud from the back of the minivan, "I really don't know why she was so upset. You just asked her to stop," I questioned whether I was an asshole for saying something.

Felt like one giant gaslight.

Old me, for weeks I'd blame myself for someone else's shame...like was done toward me; I'd take in and do unto me.

This time, I walked across it without sinking in, for only a couple days.

Today...I'm somehow able to wake up and feel centered in a knowing that...if someone wants to make me feel like an asshole for saying something and addressing what's true, then I could easily flip that projection right around though it doesn't quite seems she's open to reflection. And besides, mirroring her...isn't my job, nor does it serve my field in any way at all but to write this now...to mirror to you that for people like my daughter, me, and maybe you...that you're allowed to stand instead of wobble for yourself on the inside when the outside wishes you wouldn't.

It was all disappointing for sure. I was excited to have an aesthetically-same oriented, dietary and lifestyle similar Boho Mom friend. It just won't be her, and I'm strangely ok to be disappointed, and to be...a disappointment.

How did I get here? To a place where I allow myself to be happy in the face of others who don't think I deserve to be? To a place where I actually stand despite any curiosity about any potential wobble as whip lash, that comes after I stand? To not back all the way down into myself for fear that they're all-right, and I'm all-wrong just because that's what "they" say?

Years...of witness to love and loss, diffusion and discernment, surfing the waves of all kinds of intensely sunny and intensely stormy days. If Love has taught me anything it's do not attach to someone else's lack of it, in attempts to find it. Mentally speaking. It's a waste of energy.

Not that she's not a loving person, I have no idea, but her position was though deflating to a hope, good information about what she stands for, and it certainly doesn't appear to exist outside of her own walls.

I'm not wrong, I'm just not right for her.

It's not wrong, it's just not right for me.

These days, I give myself permission to live this without my innate fear of rejecting others, or being rejected for my truth. I've come to understand rejection strangely as a strength building exercise for the energetic constitution.

I'm allowed to be happy with my very in-integrity decision and not waver because someone else doesn't like it.

However I got here, I'm sure glad I did.

We can both be right. On our own merry ways...

And so can you and whoever's trying to make you wrong for your own right.

Do not stand against, my love.

Just stand strong.

You're allowed.

All my love,

Stac

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