I know I’m not alone when I say that I had many MANY failures in 2020. It was a year of growth, transformation and living outside of my comfort zone. Sometimes feeling like I wanted to pull my hair out, or run for the hills and escape this new life. It was a year of missing the silver lining, and refusing to see the blessings that came with it, more often than not.
My biggest failure or mistake rather was trying to live in the same manner I always had, even though everything around me had changed.
Before COVID-19, my life was pretty compartmentalized. I had definitive corners for the various parts of my life. Different hats if you will. I had a parenting hat, a working mom hat, a wife hat, a health coach hat, a friend hat, a daughter hat. You get the idea. All of these versions of myself lived separately from each other. Turning them on and off as I needed to transform.
Enter 2020 and social distancing, working from home, schooling from home, living from home 24/7 and I was still trying to take on and off all of my “hats” with the same definitive separation. Only now they were squeezed into the four walls of our home. I even added a teacher hat, a full time chef & housekeeper hat to the mix. I felt frazzled, unclear and was in desperate need of a larger coat rack!!
I failed to embrace my new identity. I failed to pivot and make for change. I failed to prioritize my “hats” and maybe put a few on sabbatical.
My problem was, I couldn’t give up on the “old me”, and I was sure that the “old way of living” was just around the corner… next week or next month… I just had to hold on. So I kept living as I always did, but this time I was trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I was miserably trying to wear each and every hat on a daily basis. Just piling them on top of each other haphazardly and watching them fall off my head one by one.
I needed to find the JOY in my new life. I needed to find a way to thrive and enjoy the segments of my life synergistically. The answer was to let go of definitive roles and welcome a messier version of myself. As a type A Mom this was hard! I don’t like messy y’all.
The lesson here is I only needed ONE hat. Me. Yes, I have different versions of myself but they are not separate from the other. They are no longer definitive. The Lines are blurred, boundaries are crossed, and everything runs together. It made me think about how beautifully messy that is!
When you make space for all aspects of your life to bloom, live and breath right next to each other, its quite enlightening. Yes, sometimes that brings extra chaos, but more often it acts as a teacher. Guiding us to prioritize, to shift, to learn and evolve.
Thank you 2020 for teaching me to evolve, for teaching me to live with an open heart and open perspective. For teaching me to prioritize and retire my “hats” as needed. It’s a joyful, satisfying and very messy way to live!
Photo Credit :: Lindsay Herkert Photography
