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Note from Stacey: Every Thursday we’re thrilled to offer Laura’s Mileposts in the Distance column. You can read more about Laura below.
This week, whenever I thought about what I wanted to write my mind was curiously blank. Usually, I have any number of things I want to discuss or recount, but there were a couple of Ferris Bueller moments along the lines of “What’s in this week’s Milepost?”
Silence.
“C’mon, what can we talk about in this week’s Milepost?
Not just silence; it echoed.
Rather than convince myself that the well was completely dry and that I was a complete and hopeless failure as a writer (which is where I would have gone a year ago), I let the thought as to why there is silence simmer as I went about my day. Finally it dawned on me that I feel rather depleted. There’s a sort of dehydration of the soul going on as the past few weeks have had some enjoyable highs, some moments of nerves, and others moments that demanded delicacy of thought and action.
If I were so inclined, I could say there was drama but that would be an overstatement of what have just been some emotionally accelerated weeks. I’ve decided to say my life has been full of “Items of Emotional Interest.” For a change, these weren’t things I conjured up out of a ripe, juicy imagination only to watch them deflate as I confronted them. No, they were real moments in the lives of people I love.
Our kids have been through an amazing couple of weeks. The Handsome Son, always keeping things cool and close to the vest, had an opportunity for a position that he wanted with great passion. He prepared, he interviewed, then he reworked the interview many times in his head, sure he’d missed some point absolutely essential to getting that position.
The Lovely Daughter mixed things up and spent a calm exam week, only to panic about her only exam AFTER she took it. She’s spent the first days of her summer vacation checking her grades, certain that the failing grade that will signal the fall of the house of cards that is her academic excellence is only around the corner.
As far as work goes, a project that I’d invested a lot of time and energy nearly had to be cancelled, only to be postponed, while the regular daily emails arrived with all the enthusiasm and complaints that are part of the promotion business.
In each of these cases I only needed to react: to bolster the Handsome Son, cajole the Lovely Daughter, solve the cancellation problem and answer the emails kindly. But I find that I’ve forgotten to replenish that well of buoyancy that allows me to spring back in a positive frame of mind and I’m moving a bit sluggishly on the emotional front.
I did use the tools that I’ve put in the kit over the past 18 months – meditating, EFT, writing – but I think I need to reach for them sooner. As I meditated today, all that wafted through my head was “You only control your reaction.” Something I forget in the heat of the moment. I couldn’t hand my son a job, or grant my daughter an A or change the circumstances at work, but I could remind myself to stand in the fire calmly and to rehydrate my soul at the first, best opportunity.
To that end, I told Stacey in my weekly update that for the week ahead, I want to be a “Peace Reactor” meaning that when in a place featuring “Items of Emotional Interest” I react in a peaceful manner. As always, Stacey looked at it a little differently: “How about moving those letters around a bit and making ‘reactor’ into ‘creator’?” she answered. “Your intentions and actions really can help “create” peace for others as well as yourself!”
See? I knew if I waited, the milepost for the week would appear. And my job this week is to create peace.
To bring the story to a close: the Handsome Son was offered the job less than five hours after that interview. And the Lovely Daughter has two As and an A- (so far).
Laura Reeth lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with the man of her dreams. With kids off at college, she no longer plays the role of active, day-to-day parent, and has moved into the complex understanding-parent-of-nearly-adult-children role. The main difference is she gets more sleep now.
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I once attended an event with Byron Katie, and one of the many people who joined her on the stage was a young woman who was visibly distraught. (Katie has a process she calls “the Work” that helps people release their stressful thoughts. If you’d like to read more about my interpretation of it, click 




