Saying YES, Let's Roll

In eight days, my oldest daughter will be graduating USF with a Bachelor's degree.  Not sure what it is called.  It is in Music and is a four year degree. She will be achieving this milestone with many honors, extra sashes, tassels, cords and acclaim.  I am SO PROUD OF HER and can bust my buttons!

Her decision to graduate now with one complete degree is bittersweet.  She has already invested an additional three years of year round classes towards a Bachelor's in American Sign Language Interpreting. She is dropping that program for the time being with only 10-12 credit hours left to completion.  As her Mom? I am concerned that she has run up extra debt and may not ever make it back to finish the degree?  Angel loved the work and found her niche in this world.  The second degree is the one that she could become certified in to work in her field.

This is another chapter, though, that as her Mom, I am writing today, as I blog here.  It is more of previous refrains of "letting go".  Empty Nest occured with all of its storms and tearing assunder several years ago.  Angel moved away to college May 2005.  Alisha moved to live with her Dad and to attend college in May of 2006. 

No stranger to letting people in and out of my life.  Some of them, we are bound by blood ties. History. Sometimes we have a close bond that we developed past the familial links.  Other instances, men and women come in, and like revolving doors, they exit. It may be a period of minutes? Or years? When I take inventory today, my truck is empty. My car sits idle. My belongings are in a storage unit that I am growing tired of paying to maintain.

As Angel's Mom, I am willing to dig in the pitons and provide her living expenses, share her financial burdens, and stand behind her so she can finish the degree while she is on a roll.  As her Mom, I also have to accept that July 25, 2010 "a man shall leave his mother, a woman leave her home, and they shall travel on to where the two shall be as one."  Angel and her husband Aaron made their decisons based on what they feel is right for them, for the current time. They didn't ask anyone to help. They made choices, set about making life course changes and then informed me of the way things were to be.

Angel and I share one of those extra bonds I mention.  We are friends as well as mother daughter. It was a bit tense as she worked out the kinks in her newfound backbone when she "called to inform me".  She phrased it in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up cold, "you can say what you like, but my decison is made and you will not be changing it."  Very unusual for Angel or I to talk that way to one another. Bordering on disrespect.

The blessing is that the  changes wrought in me in this past season, specifically this past  year, prepared me to be able to absorb that attitude, and rock with it before responding.  I am proud of myself.  I took it in, and was able to divorce my emotions from my responses by telling myself    "It's not personal. Be proud of Angel. Hear her out. Find ways to CELEBRATE her life, and do this NOW!!!"

A few people in my life's circle have given me HUGE gifts,,,, no judgements, forgiveness,  tolerance, patience, and the proverbial arms to fall back on. Call it what you will. I have experienced so much unconditional "love" that has been acted out towards me as a person? The timing is everything.  I was prepared to respond to Angel in her hour of need in kind.  What a different outcome a year makes!!!!!!!!!!  Grateful to my friends! The ones that love, care, respect and nuture the good in me.

Within the space of the extras breaths I took in during the initial phone call, I was able to shift and turn my daughter's news to accentuating the Positive.  She hung up telling me she was relieved, she expected a different response. (I know, remember the hairs on the back of my neck? She almost got a different response, LOL.)  It is cool to me that I was able to see that Angel felt SAFE with me, that she was trying her bravery out with the one person she feels safe to do so. She gave me a gift. And one day, she will be able to see that also.

Angel and Aaron - Alisha and Tony, their choices free me up to make choices for myself.  Yeah, yeah, I will ALWAYS be the mom.  But I make career and lifestyle choices based on what is authentic to me.  Recently, Angel spoke to me, then wrote out an affirmation from her to me.  She was acknowledging that "although she may not like somethings I do, and may have chosen differently for herself, her responsibility is to accept this as MY choice to make."

How quickly this gets mirrored back to a daughter who had a "growing up" revelation of the separation of mother- daughter-friend.   Within a space of weeks, I was called to remember the wisdom from the mouths of babes and extend that same grace back to Angel as a reflection of the gift of light she shone towards me just a short time ago.

A wise friend, from a distant Time Zone and shoreline wrote months ago, and recently reiterated, "I have come to realize that everyone has a God and that I am not it." Now, this friend and I have not met in person.  Funny how the people we align ourselves with via prayers, blessings, and gratitude can bring such moments of clarity, stillness and peace into a turbulent time, if only in my own thoughts.  Then in a single shock of a phone call, I can pause, breathe and make a shift.  Recent training prepared me.  Her direction has tempered my subsequent communications with Angel over the last few weeks as we makes arrangements to have a Jubilee to CELEBRATE her milestones and life accomplishments.

As I make the conscious decison to let go of areas I have not actually had the controlling reins of in many years, I am feeling freedom.  New spaces are opening up in my heart and mind.  I feel the freedom. The power. The gift to CHOOSE how I respond to these changes that I was not ready for.

  No one asked me if I was ready. That is not a common question when someone is going to leave. You don't often hear "Are you ready for me to leave and rock your world?" People just come and go and do what they feel is right for themselves at that moment. Even blindsided, it's up to me how I respond.

Today, weeks and months into a personal growth and trimming period? I am saying, "Let's Roll. What's next!?"  This week alone has already handed me gifts of new and of old offerings revisited. Especially where my career is concerned.  It seems I may be getting a second chance to try some things.  I am scared. I am excited. I am ready now, in case you are asking.

Big grin,
Jan M. Olsen
~J~