Running on Fumes

Do you find yourself behaving at your worst towards the people you love the most?

You are not alone.

We can all get hijacked by ‘parts’ of ourselves that are angry, defensive and harsh …parts that are just too bloody exhausted to play ‘nice’ anymore.

Parts that, deep down, are terrified that everything is going to cr@p – and that it’s all our fault (because we are somehow not enough).

Sadly, it’s the people we love the most who are most often in the firing line.

As we learn how to take better care of all the different parts of ourselves, we find that we are no longer running on fumes at the end of the working week.

The practice of caring for all my different parts has changed my life.

It has helped me to take better care of the parts of myself that tend to explode when overwhelmed – which means I lose my cool less often.

Recently, on a Friday night, I actually had enough fuel left in the tank to participate in an impromptu bubble-blowing competition with my kids.

And I’m so glad I did. My son snapped a great pic of the winning bubble – check it out here.

I am also getting better at finding the right language to apologise for the moments when I show up in ways that don’t accurately reflect who I am, at my core.

I am so sorry for yelling. That was not OK. I want to do a better job at taking care of the part of me that sometimes feels overwhelmed – and I’m working on it. What happened was not about you. It was about what was happening inside of me. I love you and I am truly sorry.