I did my best

And it wasn’t _____ but oh my goodness, it was _____!

a view from the rollercoaster : raw. open. exposed. come on in

#veryhumanrollercoaster #traumarecovery

10 days ago I wrote about doing my best. Posted it on social media even. We are going to do our best! Said! Boldly proclaimed. Accountability, right? No turning back now.

And so I set off. To do my best.

Resolute and absolute and so much loot you’d swear I was about to roll out a global transformation.

Because I had set my mind to it, my best was going to be many things. Because I was determined, I immediately owned my future. Because I had made up my mind and chosen my path, my path was mine and I could control its outcome. I could and I should and I would.

Insert 1000 positive psychology references here.

And, if you follow our blog or social media, you will possibly have noticed the glaring silence that followed. Aside from one semi cryptic post about growth (nice self motivation moment), we all fell silent.

What happened?

Did I “fail” and hide away in embarrassment and shame? Did I stumble and fall? Get distracted? Procrastinate? Find a pretty flower and hyper focus on it for 12 days?

What happened?

You know what happened?

Shit happened!

But not the kind you’d think.

And it was none of the above.

For 10 whole days and counting, I did my best.  I actually showed up each and every day and I did my best. And I learned a hard lesson -

that what is truly my best and what I think my best should be or what I would like my best to be are not one and the same.

Please sit with that a moment and hear those words with me? Think that thought alongside me?

And the greatest lesson I learned was honesty and authenticity and grace with self.

I launched into the week, yes launched, with such high expectations and ambition for all the things I was going to manage and achieve and how I was going to master all my tools and succeed at all my mental health strategies and … oh I believed big and bold.

And you know what “success” looked like? For one whole week I managed to stay 90% present. I “achieved” not dissociating for 90% of the time for 7 days straight.

And it was the greatest achievement of my life.

It was truly my best. Above all expectations.

And it was gruelling and exhausting and I reached early evening each day feeling like I was jetlagged and had run a marathon and would collapse into bed with nothing left in me and desperately craving sleep to recharge.

And staying present for someone who normally lives in various states of dissociation was a moment to moment endeavour. It wasn’t a task I could set myself for the day and then get on with other things. It was the task for the day. And very few other things happened around it. But so much happened.

No, I didn’t post in my blog or finish the paper or write the script or prepare well for the meeting or answer the emails or draft the proposal or create the strategy or set in motion the program or finish the _____ I did nothing else but stay present.

Nothing else

But live

For the first time in my life, I lived my life. For a whole week. I remember every day. I know where I was and what I was doing and who I was with and how I felt and what I experienced and … I lived my life. And living my life looked nothing like what outsiders think living should look like.

I achieved nothing but I achieved everything.

And now I am in week 2. A second week of determined to do my best. And this time I’m trying to get work done too and do all the things that need doing alongside fighting hard to stay present. And already I’m slipping. Because staying present is not something I learned last week and so now I can incorporate it into this week and off we go. No, it’s going to be something I will be learning and practicing for a very long time to come. And sadly, I don’t have the “luxury” of not doing anything else but stay present for weeks on end. All those other things I didn’t do need doing.

So again the definition of my best has shifted.

This week my best might look like staying present as much as I can while managing doing …

Last week living my life looked like being present

This week living my life might just mean I have to accept that I don’t get to always fully live my life but it’s a work in progress and I’m working at it. And I don’t give up on fighting to stay present or accept the dissociation as just the way things are. I have shown myself I can be more present than I ever have been. But I have also shown myself how unreasonable it is to expect I can all of a sudden both stay present and go to work or pay the bills. Sucks. But that is my truth. Here and now. This week what is my best needs to include accepting where I am. And no, not sliding into accepting second best or letting things slide because poor me, it’s too hard. I keep working just as hard, only I use the stumbles and falls to learn, to feed my growth. And I get up again and again and I keep trying. I keep doing my best. And bed will be there to collapse into at the end of each day more lived.

And acknowledging that my best does not look like “success” in the traditional sense. But it is my greatest success yet.

---

What is truly our best and what we set as expectations for our best may not be fair or just or reasonable. Sometimes we need to step back and recalibrate and then take a deep breath filled with grace and begin again.

Keep going.

You’re doing your best

And you can demand nothing more of yourself.

You have reached the top.

And guess what? Keep going and the top shifts … it’s going to be the most wonderful thing.

How do I do that?

Just show up each day and do my best.

Writing and artworks by Kendall

How was this Art Therapy for Self?

I created these pieces the evening of a therapy session where I felt I had consolidated so much of my thinking and was feeling alive and hopeful and bursting to “express”. Creating them felt like powerful affirmation and the process was both self soothing and self empowering.

How curious … because, I don’t know about you, but these pieces look nothing like “empowered hope” to me. Smile. I wonder what they are saying?

That’s another intriguing and wonderful side of art and art therapy for self. Sometimes the deeply unexpressed comes out as expressed but remains elusive for some time still. I’ll keep processing as I look and ponder.

Kendall