I Give Up – The Power of Release | The Working Mommy's Manual

I am like a dog with a bone. Grrrr. Most of the time it’s a good thing – like when I go to the mat to service my clients or when I refuse to give up on finding time for date night with my husband. But I am self-aware enough to know that sometimes this personality trait isn’t, um, what’s the word I’m looking for…healthy. Because sometimes there are things I need to let go of. We all do, right?
I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about all the things I need to let go of. Because honestly, when I lost my friend Susan this year – the year we both turned 40 – it forced me to think a lot about what things are worth keeping when you know your life is on the clock. I mean, we’re all on the clock but we can’t live our lives thinking about it every second or we’d be paralyzed.

The first few months after I lost Susan I can say I was really good at not holding onto the day to day frustrations. My middle name was release. Cranky kids, the layer of dog hair that coats the interior of my home, getting cut off during my afternoon commute, pimples next to wrinkles, etc. – I was like Teflon, all of these things just rolled right off my back.

And the “big things” that I needed to let go of – I released those too. It was like spring cleaning for the soul. Letting go of toxic relationships and being nicer to myself definitely made me a happier girl.

And you know what’s interesting is that once I released the big things they stayed released. Once I accepted that there were things I couldn’t change or weren’t worth the effort of changing I stuck with it and my mental load stayed light.

But the little things. Sigh. They were a different story. And I’m not sure if its because the sheer volume of the little things that irk me was overwhelming, or if I felt like they were so inconsequential I didn’t need to consciously release them. But those pesky little irritations just snowballed until they were back to pre-housekeeping levels. And I didn’t even realize it until last week I heard about a friends ex-wife who tragically lost her life leaving behind their three young children. And I realized all these stupid little annoyances that I had kicked to the curb mere months ago had come back and were hanging out in my mind again; keeping me up at night, distracting me from being present with my children, shortening my temper (which as my father’s daughter is already way too short, thank you very much).

So I’m rolling up my sleeves, busting out the mop, and dust busting all the little stupid little BS right out of my mind. And then I’m putting my mental housekeeper on a regular rotation. Because life is AMAZING and I refuse to waste one second of it!

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