It’s Sunday night, and my wife and I are laughing SO HARD at ourselves. We had the sudden realization that we completely missed the boat on a school thing–I’m not sure which one of us realized it first, but here we are on a Sunday night doing some parenting clean up.
The short story is that we both work full-time and we’re just not that on top of some of the school stuff. We’re not the parents who are able to volunteer to be library assistants every Thursday at 12:15 or go on every field trip or chair the annual bake sale.
(Edit: The wife did chaperone one field trip this year, and then came home and slept for approximately three days. She loved it, obvs.)
Frankly, we’re the parents who miss their required volunteer hours and donate money instead (hello, leverage!).
We love, love, love our daughter. We also love our work. And we can’t do it all, and do it all well. Most of the time that’s perfectly fine with us. That’s the letting go part.
And here’s the avoidance part…
We’ve both been getting emails about this school thing for weeks. I saw the words “tree trot” and immediately sorted those emails into the junk folder of my mind, right along with anything resembling “5K” or “marathon” or “run.”
I also assume that anything discussing “trotting” or “running” or “5K” in any manner is completely voluntary, because RUNNING.
Since my wife and I avoided reading those emails, what we did not realize is that this tree trot is a ✨THING✨ at Z’s school. Like a big deal kind of thing, that’s all about raising money for the school. Apparently there’s trotting, yes, amongst the trees–AND parents show up to cheer them on and the families raise money for the school.
Oops.
It’s fine, we’re on it now, so what if we missed avoided the memo and it’s three weeks later. WE SHOWED UP.
Which brings me to…what’s the difference between letting go and avoidance?
To let it go, you have to look it in the face, my friends. What I’ve looked at head on and chosen to let go of in my life has to number in the hundreds if not thousands. And sometimes (many times?) I have to do it over, and over, and over again.
I’m looking at YOU, perfectionism. You too, comparison. And I see you over there, “right way”–GET IN LINE because you are next on my list.
We can’t do a damn thing about what we refuse to see. It’s not letting go if you won’t look it in the face–it’s avoidance.
So how about you…what are YOU avoiding and telling yourself that you’re just “letting it go”? What life emails are going straight to the junk mail before you even open them?
We love hearing from you, so if this resonates with you–let us know!