My Fight to be a Grown Up

Sometimes, the little wounded girl in me surfaces, haunts me, and stunts my adult emotional growth. The past few weeks have been like that. Last night my girlfriend and my son gave me a little wakeup call. I have been going through a process of recognizing the woundedness taking over me, and trying to deal with it and move past it. Last night my youngest jumpstarted that process. I realized that I baby him too much. And that I baby all my children. And that the cause is shortsighted, and only serves to stunt their growth as people. In stunting myself, I stunt them. I stunt myself out of fear of the unknown. Fear of uncertainty that I haven't been able to face because I didn't feel strong enough.
Then I realized that Strong Enough is a choice. It's not an ability, it is a practiced skill. It took tears and emotional pain to get to this point of realization, and it will take more tears and pain to continue practicing the needed skill. But I now know better. and I agree with the sentiment that "When you know better, you can do better."
I will choose to do better, to take on responsibility, to love myself, to respect myself as an adult, as a lovable person, regardless of my children's reactions to my disciplining them. They do need structure. I need structure. It's not a "new way of life". It's not a fundamentalist, "This is the RIGHT way." It's just an evolution. A continued growing into myself, choosing another path that feels right to me. I no longer believe in black and white, wrong or right thinking. Admitting that to myself hurt because it meant a loss of certainty. There is absolutely bliss in ignorance. And once that childlike ignorance is gone, it's a struggle to become ok with the lack of safety, security, and bliss.
I no longer can fit into that ignorance mold, though. It's a skin I have shed, a mold I have outgrown. And although metamorphysis is painful, I know from experience that you cannot go backwards. You can choose to stagnate, but it only causes you and everyone around you pain. So I choose to accept the growth, to take on the responsibilities I see. I can only live more fully because I have grown, and that is something to be thankful for.