The Soul Library

I like to think of my soul like a library. 

There are open slots on the shelves, and I have the choice to fill them with things that make me happy, leave them empty, or fill them with other people’s agendas. 

The sum of what I fill my library with determines my fulfillment and contentment in life. 

If you looked at the shelves of my soul library, you would find entire sections filled with my children’s needs, wants, interests and passions.  Books on ice skating, cub scouts, gymnastics, and four hundred recipes for mac and cheese.

The higher shelves are filled with my husband’s interests, needs and wants. 

My mother has an entire section of her own. 

The one person who didn’t have a single book in this library was me. 

I did not value my own time, so I just let everyone else’s needs fill the space until I became an extremely unhappy person.  If you asked me what I liked to do, what my interests and passions were, I would not have had an answer for you.

I was at a crossroads, the dreaded empty nest.  My son was a senior in high school and my life was about to change dramatically.  I realized I had better start getting ready.  I had no idea who I was without being a mother, my marriage was not great, and the idea of my husband and I rattling around our big house alone was frightening. 

I had a year to find myself before my son left for college and I felt the clock ticking like a time bomb.

How do you find yourself?  How do you know what your soul’s desires are if you’ve never heard her speak?

Therapists always say things like, “Just love yourself and take care of yourself and the rest will work itself out.  Work on YOU and automatically things will get better with your partner and your life.” 

I never understood what that meant.  How can I work on myself when taking care of a family is a full time job and I am exhausted all the time? How do I find my own happiness when my partner does 10 things a day that piss me off and I don’t have 5 minutes a day alone to think?  Who is the real me that I am trying to get back to?  It’s been so long since I’ve heard her voice.

I tried to sit quietly with a cup of tea and listen to my inner voice, but I could not hear her.  My constantly thinking mind, and my frequent anger and disappointment drowned out any change of hearing my soul’s desires.

I decided that first, I had to start really letting go of my son. 

He’s a great kid with outstanding common sense.  He is old enough to handle most everything himself. He already has a lot of good life skills, he can cook, do laundry and is responsible with his schoolwork. 

Yet I still expend a tremendous amount of mom energy in worrying about him and reminding him to do things he has usually already done.  He doesn’t need me as much anymore… and so I let him go. 

I still love him and am there when he needs me but in a way that feels better to us both. I stopped worrying about him, and stopped inserting his needs into my every thought.

His confidence has grown as a direct result of my stepping back. What a wonderful cause and effect.

Letting go of the mother strings, I opened up space in my library.

Next, I had to just shut down every negative feeling that had to do with my husband. 

My mother-in-law used to vent about something that was bothering her and then say, “Whatever.”  And that was the end of the conversation.  I saw the that she didn’t hold on to things.  Somehow saying the word “whatever” was like a magic wand for her and the thing that she was upset about disappeared. 

That’s what I did with my husband. 

I whatevered him.

This allowed me to start to look at myself without constantly being mad at him.  He no longer had any control over my emotions.  At the same time, it opened up even more space in my soul library to add some books of my own.

I started opening up to the idea that I matter.

I just had to figure out what that meant.

It was around this time that I started listening to a podcast called “We Can Do Hard Things” with Glennon Doyle.  She talked about the way yoga had healed her.  I used to love to do yoga!  I had forgotten how good it made me feel. 

So, I stared with this one thing.  I went to one yoga class a week without fail.  I would unroll my mat and sit with my head in my hands until class started and in one hour my soul would start to lift, and I began to feel powerful. 

Before yoga, I felt like life was a speedboat and I was on a tube behind it holding on for dear life, nearly falling off at every turn- getting sprayed in the face with water and no destination in sight. 

Yoga allowed me to let go of the tube, sink to the bottom and swim up to the surface and suck in a full breath of fresh air knowing that I will be ok.  Every week I healed a tiny bit more, I began to trust my inner voice.  I thought that without yoga I would never even be able to hear that voice, but was it really the yoga? Or was it that I had chosen ME for one hour once I week. 

I am starting to do more little things that I enjoy.  I am hearing the small voice inside of me and I am listening. Sometimes it is as simple as noticing that I feel tired, and I go and lay down!

Glennon Doyle talks about how much she absolutely loves watching tv and that it is her goal every day to get done whatever she has to do, so she can then sit herself in front of the tv and be happy.  When I heard her say that my heart leapt!  I feel the same way I LOVE TV! I didn’t ever think that loving tv was a thing I could embrace!

Something was freed inside of me.  I am allowed to love tv too and be proud of it!  I started making time (sometimes during the day!) to watch shows that I LOVE, instead of passively watching the crap that my husband likes. 

Every day I watched shows that made ME happy and not unlike the small light that glows inside the screen, a small light turned on inside my soul. I was choosing myself every day.

I also love to read.  I joined a book club that meets every other month, I am a really slow reader and it takes me weeks to finish a book.  But I look forward to talking with the ladies about our books, I like the feeling of knowing that they are reading the same thing at the same time and I wonder as I go along what they are thinking about the story.  I feel community in the reading just as much as I do at the actual book club when we are talking.

It took a year, but I have achieved a level of happiness within myself that I have never had before. 

I choose myself. 

I like myself.

It turns out that loving yourself really is possible, if you just make the space.

My soul library now has a “me” section, and I add selections to it all the time!