WHAT DOES FREEDOM LOOK LIKE?

It seems so simple. But it’s probably the hardest question you will ask yourself. What does freedom look like for you? We grow up with very little freedom. We get to play freely as kids, and that’s about as close to the feeling of freedom as you can get, if you can remember it, but we always had someone over us telling us what to do, interrupting our free play time. We had society telling us things too! Lots of things. Stay in school. Get a good paying job. Maybe get married and have a couple of kids. We were always told to DO something. We weren’t told to BE something, unless it had to do with what we DID for a living. Be a doctor. Be an engineer. Be a mother. All those things involved doing something. Nobody said, learn to BE happy. Find JOY. BE FREE! At least I don’t remember that being my message. I had to clean my room, get good grades, then I had to pay my bills. Then I got married and had kids. There went my freedom!

Of course, we all have to do stuff we don’t want to. We have to brush our teeth everyday, right? I guess we have the freedom to not brush them if we don’t want to, but most of us want to. So I suppose it comes down to want. I wanted kids. But I didn’t want a lot of the things that came with that life. Who wants to do dishes and clean toilets? Maybe some people like that. That does not look like freedom to me. I get why people want to go live in a van down by the river. You have one plate and no toilet! But I want a nice set of plates and a toilet so maybe freedom is insisting that someone else do the dishes and clean the toilet! That’s where I went wrong.

I did a lot of things I didn’t want to do because I felt they had to be done, and if you want something done, do it yourself. Then I would just be bitter, bitchy and angry because I was doing shit I didn’t want to do!! That was me, for a long time. I was happy. I was fulfilled. And I was bitchy a lot. Not any more or less than any average mom, let’s be fair. It’s a mom thing. Most of us do not feel free. And I did not feel free. Because I was not doing what I really wanted to do. I was doing so many things from the imprinting of ‘should do’. So then I stopped doing anything I didn’t want to do anymore. I tried to watch the ‘shoulds’ in my thought patterns. Of course I want to brush my teeth. And I like a clean house so I do MY dishes happily. Some things require hired help, which require money, which requires you to do things like work. But my toilet is clean because I hired someone to do it and I didn’t have to be a bitch to get it done. I’d rather work than clean my toilet. I got real about what I really wanted to do. I would put myself back to those times when I would be allowed to play freely as a small child. What did I do? What did I like? Looking past all the childhood trauma, which we all have, and just focus on what it was like being a little kid. We all have fond memories somewhere in our psyche.

I loved horses and had a huge collection of Bryer ponies. I loved collecting rocks, shells and fossils. I loved stuffed animals and collected pets of all kinds. I always had a fish tank. I loved to draw. Didn’t we all? I loved building Barbie houses. I loved playing teacher with my dolls. I would also play office which was weird. I’d shuffle papers around. Probably because I saw my mom working at her desk. I would make clay jewelry with feathers that I would find in the yard. I would use all my mom’s foaming carpet cleaner to make mud pies! I had one good friend and that was all I needed. We would let our imaginations run wild and just come up with things to do and games to play. Ohhhh those were the days. I want to feel like that again. I want to feel joyous, wild and free. What does that look like? Do I break out my Barbie dolls?

I try and follow my heart more. But I can do that now because I don’t have dependents living with me, if we don’t count my husband. They are our hearts while we have them. That is the way it is. But we get to live beyond the raising of the kids and follow our hearts again. We get to fossil hunt again. We get to leave the dishes in the sink for days, even weeks if we want to because we can. I have real horses now and I can’t imagine my life without them. Riding them makes me feel free. I’m still working out what freedom looks like and more importantly what does it feel like? To wake up and do only what you feel like doing is the goal. But that doesn’t always work either. We need plans. We need to make ourselves do things we don’t want to. So it’s a balance. Finding that balance is the trick. I say NO a lot more now, as you may have surmised! But I can’t always say no. Sometimes I must say Yes even if I don’t really want to. But does it make me resentful and bitchy? That is the trick for me. I do things I don’t want to do, but I can accept some things with grace. There are some things I just don’t want to do anymore because when I do them, I am a bitch. I am a bitch because I’m resentful and did not follow my heart’s desire. So let me say No, it’s for your own good. And please go wash your own dish!