My mom was just reminiscing with me about a silly day from my first grade years.
She talked about the kid who "stole" my lollipop. "Stole" is probably what she heard. Actually, as I recall, I gave it to him. He asked me. It wasn't even out of generosity, he already had one, I was just too shy and too "polite" to tell him to buzz off. This silly story brings me back to how those people pleasing/confrontation hating habits have gotten me into plenty of trouble over the last 6 years.
"No."
"No" is actually pretty new for me as I was generally a people pleaser before I had Oliver. The experience of having my son turned me into a completely different person. The last 6 months have completely undone my last 6 years.
When I was in college, I was badly manipulated by a young man I'd been friends with for a while. He pushed my boundaries of comfort and I would stop communications with him, rather than communicate clearly. I actually hoped he would just not notice and maybe leave me alone. This of course didn't work and apologetically I would resume our relationship. This backfired as he pushed me further and further, as I felt telling him "no" was not polite and I found myself in a worse and worse situation. Far enough that in his disregard telling him "no" simply didn't work.
Following that experience, I began to learn and identify peoblems, enough to breed some understanding and empathy toward others, but not enough to change me.
What has propelled me the furthest 6 years later was the birth of my sweet little boy. He brought with him some real treasures.
Our pregnancy, labor, and even postpartum were very complicated and sometimes traumatic. Even now I am struggling daily with it.
Reeling, I hashed out my very angry WTF postpartum experiences with a woman who, after pointing out the nightmares of our story also pointed out to me the treasures I could dig up from them- the biggest being my ability to simply do what I want to do.
The implications of this time in my life propelled me forward by its sheer impact. enough that 7 months have passed and I still cannot go to work without thinking about my pregnancy and birth, wrought with anger born out of trauma, trauma born out of our own passive natures.
But the treasure is that now I simply have no time tolerance or patience for passivity. The treasure is the newfound gall to listen to my gut against opinion, put my foot down, say no, be in charge of my choices, son, care. Disagree, to not worry about offending or dancing around the issue, to make my call, to be selective with the communication I allow to be directed toward me, to take control, be concise and honest for the sake of other people's valuable time, and for my own sake. To have courage. To not be made to feel badly for choosing something different. To not be coerced. To not go so far as to justify when someone treats us poorly, as I have done. To not choose unsupportive relationships.
It feels simple now, because it is not worth it to be walked on. Bad habits can be devastating.
I have recently thought of myself as a former people pleaser and it feels like something gross that is stuck to me. I shudder at it and it will no longer be my identity. I don't have to be that person and I refuse to be.
I am left now, stuck in the middle of this healing and changing process, seven months later, beauty mixed with pain, and a treasure in each hand.. the treasure of my perfect boys and of personal growth.
These last months, never in my life have I feel so unheard. I fear sharing my story because it has not always been met with validation. I feel trapped in this.
I am so angry and I hope for healing. And I'm not sure how to move past all of this. But I do know how to prevent it from happening again and it is worth it.
I've been thinking about the people pleaser thing a lot. I no longer want to identify as one and only recently realized that I dont have to, though I have my whole life, growing out of it since the birth of my son. Now I am passionate about being assertive and direct, and not feeling so bad about treating the things that are important to us as important. It's a hard lesson and it's so valuable. I stress to others how important it is to make the change in order to prevent something very damaging from happening down the road. But maybe for some of us it will not click until the experience transforms us.
Either way, I'm never going back! Assertive. ♡
