On Mattering
I had a huge revelation tonight. After attending a fantastic conference with Brendon Burchard (High Performance Academy) and learning about important questions to ask myself like “do I matter?”, I wondered if I really did matter? This thought provoking notion really got to me. For the longest time I have felt purposeful and like I truly was making a difference somehow by contributing beauty with my images into this otherwise nutty world we live in.
But today, amongst 412 other thoughts running through my head I really started to think and contemplate this question. And I don’t know if it’s hormones or what, but a part of me (maybe the hormonal part) answered like this. “I don’t think I matter.” This could be because recently I’ve stopped being the one who reaches out all the time, and that decision extended to some members of my family. When I said I wasn’t going to do that anymore, they interpreted it as I was cutting them off, but that wasn’t the case. I was simply saying that I am at a point in my life where I would like mutual communication and demonstration of caring.
What I realized, is that for so long, I have wanted to matter to them, so badly, and to my husband’s family as well and had tried so very hard to ‘make ‘ that happen and the simple truth is, I didn’t. I just don’t matter to them and I have been grappling with this for the longest time, because I could not understand how I could not matter to them, when they mattered to me so much?!
The whole concept of feeling like I mattered, even if I don’t matter to my own family members was incredulous to me. How in the world could I matter in this world if I don’t matter to my own family, I asked myself. And after wallowing in my self-pity, I started thinking, “Well, I have three choices here”. One is I can spend the rest of my life feeling absolutely worthless, feeling sorry for myself, being bitter or sad. Another is that I could kill myself so I don’t have to feel that intense pain and misery. And the last choice is I can decide that I matter anyway and remember that I matter to my husband, my friends, my dogs, people I have smiled at on the street and people I haven’t even met yet.
There is nothing I wanted more than a family in this life, a big Italian, yelling, fun, close, pasta eating, Christmas celebrating Italian family. When I was 25, I wanted 6 kids. When I was 28, I wanted 4 kids. When I was 34, I wanted 2 kids, but instead got divorced from my first marriage. When I was 42 I wanted 1 child, but called off the engagement. When I was 44 I still wanted 1 child but my future husband didn’t, plus I was pretty much out of time and before I knew it I was that woman on that T shirt with the caption “Oh no! I forgot to have kids!” So not only did I run out of time, I’m Jewish! So having that kind of family was more or less ‘off the plate.”
So what’s a 56, childless woman to do? What kind of legacy can I contribute and leave to this world? Stay tuned for the next thought digging, truth revealing blog post. Actually, I have opted to choose number 3; remembering that I do matter, to other people and to myself and to the universe, as we all do.
Be Brave, Be Strong Be YOU!
Robbie
PS: YOU MATTER!
