Finally! At last! It’s here! Boom… Boom… Boom… is in hand and ready to be seen by all. Gaurav, Troy and I are all very proud. We will have pictures up on the website very soon. Poor Gaurav is working around the clock on e-book production, website update and the Full of Ideas website. He has a cold and I’m not surprised! Come Christmas and I think we will both slump happily into anything that will hold us!

“Because I said so!” The one phrase I vowed never to use, ever! Sad to say, it has popped out my mouth on more than one occasion. Speaking (I think) for all parents, I think its accurate to say that we can only tolerate a certain number of whys and buts before we reach our absolute human limit and “because I said so” flies out our mouths. In that moment, many other things that we have learnt about being a ‘good’ parent, fly out the window! “Because I said so” is our little (perhaps childish) way of hanging onto the control that we feel slipping from our grasp. Therein lies the universal parenting misnomer. We have no control to begin with! Parenting is learning to live with this with grace. Don’t get me wrong, having no control does not mean bad parenting. Quite the opposite, I believe. Parenting is recognizing the separateness of our children and reacting to them as individuals. Really seeing them is what it’s all about. Good parenting is knowing that the whys and buts are not defiant acts but attempts to be heard and seen. 

Why do so many find it so easy to judge others? Are there any amongst us who are really able to do this? When others do things, see things or feel things differently from the way we do, shouldn’t this be a cue to question our own beliefs and actions rather than theirs? In fact, is this not the only way we can possibly learn, change and grow? I want to leave this earth having seriously questioned myself along the way and I hope that at 100 I will know much more than I do now. Yes, I plan on living to at least that age! (I apologize to my kids, in advance!)

At 51, there is less wondering what life is going to bring because it already has. This is not to say that I no longer contemplate, because I do. But now I contemplate ways that I can make my life happier right now. Misery only relates to the past and future, never the now. I spend a lot of energy extending my “nows. ” I’ll be the first to accept that it’s not easy. If I had to say one thing, (not that anyone’s asking) that I have learnt by 51 that has changed my life, it would be this. I have learnt self-kindness. I have learnt to ask the question, “What would I do if I was my best friend?” It’s amazing what a little question like that can  do. Guilt, self-deprecation and self-criticism are not things I consciously choose today. I have spent far too much of my life ruminating on those sentiments. Not that it was wasted. Whatever was, has brought me to what is. And what is, is pretty good.