Are You Taking Your Opportunities?

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Here is my beautiful mother wearing her ‘wow’ colours at a family wedding at the age of nearly 90! If you’re lucky enough to have a mother still alive, like me, even at 91, I hope she has inspired you in some way, as mine has. Watching my mother, I’ve learnt never to give in, no matter how old you are and to keep active and busy, taking every opportunity to travel, see the world and spend time with friends and family.

No Mother is Perfect!
As I write this on Mothers’ Day, I am reminded of Abraham Lincoln’s words that appeared on the flowers my son and his wife gave me today: ‘All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my mother’. I was jokingly reminded too of an incident that was not my finest hour when my son remembers me completely losing it on one occasion at the dinner table when he was about 11, where, as a result of many trying weeks of severe frustration and provocation, I threw my son’s dinner on the floor during a family meal. I am not proud of this and I hope my son has since forgiven me for that appalling lack of self control on my part.

However, I am writing about it here to highlight the fact that while motherhood is a joy and a privilege, it is also downright hard work, full of sacrifice, frustration and anxiety and that we need to forgive ourselves for moments like these and hope that our children will remember the good stuff about their childhood more than the bad and that we will do the same for our mothers -and fathers as well for that matter!

Families are wonderful but they are never perfect and come in all shapes and sizes these days. Many are broken, struggling and often reconstituted into step families with all the challenges that brings.

This week I spoke to a woman who I met for the first time in a surgery who really inspired me with this profound thought. When she found out she couldn’t have children, she said that once she had got over the grief, she realised all the worthwhile and wonderful things she could do. For instance, she recognised that since her sister wasn’t that interested in taking her own children to museums, galleries, concerts and fun parks, she could step in and have the joy of taking them herself. Today,as a result, she has a wonderful relationship with her niece who is studying at University.She also spoke of all the freedom and opportunities she had to travel extensively and see the world.

My coaching tips this week are drawn from the example of that woman and from my very imperfect motherhood moment all those years ago.First, when life doesn’t deal us the card we are hoping for, we can often do far more with the cards we already have in our hands if we look at them with a fresh perspective. What opportunities are there for you, sitting there in your life right now waiting to be  taken? Also, could guilt and lack of forgiveness of yourself or somebody else be holding you back from enjoying all the great things that life has to offer?

Contact me if you think you could benefit from life coaching to help you make more of your life. I would be delighted to help.

Comments

  1. Steve Fletcher says:

    You Mum looks amazing for her age Catherine! Steve.

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