When everything feels icky & squirmy & totally uncertain
Mom Says:
I was a bulging, sweating, 8 months pregnant hot mess in the middle of one of the hottest heat waves we have ever experienced. My husband will recount to you tales of woe and suffering as he endured the words “I’M UNCOMFORTABLE!!” more times than I care to remember. It has become a standing joke between us, one that is typically accompanied with boohoos and mockery to indicate said Uncomfortablist is being entirely unreasonable.
The word comfort has been an enemy in so many ways throughout my life. At the start of our marriage, I would share with my husband (often) my thoughts that the minute we were comfortable, we were done for. Comfortable meant being normal, stagnant, conforming and lacking passion. I didn’t want us to ever get there. I wanted us to strive for date nights and spicy moments so that the notion of comfort would never take hold.
I am often found pushing myself past my comfort zone. Whether it’s skydiving, scuba diving, motorcycling, bungee jumping, or climbing mountains, I have done it all. At the start of every one of these adventures, I am scared poopless. Every. Single. Time. Until I do it & then realize that that wasn’t so bad after all.
I like it & I don’t like it. It feels icky and squirmy and often disagreeable. Yet something about pushing through the hard parts, to conquer and achieve a challenge on the other side makes it so worth the initial grossness of it all.
The thing is, I have started to think of my comfort zone as exactly that. It’s just a zone. It’s not your prison cell. Your zone can take on different shapes or sizes. The more we push, the bigger our space of allowable adventure becomes. We just have to keep pushing out the walls.
As we hit our 3 month window before we leave on our #CuppaRTW Round The World trip, I have recognized I have that uncomfortable feeling once again. This feels new for me because this time it’s not just me getting out of the zone. We as a family are taking this on, all parts of it feel foreign and unsettled.
I have been trying to explore what is actually causing these whirl-a-gig butterflies inside me and I think for the most part I have figured it out.
- We are planning to not plan which for a planner makes things all kinds of up in the air. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster that’s pulled out of the station and already on the ride but need to get past the urge to hold my breath through the whole thing because its a long time before its over.
- I am curious how we are going to manage surviving as a family 24/7 over the next many months. We are a strong team and we all love each other dearly but we already know we are going to plan for breaks or we will end up killing each other before we get out of South America. We have even invented a safe word to roll out on the days for the kids (or each other) are driving us so batty that we might say something we regret. We are also planning on taking days in which one of us takes the kids and in which we each take one kid to keep things different and exciting.
- Very soon, we will no longer have a home. We are letting go & rid of most of our stuff. The grounding stuff. As we start packing up, we are starting to work on how to create a new version of “Home” for us & the kids. We will have no place to come back to and the concept of coming home will now have to truly live in “home is where the heart is”. So how do we teach that to our kids?
I know these are all just growing pains as we start this new chapter in our life. I just can’t wait till my brain is settled on the other side and starts feeling more comfortable (baahaaahaa) with it all.
Dad says:
oh, the pain of comfort…
I am, unlike above, comfortable with comfort to a point. The balance I constantly try to strike is to look around and appreciate accomplishments before running off to literally jump of a cliff. There is little joy in a life so hectic that you forget to breathe, look around, smell the roses, you know, LIVE…
Part of joy is enjoy, which is a poorly spelt word that should be in-joy. Get in the moment, relish it, then set you sights on the next adventure.
You have offered me an uncomfortable, but exciting new perspective. My younger years were extremely uncomfortable so I desperately yearned for comfort in my adult years. I saw comfort as the very best thing. I didn’t even really care what it looked like, I just wanted to feel safe. But yes, as comfort settles in we can get complacent and miss out on the tremendous vitality beyond our comfort zone. Time to bust out! 🙂
Time is right! So looking forward to where that takes you Michelle!
I am googling Kilimanjaro and family travel and trying to feel okay with some upcoming events even though I am 100 % out of my comfort zone. I take heart knowing it’s not just me and if you can do it then maybe I can as well. I am brave I think mostly but lately I feel like my brave is also being tested. I am not visiting Kilimanjaro but embarking on a big trip. Also scared poopless.