Day 9 #Trust 30 - Afraid to Do by Mary Jaksch

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson


Emerson says: “Always do what you are afraid to do.” What is ‘too scary’ to write about? Try doing it now.

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Scary to write? Not my views on living here in China or on what it means to be an American. No problem expressing frustration or happiness to be a Mom. But there is one thing. And that is the fear of what happens next year when we move back from Shanghai to the US next year. So here goes....

Natalie will have lived half her life here in Shanghai on September 16, 2011 (yes, we have it on the calendar titled "Natalie's Half her Life Day". Her Mandarin, while not as progressed as it should be having a 40 minute session every day, is passable. Tom's doing some work that he really enjoys (I will hesitate to say love) and has had great opportunity to learn. And I... Well, I have accomplished a lot of things here during the last 4 1/2 years.  Speaking another language, taking time away from my career to spend with Natalie, working at Roche Diagnostics for two years. So, we should be glad we had this opportunity, right? Well, somewhere along the way it stopped becoming an opportunity and became our way of life. So we don't finish one chapter and start the next, we changed the book.

So now when we leave, we have to re-establish again. But it won't be re-establish. It will have to be a re-invention. I fear that our family is not ready for that. It's like a big pile of dirty laundry and some you sort into the machine wash pile and some you sort into hand wash. Some things can be washed with others, some have to be separated  And there is always a single sock or a pair of underwear that has seen it's better days that needs to go into the trash. Our family has to do that before we move back. And I am a bit worried about how the sorting will leave us feeling. What didn't we accomplish? What changed for the better? the worse? 

I see that the best thing to do is to 1) recognize the concerns 2) put a plan together to eliminate the unknowns and fear and 3) be willing to take the risk that the future might actually work out without me worrying about what needs to be done now. I mean, I am going to be "Self-Reliant" in 21 more days, right?

So, I guess that this isn't quite as bad as I thought.