I got a good lesson about expectations this past weekend. The universe is always teaching 💫
I fell in love with the community we were camping in 4 years ago. I immediately wanted to bring Destiny there.
After an absolutely magical experience I knew I wanted to share it with her.
This was the year things finally aligned 🙌
I knew exactly what I wanted to show her. What I wanted her to experience.
It was NOT what she experienced. 😳
She actually got hurt almost as soon as we got there. We were both heartbroken that she had to sit out of so many things 🥺 After everything we'd looked forward to 💔
She decided to stick it out and see where the weekend went 🤞
As I was walking with her on our third day, I let her in on the lesson I'd just learned.
It was always MEANT to go this way.
It was never about sharing what I thought she'd fall in love with. It wasn't about all the things I'd hyped up.
It was about taking her somewhere that gave HER the space to experience whatever she was meant to experience.
I fell in love with the freedom. The chaos of the kids being fully feral and living out loud.
I saw the sheer space available for unbridled authenticity and I wanted her to explode into it with her full self.
I brought her somewhere that touched my soul but I made the mistake of adding a layer of expectation for her journey there.
She actually found quiet. 🧘♀️
She found slow mornings 🌅
She found 1-on-1 connections. 🤝
She found reading next to a friend in the shade of a tree 🌲
She found building a rock wall in a creek for hours 🪨
She found quietly reading stories to toddlers in a fort 📚
She found falling asleep easy 😴
She found star gazing and constellations ✨
She found eating apples from a tree 🍏
She found playing chess in the afternoon ♟️
She found stirring honey 🐝
She found stopping to look at how deep blue the sky was 🙏
She didn't find what I fell in love with for her. That wasn't her lesson.
She found what SHE was meant to find 💯
I found the reminder that I don't always know best 👀
The reminder that we are here to walk alongside our children as they live THEIR lives.
It was never about me.
I fell in love with what I needed to on that land 4 years ago. It showed me she deserved the freedom to be herself.
I never took her back to school after that weekend. I KNEW I could do better.
I got exactly what *I* needed then.
*I* was the one that needed permission to live out loud, to do things differently, and to lean into the unknown. To not care what others thought and to live unapologetically.
I didn't need her to experience what changed me. I needed to give her the room to have an experience that changed HER.
That's exactly what she got 🫶
The universe is always conspiring for our greatest good. This past week was no different.
Loosen that grip mamas. It's not all on you. Our babies are being held by something far greater than us 💫🌈🌙💕
