My daughter is getting so big, so fast. They always told me this was going to happen. How fast time flies by when you have a little one, and how they seemingly grow before your eyes.

I didn’t believe them, not really, until I started getting on lots of airplanes for work. Flying all across the country to do the human connection thing that is so vital to the business I’m in, and what has helped create so much professional satisfaction in the last year. I can see some of the goals I’ve had finally getting closer to real, and I’m learning so much about setting newer, better, different goals.

But every time I walk out the door to go further those aspirations - ones that I hope will form a secure foundation for my family for years to come - I say so long to a very small person who doesn’t quite understand what I’m up to.

To her, in her tiny little three-foot world, I am everything. I am omnipotent, capable of delivering the finest breakfast waffles, healing bonked heads, finding lost small purple bunnies amongst the terrible sofa cushions, and telling the best stories. I am the Solver of All Things, the better-maker when we’re sick and the comfort when there are scary noises outside. She relies on me.

So too, do the people with whom I work, sometimes. The folks among my friends and colleagues who seem to think I don’t sleep (I do), that I can tackle any challenge they hand me, that I can keep up an endless pace with a smile on my face, conquer the world, make a difference, befriend everyone, move mountains.

But Abby doesn’t care about that. She doesn’t care about Twitter. She doesn’t care about my stupid blog. She doesn’t care if I ever churn out another webinar or whitepaper or stand on another stage to give a silly speech.  She’d much prefer I stay on the ground. In our living room or the backyard. Her vision of superhero status is rooted in different things. Bigger things. Maybe better things.

If I’m going to choose what kind of a superhero to be, I’m going to be her kind. The kind whose powers are wrapped up in cookie baking and drawing of endless chalkboards full of happy face flowers. The kind who can make time slow down, just a little bit, to hold fast to new discoveries and sentences full of laughter and nonsense and amazement at the world she’s discovering in toddler-sized chunks.

I don’t need to be the superhero that’s internet famous. I don’t need to be the popular superhero, or the funny one, or even the smart one. I don’t need to be the superhero of social media, or business, or my circle of friends.

The only kind of superhero I care to be is a quiet one, a steady one, a human and fallible one.  One seen through blue eyes, giggles, and fingers sticky with pancake syrup and fruit snacks. I don’t need to save or conquer the world. I just need to be the guidepost, the best kind of simple superhero I know how to be, to give the world, instead, to her.

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I’ve had a bit of an introspective year, as you might tell from my posts here. It’s been one full of change, transition, learnings, and lessons.

Some of them have been beautiful, like learning that I’m a much better mom than I ever thought I could be. Some have been hard, like accepting that I have some deeply rooted self-esteem issues that need sorting. Some are still percolating, and maybe always will be.

Often, when we reflect on self, we focus on what’s wrong, broken, falling short. Discovering what we need to fix.

But the more interesting thing happens when we find, along the way, the things that we won’t compromise. That are so valuable to us that we just can’t have it any other way, even if they’re not perfect.

For instance, I’m loyal. To a fault. I have a tiny, elegant and messy handful of close friends. And I would stand in front of a train for them. Does that mean I put myself out there to get hurt? You bet your butt it does. It’s happened more than once, and I’m sure it will happen again.

So I keep asking myself if the answer is really to keep being so open to trust and accepting of others and willing to invest deeply in relationships that matter to me, on any level. And the answer is a resounding, uncompromising YES.

This isn’t to say I’m some kind of benevolent saint. I can be judgmental and stubborn. Quick tempered. Impatient. Those are all part of the realizations and exploration, too.

But I surprised myself at how vehemently I didn’t want to change some things about me, even if they weren’t perfect. It becomes about what matters deeply to you, and I suppose in my world, it’s knowing that I have a handful of people that I would go to lengths for. Because it makes me feel good to invest in other humans and give them the reassurance that someone would, for them.

So it’s piqued my curiosity. We all know what we’d love to change. But what won’t you compromise? What are the things that are so tied to who you are that letting them go just wouldn’t fit?

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

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Yes, I took time off of work. I put aside the email and the phone for the most part, and soaked up some sun and breeze and lake. I ate too much, slept too long, and cracked a beer at 2 p.m. on the boat dock most days. The weather was perfect, and in many respects, it was the picture perfect vacation.

But the best parts of this week had little to do with me.

I got to watch as my father adored my daughter, smitten with her as completely as I thought he might be. Tough, stoic Swede that he is, he melted the minute Abby showed up and smiled “Hi, Grampa!”. I’ve seen him smile more in the last 6 days than I remember in a long, long time.

My dad and I never had the “perfect” relationship, whatever the hell that means. He wasn’t my softball coach or the guy that came to all my music recitals or drove me and my girlfriends to the mall.

But seeing him with my daughter, laughing with her as they flung the garden hose around the front yard, I realize just how precious he is to me, flaws and all. In fact, that’s all part of what I’ve come to love about who and what he is. My daughter cares only that my dad is there to chase geese with and blow bubbles and throw rocks in the lake. Now, he’s precious to her.

I guess I never really needed him to be that textbook dad. I’ve learned a million things from him, many of which I’m only now starting to realize. Some of them I could never have learned from anyone else. And the magic is that now, as a mother and a grown daughter, I’m teaching him, too.

So vacation to me this year was partially about relaxing. But more than anything, it was about reconnecting, and embracing my dad - truly - as the person he is. Finally without reservation. It was about seeing my daughter take such joy in his silliness and his warmth. And knowing that I’ll be able to share with her, for years to come, the things about him that have helped make me who I am.

We’re all flawed. Being human can be hard. But there’s nothing like a vacation spent with family to remind you just how little some things are, and how big it is to love unconditionally. Who knew I’d find it, after 33 years, at the lake?

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I have two dogs. Rather, I have two four-footed aliens. I say that because I’m absolutely convinced something, somewhere sent these critters to me from another planet to bring me amazing amounts of joy in between the times they make me insane. Mostly so I won’t sell them to gypsies.

Riley

Riley is my first rescue. She’s mostly pit bull, probably part something else, and she’s truly…special. Like, in the kind of way where you can’t really make fun of her or it would be un-PC.

She’s neurotic, and I never really knew that dogs could be that way. In truth, it’s probably because she was mistreated at some point early in her life (I got her when she was just over a year old). But looking at it objectively, the aversion to plastic bags, brooms, the vacuum cleaner, the closet, the plunger, electric toothbruses, my toddler’s talking puppy dog and the pepper mill just seems a little…well…hysterical.

Riley is also maniacal about thunderstorms. Thunder causes her to run around in circles, up and over furniture, barking loudly and aimlessly at The Big Evil Noise That Will Clearly Come And Eat My Face And From Which I Must Protect Myself. If you let her outside, she does a couple of laps barking at the sky before she comes inside with that “What the f*ck is with the rain?!?” look on her face.

Maggie

Maggie is the second rescue. She’s 85 pounds of half Rottweiler, half pit bull, and all doofus. They say puppies calm down and stop being hyper when they’re around two. “They” lie. Maggie is going on four now, and the house is her jungle gym. Nevermind if you’re actually sitting on the couch when she vaults over it chasing one of the cats.

She’s utterly friendly, and utterly clueless. I mean, if dogs had IQs, I don’t think Maggie would have made it past finger painting in school. She’s sweet. She’s happy. Perpetually happy. And an absolute train wreck.

Dog Proofing

Ask any dog person and they’ll tell you that at times, we go to rather extraordinary measures to accommodate our animals. Mine are spoiled in all the typical fashions: they get to sit on the couch, they sleep in the bed with me, they occasionally get the part of the steak I can’t eat and they most certainly get all the attention, toys, and dog treats they can handle.

But when you have “special needs” dogs like I do, accommodating sometimes goes beyond just spoiling. As in engineering ridiculous solutions in order to prevent your house from being single handedly torn apart by two mouths and eight paws.

Especially now that I travel a great deal, I’m out of the house for days at at time. I have wonderful pet sitters that come in and check in on the girls (and the cats, who aren’t delinquent enough to warrant a blog post apparently), but even then I need to be sure that in between visits, my possessions go (almost) unscathed.

Dog proofing is really more a matter of realistic expectations than perfection. You know that no matter how hard you try, you’re going to forget to put away one of the kid’s books or a magnet or, you know, the phone. Something’s going to get eaten. So it’s more a matter of cutting your losses, deciding what casualties are acceptable, and putting your energy into protecting the important things. Like the furniture.

MacGyver Would Be Proud

Not every solution has been a pretty one. There was the failed baby gate experiment, which consisted of attempting to keep the dogs out of the bedroom and other areas of the house by making use of the now-obsolete baby gates. That would be fine if my dogs weren’t accomplished mountain climbers, which apparently they are. They just scaled them. Same with the upgraded solid-barrier system that we actually built and installed between the kitchen and the living room. Solid plywood. They ate it. Then climbed over it again.

It didn’t take me long to realize that keeping them OUT of certain rooms was going to be futile. So instead, I endeavored to make the rooms they were going to be in dog-proof. Ish.

The girls like the living room and the bedroom. They don’t much care about the other rooms of the house. The bedroom and living room are where all the smooshy furniture is, the places where they settle in for hours on end and make groaning noises while they dream doggie dreams and prove once and for all what suckers we humans are. (In fact, I think Riley’s snores are actually saying “dumbassssssss”)

So when I leave, there’s a bit of a production to protect the couches and the bed.

I take my nice, fluffy duvet with my awesome duvet cover, ball it up, and stuff it in the closet like all those in Metropolitan Home certainly do. I take the accent pillows and put them in there too because hey, they’d miss the duvet. So my closet, when I travel, is extraordinarily well appointed.

In the bathroom, I fold up the bath mat and put it in the tub with the bath toys, hoping that Maggie won’t find them.

I just shut the door to Abby’s room. You don’t put a big pile of cocaine in front of an addict. Seriously.

In the kitchen, everything on the counter that might smell remotely like food has to go UP somewhere. (I found the pepper mill in the living room last time. I mean, really). I put a child lock on the lazy susan that has pantry items in it. And I put a tin can full of pennies on top of the trash can. You’ve never seen a blockheaded dog move faster than when a can full of pennies hits a tile floor after an errant sniff at the trash can lid. Trust me.

As for the living room, that’s where the real engineering work happens. For Abby’s playspace, I put everything that CAN be put away in bins with lids that my doofus dogs can’t open. I stuff the couch throw pillows in the front hall closet, and make sure that things like remote controls and telephones are up and out of reach. I leave the television on just in case it makes the dogs thing there’s an authority in the house, though I think by now Law and Order has lost its ominous feeling.

And now, after many failed attempts to save my old couch from the Jaws of the Canines, I’m determined to ensure that my new sofas last more than a month. So I have them wrapped up like Christmas presents, covered in blankets and sheets, and a long length of rope (yes, rope) tied around the base so that the anchored blankets prevent the cushions from being pulled onto the floor and being unstuffed like a turkey at Thanksgiving. It’s kind of like a reverse drawstring sack thrown over my otherwise beautiful sofa and loveseat. My poor furniture is bound and gagged,  just to increase its chances of surviving yet another business trip.

By the time I’m done, my house looks like some kind of bizarre obstacle course. Or a tenement. Or both. Devoid of decorations but chock full of booby traps, failsafes, and the rigors of couch bondage.

But hey, at least the dogs are comfy.

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The old adage is that when life deals you lemons, you’re supposed to make lemonade. Truthfully, I can’t complain deeply. I have an amazing daughter, a job I really love, a warm and cozy house, and some wonderful friends that surround me.

I posted professionally about the “drop” that happens after gallavanting around the country at events, showcasing that “shining personality” and doing my best to be on, and happy, and connected. On the one hand, I’m so very lucky to be *able* to do what I do. But it’s a strange feeling to have a huge community surrounding you and have moments when you feel like you’re alone in the world.

But rather than throw a pity party, a good friend encouraged me to instead write about what makes me feel better in moments like this. So I’m taking him up on that challenge.

Incidental Contact

I’m the kind of person that really feels good when someone reaches out, even in a tiny little way just to let me know that they’re out there. I relish those text messages or Twitter DMs or email notes that are just letting me know someone’s thinking of me. I send lots of them, too. Because I know sometimes how that little reassurance can go a long way to making someone feel calm and more secure.

Reading

I’m a big book nerd. I read mostly historical fiction, suspense and mystery-type stuff as well as business books on my field of work. I read fast, too, and usually several books at a time. Books are my immersion into somewhere else, and often are the ticket to getting my brain out of whatever funk it’s in.

The best reading setup for me is curled in bed, with the window cracked to let in the breeze, my duvet (a splurge purchase) and a cup of hibiscus tea. I rarely make it past three pages before drifting if I’ve done things well.

My Mom.

What else is there to say about that? Sometimes you just freaking need your mom.

Music Indulgence

I am a confessed music junkie. I’ve spent obscene amounts of money on iTunes, Amazon mp3s and even good old fashioned CDs. I have dozens of gigabytes of music and I haven’t even ripped my classical collection. It’s that bad.

So while some people’s idea of retail therapy is a new pair of shoes, mine is a trip into the iTunes store and mining the music that matches or indulges my mood. When I’m sad or lonely, I tend toward harsh music to snap me out of my funk (I’m a bit of a metal head. Some of you that will shock. Some of you not so much.). I was a music major in college, so immersing - drowning - myself in music is second nature to me when words and other trappings of humanity fail me. It’s the expression I don’t have to express. I just find what taps a nerve and go.

My Daughter

(Hallmark moment warning). There’s few things more powerful than having your two-year-old daughter patter up to you and ask “Are you okay Mommy?” Talk about a signal that you need to get your shit together and snap out of it.

As a result, I’ve discovered that Play-Doh, getting soaking wet with the garden hose, sidewalk chalk and digging for worms in the garden can be remarkably cathartic, and really put a whole bunch of things in sharp perspective.

Go-To Movies

I was never the person that went to the movies terribly much, and as much as I love it, I still don’t get to go as often as I’d like. But I have an arsenal of killer go-to movies that I keep on DVD for these kinds of occasions.

Some favorites: Top Gun, the original Star Wars trilogy, The Muppet Movie, The Usual Suspects, Goodfellas or Casino, Fight Club, The Matrix, anything Monty Python (follow the shoe), crazy PBS Agatha Christie series’ like Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot (I know, WTF right?), Batman Begins or Dark Knight, Iron Man (comic nerd colors coming out), Blade Runner, Dumb and Dumber, Pulp Fiction, the original Day The Earth Stood Still. The list goes on…

Helping Someone Else

This might seem a strange one to some, but those of you who get it will totally understand.

Sometimes, the very best thing to do when you’re feeling rotten is to make someone else feel good. Help them, send a note that you’re thinking of them, say or do something kind and unexpected. For instance, I’m a spontaneous gift-giver. I love finding presents for people that reflect jokes we share or experiences they’ve had. Making someone else delighted is one of the best ways to remind myself that there’s a whole lot going on outside my little world.

So then. After writing this post, I already feel a little lighter, and I have a few ideas about people I can reach out to and help.

What about you?

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It comes as a surprise for many people when I tell them that I am only now coming into my own. My own me. My own something, that doesn’t have a qualifier - someone’s partner, employee, friend. I’m just…me.

It’s an interesting and scary experience sometimes, because when you’re often defined by how you enhance someone or something else, you tend to get lost in the shuffle.

But I’m learning that my soul, my person, is mine to sow. It’s mine to color with the things that make me, well, ME. The things that aren’t part of someone else but that rather are definitively Amber, for better or for worse.

I’ve had my moments like everyone else, wondering if I was a brilliant enough light to shine on my own. Wondering and hoping that I had something of value enough that a person knowing me only for me would find me and know that I enriched them somehow, at some place in their journey.

But I find spots every day. And they’re not always huge, not always transformational. But I’m learning things about the very fabric of me that are turning even my deepest-seated ideas on their heads. I’m not even who *I* thought I was. Perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to evolve, after all.

I still, however, catch myself staring a bit wide-eyed at myself, asking me if I know exactly what I’m doing or where I’m headed or just what I’m in for.

I don’t. I have no idea. But that’s the fun. Or the adventure, anyway.

I’m seeding my own garden, now, and it’s different and more diverse than it’s ever been. I don’t know who I’ll be tomorrow. I know that there’s something churning just beneath the surface, a part of me that’s borne of some heartache coupled with reality checks, and a good dose of acceptance and peace. It’s not about how I help define others anymore, but rather how I can lift up the world around me while finding my own definitive spot upon which to settle.

Instead of following footprints, I’m determined to sink my own, gently into the wet and giving sand and let the tide tell whose follow next, and when.

Photo credit: randysonofrobert

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The bridges are different than they’ve ever been.

Tonight, when I needed an ear - just a friendly contact with another human I liked - I reached out to someone I’ve yet to meet. Because his face was friendly and familiar, and he’s become comfortable to me.

I think that’s an increasingly common phenonmenon, and for those of us that spend a good deal of time online, more prevalent than ever. The definition of “stranger” has totally changed.

It used to be that a stranger was someone you’d never met. But that just doesn’t suffice anymore, does it? Perhaps the better questions is asking what “meet” means today. I’ve had thousands of conversations across the web, phone, video, email, instant message…and yet, many of these people feel more in tune with me - with my person - than people I’ve “known” my whole life.

We were once confined by our geography and the range of our travels to find the people that made up the fabric of our relationships. We met people through sweeping commonalities - school, work, neighborhood, mutual friends - and it was chance to connect with someone who shared (I mean really shared) anything about who we were.

If you were anything like me, you often wondered if there was anyone who shared anything like who you were.

But I’m not a slave to my physical space anymore. I still very much cherish live human contact. There is no replacement for that to me, not ever. But there is instead a new presence of people, somewhere between “I know you” and “I’ve met you” that really, truly matters. That makes it okay to reach out to someone when you’ve not yet shared a room with them, if only because you know that through all that aether, they might just not be a stranger after all.

Photo by antkriz on Flickr

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The world must sound different to me than it does to most. I don’t notice it, mostly because I’ve never much known it any different. But every once in a while, I’m reminded that I hear things just a little bit differently.

I’ve had ear afflictions ever since I was a little kid, all the way through early college. All those issues combined with the operations to correct them have left me very hard of hearing in my right ear. It’s not really something I talk about, mostly because I’m self conscious about it and don’t like to think anything is “wrong” with me. And in most cases, no one notices a thing.

But there are moments when I’m reminded that my world sounds a little different.

Sometimes it’s quite embarrassing. I was in a taxi cab with a good friend last week, who gently pointed out that I was nearly shouting at him in a very confined space. I’m sure I must do that often, and more often than friends point out. Each time, it’s humiliating.

If I speak at what’s probably a normal volume for everyone else, I have a hard time hearing myself. Which means I talk louder to compensate, and I don’t realize that I’m speaking far beyond the level that *others* need to hear me. I’m sure there’s been a time or two where I’ve been chalked up to being overly enthusiastic or annoying, all because I was inadvertently hollering so that the silence in my head wasn’t quite so deafening. (Ugh, the thought of being “that girl” just kills me.)

Dinner parties are sometimes my worst nightmare. Being seated on the end of a table is often complicated, especially if my right side is pointed toward the bulk of the crowd. I find myself smiling and nodding at collective conversation, hoping that I can pick up enough snippets along the way to be a knowledgable participant. Around me, always, is a kind of white noise.

The hardest part is that I’m often far more interested in the conversation than I’m capable of demonstrating, and I never quite feel like I’ve been as engaged as I’d like to be.

Conversations on my cell phone are hard, too, if I’m anywhere there’s background noise. In a car, in a store. I’m mortified every time I have to ask the person on the other end of the phone to repeat themselves. I want to shout sometimes “I SWEAR I’M PAYING ATTENTION!!”. But that would just require even more explanation.

Cocktail parties, hanging out in a music-filled bar, even work meetings with several people talking at once…all moments where I’m convinced someone is going to look at me and see the panic on my face. They’ll see that I’m trying desperately to distill one piece of coherent conversation from the whole, hoping that no one will notice that participating for me is a little bit harder than for everyone else.

[Let me digress for just a moment and say aloud that I am absolutely aware that my minor hearing difficulties are nothing compared to those with complete hearing loss or any number of other challenges. Knowing how I feel, I can only imagine what they must overcome.]

I’m social and outgoing most of the time, and I really enjoy meeting people. So it’s frustrating as all hell to me that these issues sometimes make that more difficult than I’d like. They certainly make me more self conscious.

So if we meet someday soon, please forgive me if I’m talking a bit too loudly, or leaning in a little close, or asking you to repeat yourself. I promise - I really promise - that I’m just glad to be there, talking to you. And even from within the white noise, I’m truly paying attention.

Photo credit: benleto

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Sometimes, the impossibly hard thing to do is to let go.

I’m terrible at it, actually. I am relentless about most things I do. Tenacious on good days, stubborn and bullheaded on others.

The hardest lesson I’m learning today is that some problems just don’t have a solution. Not everything works as you planned, and it’s impossible to plan for that. And when you’ve tried to fit every piece of the puzzle into the space but it just won’t go, it’s time to set it aside and let it go.

Letting go for me has often been a sign to myself that I failed. That I just wasn’t smart enough or patient enough or clever enough to figure it out. And if I let go, it was the same as giving up. The same as throwing my hands up in the air and claiming that I was too tired or lazy or inconvienenced to really *look* for the solution.

But I know now that there is a vast difference between not trying at all, and giving yourself the permission and peace to know when you gave it the best try you had. When you’ve done the latter, you can look at yourself in the mirror - tearfully, maybe - and accept that letting go *is* the answer.

I’m letting go today. It hurts. It makes me sad. It’s difficult to admit that I’ve tried all the answers I had and still come up short.

But I’m hopeful. Hopeful that I can now find some balance, some peace of mind, and a new path that’s meant for me.

Photo Credit: Mayr

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