Intro

Welcome to the Freedom from Empty Podcast: Building Strong, Effective, Resilient Leaders and Humans. My name is Booth Andrews, and I am your host. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode. 

Transcript

As of the recording of this podcast, I just returned from a trip to Martha’s Vineyard. My mother lived there for more than a decade. She first moved to the Vineyard after finishing her course work at Boston College for her PhD. When she was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and an accompanying immune deficiency in 1999, we were grateful that she lived on an island. 

I used to imagine that I would be able to take my family to the Vineyard at least once a year. But in fact, until last week, I had not been back to the Vineyard since we packed up Mom’s things and scattered her ashes in the Fall of 2012. My oldest daughter was with me on that last trip, but my other two kids were not old enough to have memories of the Vineyard. In fact, the only time my son had been to the Vineyard was when I was pregnant with hi.! In many ways, it felt like an important trip. 

As the plane landed, a little voice inside me started singing a P.Diddy song of all things, “I’m coming home, I’m coming home, tell the world I’m coming home.” (I have linked it in the transcript). 

In my hyperfunctioning years, the Vineyard used to be the only place I could REALLY relax. Something about the combination of the place and the relationship I had with Mom at that point in my life. A friend of mine with whom I worked in my first career went with me to the Vineyard once. She and I couldn’t BE more different–me, super high strung (then) and her, a wandering free spirit. Years later, she admitted that she had been nervous about traveling with me because of my hyper Type A personality. She had been pleasantly surprised to find that I was a completely different person on the Vineyard.

As we prepared for the trip, I thought about the things I wanted to show my kids. Their grandmother’s favorite places and things to do as she showed us “her” island; the rituals and experiences that had become part of the fabric of the place for me: hopping in the car to catch the best vantage point for the sunset; the coffee shop where she used to bake; the lobster picnics with lobsters fresh off the boat; the farmer’s market, and so on. I signed us up for a sunset sail thinking that my kids had never been on a sailboat and that would be a great experience to add to their memories. From time to time, I also caught myself idealizing the trip in my mind. And then, thankfully, I would catch myself. Because I have learned not to idealize moments, particularly when other people are involved. How did I learn this? Well, through experience of course. 

I remember as a mom with young kids, planning what I imagined would be a “fun adventure” only to have them misbehave, carry on, and be miserable (making me miserable) the whole time. I remember we took the girls to The Melting Pot for a fondue dinner not long before I gave birth to their baby brother thinking it would be a fun celebration. And, they did everything we told them not to do during the entire meal; so much so that we swore off taking them to dinner at a restaurant for the foreseeable future. There was the Mother’s Day brunch where someone set a napkin on fire. And the very expensive lesson of a trip to Disneyworld the week between Christmas and New Year’s when the park was so full you literally could not see Main Street and we stood in line all day for about 4 rides. There are more stories than I can remember and recount. 

But back to the Vineyard . . . two nights it was too foggy to see the sunset . . . including during the sunset sail . . . and one night the sunset was blocked by the clouds. 

The kids bickered and fought and got on each other’s nerves and my nerves. 

My youngest broke his hand the week before we left and so we had to navigate his frustration and the tension between wanting to be in the water but hating the waterproofing sleeve. 

The first two days of our stay there, there was hammering either next to us or above us or both for most of the day; commencing promptly at 8am. 

One night I spent sleeping with one ear open because I thought my son might be coming down with croup. 

My middle daughter felt sad because of her lack of memories of being there while my oldest daughter felt protective of her own special memories of this place. 

And we grieved the missing piece–my Mom. 

I found that some traditions just wouldn’t be the same without her. And some things had changed. 

The chocolate shop we used to visit on every trip closed down in 2019. The coffee shop still had maple walnut scones, but they weren’t quite the same as she used to make. 

The sculpture garden had fewer sculptures in it. 

And while the experience of a lobster picnic is etched in my memory, it is also messy and a little more challenging to pull off when you don’t live there and have all of the supplies on hand. And let’s be real . . .eating lobster on a beach sometimes means sand on your lobster. 

I will say that one of the highlights of the trip was getting upgraded from the economy car to a jeep . . . a perfect vehicle for cruising an island. 

And the sunset at Aquinnah on the last night was absolutely breathtaking.

All of this has me reflecting on the pressure we put on ourselves (and often on others) for certain moments or experiences to be “special” or “perfect” when the reality is that life is messy, uncomfortable and rarely perfect. And the more pressure we apply, the more we configure the perfect moment in our minds. . . the more likely we are to be disappointed. Not only that, if we spend all of our time and energy being upset about what isn’t rather than embracing what is, the more likely we are to miss the beauty and the gifts of the present moment (even when it’s messy). 

I was talking to a friend this morning who scattered her mother’s ashes yesterday on the 1-year anniversary of her mother’s death. And we talked about how “idyllic” this scene is in the movies; particularly when compared to the reality. The real experience is more like this . . . 

When my mother passed away, the crematorium burned down. While her body was there. I CANNOT MAKE THIS STUFF UP. The crematory staff assured my sister that Mom had been safely tucked away in the basement by the time of the fire, but both of my sisters thought it more likely that Mom had been in the oven when the place caught fire. If you knew my mother, you would know why they might think such a thing . . . it sounds exactly like something my mother would do on her way out of this realm. Fast forward 6 months and we are on the Vineyard, with her ashes, preparing to scatter them in the ocean at Aquinnah at sunset. 

We had the idea that we would place the ashes in a pretty cardboard box which would be pulled in by the water and taken out with the tide. But we had difficulty getting the plastic bag of ashes out of the urn. So much so that we joked that we must have had some of the building too, because our mother wasn’t a very big person. Finally, we retrieved the ashes and put them in the box. We put the box in the water and . . . it started to float . . . parallel to the beach . . . in the direction of other people who were still at the beach. Well that wasn’t going to work!! 

I am pretty sure my oldest retrieved the box from the water. And together, she and I stood on a large rock that was maybe 20 feet away from the shore and emptied the ashes into the ocean. Again, missing an important detail . . . The ashes were now between us and the shore. And we had to wade through my mother to get back to shore!! 

Not exactly the idyllic, picture perfect experience. Right?!?! So horrible it is actually comical. And perfectly unforgettable.

There are lots of reasons we put pressure on ourselves and on particular moments. Maybe we save all our hopes and dreams for those special moments. Maybe we are trying to save up special memories in fear (or as we face the reality of losing someone we love). Maybe we think those special moments will assuage our soul or fix something that is broken in our relationship or within us. Maybe the pressure is amplified by social media . . . when we look at other people’s posts and all we can see are the beautiful, often filtered images; a construct that is only partially grounded in reality. 

A very wise friend said something to me during the last year of Mom’s life–when I was forever torn between the roles of mother, daughter, wife and CEO–and I couldn’t decide where I was supposed to BE because my Mom was dying approximately 170 miles from where I lived and worked. My friend said this, “You are never going to be able to fill your bucket with enough memories to mitigate the grief of losing your Mom.” And I have found this to be true. 

There will never be enough “perfect” moments–frankly there will never be enough even imperfect moments–to save us from our grief or heal what needs to be healed. We cannot mend the holes in our hearts, souls, or relationships with perfect moments–ours or anyone else’s. And spending our lives chasing “perfect” leaves us feeling exhausted and empty as I explored more in the “Never Enough” blog and Episode 2 of this podcast (which I am linking in transcript).

When our present feels untenable or our hearts are broken or we spend all of our time and energy ignoring, denying or shoving down the messages that our bodies and minds are sending to us, it is tempting to create and feed a construct of the power of the perfect moment to fix what hurts or to fill our empty bucket. But the irony is that learning to sit in the present, in the comfortable and the uncomfortable, is one of the most powerful techniques for finding joy and healing. And as Glennon Doyle says, when we learn that we can withstand the pain, we don’t have to be afraid of it anymore. 

I had to succumb to severe mental illness to fully learn to embrace the present moment. But even before then, I learned to take the pressure off of my kids and myself by resisting the temptation to create an idealized expectation of “special moments” in our lives. I have found this practice allows me to more fully embrace what comes. Is this an area of your life where you can take some pressure off and give yourself and others space to breathe? I encourage you to give it a try. 

Outtro

Thank you for listening today. And, if you haven’t already, please hit subscribe and remember to rate this podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. When you subscribe and rate, you make it easier for other people to find this content. If you write a review of the podcast, I will share it on air in a future episode.

I look forward to being back with you next time!