Latest / The Raising Emotionally Intelligent Humans Podcast / The Bold 40th Birthday Move
Transcript
- Heidi: Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Raising Emotionally Intelligent Humans podcast. I'm Heidi Lindemann, your host, a single mom by choice to two little ones, a lover of feelings, a therapist. And we're here for another story. Today I'm gonna tell you a story about a bold move, a change that I made. But I wasn't sure that I could make. It's a birthday move. I'm gonna take you back to January of twenty twenty six. I was sitting in the living room with a group of women surrounding me. We were on our retreat. A business retreat. That both nourishes our souls. And gets some shit done. And the idea of birthdays came up because it's a big year for us. There's a lot of us turning forty. So we knew we had needed to plan what are we gonna do for all of our birthdays? How do we celebrate these important people in our lives? I knew right away. One hundred percent sure I wanna do a ritual. I wanna be immersed in love. I wanna be held by my community. I wanna be deeply connected inside. I want to reflect on who I am and who I'm becoming. I want to do something deeply meaningful. Without a doubt in my mind I knew that that's what I wanted to do. That's all I ever really wanted to do back in January. I wanted to be in as many rituals as I possibly could. I deeply, deeply desired to lead rituals for other women. I wanted to bring more sacredness into our everyday lives. To our lives that sometimes feel so mundane and routine. And the same old thing, day after day. Because I know I know that. Our everyday lives are filled with sacredness. I know that. And sometimes I have a really hard time accessing that to feel the sacredness. To feel the meaning of life, to feel full and love and joy and loving what was happening, to feel deeply connected to something that is more than me. So ritual. Absolutely want a ritual to ground myself back into my sacredness for my fortieth birthday. I was settled. I was sure. Yep. That's what I'm gonna do. I created a save the date invitation in January to send it to my favorite people so that they could save the date in September when I was going to do the search rule. Well Months went by. Something inside changed. I don't know what happened. I felt unsettled, almost a little disgusted every time I thought about a birthday ritual. Like, ew, I don't wanna. Then I'd pull myself back together. no no no. You love rituals. Everyone expects you to do a ritual, Heidi. You're going to do a ritual. You can do this. You can plan it. Come on, let's go. And I tried. I was like, can't think of anything I really want to do. Meh, I'll wait a few more months. Up land it like the week before or something. I don't know. There's a bug flying around. Side note. to the s right. But I was still like, Yeah, I'm gonna do it. I need to. Then Something else happened. Something a little unexpected. I thought about changing it. Like what if I don't actually do a ritual? What if I do something else? Ugh, but what? What could I do? Ugh. It felt a little scary. I wasn't quite sure that I could really do that, but I thought about it. And I spent a month with a really great human design coach. Talking to her through Voxer nearly daily to ground into what is the real decision making process for me? What does this emotional authority really feel like? How do I know? How do I know if this decision is the one that is right for me right now? I talked to her about many decisions. And I started to really get it. It's like, you mean when I have that feeling of ugh or contraction or I don't want to or meh. That's all a no? Could that be? Could it truly be that simple? Mm. I thought I'd experiment more with it. So I said no to some things that were big. I said, I don't want to do that. Mm mm. That doesn't feel good in my body. And I stopped investing energy into those things. And it felt great. It's like, huh, okay. And then there were decisions that were Exciting. opening almost giddy sometimes. One of the best decisions I've made recently. I felt so giddy. And I was I asked my human design coaches, like, is that a yes? Like how giddy I feel about this particular person versus other person. Is that a yes or is that like some I don't know, projection or something that's happening? And she's like, I think you should trust yourself, Idie. I think you know. And I said yes to that person. And my gosh, it has been amazing this person in my life. She has supported me in the ways that I've asked for and more. And it's been easy. And I love it. Okay, so those are just a few of the things that happened during the summer as I was learning my decision making process. I felt a s little bit of excitement about asking a Mm she leads man, what is it called? There's a speed dat Tantra speed dating. I've been on some Tantra speed dating events and she leads those events and I really like her. So I thought asked her, would she lead my birthday party ritual? She was open to it. I was open to it. And then I didn't really fully follow up with her because the two ish weeks, three ish weeks before my birthday, I was like, I d I don't have energy for that. I just don't wanna. No thank you. Mm mm. Hmm. Then I was in the shower one day. I was letting myself fully be free. I was not listening to music. There was no sound on. And we all know showers. Best place for the best ideas. When you're not trying to make them happen, that's when they happen. And I had this idea. This it's not even really an idea. It was like this deep pull from inside. All I want to do on my birthday is play. I want to play. I wanna be free. I wanna be like a kid. I don't want to have the structure. I don't want the pressure. I don't wanna be perfect. I don't want to plan it. Come from inside of me. Maybe that was a young part of me. I don't know. Don't honestly care because what felt amazing was the idea of not planning. Yes, inviting my friends. Yes, I'm gonna get out some paper. We're gonna throw art or not art. We're gonna throw paint onto the paper. I'm gonna flow with the day. I have a couple of ideas of ways to try to help loosen up some of my friends to help them tap into their inner four year old. And we can be goofy and we can play. And if we need to cry, we're gonna cry. When I want a really big hug, I'm gonna really try to allow myself to ask for that or to just go get one. My friends are really good with hugs. They would totally be fine if I just hugged them. So I changed it. I made a bold move in a I think about two weeks before my birthday. I said, Hey, we're changing it. We are doing a playful graffiti art dancing birthday. That's what I want to do. So I'm gonna do it. And I let go of the need. to do the ritual of the like I need to be seen as this particular person who is spiritual and connected and dropping into the deep meaningfulness of life. And I'm like, no, let's not take life seriously. Let's do something different for once. Let's not give a fuck. Let's play for no reason. We are not, I tell you, we are not going to make art. That is intentional, that is to be hung on a wall, might hang it on the wall, but that's not the point. no, no, no. The point is to break free, to do whatever we want because we can. No more rules, no more structure, no more have to's. But pure tapping into that inner four year old. We're just gonna drop the zero. And let those four year olds come out. Maybe even the younger, like two year olds, because by four, there's some intention that tends to happen when they do art. At least my four year old, my five year old intentionally tries to draw something. You know, she'll draw hearts or she'll draw people or she'll draw whatever to make it look like the thing. I'm like, yeah. Let's go younger. Two. My two year old scribbles. She picks up a pen, pencil, whatever, doesn't care what color it is, and she makes random marks on it. It's lovely. Let's do that. Let's not care. And there's something that feels magical about that, honestly. I went to a renegade motherhood networking event this week. The week that I'm recording this, which is the week of September. Today's September tenth. So it's that week. I went on the eighth. At that event we were asked. To write down and share what is a bold move you have made. That might be a quiet bold move. It might be a loud bold move. The first thing that popped into my mind. Changing my birthday plans. Freedom. Art. Fun. Playfulness. Playfulness. That's what I want. Playfulness. That is bold to me. To change what I want. To change to what I want. From what I thought I used to want to what I actually want now. I totally wanted a ritual in in January. But here in September I don't. So I'm sharing this before my party. My party is tomorrow. And who knows how it goes. But to just share about a bold move I made. feels really good to me. It may not be the biggest bold move in the world. Feels kind of small maybe actually. But it feels vitally important to my life. I think I'm stepping into an era of being more playful and way less serious about life. And I'm loving it. So I just wanted to share that with you and I'm gonna come back after all the birthday adventures happen, my party tomorrow, my actual birthday on the fifteenth. I'm taking the entire day off and doing some yoga and qigong and who knows what else. Playing, hopefully. Fall goes as planned, or unplanned, should we say. Who knows? And I'll come back and tell talk about how all of that went. And I just wanna leave you with this question, Mama, or whoever else is listening. What's a bold move you've recently made? Or what's a bold move you could make? What is something that is happening in your life? That you don't want to have happen. That you actually want something else. Is there anything that feels vrch that you wanna change so that it feels like yeah? so good. So, mama, I invite you to feel into the vrch and see if you can find the yeah, that's good. Then those are my real therapy terms there. All right. Until next time. May you be well?