I am not a Kindergarten teacher, and for a good reason. I don’t have the patience.
Yet, today I find myself as a Kindergarten teacher for my daughter, who is now ‘homeschooled’ due to the Covid 19 nightmare we’ve all been waking up to.
And although I love spending time with my daughter, I am finding myself disliking (or even going as far as to say absolutely hating) having to be her ‘teacher’. It’s frustrating at the very least. And I have mad respect for all the teachers out there who do this every day for years and years, because I’m ready to quit after just three days.
I find myself getting annoyed more often than I should. I find myself feeling like a terrible parent for keeping her home because I know she doesn’t do well in a mask for more than about 10 minutes. I find myself feeling like a horrible person for not sending her to school so she can make friends. I even find myself pulling out my hair (literally, it is falling out in clumps) because I am so overwhelmed and stressed out trying to teach her, run a business from home, declutter my condo, make three meals a day, keep up with the housework, find time to do anything for myself that brings me a sense of peace and calm, handling a relationship, keeping us all healthy, finding creative ways to pay the bills, and let’s see, what else can we pile on top of this? Oh yeah, not to mention the uncertainty of the future, living one day at a time, and having to be more flexible than ever with all the unknowns and changes being hurled at us on the hour every hour.
It’s enough to drive a girl insane.
But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Everything you’re doing today is temporary.
Where you are right now is temporary.
How you feel at the moment is temporary.
Be gentle with yourself because you have just been thrown into a brand new lifestyle of survival.
You are forced to use (and learn spankin’ new) skills you’ve never seen before. You have to be creative and resourceful in ways you’ve never even thought of. You’re being bombarded with information and misinformation at every pass and have to just trust yourself that you’re making the best decision for you and your family. Add in all the uncertainties and unknowns to that, and you’ve got yourself a potential cocktail for disaster.
BUT, if you allow yourself some space for grace you will have a much easier time finding your way through the darkness.
Every time you try something new you are a beginner. And every expert had to start somewhere.
Keeping in mind that it’s ok to be a beginner at something will give you permission to ‘fail’. But failing is not really failure. By doing something and having it turn out in a way that didn’t work allows you to learn and grow. So there really is no ‘failure’, only lessons.
By leaving space to learn some new lessons (what? You mean we don’t know it all?) you are inviting grace in. It’s ok to learn something new in a way that may bring up an emotional response of “wow, I’m such a loser because I couldn’t do this” or “this is sooooooo irritating” as you slam the books shut.
Looking at the emotional response that gets triggered opens you up to have compassion for yourself. You have the opportunity to see it for what it is and recognize that the reaction you had may be unconscious and just seems to happen on autopilot.
When you do this you create an awareness, and that awareness will lead to the ability to make a different choice. And that different choice of responding can be as simple as “I’m here and I’m doing the best I can.” And that’s all we really need, right? To just acknowledge that we’re doing the best we can with what we have.
Stepping back out of that emotional response gives us the space to breathe, think, and choose what we do next from a place of clarity. We can recognize that we don’t know it all, and that maybe right now, we’re not supposed to. We can allow new learning and growth as we navigate these trying times. We can give ourselves the grace to know that everyone is going through the after effects of the pandemic that has displaced everything we thought we knew about life.
Our journeys are different but what we’re living through is the same: uncertainty. We all are fumbling through unknown times doing the best we can.
By understanding that life is no longer as we once knew it and that we’re going to have to find new ways of moving forward, then it is easier to try things and ‘fail’. You’ll never know what works and what doesn’t if you don’t at least give it the old college try. And eventually you’ll find what works best for you.
Allow yourself the grace to try something new and be a beginner. Allow yourself the grace to learn and grow. Allow yourself grace in the fact that you’re in uncharted territory. And know that it’s all temporary. Tomorrow is a new day, yet is never promised, so give yourself permission to be satisfied with what you’ve done with the day you’ve been given.
Save the space for grace. You’re doing the best you can.