How to Handle Rejection Without Disengaging
“A stirring is happening in mothers all over the world, a desire for a simpler way of living and raising our children.
We want to save their childhoods. We want to reclaim what’s been lost over the past few decades.
Time in nature. Time for childhood. Time for exploration.
Time to learn at their own pace. And time to pursue their own interests.
But in reclaiming childhood, we are reclaiming motherhood as well—
trusting our instincts and doing what’s best for our children, rather than what society says is normal or expected. . .
we have to tune in to our natural instincts as mothers.
And that can be frightening when we’ve been trained to tune them out.”
These words are from Ainsley Arment’s beautiful book The Call of the Wild + Free.
Her book catches my eye from the shelf, reminding me of that March two years ago when it healed, held, and changed my heart in so many ways. I take it from its shelf and read through my underlines until I find a section I want to spend time in. Suddenly, my worries about how I’ve raised my kids and how I’ve lived my adult life up until this point start to lessen.
The tune of “not enough”, “never enough” gets faint.
Before I know it, I’ve closed the book and I’m journaling ideas and a long list of things I’m grateful for. To me, this is the best kind of book. This is the kind of book I want to birth into the world — one that doesn’t soak readers in my own story so much as it prompts them to live, and maybe even write, their own. A creation that leads to more valuable creations. An investment that multiplies exponentially.
This is also the kind of life I want to live — one that isn’t about me as much as encouraging, inspiring, and equipping the people I love and encounter to live their own great story.
A life that might inspire my children to one day be able to say something like this: “It is impossible to overstate the influence she had on every part of my life: Why did I write? Mom did. Why did I fall in love with reading and meeting people and hiking? Mom did. Travel? She spent every penny she had taking us to experience this world. She and Dad took us all over, to different cultures and regions of the globe, where I’d learn so much about life and living. I remember admiring her zest for life and her work ethic so much: she’d get up before dawn every morning and write and work for hours before I was even awake. She often put in extra hours on weekends while I was playing video games. She was a voracious reader and learner, and was so interested in other people. In the other room I can see another book stack of hers. There are so many. . .” — a passage I adapted from Matt Mullenweg’s beautiful blog about his relationship with his father.
But I can only live such a life if I make room for it, if I grow into it, if I’m intentional about it. That’s what I’m aiming for today, this weekend, this year.
Since you're here, my guess is you're aiming for something similar.
Certainly, there are moments, days, weeks, months even when we get something completely right and our life and family are a big ball of bliss. We pinch ourselves to make sure we aren't in a dream. We take notes and copious amounts of photographs to try to hold onto the feeling.
But sometimes, things don't work out so well.
Some days, weeks, or even months, the people we love the most aren't having it, aren't feeling the love, aren't into our flavor of fun, or maybe aren't into us at all.
The dinners we cook aren't to their taste, the way we sing in the car makes them cringe, or we take them out for a special dinner or ice cream run only to hear "You know, what I really wish I could be doing right now is hanging out with my friends."
It happens.
And when it does, we might need some courage and a few ideas for how to pivot.
A few ways to love and give them what they need without disengaging entirely, stomping off, or putting ourselves in a funk that lasts for days.
Recently, the ladies at iMOM asked me to write about what it's like to encounter rejection from my teenagers and how I handle it. What I ended up finding were a few strategies for handling rejection from anyone we love (not just kids or teenagers).
If that kind of thing sounds like your jam today, I'd love for you to hop over there and have a read ⤵
I’ll see you over there!
Want more encouragement like this on the regular?
Come join me in the email group or a mini-course today.