Is’t it interesting that what your parents want for you is completely different from what you want for your life?
Recently, I left my great paying property management because my heart wasn’t into it. I tried every day to get excited for it but in the end it just felt like a chore. So I left with no plan B, C, or D in site. It was the scariest thing that I have every done.
I stayed at my job because my mom told me that I just need to push through it until I get the house that I want. But I was miserable. All I let like doing was crying all the time because I wasn’t living the life I wanted to.
So I made the decision to buy coaching from a friend of mine who not only helped me to publish my book but is also doing what I wanted to do. I made the call and said teach me because property management isn’t working for me.
I still don’t have a plan B and am racking up debt on my credit card to invest in myself. I know I will be able to pay my credit card down once I get my first client, but until that time comes, I will be working on myself.
The reason why I am writing this is because we all want to make our parents proud. To stay the course that they laid out for us and to be financially stable. Whatever that means. Because I am not there.
The moment I told my mom that this is the path I want to go to, I instantly got the mom face. You know the mom face. The one that she gives you when she knows what’s best for you and what you are doing is probably going to fail and she will have that infamous I told you so face.
See I have lived with my mom and sister my whole childhood and come adulthood. My parents divorced when I was too young to remember and I saw my dad on weekends to see my grandmother before she passed away. (His mother, not my mom’s mother who recently passed away.)
So I grew up doing what my mom told me to do without asking many questions to stick to the path of what she wanted me to do.
You would think that she would be happy that I have finally found the one thing that I want to do. To do it well enough to make money and be “financially stable” while doing something that I want to do. Well, you would be wrong.
Deep down I do think that she wants me to be happy, but at the same time I know she is thinking of the financial issue I will have with not being able to pay rent or take care of myself. The money issue is a whole other blog I will write about since its seriously a generational issue.
This past weekend I went to talk to my stepfather about how I wanted to change the way my pictures are because they all look the same and I’m just so stiff in all of my photos. You would think I would be happy to be in front of the camera since I loved posing in front of it when I was younger, but sadly it did not follow me into adulthood.
As I was talking to him about it, the first thing my mom said was I need to change my hair color to look more professional since the blue is starting to fade. I know I need to clean it up and I am not looking to get photos done until the new year, but what she said triggered me. And I definitely had the yes ma’am I will get right on it syndromes that I always have around my mom.
She was mad when I got my first tattoo that she knew of/seen of an Egyptian goddess on my arm. To me it’s a powerful representation of what and who I want to be. To her, it was why is there another woman’s face on your arm? And of course the mom face.
I know she meant well and wanted me to be successful in everything I do. What she didn’t understand was that for the first time in a long time I felt like this is me. This is Kayla who I have been trying to find. I change my hair color a lot and I get it professionally done because I only trust one person with my hair. But I love having a new color to my hair. I feel more creative and just happy when I do it.
But I know because of her thinking and the way she grew up, me having tattoos and different colored hair isn’t professional. I don’t want to be like everyone else. I want to be like me. Whomever she is. And right now she has blue hair. Who knows what the next color will be.
I’ve realized that the more I work to make others happy, the more I start to lose a piece of myself. Like a part of me is being molded into someone who is not me. But then again, once I start doing something that makes me happy, I start to realize that this is Kayla. And only I know me best.
So don’t let others influence who you are. Just because they may have raised you or even given birth to you, they do not know you as you know you. And yes, this is part of ancestral trauma because at the end of the day, your parents or family members are going to project how you should behave and what you should do because they think they know you best. But that’s not always true. That may have been you when you lived with them, but hopefully now you don’t and you can make choices that make you happy.