Monday Moment: Sometimes the ball has to finish before midnight | HerCanberra

Everything you need to know about canberra. ONE DESTINATION.

Monday Moment: Sometimes the ball has to finish before midnight

Posted on

shutterstock_152699723On Friday night at my daughter’s Year 10 formal, she had to do something difficult and unpopular. This wasn’t your run-of-the-mill teen, peer-pressure situation. An hour in to the event, she phoned her best friend’s mum and told her to come in and pick her daughter up. She cut her friend’s experience of the formal short with that call, and did it despite protestations from her friend that she was fine.

She wasn’t fine. The effects of her latest dose of chemo had hit hard. The phone call wrecked their long-held plans for the formal, the after-party and sleepover.

Her friend’s mum texted me on the weekend and said what a ‘bloody good friend’ my daughter is. It brought me to tears. Over the years I’ve watched her win school prizes and races and sports games and dance comps, but none of those achievements meant as much to me as knowing she’s capable of tough love at fifteen.

There is no harder, bigger, stronger way to love someone. There’s nothing more difficult, as a friend, than to do something that hurts a loved one short-term, because they’ll be better for it. There’s no gutsier way to show you care than to say ‘no’ or take something away from someone because it’s in their best interests. Parents know this. It feels horrible at the time…

It’s our assertiveness that shapes our lives. I had a conversation with someone on the weekend about boundaries, and how we teach people how to treat us. We both recalled times when we’ve been too passive and have let too much responsibility or commitment flow into our lives, unstopped. The results have been exhaustion, frustration and resentment—and usually a lot of blame.

51188-MEJ-MREC_FA-for-GIFWhen we’re swamped, we’re often quick to point the finger at all the ‘demanding people’. It’s rarely about us, and our inability to manage what we choose to sign up for.

We do this because we need to be liked. We people-please. We want to seem nice. We don’t want to rock the boat.

But being liked isn’t about instant gratification. It’s not about saying ‘yes’, just to fit in. That’s being walked over.

Being liked is something that develops over a long time, when you stay true to your ‘best self’, make heart-felt choices for the best reasons and earn respect. It’s something that grows after you face difficult conversations and take risks and say what people need to hear, not what they want to hear.

It’s something I’m still working out, in my forties—assertiveness doesn’t come naturally to me. Thankfully I gave birth to a great role model in this regard.

And I’ve recently started looking up to her in more ways than one.

Photo of three teenage girls holding hands courtesy of Shutterstock.

Related Posts

3 Responses to Monday Moment: Sometimes the ball has to finish before midnight

Leave a Reply

© 2024 HerCanberra. All rights reserved. Legal.
Site by Coordinate.