My favourite bit about today …

‘ I love my Dad’…. Tom says out of the blue as we are driving home. Big Daddy Morts is definitely Tom’s hero and he misses him loads while his away in the week.

‘I love you too Mum. Just the same. You take me to school and back every day. I love you.’

At that point, I had little mini replicas of me dancing around my head with pom poms…. Doing the can can! Rejoicing and being the biggest cheerleader of me. Snow White is singing a merry tune… although short lived, only to be drowned out by Tom’s rendition of One Direction.

Dobby is trying to get a word in… and I faintly hear him ask… ‘Does that mean he didn’t love you before you took him to school’… but he is swished away by countless flying pom poms very quickly…booted out by a flying high kick…

I am my biggest critic. I have the biggest stick to beat myself up with. For not doing things right or perfectly, for not doing enough, never enough… the constant feeling of guilt that I should be doing more or even something else.

I am not too proud to admit I have been seeking professional help to get me through some of the grief, guilt and anger that I have been feeling, and sometimes overwhelming me following all the change and loss in the last few months. And one of the things we discussed this morning was my big stick.

Why do I carry such a big stick to beat myself up with? To keep me motivated was my gut answer.

Does it motivate you to do more, be more? No.

How does it make you feel? Bad. Sad. Frustrated.

So why do you keep carrying it, using it? I don’t know. Habit?

What can you do instead? ?????…….. Be a cheer leader……?

So the pom pom’s in my head tonight following Tom’s comment, may have been there initially in response to congratulate me on making brave decision to be more present in my boys’ lives… but they were also there cheering me on and duplicating and duplicating out in to a pom pom, can can dancing frenzy as I realized that the stick wasn’t there…. And I felt GOOD! I felt happy… and definitely motivated to do more, to be more involved in the boys’ lives. If they feel loved, then that is all that matters.

Motivation… many different factors can motivate people in different ways. Professionally and now personally, I believe and have seen and felt that the best motivation comes from praise…   I also notice more and more that the boys are far more responsive to motivational praise than they are of motivational fear or reprimand.

So I say, get your pom poms out and give out praise where praise is due… and especially to yourself….

xx