Kiss Me Thru The Phone

This week, my daughter left to spend time with her paternal grandparents for the summer.

And as I sat staring at my phone, preparing to make a call I didn’t particularly want to make, I found myself reflecting on the years of boundaries, growth, and difficult decisions that made this moment possible.

A journal entry about co-parenting, discernment, and the realization that healing doesn’t always mean something becomes easy.

Sometimes it simply becomes safe enough to engage with differently.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I'm Ashley, and this is Dear Sovereign Self, my audio journal on the way I walk through life, practicing sovereignty, living from truth, not wounds, and choosing alignment over self-abandonment. Here's today's entry.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Yesterday my daughter left for two weeks for the summer. She's spending time with her grandparents, with her dad's parents, and she is so far having a wonderful time, and everyone involved is perfectly happy except me. Which actually brings us to what this entry is about. Not that I'm unhappy with the arrangement. I'm of course grateful for all of the free time that I now have. And of course, when she gets back from her dad's family, she's going to spend some weeks with my family. So he and I both get an extended break from parenthood, a little extra time for the summer. But first leg of her trip is now underway and she is with her dad's family. And yesterday after she left, I realized I had entered a very specific kind of logistical predicament. And that is if I want to talk to my child over the next two weeks, I have to voluntarily call people I would not otherwise be calling. And prefer not to ever have to call. And listen, I don't think I'm saying anything particularly controversial when I tell you that co-parenting can produce some interesting emotional terrain. Right? There are relationships in life that are easy, and there are relationships in life that are hard. And then there are relationships where everyone involved is doing their very best, and you still occasionally find yourself staring at your phone like you're preparing for a hostage negotiation. And that's sort of where I found myself yesterday in this realization and where I find myself today wanting to talk to her, not because anything terrible is happening, not because anybody has done anything wrong, just because some relationships remain deeply unpleasant even after they've stopped being unhealthy. And as I was sitting with that feeling yesterday, I realized this episode is about what happens when something you love is sitting on the other side of discomfort. Because my options were surprisingly simple. I could avoid the discomfort and not speak to my daughter, see her face, hear her voice for two weeks, or I can call anyway. I can pick up the phone, I can type in my ex's sister's name or my ex's mom's name, and I can press dial. And not just once, but daily for 14 days in a row. One of the things I've noticed about love is that people talk about it as though it's a feeling, right? And of course it is. But I think if we're being honest, love is just as often an inconvenience or measured by inconvenience. I think that values become visible at the point of inconvenience. That's my point. Values become visible at the point of inconvenience. And that's why yesterday's decision felt so obvious to me. Not easy, just obvious. Because my daughter is on the other side of the discomfort. And the thing I've been thinking about ever since is that love is often measured in inconveniences, not the grand gestures, not the social media posts, the inconveniences, the call I don't want to make, the drive across town, the awkward conversation, the thing you wouldn't otherwise choose. That's where a lot of love actually lives and is expressed. And the willingness to endorse something unpleasant because something meaningful is waiting on the other side. Now, before I go any further, I want to be careful. Because you can already hear somebody listening to this and thinking, so we're supposed to tolerate everything for the people that we love. No, I do not believe that. Not only do I not believe that, but that would be the opposite of what I feel like this journal has stood for historically. And that's where this really gets interesting for me because there was a season, a not so long ago season, where these dynamics, these exact characters, I should say, that are relevant in these next two weeks, there was a dynamic that I genuinely believed to be unhealthy for me. And that season required boundaries, that season required distance in some cases, that season required difficult decisions, big girl decisions. And looking back, I think one of the things I'm realizing now or giving myself credit for now is that I wasn't just trying to maneuver out of discomfort. I was trying to avoid harm, perceived harm, I will say. It was never the discomfort that I was avoiding, it was the danger. What served me in the transition was my willingness to lean into discomfort. Because that's what transitions are. They're uncomfortable. But anyway, those are wildly different things: danger and discomfort. Because discomfort is data that can help you determine if a situation is dangerous. We've said that before. Discomfort tells us something, it asks us to investigate, to pay attention, to get curious. But once you've listened to the data and acted on it, right? Because the sovereign way is not just the discernment, it is the discernment paired with the action to embody the thing, right? So once you've listened to the data and you've acted on it, the discomfort still doesn't necessarily disappear. Because sometimes it stops being information to act on and becomes a reminder of the decisions you've already made with the data. Does that make sense? I think that's where I'm sitting right now because the boundaries didn't eliminate the discomfort. They eliminated the danger, the discomfort state. And to see the quiet part loud, I think part of the discomfort that lingers, the discomfort in this moment at least, that lingers is residue from having identified someone as a danger and living to tell the tale. And more than that, now having to reach a new cadence in life, if even just for this moment of me hitting your line every day, like, hey girl, hey, right? Like that'll make anybody uncomfortable. But now the discomfort exists in a completely different context. It no longer asks me what I will do with the data that I'm collecting with my discomfort in the environment, and it instead asks me if I can recognize the fruit of establishing boundaries. And honestly, I think one of the most beautiful things about healing is that sometimes healing doesn't mean the thing disappeared. It means the thing no longer has access to you in the same way. One of the things I think that people misunderstand about enacting boundaries, establishing boundaries in a situation is that they imagine the lived experience of having boundaries is distance. For me, that lived experience is optionality, getting to choose, feeling like the driver in a situation that I once felt driven in. Because of that switch in experience from driven to driver, from passenger to driver, what once required self-abandonment now merely requires maturity. That's a very different ask. And I think that's the particular nuance that can get lost when we talk about discomfort. Discernment isn't just knowing when discomfort is data, it's knowing when the data has already been processed. Months ago, that discomfort was data that I then made decisions with. Today that discomfort is different. The discomfort isn't begging me to do something with it. It is to an earlier point that I made just the discomfort of standing on business, right? Like if you call a spade a spade and then you have to see that spade again later, yeah, it's not gonna feel comfortable. And I do want to acknowledge something here because I can already hear the obvious question. If there was a season, a very recent season, where these dynamics felt genuinely unhealthy, genuinely dangerous to my environment, then why did I send my daughter at all? And honestly, the answer to that question could be a completely separate entry. There are dozens of data points inside that decision. So consider that this episode begins after the choice was made. Her dad and I prepared to send her, and she arrived, and now it's the next day. Maybe one day I'll get around to explaining the what isn't really a change of heart, but again, that's the left of what this episode is about. But the willingness to move forward despite my discomfort that still lingers in the situation. But the one thing that I do want to highlight from that calculation to ultimately allow her to go is that part of the reason I felt comfortable making that choice is because I believe boundaries should matter, right? Not just when they're violated, but also when they're honored. Wanting to reward what I feel like has been a season of adherence to the boundaries that I established. Right? I wanted everyone to feel like I was adequately recognizing that the boundaries were acknowledged, they were respected, and we've been able to find a rhythm and a co-parenting dynamic that is so much better than where the situation started from. And so it kind of felt like an olive branch. Um, so that's the answer to the question that the obvious question that anyone might have here about why there's even trepidation or static in these relationships at all. The static hasn't disappeared, but the danger has. And I think it's important that we that I say that because otherwise boundaries quietly become punishment. Uh, and that was never the point. So I think if anything, that's what's at the crux of this episode, and that's why the distinction between danger and discomfort, and sort of doing a callback to my discernment in the previous season of like, okay, I use those same data points, perceived them as danger, and worked through boundaries as a tool to create a new environment for myself and for my daughter that reduced it from danger back down from red back down to an orange of yellow of just discomfort. And now this discomfort becomes the measure of progress, which kind of seems like a mind warp, but it's an important type of maturity. That's why I said earlier, just it went from having to abandon yourself to just having to have maturity, which in and of itself is a lot, I know. But if I can sit in something uncomfortable, then her relationships can go unaffected by my emotional response to the people around her. As long as I have neutralized what I genuinely feel like is a threat, and I and I've am willing to disentangle my own preferences and again my own discomfort from what is an actual danger to me and to my child, right? Because sometimes people can just have too much access to you. Um, forget the kid, like just as a person, your personhood, um, the trajectory and rate of your growth, all of these things, right? So as long as I'm able to put things and keep things in balance, I can and will endure discomfort for the carrot on the other end of that stick. And honestly, the reason I'm even recording this entry at all is because I know this won't be the last time. Right? Her second birthday is coming up, there'll be graduations soon enough, school events, family gatherings, other milestones. There will be future versions of this exact emotional terrain. And if these relationships never improve beyond what they are today, I want future me to remember something. The moment that required leaving already happened. The moment that required boundaries already happened. The moment that required distance already happened. This is a different moment. And different moments require different versions of me. One of the things I've learned over the years is that feelings are not always current information. Sometimes they're historical information. Sometimes your body remembers a chapter that has already ended. Sometimes your nervous system remembers a version of reality that no longer exists. And I think this is why this entry feels um connected to so many others in this journal because one of the themes I've come back to again and again is discernment. Discernment about what aligns, discernment about what nourishes, discernment about what belongs in your life and what doesn't, discernment about what requires action and what requires patience. And this week I find myself sitting with a very specific form of discernment. The discernment between danger and discomfort. But they are not asking for the same thing. There was a season where this situation was giving me important information, information that required boundaries to be established, information that required distance to be built in, information that required different choices, and I'm grateful that I listened. But the data has already been processed, the boundaries have already been established, the terrain has already been changed, and that doesn't mean that my nervous system isn't going to continue scanning for what it now thinks of as historical threats, right? But it's giving the benefit of doubt as clearly as I possibly can about what is my nervous system scanning history in the future. You know what I mean? Um and what is a a threat in the present. So I use my discernment here, and because I trust my data, I had to be honest and say that the data came back, that this situation is no longer hostile and dangerous. It's now been downgraded back down to just discomfort or discomfort, I shouldn't say just, we just said it plays a big role. Back to discomfort. Can you survive discomfort? And like I said earlier, the answer to that question is obvious to me. So tomorrow I'll pick up the phone. On the day after that, and the day after that too. Not because it's comfortable, not because we are suddenly besties and I'm ready to play besties, not because I don't still get physically hot from reminiscing on this situation for too long, but because I don't want my daughter to ever wonder whether my discomfort is bigger than my love for her. It is not, and that is really what these calls are about. So, I'll leave you with this. What in your life is making you uncomfortable to do right now, and that is sitting between something that is obviously worth it, between you and something that is obviously worth it to you. Let me know.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

We'll close the page here for now. Until next time.