A Kayak Fell on My Head {BONUS}

Hey there. Good morning. It's me, Robyn. And today's short podcast episode is just a short note from me. I love kayaking. Love it. I love water. But mostly I love looking at water. So kayaking is like the most perfect way to be surrounded by water and looking at it while not talking to anybody. It's complete perfection. I especially love kayaking at 6am when everyone else is asleep. And since everyone else is still asleep, I have to figure out how to transport my own kayak to the water if I want to kayak at 6am. And so here's the thing without question, I'm not learning to drive with a trailer hitch to my car that simply will not ever happen. Not a very good driver to begin with. I have terrible spatial awareness. Adding a trailer to the back of my car just sounds like an absolute disaster. So kayak roof rack it is I grossly underestimated how challenging this would be. The hoisting the lifting the balancing the strapping. And when I dropped the kayak on my head, I was ready to give up. It's too hard. I thought I can't do this. I thought in almost all areas of my life except work. My instinct is to give up when things get hard. I collapse full on possum mode. So I took a breath. And I thought to myself, people figure out how to do hard things all the time. Figure it out, Robin, I mean, I can climb fabric 30 feet in the air and flip myself upside down. Surely I can lift a kayak over my head, right? Then I asked myself, what's the real problem here? Why does giving up sound so appealing? The answer is shame, the shame of fumbling with the kayak in public at a boat launch, it just felt like more than I could manage. And when I'm ready to hoist that kayak back up onto the roof of my car at the boat launch with everybody watching, it's going to be wet, like lake water will drip on my head and it's going to be slippery, making it all the more likely that I'll panic and drop it on my head, and then my foot and then I'll fall down and everyone will point and laugh. Shame y'all is a sneaky thing. Shame has kept me from doing so many things. So many. It's painful and sad. I had a moment of compassion for myself. I took another breath. And I thought, Well, I'm just gonna have to practice. So to practice at my own house, I put the kayak on my car and took it off five different times in a row. Practice. Why did I expect I'd be able to do this without practice? Like, I should just be able to lift a boat over my head and strap it to the roof of my car without ever trying it before. Everything we do takes practice. Parenting takes practice. reframing our kids behaviors takes practice, self compassion takes lots of practice. Sometimes it goes well. Sometimes it does not. Sometimes the risk feels too big and we give up. Sometimes we try again. All of those options are okay. Giving up trying again, all the options are okay, they have to be okay. It's taken me decades, lots of therapy and a solid, supportive relationships, to consider other ways to approach a problem other than to just give up. Making changes feeling safe enough to try a new way. It takes a lot of work and a lot of safety. It might take you a while. It might take your kid a while like a really really really really long while. Be gentle with yourself. Practice. Take a break if you need to. Try again. When and if you can.