When I thought about how to write that I’m moving forward a little bit at a time, the book The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper came to mind.  I have always loved that story…the plucky little train engine that when faced with a big hill and an uncertainty with respect to success or failure, kept saying, “I think I can, I think I can”.

I have moved through the days of the last two weeks since my depressed, low-point blog, trying to do something each day that challenged myself.  After I wrote that blog, I realized that waiting to move on in life AFTER I felt better, just wasn’t working.  I was completely stuck and barely functioning (more accurately…non-functioning) in either life or work.

On the Monday after the blog, I decided to try an experiment.  I would do one thing each day at work that pushed me out of my comfort zone…in my case, sales related things for our business which has been in a bit of a lull for the last two months.  Whether a phone call to a prospective new client or a visit to a potential client, I would call my day a success if I did that.  I knew that I controlled whether I did these slightly uncomfortable sales things even though I could not control my daughter’s actions.

Lo and behold, by Friday, after doing things I could control, somehow I felt better and could tell I had “just a tiny bit” released some of the agony of the part of my life I couldn’t control.

With respect to my younger daughter, I also realized I could choose to display unconditional love toward my daughter even though her choices were breaking my heart.  I have been texting her every few days with pictures or “thinking about you and hope your day goes well” comments.  Somehow again, focusing on what I can control (displaying love) reduced the internal emotional infinite loop of despair over her.

In case anyone is wondering why I chose texting to display love, it’s because of something she said.  All of the worrying, all of the planning to help her out of her financial issues for her after her pill overdose last Fall, all of the trying to “rescue” her, even the financial support we gave her…during the meeting where we confronted her about our suspicions, she said we didn’t care about her.  I could tell she sincerely believed what she was saying.

At first I wanted to defend what I considered showing love to her.  “Hello daughter…I worried so much about you that I came close an intestinal blockage and an ER visit from the stress.”

Then, during the painful weeks afterward, I had to consider that from her perception, it was true for her.  I then thought back to little things she had said over time that might give a clue to what she would value as “love”.  I remembered her telling me that she made a former boyfriend text her every day.  At the time I privately thought, “Well, that’s high maintenance” but as I look back, I think she wanted to feel like she was thought of every day by the boyfriend.  I decided that every few days I would send her words that told her I was thinking about her or family pictures that she might enjoy, without expecting a reply.

Last night my daughter texted me and asked me to lunch today.  That is code for “Let’s meet for lunch and you pay” but that’s OK.  It will be the first time seeing her since that awful meeting where our suspicions were confirmed.  By the way she didn’t confirm her actions directly but in not denying the evidence and in saying, “I’m going to live life my way”, she did confirm it.

Every day, like the little train engine, I choose to control what I can control.  I can control helping our business grow.  I can control showing my daughter love to the best of my ability.  I think I can.  Going to go have lunch with my daughter soon.  I know I can.