Hi ,

TL;DR my mom is visiting and she puts me straight into my masculine...and what has helped me the most is setting firm boundaries.

So when I was in college, my mom cut me off for about 2 years when I told her that I didn't want to do pre-med anymore. 

Truth is, she had told EVERYONE around her that I was going to be a doctor when I kept telling her that I wasn't sure - and while you might think that she was just being an excited & proud parent... I knew better. 

When I dropped the news on her, she felt so embarrassed and inconvenienced because she didn't know what to tell her friends, and I remember telling her that it wasn't my problem LOL. 

She held that grudge against me for years!!!!

She's clearly a very prideful woman. 

But underneath that, she has always been very reliant on me, even when I was just a kid.

And so, a lot of responsibilities, emotional labor, emotional support, and physical labor fell on me while growing up. 

Like what many eldest daughters of immigrant families experience, I was heavily pushed into my masculine. 

I was the head of the household, the problem solver, the do-it-all girl, the go-to person for anything and everything. 

Thankfully, our distance (she lives abroad) made my personal growth and healing journey much easier because it really helped when I was working on cultivating my feminine energy that I wasn't constantly shoved into a masculine provider role. 

Like you girls know, I dropped my corporate soul sucking job, I dropped my 5050 dusty ex, but I couldn't drop my own mom so just creating space helped me tremendously. 

Now, why am I sharing this with you? 

Because my mom is visiting, and I found myself getting pushed right back into my masculine being asked to do this and do that, check this and check that, take her here and there... practically every 10 minutes and it was driving me absolutely NUTS that she constantly needed me to do something for her. 

Every time when we are together, she feels relieved of all of her responsibilities because she thinks she can place them on me. So while she's enjoying herself, thinking about how amazing it is to have a daughter who can take care of everything... here I am feeling like I don't really have a choice but to push through and handle them, but also getting overwhelmed and stressed out.

All this to say that I understand more than most about how family really affects us and how they're also a bit of a wild card. But the one thing that has consistently helped me the most, including now, is setting firm boundaries. 

Family is the one thing that is very hard to say no to, but you have to remember that nothing should come at the expense of your own mental health and priorities (like prioritize the things you need and also the requests you get from your family too, don't just let other people's needs come before yours). 

It is ok to say no sometimes.

It is ok to put yourself before them.

It is ok to say you'll do it when you get to it, and then not get to it lol. 

It is ok to teach them how to do it themselves.

It is ok to kindly ask that they do it themselves.

It is ok to let them know that you don't have time. 

It is ok to say that you don't know how to do something either.

It is ok to tell them to check google because that's what you would do anyways. 

And if they like to pull the parent special of guilt-tripping you, practice responding and not reacting.

You can't be guilt tripped if you don't feel guilty, especially if you are aware of what they're trying to do. 

Hit that uno reverse! 😂

Love you,

Nadeen xx.

P.S: Today's challenge was to stretch for 15 minutes. I haven't done it yet but I'm about to. I also signed up for Hamelin d'Abell's workouts. I've heard really great things so I'm going to start those this weekend :) 

If you haven't seen my glow up project, you can download it here 💖

P.P.S: I've been trying out using TL;DRs for my longer newsletters - do you like this or do you read the whole thing anyways? Let me know! 

To unsubscribe, click the link at the bottom of this email. Just be careful, unsubscribing means I can't deliver your emails including some things you have paid for!