On letting go of expectations and doing things differently

This year I cancelled my birthday, and it was an absolute liberation. I love birthdays. I may have said here before, it was the only day I would ever get a rounder whilst playing rounders at school. It's always been a joyful, lucky kind of day for me. For my 40th I had an 11 month celebration, from September through to August.

This year, after something of a disaster night out as a birthday treat, I decided to not celebrate, recognising that it was the expectation of it, that it would be fun and joyful that was as much my challenge as the actual events that occured. So I refunded the price of the tickets to my boyfriend, and advised people close to me I wasn't celebrating. In a good way. I was really happy about doing it differently.

The expectations we have and also those of the world around us intrigue me. The shops are filling up with Christmas things we need to buy to decorate our homes, things we need to purchase as presents, and birthdays can be much the same. The expectation that we need to go, buy, do I'm questioning. I love to celebrate and I feel like I've celebrated September this year really well. I feel happy about it all, and that the letting go of how something should be has enabled me to feel more joy about how it is.

A friend made me the chocolate cake I'd been craving. Another gifted me a sound bath session. Another gifted me a night of her company with the intent to get something twice that didn't happen for various reasons. The driving together was a joy. My partner and daughter got me a bat that I'd kept on about wanting in our garden. Simple. Beautiful. Perfect. I had lunch out, dinner out and it seemed there was less cancelling than I had planned... but there was a lot of letting go and serious appreciating of what there was.

I feel like I'm still reflecting on the lessons learnt and I'm sure I'll attach to plenty of things in the future and need to re-learn it, that's being human I guess, but it has been a brilliant catalyst to some great experiences.

I'm in the process of changing how I do Christmas and I am LOVING that too. It's so rich and abundant with experiences, meeting people, learning and growing. In a literal sense - one of my changes is creating a wide flowering border for my parent's Christmas present. My dad had 'sort the garden' on his list and was getting a little stressed it wasn't how he wanted, so I took to going and helping out with weeding and tidying. Whilst there he mentioned he'd like a herbaceous border in a large border area. So I thought how about I could create that for their Christmas present. I floated the idea and it was a resounding yes.

Since starting, I've put out a couple of appeals on Freecycle (seriously loving that site too), and have had offers of hypericum, aqualegia, flowering sweet geranium, blue irises, peonies, cornflowers and shasta daisies so far. I figured it's that gardening tidying season so instead of them going to waste I could find a new home for them. I've met people, dug plants in the pouring rain, chatted, appreciated their generosity and been a part of the community in a different way than if I'd just grabbed a gift from a large store. It's definitely an idea to explore further and the connections and conversations that have come from my few short months of using Freecycle are really valuable to me.

I'm a fan of getting people something if I see it and think of them, but something about doing what the shops tell me never quite sits right. So I'm re-exploring how I do that. Exchanging gifts can be a joyful experience, but can also be fraught with not feeling good enough, going into debt and stress about so much of it. So I'm going for homemade, handmade, less. Experiences or doing for someone. Supporting small businesses wherever possible has been a long held intention, that can sometimes fail at the last minute but with some planning I hope to be able to achieve Christmas very different this year.

My sister-in-law aka my graphic designer is designing me a poster for a gift for me. There are so many options out there that we can do and give differently, I'm excited to start exploring more, and grateful to those happy to go along the ride with me.

Instead of a stock photo, here's a smiling Golden Retriever.

You're welcome.

Share thoughts if you like - on the smile or the blog,

With love,

Em

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