Perhaps you can relate to this: when I was growing up I was trained to do what I was told.
I don’t remember ever questioning this. Even with my adventurous spirit, I went off to Europe by myself at age 20, I did what I was told. Go to church every Sunday, follow the rules, don’t talk back to elders, stay in the crosswalk (physical and literal!), clean your plate, and doing things for myself was selfish. It took decades to learn about self-care, we’ll come back to that!

Now watching how my grandchildren are being raised, that they get to choose most things in their world (clothes, food, games, shoes), I am realizing I did have choices. I raised my children to follow the rules, etc. I look back now and see mistakes I made, not knowing I was allowed to do things differently than I was taught.

Not an indictment of my parenting or life choices. You know this one, too: If I knew then what I know now!
The perspective I recently saw was that I thought I was not allowed to question rules, much less make different choices.

Which leads me to the question: how did I get the belief that I was not good enough. Somewhere along the way, I did. In high school, I believed no man would ever want to marry me. I did not say this to anyone, however, I did tell my family that I was not going to get married because as a career professional person I wouldn’t have time for marriage.
Was it growing up in a poor family? I didn’t know I was poor, of course, until later in school when other kids pointed that out to me.

You may smile: there I was twenty years later, working with Drug Court adults and teens charged with felonies, many of them incarcerated. One of the cool things about me was that I did not judge them. My job was to help them learn boundaries, evaluate decisions, and change their beliefs. One of my favorite lines when someone outside that system gave me crapola about something, I’d say, “I’ve been in jail more times than anyone you know. You have a problem with that?” They would usually smile awkwardly and walk away.

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So what does this picture of a giant chessboard on a street in Montreal have to do with jail and choices and beliefs?

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It is about gifts. I loved my time in Montreal. So much history, so much to see and do.

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It was a gift from my friend, Maire, when she invited me to go with her. She was attending an electronic music festival. My interests were otherwise, so off I went to see where Leonard Cohen had walked, so much amazing history and architecture, experiencing the incredible Aura light show at the Notre Dame de Montreal Basilica. Plus learning that Jeanne Mance from my next hometown of Langres, France, was one of the founders of Montreal~

Thank you for reading my mental wanderings. If some struck a familiar chord with you, yay!