Is It Real, or Is It CONTEXT?

In my book, Stop Playing Small: An A to Z Guide to Living Your Bigger, Better Life, I write, “Our context transforms how we perceive the reality around us.” Reality is a fact, it is true, it is verifiable. My mother passed away on Monday, November 30, 2015. My father, on Tuesday, October 17, 2017. That is reality.

How I feel about my parents’ deaths depends on my context. It depends on the frame or narrative I build around the reality of their passing. I will never forget the shock and sadness I felt when I learned of their deaths. But I didn’t stay in the grief the shock and sadness produced. My mother lived a very difficult life. She lost her father when she was 17, and lived most of her life ganged up on by withering depression, multiple addictions, abject self-worth, and tragic loneliness.

In spite of these challenges, she gave me tremendous gifts. Though she was emotionally tortured in her marriage, she helped me develop the skills I needed to have my own strong marriage. A former teacher, her skills as a nurturing mother helped me raise my children and develop the strong relationships I have with them today. Her deep love for me gave me an abiding self-confidence that may waiver, but never fades.

I hold her death in the context of release. Finally, she was freed of her demons. I don’t remember where I was—or what brought it about—when I realized her first thought as her soul left her body was, “Thank God that’s over!” When she was alive I held her in a context of sadness, sadness for the life she was living. Re-framing that context to one of freedom, to one of liberation, actually liberated me. I could now embrace more fully, and more consciously, everything she gave me.

My video on Context talks briefly about what it may take to change our context. Leave a comment here and let me know what you think of our power to change our context, and check out the video and let me know what you think about that.