Experience : Write 28 Days

experience -- practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity

I have quite a bit of experience in a variety of areas -- daughter, sister, wife, mother, librarian, homemaker, cook, seamstress, crafter, helper, survivor.

I type that list and it looks rather impressive at first, but then I find myself looking at each word and dissecting meanings. Daughter was through no action of my own, nor was sister. Some might debate how good I've been at either of those.

Wife I did for 32 years. I tried hard to be good at it. There were ups and downs. Ultimately the downs overwhelmed me.

Mother. Well, all of us with that title will acknowledge we could have done better. But in hindsight, I'd give myself a B+. I did as well as I could in those moments. I've apologized (repeatedly) for my failures. My grown children and I have good relationships now.

Librarian. I think I was good at it. I know I enjoyed it. I feel I could have made better use of that degree, but so it goes. Who knows, I might find myself wearing that hat again someday.

I'm a decent cook and I've certainly fed a lot of people over the years. Some would say I'm better than decent, but we all know I'm not good at self-promotion.

Seamstress and crafter are mostly for me. I like fiddling around with yarn and fabric and beads and scraps of paper and string.

Helper comes pretty naturally to me. I'm a 9 on the Enneagram so I can't stop myself from checking on everyone in a room to make sure they are ok.

That leaves me with survivor. I have a love/hate relationship with the word. Yes I did survive childhood abuse and sexual assaults as an adult. Yes, I've worked hard to overcome the damage those experiences did to me. The problem for me is the term sounds grandiose. From my perspective, I only did what I had to do. But that's probably a whole different post.

What does all this rambling get me? Perhaps a clearer recognition of what I value in myself. In my life. Maybe it's just navel-gazing. And then again maybe it's the result of agreeing to participate in a writing challenge based of one word prompts.

Whatever it truly is, it's been an experience.