Tara Gallagher Coach

Go and give Daddy a cuddle, ask him how his day was.

Turn that down.
Don't ask him that yet.
Give him five minutes.
Please don't start.
Just do as you're told.

They can sound like completely ordinary things to say to your kids.

Except you're watching.

Has he been acknowledged enough?
Is the noise getting too much?
Is someone about to say the wrong thing?
Is his face changing?

You're trying to catch the mood before the mood catches everyone else.

So you manage the noise.
The timing.
The children.
Yourself.

Everyone learns, in their own way, how the day needs to go.

That's how unspoken rules get passed around a house without anyone ever sitting down and explaining them.

And sometimes you don't realise how many there were until years later, when you hear yourself say:

“Go on, say hi to Daddy.”

You didn't wake up one morning and decide to become someone different.

It happened slowly..

You stopped saying your opinion because it always caused an argument.
You learnt when not to bring things up.
You explained their behaviour away to yourself.
You checked their mood before deciding whether there was room for yours.

You asked for a little less and lowered your expectations.

Each change made sense at the time.

And that's the bit that's so easy to miss.

You were trying to stay with them, and slowly, in all those tiny little changes, you stopped staying with yourself.

Leaving yourself doesn't always feel like leaving yourself

Sometimes it looks like changing your answer after you've seen their face.

Softening what you meant because you can feel the mood shift

Deciding to leave it asi t wasn't really that important after all,

Explaining their behaviour tonyourself before you've had a chance to acknowledge how much it hurt

You probably don't think...

I'm abandoning myself right now

You think...
You're keeping the peace
Choosing your battles
Trying not to make things worse

And that is why it can be so difficult to see

Leaving yourself can happen in tiny moments of change

A word you swallow
An answer you change
A feeling you explain away
A need that suddenly feels like to much to ask for

None of these look very significant on their own.
But eventually you can become so used to changing yourself around other people...

that leaving yourself starts to feel like being yourself

I took the first photo because I liked all the different reflections.

Then I looked at it again.

And bloody hell... how many slightly different versions of ourselves do we become depending on who's in front of us?

You know when their mood has changed before they've said a word.

You notice their tone, the pause, the look on their face.

You know when to leave something for another day.

When to soften what you were about to say or when to leave the room

You know when it's easier to say, “It doesn't matter.” or that now isn't the right time to ask for what you need.

You got really good at reading the room.

So good infact that sometimes you read everyone else before you've even noticed what's happening in you.

That you were about to say no before you saw their face.

That you were angry before you started explaining their side to yourself.

That you wanted something different before you worked out what would suit everyone else.

That something hurt before you decided they probably didn't mean it like that.

That you'd changed your mind before you started worrying about how inconvenient that would be.

**Everyone else became information.

You became the adjustment.**

And when you've done that for long enough, it can feel completely normal.

You don't think, I'm changing myself here.

You just know what they're like.

You know how this will go.

You know it's easier.

Until one day you realise you can read everyone in the room...

and wonder how much of your life was actually chosen by you