Mountains Out of Mole Hills

I get teased quite often about the phrases I use to illustrate a point I'm trying to make during conversation. Most of them come from having lived with my grandma since I was a little girl. She would say things like, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride," "The chickens have come home to roost," "Close the door, were you raised in a barn?", etc. Lots of these have stuck with me, but one phrase that seems to fit the theme of this blog is the one that says "Making mountains out of mole hills."

This idea seems to go hand in hand with spinning sometimes and building mountains can add unneeded stress, illicit the involvement of more people than necessary, and can basically make us look like the little boy that cried wolf. No thanks.

Example: This past weekend I was helping with a wedding reception. We had a babysitter for Friday and Saturday and back up just in case. Well, the babysitter threw out her back doing yoga (no spin) and by Friday evening I couldn't get a hold of our back up. I called a total of 8 people to watch our son for Saturday morning. 8 PEOPLE. Why didn't I just decide to let my husband stay home and watch our son if the back up never called? Instead I panicked, calling in serious favors from friends (which I HIGHLY DISLIKE doing) only to have them be busy or not return the call (to be honest, I probably wouldn't have called me back, either. Saturday morning sitter? The nerve! lol). The back up did come through and things were fine, but now do I look like one of those 'user' friends? I don't know. But since I'm trying to not make another mountain, I guess I'll just wait and see if any of them call me to hang out ever again. Moving on...

The basis of this mountain/mole hill idea is that we make large issues by building up something that is rather small in origin. There is some good news! This isn't always a bad thing. I have a positive example of this as well.

Here is my mole hill...

And here is my mountain...

19 blankets in total.

I had a miscarriage about a month and a half ago. I've heard lots of people talk about them and even have a family member that works in LBD so I've heard extremely detailed descriptions of miscarriages, still births, etc. So when I got pregnant, I stayed up the night before the doctor's appointment putting together a back up plan in case there ended up not being a baby just in case. I'm a big planner.

I had a plan, but ho-ly crap was I unprepared. Forget the hormones and the emotions, the physicality of the experience alone is more than I think a lot of people realize. I'm not going into detail here because that's not the purpose, but it honestly opened my eyes-- no spin.

Well, afterwards we were left with having gone through 2 weeks of labor and no child. No headstone, no memorial, nada. Being the somewhat busy bodied person I am I decided I needed to do something productive to fill up my few spare minutes I had each day. So I took my mole hill miscarriage and turned it into a mountain of 19 blankets for the still born babies and their parents at the hospital that I delivered my son at. Granted, a miscarriage isn't a small experience, but outside my little family it doesn't affect much else. Likewise, 19 blankets won't satisfy the masses, but they will reach and affect at least 19 moms (possibly dads, too) which is at least 16 more people than my miscarriage affected.

This is NOT a pat-on-the-back for me. This post is to raise awareness of several issues:

1) We can easily landscape our life to have less stressful and unhappy mountains and more mole hills. When it comes to the little things just repeat after me: IT'S NOT THAT BIG OF A DEAL.

2) Miscarriages actually are kind of a big deal and I feel like the topic is a little taboo and I don't think it should be. They happen, they stink to go through, and we don't ever "get over" them but we move on. We'll bring them up here and there but we're coping and re-coping, so let's remember we should try and cut those we know some slack.

Finally-

3) Everything has it's opposite. I've given spinning a negative connotation, but think of those we know that spin what facts we tell them about our lives. "I bought a house, but it's really old." "WOW, your first buy! I'm so excited for you!" (Aren't those friends the greatest?) Similarly, we can choose to build either negative or positive mountains out of either mole hills. Don't forget that size is relative- what looks like a foot hill to one may seem like a steep summit to another. We can't ever comprehend what affects who to what intensity (just like in spinning, we never REALLY know). So don't hesitate to create influential mountains of goodness, no matter the size.

IT ALWAYS MATTERS.