True friends and members of my close family found out many years ago the secret. Don’t tell me what to do.

When my sister Renee’ and I were kids, our parents John and Ann created “chore charts” for us. They were hand made calendars, one for Renee’ and one for me. On it were the days of the week cross-listed with various chores including emptying the dishwasher, folding socks, emptying waste baskets, and taking out the garbage. I liked the chart and how it kept me on a nice, little

As I got older and chore charts drifted into the past, chore completion became less regimented. If I noticed the dishwasher needed to be unloaded, then I’d unload it.

But if my parents were to suddenly ask me to unload the dishwasher that day, I would bristle.

Mittens. One of the animals I dooned at my mother

Don’t tell me what to do.

My mother used to wake me in the morning for school sometimes and as she would creep into the room, I would pitch a stuffed animal in her direction. She called it “Dooning her with the animals.” I called it “don’t tell me what to do.”

This does not mean I don’t take direction well. In fact, I love towing the company line and working toward a cause. I’m not too proud to respect authority and know when to defer to someone who knows more than I. It’s mostly in my private life that I bristle at someone’s perceived orders.

It also means it takes me a long time to change a pattern. I get stuck in habits or ideas and it takes me a while to realize a plan or way of life is not working.

For several years, I assumed being married, owning a house, and working a fulltime job with health benefits equaled being an adult and being secure. As those things and more faded from my life one by one, I began to panic as the threats to my identity rolled in one after the other.

My dear family told me those things didn’t define me as a person. My best friend Randy said in great exasperation during yet another one of my freakouts that I was better off without the spouse and would be perfectly fine without a fulltime job. I had enough money in my savings account to last a while. But I didn’t believe him because I suppose I saw his comments as a form of telling me what to do.

Butterflies are magic. This is from the website of a fave artist Kelly Rae Roberts.

After a season of sinking so terribly low, becoming depressed, and facing hit after hit from personal relationships, something happened to me that I can only describe as a butterfly wiggling frantically from a cocoon. I’ll have to think about the how and why later, but essentially I stopped the need to feel validated by the trappings of stability. I’m fine.

I don’t like being pushed and persuaded. I resent being coaxed and cajoled. Once my mind is made up about a matter, it will only ever change in one way and that’s if I reach a different conclusion after many hours of careful consideration and contemplation.

It might take a while, loved ones, but I’ll get there.