{"id":1457,"date":"2017-01-09T07:38:16","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T12:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=1457"},"modified":"2017-01-10T21:14:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T02:14:48","slug":"expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/expectations\/","title":{"rendered":"Expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"RobinSomething has been bothering me. A couple of weeks ago when I blogged about how to handle holiday stress<\/a>, I posted all over Facebook, \u201cStay in bed with a hot water bottle…. You don\u2019t have to do the holidays this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo way. Expectations,\u201d a couple of Facebook friends replied. And it took a while until I remembered my many years of being The One Who Made Joy Happen in our house. Back then I couldn\u2019t have simply turned my back on what was expected of me. I would not have wanted to. There are times in your life when people look up to you, depend on you, trust you. And when you are in that position you do what you can to keep their world intact, and you do it with grace. I apologize to the ones I offended or disappointed. I\u2019m sorry for forgetting how important it is for us to hold our tribe together.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you lose track of what others expect of you, or what you expect of yourself. With the loss of my daughter, I lost a lot of my expectations. The biggest one was that children would outlive their parents. There were others:<\/p>\n

The expectation that life will return to normal. That there ever was a normal in life.
\nThat grief has an ending point, that at some time we should reach the end of our grief.
\nThat one day you will be the same person you used to be. That one could ever be the same person she was before losing her heart.
\nThat the first year of grieving is the worst. That time heals all wounds.
\nThat if I followed all the rules and did what was right, everything would turn out okay.<\/p>\n

That I would always complete my photo-illustration before putting it out on the Internet for all to see.<\/p>\n

So much for what we believed.<\/p>\n

You were expecting something joyful here? You\u2019ve been so patient, putting up with my moping through the last weeks. There is some good news: We don\u2019t have to worry or fret over any of this. Expectations – I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s one of those things our president-elect is working hard to rescind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What expectations have you come to let go of?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something has been bothering me. A couple of weeks ago when I blogged about how to handle holiday stress, I posted all over Facebook, “Stay in bed with a hot water bottle…. You don’t have to do the holidays this year.” “No way. Expectations,” a couple of Facebook friends replied. And it took a while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1062],"tags":[1069,1074,247,784,1072,1070,406,388,1071,1073],"class_list":["post-1457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1062","tag-expectations","tag-good-news","tag-grief","tag-healing","tag-joy","tag-keeping-people-happy","tag-looking-for-joy","tag-loss","tag-stepping-up","tag-what-we-believe"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1457\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}