Not My Canoe Not My People
By Bernadette A. Moyer

Sometimes in life we find ourselves in someone else’s canoe or with people that are “not our people.” We know when we are with “our people” it is when the relationship is easy and natural and we feel connected. We also know when we are in someone else’s canoe and that we don’t belong there.

There are people in this world looking for us and they want us to be a part of their lives; they are inherently our people. Forced relationships whether through tolerance or life circumstance seldom if ever offer us a real and lasting connection.

Are we helping or are we getting in the way and enabling? When we jump into someone else’s canoe, even if we think it is to help them, are we helping them or are we enabling them? And quite possibly we might just be hurting them by not allowing them to learn and to grow and to steer their own course.

Confidence comes from life experiences and from making choices that propel us forward. When we make the choices that are best for us, we alone know that. There is so much value that comes from owning our stuff, learning from it, growing and building upon what works for us.

Giving our power away, allowing others, any others, the control over our lives does nothing to help us grow up, or mature and learn. If anything it may contribute to our lack of confidence and our ability to forge our own path.

Parents often straddle a fine line of helping their children versus enabling when they do not allow their children to experience the consequences of their own actions. As a mother I have often been guilty of this, taking responsibility for my children’s action when they alone should have understand the consequences and felt the outcome of their choices.

You can’t protect someone from themselves, and it is okay when things don’t go the way we want or when people don’t get us, or want to be with us and support us, it may just be that they aren’t “our people.” In the natural course of life in the natural order we find “our people” and they find us!

This starts with trusting the universe … trusting in a God source … trusting that we already have inside of us, everything that we need to maneuver our own canoe and chart our own unique life course …

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Books by Bernadette available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble