I live in two different worlds: the world of Lauri Ann Lumby – author, spiritual counselor, educator, ordained minister; and the world of Lauri Lumby – office manager for a local arts/dance academy.

Living in the world of Lauri Ann Lumby is easy. Sharing my gifts flows without effort. I am filled and fulfilled when sharing my gifts. The people that receive my gifts come to me because they see value in what I offer and because my sharing helps them in some subjective way. In this world I’m in charge of my time, the environment in which I work, and I get to decide how and with whom I will work.

The world of Lauri Lumby is a challenge. There, my administrative abilities are the focus – not my soul gifts. Here I’m not in charge of the environment or the people. I do not get to chose with whom or how I will work. There it’s noisy, chaotic, and I’m forced to work outside of my comfort zone. My soul thrives in a structured, ordered, planned environment. The world of Lauri Lumby is everything but this.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the gifts I experience living in both worlds. The former feeds my soul.  The latter prevents me from disappearing into my hermitage and in that world, I have gotten to know some truly amazing children and their families. I also find myself nourished by being in proximity to the arts. Finally, the latter pays my rent – something critical for the other world to survive.

The real challenge, however, comes when the gifts of Lauri Ann Lumby try to bleed into the world of the other Lauri. Lauri Ann Lumby sees and knows things. She can’t help but identify growth areas in an individual and in environments. She knows when things aren’t working out and how that might be repaired. Lauri Ann Lumby is improvement oriented. When Lauri Ann Lumby’s improvement orientation is triggered in the world of the other Lauri, things get really uncomfortable – not necessarily for anyone else but for me.

Unless….until….the soul-need to share my gifts goes unmet for so long that it starts to come out sideways. Which it did last night. In a moment of frustration over a pile-up of frustrations, I spoke harshly to a group of students who were not following instructions that I thought everyone understood. I made one of those students cry. ☹

I felt so bad.  I never want to make a student cry.   I immediately apologized and later, I went back and explained to the student that I had taken my frustration out on her over something completely unrelated to her. I’m not sure if she understood, and the damage was probably already done. I hope over time she will forgive me. I hope over time I’ll be able to forgive myself.

Being human is hard. We try our best. We attempt to manage our stress and anxiety. We try to find balance in environments whose dynamics are outside our preference. We try to be honest about our feelings and ask for our needs to be met. Sometimes our needs are met. Often they are not. We then work through the grief, frustration, even anger over needs going unmet. We apply self-care and engage in our mindfulness/stress-relief practices.

But sometimes…..sometimes…..it’s just too much and we lose our shit. Sometimes innocent people are the recipients of the shit we lose.

Being human is hard – especially when you’re already a perfectionist and recovering people-pleaser.

We do our best. We are sometimes successful. More often, we fail. The best we can do when we fail is to seek inside of ourselves, ask ourselves why, and do something to manage that why. Then we apologize and take responsibility for our failure, hoping that in time, the wounds resulting from the failure might heal – our own, and those we may have hurt simply because we are human.

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