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Chapter 9 (The Next Step)

January 22, 2025 / Callie Page / 0 Comments

I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be a mental health counselor. I think maybe jr. high was the first time that I realized it. I met with a counselor that I adored and looked up to. After the meeting with her, I started to really believe in my dream. I had a one track mind until after the completion of my masters degree in counseling 11 years later.

I understood the reticence of my parents and family members who wondered if counseling/psychology was really a plan for my future. I understood that they didn’t see the profession as I saw the profession. It didn’t help that no one in my family at the time was in that industry, or benefitted from that industry…not that we didn’t need it. Everyone could use a little counseling.

At the time, psych was not really 100% accepted by everyone around me, but I knew it was right. I finished the degree. I got the job. I had babies. I quit the job. I started a business in a completely different industry. I thought I was done with the dream.

Silly me.

Of course I wasn’t done. Looking back I can see all of the perfectly laid plans, and the convictions, and drive to finish my counseling dream for what it is…

The next step.

That’s how everything I’ve done has been. It’s all just been the next step. God hasn’t shown me how each piece “ends” before it ends. He only shows me the next step and I chase it, knock it down, and I think I know exactly what it means for my future. Most the time, I don’t.

I don’t think I’d wish for it any other way. I trust in the plan. Thank goodness, too, because I don’t have the capacity for more than that.

For so long I didn’t understand that for what it was, and is. I thought there was a definite and “right” path. I thought that when I seemingly chose the wrong profession, path, friendship, etc. that I made the “wrong” choice. It was never about that. It was always about that decision being the next step. All of those “wrong” decisions taught me something about myself and the world around me and helped me in my next journey. It was never about getting it wrong. I’m not that important. My decisions aren’t that monumental. It was just about the next step, and with God at the helm, I’ll get there. I always do.

Chapter 8 (The Comparison)

January 15, 2025 / Callie Page / 0 Comments

My older sister was always someone who I looked up to with so much admiration. She was and is beautiful, smart, loved by our whole town, and a teacher’s favorite. I was happy to be her sister, but sometimes I would spend my time comparing how wonderful she was to how average I was.

As a kid, the comparison was strong. Sometimes it’s all I could see. I envied her, but I never tried to compete with her. I knew that she was good and loved and special. I didn’t ever think that wasn’t the case. I was never jealous. I was always proud of her.

I never tried to “beat” her at being great. I just gladly took second place. I stood behind her. I let her shine. I tried to take on her persona in an effort to be “better”. I tried to feel and emote the same way she did. I tried to emulate her interactions with others. I tried to be the most like her that I could but was completely satisfied with being second best. She deserved all the greatness.

Here’s where it gets crazy.

This rendition of our childhood is not at all how she saw it. We’ve had conversations about who we are and were in the world, and it looks very different than what the other person thought. It’s almost funny how different the perspectives are.

When I realized this, the idea of “no one is looking at you as much as you are” really became real for me.

I know that you’ve heard the sentiment of “don’t worry about yourself so much, no one else is.” Everyone is just worried about themselves and how to keep themselves on track. It’s a popular thought, but we seem to forget it in everyday life. She was thinking about how she showed up in the world, and I was only thinking about how I showed up in the world. When we had a conversation about it, the experience was incredibly illuminating for me.

It’s too bad for humanity that we can’t get past ourselves, but it’s also freeing to know that our only responsibility is our own selves. (If you’re a parent, you know that’s not completely true for about 18 years, but at the core of our existence, it is.) I guess it’s humbling to know that we are supposed to be on this journey of self discovery.

Comparison and judgment is futile. Fear of not being enough is useless. Worrying about what will come for us tomorrow is pointless. We couldn’t control any of that if we tried. All we can do is love and then love, and then love some more. Everything else becomes unimportant.

It only took me 39 years to learn this. I’m a slow learner, but eventually I got there.

Chapter 7 (The One)

January 8, 2025 / Callie Page / 2 Comments

As a part of the “not enoughness” feeling that I often carried with me throughout my life, I had this assumption that the “man of my dreams” would fix it. I imagined that he would fill those places that felt empty within me. I romanticized the thought of him being perfect, and I ached to meet him so that I could stop feeling so empty. So I searched. I prayed (to what i’m not sure, maybe the universe?). I thought about it daily. Honestly, probably most minutes of most days when I hit jr. high.

I dated a few boys in high school. I was pretty lucky, they were great boys. They all treated me very well and respected me. I couldn’t have asked for more.

None of them, however, were the missing piece. None of them were the link to my happiness that I so desperately needed them to be. They didn’t complete me. So I kept searching.

Years later, when I found my missing piece (more on that in a later post), I realized that the things I thought he was supposed to fix, he couldn’t. From the time I was too young to even understand, I had a need that hadn’t been filled.

The realization of Brad, my husband and missing piece, not being the answer to all of my “not enoughness” parts of myself was excruciating. I REALLY didn’t understand what I was supposed to do with this feeling of emptiness inside of me. I was so confused. He couldn’t have been more perfect for me. He couldn’t have done anything better. We couldn’t be better friends. He was my soulmate, and I knew that. How could that not be enough?

I was so confused and so hurt. This feeling led me to struggling for years in silence, because he was supposed to be all of my answers before I realized he couldn’t be.

I was back at square one.

I just wanted so desperately to feel full.

There’s much more to this story and it gets laid out later throughout the remaining blog posts. The important part of this part of the story for me was that I realized I had this initial need for someone to fix the parts of me that I couldn’t seem to fix myself.

My high school self was looking for “the one” because I just knew that would be my answer. Someone would fill that for me. I just had to find the right person.

Learning that wasn’t possible, was one of the most formative and difficult experiences of my life.

Years and years later I watched a video posted on social media by Will Smith talking about the very same thing that he walked through with his wife, Jada. It’s amazing how this need and feeling lives in all of us. It doesn’t matter if you are just a simple girl from the midwest or an international superstar, our human needs and desires seem to come back to one place.

We all just want to be loved unconditionally, understood, and cared about. We want to feel “full”. It’s human nature. And there is a larger reason for it. I’m grateful for the need because it makes this life bigger than us, and I’ve learned, none of us can fill it alone.

Chapter 6 (The Game)

January 1, 2025 / Callie Page / 3 Comments

I’ve always been a very passionate person. Sometimes I like this quality about myself, and other times it can be a bit ridiculous. Nevertheless, I think I was given this quality for reasons that I don’t even fully know about yet. The reason I say that is because I’ve already seen the fruits of that thus far in certain areas of my life.

I remember in high school a weeknight softball game was canceled because of the rain, and I was devastated. And yes, I actually mean, devastated. I went to my room and cried after school because I wanted to play so badly. I LOVED softball. It was an obsession for me. However, to be fair, everything I did was an obsession for me. When I love something, I go all in. 150%.

I do realize that it’s a bit silly to cry over a missed game, but that’s the only emotion I could feel at the time. I knew, even then, that it was an immature thing to do, but I was so caught up in the feeling of playing, I forgot about everything else.

I do that still.

When I pour my heart into something, I get tunnel vision. I can’t even imagine a way that it could go other than the way I created it in my head. I only imagine one scenario. And because I am a notoriously optimistic person, my way is always slightly more positive than the reality. So, I tend to enjoy things on a deep level.

Even with parenting I imagined the situation slightly different than it has gone. Sleepless nights? That wasn’t going to happen to me. Business? Well, I’ll just open the thing, and money will flow in.

Like I mentioned earlier MOST of the time the optimism and obsession with my current situation has been a blessing. It makes me get up in the morning and expect my best. It makes it a little easier for me to take the next step, whatever that might be at the time. It shows me a world in which most things are good. It keeps me in a positive state of mind. I need it. Maybe, more than air sometimes. I’m grateful I have that quality, but sometimes…it gets me into trouble.

Obsessions have two sides to them. The difficult part is when I can’t let go of something that I know I need to let go of. I may hold onto dreams a little longer than I should. I create expectations of others when I don’t have the right to, including my own children. When I have a plan for my kids’ life in my brain, and they don’t take the same steps I’ve imagined, I have to go through a process of letting go. When Brad sees something different than I do, I have a hard
time letting go of my vision. I forget that we don’t necessarily need to agree.

The whole experience is a constant reminder to me that I only get to control my own response to the world. I do not ever get to control what others decide to do. And thank goodness for that, because that means that I get to choose my path, even if someone else doesn’t choose the way I do. The way I see things is up to me, and me alone.

Chapter 5 (The Deer)

December 25, 2024 / Callie Page / 2 Comments

Compassion. It’s an interesting thing, some people have it, some people really don’t have much of it. It seems like it’s not something that can be taught, but maybe observing it is the most impactful way to learn it? I don’t know. It’s a concept that is a little more cumbersome to explain. There are several parts to it.

The first time I realized that compassion was going to be a blessing and a curse for me was when my grandpa and uncle were hunting at my house.

Yes, I’m one of those people who hate seeing death in any capacity, however, I do understand it differently as an adult. At that time though, I was probably 12 or 13 and seeing a gutted, strung up deer carcass on my tree outside my house hit me a little harder than it probably should have.

My first thought was “oh that poor deer never gets to see its mom again.” “It probably left behind a wife or a girlfriend. They are probably looking for him right now, and they’ll never find him.” I personified a deer. And then I stood there for 20 minutes sobbing uncontrollably because of the pain the deer family would have to go through. Yes, I realize now how ridiculous that was, but at the time, it was all consuming in my brain.

My heart broke for the family of that deer.

My heart broke for anyone, at any time, that experienced any kind of trauma or pain. For many, many years I couldn’t move past the sorrow. In some ways, I still can’t. I’ve had to learn how to use that compassion to the best of my ability.

It’s probably ok to let go of one less deer in the world, but it’s also ok for me to feel things a little deeper than what’s socially acceptable. So if I see you in the crowd, and ask you a question about your life, just know I genuinely care about your answer. And chances are, I’ll keep that response with me throughout my day. I will hurt for you, or smile for you, whatever the case may be. I will keep it with me for some time.

Throughout my life I’ve been told that those reactions aren’t acceptable and are considered naive and ideal. For example, in the mental health world, when I was working as a counselor, I was advised several times to “not get too close”. I was warned away from crying over a situation I heard about that day. And although I understand the reasoning behind this, I couldn’t change my natural reaction. I couldn’t change it only because I realized I didn’t want to. Instead of changing, I removed myself from the industry. I had to.

I think sometimes in life, we find ourselves being told by a societal norm that we need to conform in order to follow protocol or to do things the “right” way, and even though rules need to be had, there comes a point in time when you have to decide for yourself if you’re willing to make that concession. In my case, changing that piece of me would have been something that changed the fabric of who I want to be. And that wasn’t worth it for me.

I choose now to look at that compassion quality as a strength and not a weakness, and that has made all the difference.

Reclaimed Living