Tag: Growing Up

The Padawans have surpassed the masters… and other things that happen when you become a parent.

The Padawans have surpassed the masters… and other things that happen when you become a parent.

by Maelyn Murray ♥ 1 Comment

Let me start this off by saying that it is fitting that my husband’s love for Star Wars ties into our parenting journey.

I still remember the early days of our relationship, and sitting down for the 1st movie, which, fun fact, is actually the 4th chapter (my husband would be proud I’ve included this). And I remember thinking… 9 movies?…and in so many words, I thought – how will this impact our relationship?

I guess this is my answer…

To be honest… parenting feels like bouncing around chapters, book reprints, movie remakes, and any other analogy you can think of that can explain how impermanent things can be while navigating parenthood.

It’s a constant learning process.

It’s rewriting, editing, and publishing what you learn along the way. And deleting what doesn’t really fit into your life.

My husband and I are so grateful to have learned so much from our parents and people who have become parents before us. But when it comes to raising our child… we’ve come to realize the process is ultimately up to our little one and us as a unit.

Our childhoods, whether we want to admit it or not, play a huge role in our decisions as parents who are on the other side of the delicate dance of growing up.

Our parents’ advice, our siblings’ advice, parenting books, and documentaries might change bits and pieces of the trajectory of our parenting. But at the end of the day, we create it and follow through with what we believe in and what our hearts tell us to.

So much of learning how to do something you’ve never done before, is learning from someone you trust, respect, and love.

And we have been extremely fortunate to have copious amounts of wonderful people who have raised wonderful people…

Yet in the same way, we have also learned the things we won’t do, the things we won’t let be generational or repeated for our child’s upbringing.

Like anything in the world, parenting advice changes, it reverses, and it gets overturned…

The thing is, it often stays the same for the people who lived it & practiced certain parenting styles during their time. And it can be difficult to share aspects of parenting with people who don’t and won’t share your updated outlook.

Being parents in today’s world, where there are 1000 and 1 options and opinions in the palm of our hands, as well as our own parents’ advice, can be overwhelming to say the least…

My husband and I have found that the one thing we know to be true & constant in this parenting journey, is our undying team work. We luckily share similar mindsets for learning in real time alongside one another, and we absolutely love sharing all the parenting ups and downs.

We have also found that what our parents did, does not necessarily mean it’s the rule or the best/worst option for us.

What I’m trying to say is this…

Growing up is wild.

Finding who you want to spend your life with is wild.

Building a family with someone is wild.

And redefining what your child’s upbringing will look like is wild.

When I say the padawans have surpassed the master, I mean it in the most loving way….

Like in Star Wars… when this happens, it’s celebrated.

The next generation is taking the reins, and they are creating the next generation of padawans.

It’s a good thing, and it should be the goal… don’t you think?

Live life in vibrant color, and leave behind the rest

Live life in vibrant color, and leave behind the rest

by Maelyn Murray ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

I sometimes struggle with healing from my past. Past mistakes, friendships, relationships, or even past versions of myself. And what I have found is that we are always a little bit of each of those things…forever. Not necessarily in all the cringe worthy ways, but if you think about it, we are always growing from our past versions. Whether it is the past version of yourself from a year, a month, a week, or even a day ago. I like to think of each person’s life like a plant, every plant has different needs and different ways to care for it, but the base line care is pretty much the same. You water it, give it sunlight, and repot it when it’s outgrown its first container. People are like this too – everyone starts somewhere, needs a level of nourishment, and care – and eventually we outgrow where we started. A lot like plants, we will always have our roots, the evidence of who we once were, forever attached to who we are today.

My past self has made some foolish decisions. Hell, sometimes my present self does too – no one is perfect! After trial and error, most of the time I have learned to notice, grow, and improve from those choices. Some decisions lead me to stick it out with friends that were no good and stay with jobs that were sucking the life out of me. And others were questionable personal decisions, like trying not to eat to fill the fantasy standard of beauty. Oppositely, some were positive decisions to take chances on myself, choose what I wanted over what others wanted for me, and love who I was at every stage of life. These decisions were rarely self taught, and a lot of  times they were inspired by way of example. I would see someone taking risks and choosing to live life in vibrant colors, and I would decide I wanted to live life in vibrant colors too.  

Speaking on the spectrum of decisions, I have and love tattoos. They are beautiful expressions of what people want to showcase to others without words (although sometimes tattoos are words). Occasionally they are self explanatory, while other times they are special to only the one person who has them. I like the ones that are significant in some way, the ones that have meaning beyond the tattoo itself. All my tattoos have meaning, but I happened to get one that I no longer felt in love with a few years later. After thinking long and hard about it, I decided to get it covered up. The process of getting it covered up was weirdly therapeutic, I was changing something that was thought/meant to be permanent. I was changing something because I made the decision to. 

Lately, I have become more aware of the power of decision. Our daily lives are so saturated with advice and FOMO, that sometimes it’s hard to make a personal decision without someone else’s approval. I now acknowledge the power of jumping off of my past/present self today and everyday to be a better version of myself.  Every day is a clean slate to change and make waves.

Where are you REALLY from?

Where are you REALLY from?

by Maelyn Murray ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Okay, I’m going to answer that question right off the bat. I am adopted from China, and I honestly know very little about my original home town. I’ve seen pictures, heard stories, and even watched documentaries, but I’ve never experienced it. It’s been on my bucket list for a while. 

I don’t even remember when I found out I was adopted, it might have been self explanatory. In my early days, I remember being different, different hair color, eye color, and skin color. In many ways my family worked hard to make the differences an excuse to celebrate my uniqueness in our daily lives. For one of my birthdays my family spray painted their blonde hair black for my birthday (it sounds like it was in bad taste,but I loved it). 

My parents tried to keep me involved with cultural groups, like dance and language classes, but I was never into it. Not because I wasn’t interested, but because I immediately fell into a category. Chinese girl, adopted into a caucasion family (my dance class was filled with identical situations). It felt more like a label than my race difference, and with time the classes slowly disappeared from my life. 

Growing up, I remember people asking where I was from, speaking to me in chinese, or thinking I didn’t even belong with my family group. It stung, and often took me back for a second, but I got used to it and learned to live with the constant replies of “I am from China”, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak chinese” (in my very american accent), and “I am with them”.

As I got older, friends were sometimes the worst. I often forgot my different looks, in my house it was never mentioned, but in school – I was asked the same questions that strangers asked me. The most popular though, was “where are you from?” or “WHAT are you?”

Friends would ask – do you ever want to be white? And I remember thinking about my response – it was often a short no (but in secret, sometimes it was… yes). My friends mostly consisted of non – asian individuals, so I was never the friend who was called the twin or the sibling. These little instances really hurt, but I learned to mask it and eventually learned to own my differences. This was definitely not over night, and took a lot of self love. No one can really make you happy about you, except you. 

Once I got to my teens the stereotype shifted into something more adult. There were times where the shift was thrown in my face, while other times it was less recognizable. Once my father took me to a restaurant after one of my choir concerts, and the hostess seated us in a private room. It wasn’t until we asked to be moved to the main dining room that it dawned on me – they thought I was only with him for the night. 

In high school and college I no longer knew if people liked me for me or if it was an “asian thing”. Sometimes it became self explanatory, a phrase like “I’ve never been with an asian girl” would eventually be verbalized or “can you speak with an accent?” and it would set off my radar.

As an adult – I still deal with these insecurities. The difference now is that I know where to spot them, and how to digest them, and eventually grow past them. Like all things, it ebbs and flows – with time, with news, and with who I meet.