Yestember 2017

Can you remember the first time you realised, that maybe you weren’t that good at something?

I think the older we get, the more tentative we become, aware of our failures, aware of our imperfections and moments where we just get stuck. Our relationships are the first to be affected when we are worried about what other people think.

Very quickly, we start to question and doubt our abilities. We start to shut down. Without even realising it, we have backed ourselves into a corner and played the movie forward and so often we just end up saying no.

As children, we change from these young girls, who dance freely around the kitchen whenever music is played, to women who are uncomfortable that we may look silly or childish or, even worse, fat.

As young girls, we play up to the camera, wanting someone, anyone to take our photo. We smile and we play, then one day we become shy and worried about whether we are good looking enough? Is what we are wearing okay? What will others think of us?

As young women, we cook with delight, making awful breakfasts for our Mums in bed, with burnt toast and cold coffee, all the while being so proud. As we grow older we become afraid of inviting guests over for dinner, because our food isn’t up to a master-chef standard.

We draw and scribble outside of the lines as a toddler and preschooler. Then we hear negative words, one after another; that we shouldn’t paint the sky purple, that girls must like butterflies and boys trucks, and our self-worth, year after year, becomes squashed into a place of perfection.

The little girl who decorates her room with scarves and colours, dressing up her Barbie dolls with bright colours, building teepees and forts out of rugs…becomes afraid to invite anyone over to her house because it might not look like those amazing homes on Insta- gram or Pinterest.

We start to say no to new opportunities out of fear and we progressively shut down our lives until we’re in a place of comfort. I believe there are times in our life that we just need to make a crazy change and begin to do things that we have never done before. Old ways won’t open new doors. Sometimes you just need to throw caution to the wind and say yes.

That’s what this book is designed to provoke by using the thread called Yestember: say- ing yes to things we would not normally do.

Stretching our comfort zones, meeting new people.

Seeing your life with new eyes.

“For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”

Isaiah 43: 19