Not your usual leadership blog

I was supposed to write a leadership blog for you today. But when I came to write it this afternoon, I had nothing. Instead, I wanted to tell you about the holiday I’ve just spent with my whanau.

There was nothing spectacularly different about this holiday. It’s one we take every year in September to Wanaka to ski with our kids and my 18-year-old niece, Billie.

Except this year, it felt different.

Family dynamics trickled over us, making their well-worn paths when we’re together. The hard-ass organiser, the placating peacemaker, the ‘go with the flow, always late’ cruiser – they all showed up. Sulky, bossy, subdued and hurt made their entrances and their exits throughout the week.

It wasn’t the perfect holiday. And yet for me, it was. I felt more joy on this holiday than I’ve felt in a long time.

Perhaps it was the fact that Billie and her boyfriend Gabriel hung out with my 15-year-old daughter - and I saw her seeing the woman she could become because of it. It might have been listening to the gentle ribbing my husband gave Gabriel about his snowboarding prowess (or lack thereof) on the way down from the mountain each day. It could have been the surprise catch up with our 18-year-old son who was in Queenstown with his mates, but who spent the afternoon with us at an Irish pub. My heart swelled so much I thought it would burst.

Maybe I’m just a middle-aged menopausal woman who’s starting to realise what is truly important to me. But, there was something special about last week.

It was the mundane. The games of cards, the cooking of burgers at the end of the day, the watching of movies on the couch together in the evening. Me nagging everyone to put their washing in the washing machine every afternoon so it could be ready for the next day’s skiing.

In the mundane and the familiar I felt joy.

I’ve sometimes struggled with touching joy. I’ve grasped for it, really wanting to be in ‘this moment’, but somehow, falling short. I worry about what I have to do for work next week, or how I feel like I’m failing in different aspects of my life.

Those uncomfortable companions still joined me this week. But also, joy was here too. In fact, joy was big and lovely and present in my holiday. And that’s what I wanted to write to you about this week.

I hope you too feel joy this week, even if it is in the mundane. And accept that it’s OK for joy to co-exist with worries sometimes too.