What happened when my mom stopped giving a ****
My mother is always the life and soul of the party among her family and friends. She’s one of those people who lights up every room she walks into and makes everyone feel happy in her presence.
But when it comes to speaking to strangers, she crumbles. She morphs into an incredibly shy, unconfident shadow of herself. I remember one time as a child she noticed that some people were knocking on doors where we lived and she had my sister and I hide with her behind the couch and pretend we weren’t home just so she wouldn’t have to speak to them! It was funny at the time, but looking back, I realise she was paralysed by her fear.
She could never explain why she was so terrified, but this kind of behaviour haunted her her entire life. She relied on others for the simplest of things like even ordering a taxi and as a result, she lost a lot of her independence.
But then something happened in the last few years to change all that.
In the last 5 years or so I have been watching my mother become a completely different woman. She’s confident, fearless, puts herself out there, and takes no s**t.
She gets on the phone to strangers without hesitation and wouldn’t delay in putting someone right if they tried to rip her off! Next week she’s travelling to Croatia, somewhere she never would have gone for fear of being outside her comfort zone and is super excited and open to trying something completely new!
So why the huge change? And why only now when she’s in her mid fifties?
I honestly believe she just stopped giving a f**k about what other people think about her. She realised it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t like her or thinks she’s not enough. She is enough. She knows it, her family knows it, and that’s all that counts. And her life has transformed since she made that realisation.
So much so, I was even able to get her to record a video that will be shown to thousands of strangers on the internet! The video talks about what growing better means to me at HubSpot but what it really shows is how my mother has grown into the person she was always meant to be. A happy, confident woman who owns her identity.
My call to action for you though is not to hold off on becoming your true you any longer. You are enough just as you are so please don’t let the perspectives of others restrict you from living a full life right now!
Here’s the video of me and my momma. It makes me smile from ear to ear watching her in this which by the way, she nailed in the first take! If it makes you smile too, please give her all your claps and leave a comment about how you’ve learned to or plan to #GrowBetter.

