Such approval I seek

I told my friend Jane that I read somewhere about most writers never writing anything interesting until their parents are dead. She said "I would say that the writer who told you that was a pussy, but I'm not sure I my mother saw anything interesting I had written before she died." Jane's not known for mincing her words. It's one of my favourite things about her.

I'm trying very hard to get a grasp on precisely why I need so much approval from other people on certain matters. It all originates with my parents and while there are many people in my life whose approval I don't seek, I do look for it from certain people other than my parents, although they are the main focus of it.

I'm confused. In some ways I'm completely independent of their approval. I knew they wouldn't like it when I chose a homebirth for my daughter but I did it anyway. They were disapproving of me breastfeeding her until she was nearly three and they certainly didn't like the home educating that I did until she was six, but all of this I handled with very little bother as to what they thought of me.

Perhaps it's because that was all related to me being a mother. I'm prepared to take the flak over my parenting decisions because it's not about me; it's about my child and I have to put her needs before anyone else - including my own need for approval.

Things are much harder when it's about me personally only I can't figure out how much of it is about me needing to love and approve of myself or about having that approval from others. My mother and a friend of mine dislike most intensely that I am seeing this man. I feel tremendously un-guilty considering I've always thought of myself as a highly principled and moral person.

I had lunch with my neither approving-nor-disproving friend Carole in a tapas bar in Windsor last weekend, post new-boots shopping. At the end of the meal I said I may well claim some mileage back (from my own company) on all the trips I'm making down south lately. Carole said that she could never do that, whereas I consider a slight massage of mileage figures to be financially prudent behaviour. I had to reflect afterwards that perhaps my morals are much lower than I've always considered them to be. Perhaps being a highly-principled person is simple something I've always told myself that isn't necessarily true.

I am finding with those friends and family that are judging my current behaviour that they are projecting their own issues and it's all about them and not me. Having this understanding is not stopping me from being affected by their feelings about what I'm doing. I can't figure out if this is because I am conflicted about what I am doing and I'm blaming them for 'making me feel' like that or if I don't like it that they aren't currently approving of what I'm doing.

I could probably live with the whole issue if it weren't for how it leaks over into how I feel about my writing. Even if I were writing fiction I know that a writer puts so much of themselves into what they are writing it can be revealing, but they are able to hide behind it being imaginative and fantasy. My writing so far seems to be non-fiction and it all falls into the most personal parts of my personality and relationships; places where I will have to talk about my ex-husband, my childhood and my sex life. I am not going to be able to do that freely unless I distance myself from the requirement of approval from those that love me. Maybe I simply need to trust that they will love me whether they approve of what I'm doing or not.