Stay Weird, My Love

The day you were born you looked at me with the eyes of an old soul. I knew right then you were what I’d waited my whole life for. You were wise from the start. I’ve always known that I have as much to learn from you as I have to teach you. You can be a typical teen at times. Cranky, argumentative and an emotional tornado, but you are so genuine, so kind and so unique. I am regularly in awe of how well you know yourself and how hard you are willing to fight not to change for me or anyone else.

But this one is tough, kiddo. Middle School. It’s not the schedule or the shifting of classes. It is not balancing multiple teachers or harder courses. It’s middle school kids. Are they all a special breed of gremlin that morph by smelling out fear and insecurity?  Perhaps.  Will the next two years be nothing but pimples, body odor and mean girls? No. There will be finals and term papers and rumor mongering too. There will be crushes and heartbreak and friendships tested. There will be moments of greatness and success that your insecurity will warn you to celebrate quietly as to not stand out.  I say this from experience. I don’t tell you this lightly or without knowing that I sound like I am prepping you for war, but forewarned is forearmed, sweetheart.

Don’t be shocked by how mean girls can be. Middle School girls are a special kind of mean. And while I hate to believe it, we’ve all been that girl and we’ve all been the victim of that girl. Don’t let it define you or wound you for too long. We all survived, scars and all.

You have been blessed thus far with a group of friends who are as “perfectly weird” as you are. Social misfits, who all “fit” together.  It’s why The Breakfast Club resonates so deeply in your soul. You have been so lucky to remain outside of most of the drama online and in person. Middle School will make that harder. But stay weird, my love.

Your “weird” is what makes you, you. The way you write. The way you draw. The way you wear your hear t right out on your sleeve. The way you laugh and giggle and sing. The way you dance and draw song lyrics all over your pants. The way you read obsessively and memorize whole books so that you can share the best parts with us. The way you get into the minds and hearts of characters and long to understand them as people. The way you are part girl and part woman and 100 shades of tween. The way you rally for the causes you believe in and do everything with a sense of passion and purpose.

As hard as it will become to remain true to whom you are, FIGHT for it. Fight for your friends when they are faced with cruelty or hardship. Fight for the ideals you already hold so dear. Fight to remain you while figuring out exactly who that is. Fight the urge to “fit in,” when standing out will take you so much further. Fight to ignore the bullies and the desire to be one when you are hurt. Fight taking down a friend, an acquaintance or even someone you really don’t like. There are some hurts that scar us forever. Fight against injustice when you see it, against boredom and insecurity when you feel it and cruelty when you hear it. And stay weird, my love.

Spend time nurturing new and old friends. Spend more time on the subjects you hate than the ones you love. Spend time being unique when it’s easier to be anonymous. Spend time bettering your mind and your body. Push yourself, HARD. Never turn in anything less than your best work. Never leave a friend alone. Never walk when you can run. Never say no because yes is more work. Never let anyone else define you, tell you what you think, what you feel or who you are. Never chose hate when you can chose love. Never treat anyone in a way you’d be ashamed to admit to me.

Things will be confusing for everyone around you - popularity, sexuality, identity and ideology. Keep your mind wide open. Let your spirit and your heart guide. And LISTEN. Don’t just hear but really LISTEN. Listen more when you disagree than when you agree – those times will prove to be your greatest lessons.

Trust me when I tell you that you will learn more about yourself and others in the next two years than you have in the last 13 combined. This is a passage out of childhood. It will be exciting, and overwhelming and scary and wonderful and awful. Some days it will be all of those things at once (oh blessed hormones).

So as we embark on this journey together, my love. Stay weird and know:

1. My door, my ears, my heart and my lap and always open.
2. There is nothing you can do that I cannot forgive, but you have to tell me so I can help.
3. Girls will be mean. It will not make sense.
4. You will be mean. It will not make sense. Learn from it.
5. Deleted and erased no longer exist. Don’t do it, say it or show it if you’d be ashamed for it to wind up in your grandmother’s inbox.
6. You have a powerful voice. Use it wisely and with conviction.
7. Silence is equally as powerful when used correctly.
8. You are beautiful, smart, funny, wise and strong. You will not truly believe any of that for many years, so I will be here to remind you.
9. I want you to be successful, but not as much as I want you to be kind.
10. Don’t give anything less than 100%. If you can’t, don’t bother.
11. I don’t expect you to be the best. I simply expect you to try your hardest, always.
12. You. Are. Loved.

On Thriving

The thing about divorce is that even the “best” ones are, for a time - a shit storm. Your life is upside down and everything you defined yourself as is shifting. You are watching your partner of close to 20 years move out and then sell a house and move, all the while reminding yourself to breathe. And reminding your kids that their world is not ending. While doing all of that, it’s hard to not become self-involved, selfish and perhaps blind and deaf to everything that is not immediately in front of you.

Your expectations of your people become larger than life. You need life rafts, buoys and Atlas sized shoulders. And sometimes that’s ok. At others, it’s not.  You become so wrapped up in your own storm that you often forget that everyone’s lives are still in motion and they too are experiencing their own hard times, their own loss, and their own needs. You are so focused on staying afloat that your weight becomes an anchor, keeping you in only one place, focused on only your tugboat.

Different friends and family respond in different ways and you take that personally and make it their fault. You are hurt and angry and full of blame when they no longer show up. But they don’t see it that way. They have their own lives and they miss your presence in it. They need your strength and support at a time when you don’t have it to give. Time goes on and you feel alone and isolated from those who used to be your everything. And for a while no one is willing to give. Fingers point in every direction but the right one.  At yourself.

Eventually you are lucky enough to have it out with someone you refused to give up on, even though you should have both thrown in the towel. Lucky enough to have them call you out on your sh*t and remind you that it takes two to tango. Remind you that you have always believed in owning your own sh*t, but have been too busy feeling badly for yourself to pull up your big girl panties and do so.

Divorce is like a death and it too has stages of grieving. In three years I’ve passed though shock, through denial, through anger, through bargaining and depression and testing and into acceptance. But divorce is different too. It’s about moving through surviving and into thriving.

So that’s where I am. I am working on thriving and to do that I must own my sh*t.

I own my failures as a wife and a mother.

I own my selfishness as a friend, a sister, a daughter, a granddaughter, a lover and a girlfriend.

I own the passive aggressiveness and blame I wove through my writing when I was hurt and felt betrayed.

I own my weight gain, lack of motivation and strength when I could do nothing more than crawl under my covers and cry.

I own my voice though it was often harsh, crass and hurtful.

I own my mistakes and indecision.

I own the pain I've caused myself and others.

I own my lack of self-esteem, self-doubt and self-loathing.

I own the kind of friend that I am and I own that alone.

From here on in, I WILL OWN MY SH*T and I will thrive.

40 Pledges, Self-Esteem and Cheesecake

While filling out paperwork the other day, I was made painfully aware of the fact that I am already ¾ of the way through my 40^th year. Yikes! Leading up to 40, I had put a lot of pressure on the birthday. There were things I wanted very much to be able to say I had accomplished. Things I planned to do for myself, like my birthday celebration On Planning My Own. Then there was the one that was intended not to mark 40, but to carry me forward from there. The learnings, the insights, the promises and the ambitions. I had thought long and hard about making 40 pledges to myself – my gift to myself and myself alone. No pressure!

I set out very intentionally. They needed to be realistic but aspirational. They needed to reflect the real me and where I am in my life. They needed to be sunshine, silver lining and a few kicks in the ass. There needed to be things I could consider daily and others that were bigger, more global and long term. My self-esteem has taken a beating over the last few years, so they needed to avoid adding to that. Then there was the question of whether or not they made it on paper. Are they kept in my mind? Written down? Said out loud? Oh my – published?

On a daily basis I am reminded that I could be better, do better and feel better so that seemed like a good place to start, right? As the mom of two tween girls, my number one job is to make sure that my girls have self-respect. Yes, there’s feeding, clothing and loving, too. I assure you though, as I look back at the best lesson I got from my own mother it was that “I was the boss of me.” No one could force me to drink or do drugs, no one could coerce me into thinking that sex was no big deal or to jump off the bridge because everyone else was. Of course I struggled, like all teens. But I trusted my parents to be true to their word – they would be there NO MATTER WHAT and I was the boss of me.

It’s a lesson even as divorced parents, I know my ex and I are on the same page about. We might go about it differently, but the take away for my kids is the same. So I started there and 40 pledges later I ended.

1.      I will stop beating myself up. The world will do it enough for me.

2.      I will eat cheesecake, it makes me happy.

3.      I will listen to hear and not to respond.

4.      I will breathe before I scream. If I must scream, I will open the door to the basement and scream until I can’t breathe.

5.      I will kiss my children every time I say hello and goodbye.

6.      I will say I love you without hesitation. By now I am a good judge of who has earned that.

7.      I will mean what I say and say what I mean.

8.      I will listen to my mommy and always do my best work, clean up after myself, be the boss of me and believe that I can.

9.      I will listen to my daddy and smell the roses, think hard, love harder and be silly.

10.   I will listen to my children as they teach me how they need to be themselves, how fast time really passes, the importance of family dinner, bedtime cuddles and that being a mom is equal parts holding on and letting go. Helicopter who?

11.   I will let myself feel even when it scares the shit out of me.

12.   I will be open and honest about the things that make me, me.

13.   I will fight tooth and nail against injustice, even when it makes me unpopular.

14.   I will be willing to be wrong and say so.

15.   I will be willing to learn, to see and to absorb from those who know more or differently than I do.

16.   I will eat cheesecake, it makes me happy.

17.   I will be willing to give up even when I don’t want to, when it becomes clear that that is the only choice.

18.   I will learn from my mistakes and avoid making them again. When I screw up and make the same mistake again, I will be gentle with myself.

19.   I will love with 100% of myself. It is the only way I know how.

20.   I will be generous with my time, my resources and my energy.

21.   I will forgive those who hurt me, wronged me and spoke ill of me. Unless it had to do with my kids and in that case, they are dead to me.

22.   I will work hard.

23.   I will play hard.

24.   I will travel more.

25.   I will give up certain dreams if it’s for the greater good of my family.

26.   I will be grateful.

27.   I will have a lot of sex. It too makes me happy.

28.   I will smile a real smile in pictures and worry less about how I look.

29.   I will take care of my body.

30.   I will eat better (except for cheesecake, obviously).

31.   I will exercise my body and my mind and embrace activities that do both at the same time (like sex).

32.   I will honor those I have lost in the last few years. Each of them took a part of me with them when they left and that is ok.

33.   I will laugh. Loudly. Loud enough to embarrass my children and to fill my soul with the light only laughter can.

34.   I will put myself first when I can. When I can’t, I will eat cheesecake.

35.   I will guard my heart less, knowing that means I’m likely to get hurt. If I don’t, I will miss humans and experiences that will change my entire being.

36.   I will refuse to be labeled or defined by ANYONE but me and I will teach my daughters the same.

37.   I will dance. Sometimes nothing in the world feels as good (well…maybe cheesecake).

38.   I will learn new things on a regular basis and make them part of my being.

39.   I will read. For work, for pleasure, for my children. It doesn’t matter. I simply love to read.

40.   I will write. More.

The Only Way Over Is Through

Amongst my divorced friends, we often refer to ourselves as "2.0," this part of our lives being a "next chapter" of sorts. Part of the process of divorce at 40 after 14+ years of marriage, is reinvention. It's impossible to go back to who we were at 25 and it's impossible to move forward without significant change. When I talk to people considering divorce, this is the part that scares them the most. The idea of starting over, of redefining ourselves halfway through our lives. The knowledge of the strength, support and wisdom it will require - it's terrifying.

The only way over is through. The only way to get there, is to do it. Some days that just means getting up and putting one foot in front of the other and other days it means discovering humor, passion and strength we might have believed we no longer had. In the beginning, each day you get through is a victory, each step is a mountain climbed.  In the beginning, the idea of 2.0 is so overwhelming and foreign that our ability to see it's potential is marred by the long, winding, muddy road between here and there.

Eventually though, time passes and you realize that your baby steps have moved you further than you'd have imagined. You wake up, look in the mirror and actually recognize the person looking back. That person is not you a year ago, but that person is YOU. You can finally see light back in your eyes. When you picture your day, your week and your month, your realize you are excited about the potential. Reinvention is the most integral part of this journey. You simply cannot get over what you have been through without it.

For some of us, we are faced with hard truths. We are forced to deal with demons and issues, we'd long ago put on a shelf. We are forced to look long and hard at who and what we want to be. To look at who and what we want to be around. There is a lot of work to be done and often in rediscovery and reinvention we have to force ourselves to be honest about being given a second chance to figure out what makes us happy. We are also forced to see where we have been wrong, what we need to own about our failures and how we want to be different in the next chapter of our lives. This is not to say that our core tenants change, per se. The crux of who we are remains. It is what we do with it that we are being given an new lease to define.

I recently sat around a table with 9 of the most amazing women I know (and have been blessed to know for over 20 years) and we were asked "what are you most proud of in the last 20 years?" While the answers varied and are too personal to disclose here, mine was simple - "I have found my voice again." One woman at the table chuckled and said "wait, when did YOU ever not have your voice?" In the literal sense she was right. I am loud, opinionated, a debater and defender. But the truth is, I had.

I had lost a sense of what made me, me. I had lost my innate need to own my words, my needs, my dreams and in doing that I was lost. It's been almost two years since my separation. Two very long and painful years. Two years of growth, discovery and redefining. Some things remain the same. I am a mother. I am a daughter. I am a lover. I am a friend. The rest has, for the most part, changed. How I view that change has also shifted. I am grateful, I am blessed. I still have days of anger and frustration but they are fewer and further between.

I am still very much in the process of understanding me, of knowing me and of liking me again. I often fall backwards and am lucky enough to be pulled back up by the loving people in my life. I am also learning new things about myself that are exciting and beautiful and that require so much soul searching. But this process is long and it is painful. Often in my discovery, I hurt the people I love in the name of understanding and discovery. I have no choice though. I need to find my 2.0 so that I can own her.

I am a work in progress. I have started the next chapter but the book is not yet finished being written. I am a sketch, not a masterpiece. I am still me at my core though. That me, she knows only ONE truth in this journey - the only way over is through.

I Am Me And I Am Okay

 

I have long held the personal mantra that “if it won’t be on my headstone, it does not define me.” It has been 40 years in the making and I’ve forgotten it many times along the way, but I do my best to live that truth. Granted I plan to be cremated, but the sentiment is the same nonetheless.  The idea of letting ANYONE or any ONE mistake, accomplishment, role etc. define me, is simply unacceptable. I am the sum of my parts - inside and out.

A friend announced her graduation from cancer treatments today and I was so incredibly inspired for the obvious reasons and a few that are less so. From the day she openly shared her diagnosis, she has never let the disease define her. She is a mother, a wife, a friend, an advocate and a “grateful patient,” but she has never been “breast cancer.” She has often shared that even when its “over,” it’s never done. I suspect that she will continue to define her experience, her story and her life, herself. She defines what that looks like.

Until you are divorced, you don’t realize just how many documents require you to define yourself as such. It takes a toll at times. Adds insult to injury. If it were up to Facebook, I could chose that definition of myself there too. Yet very few of the divorced men and women I know would ever consider that a part of their being. A definition of self.

I was married. Now I am not. I am a mother, a daughter, a colleague and a friend. I strive to be a good neighbor, a lover, a contributor, a communicator, a teacher and human. My therapist insists that I spend far too much time on two unproductive topics; self-blame and affirmation seeking from the wrong people. It’s true. I can forgive others with ease, but rarely myself. I want to live my mantra, but I fall down when I can’t move past my own failures. I have often said that when I love, it is at 100%. The issue with this is when the object of my 100% can’t do the same. I have in the past, been left (in friendship and in love) feeling “less than.”

Amongst my divorced peers, there is a pervasive difficulty among women who were “left” not to define themselves that way. It’s the hardest part of being a support system. I see these women as strong even when they feel weak. I see women who, despite the hardest of circumstances, get through every day for themselves and their families. I see women who in their marriages might have played different roles, now begin to stand up for themselves, to fight for what they think, what they feel and what them and their children need. Today divorce might define them, but eventually they will define themselves.

A dear friend asked me recently what else he might refer to his ex as. “Ex-wife sounds so harsh, but the mother of my child erases all of the history.” He is right. This idea is not exclusive to women either. Why are dads often referred to as “babysitting” for their own kids? Would you ever refer to a mom that way? Why are divorced men automatically given praise when they show up, co-parent and do their share in all aspects? Would we ever award the same to a women? As a divorced women, I can’t imagine dating anyone who was not also divorced with kids. Who else could possibly understand? Who else would be able to handle the crazy scheduling and time sharing me with my kids and theirs? “Divorced dad” often comes with its own set of unfair societal definitions, when it seems each man should be able to define themselves.

I am, even from first blush, a lot of things. I am loud and extroverted. My accent is a dead giveaway about where I grew up. I am opinionated and open and honest and real. I am also incredibly sensitive and not nearly as self-confident as you might assume. I am scared, often. I am a worrier and I obsess over the things I cannot change. I’m a lover and a fighter all at once. I am organized and meticulous but also open-minded and adventurous. I define me. I am me and I am okay.

On Being True To Ourselves - Lessons From My Daughter

My amazing, incredible and world traveling daughter finally came home last week after a month in Amsterdam. She called her time in the CISV village (http://www.cisvusa.org/) “the most amazing experience of my life.” She arrived exhausted, animated and changed. She talked non-stop, except to sleep, about the amazing friends, adventures and life lessons she’d had. Despite my being the adult, she is my hero. Her thirst for learning, her openness, her kind and gentle nature, her willingness to be vulnerable – all a gift. Her response to the opportunity to meet kids from all over the world and live together in a community of their own for a month was so enthusiastic, it was contagious. I was envious of her journey.

In the yearbook she returned with, so many of her friends, leaders and staff commented about her comfort in her own skin, her big ideas, her open mind and giant heart. Reading those notes was so emotional for me. I was so proud and also in such awe. I take very little credit for the person she is, which is very much her own doing. I know we are pretty good parents and get close to 50% of it right, close to 50% of the time. But she, she is all her own.

I was reminded however, that it was the same spirit in me that forced me to see how much of myself I had lost in my marriage. How squelched we can become when trying to please someone else’s ideal of how we “should be.” I was reminded that I had no one to blame for that but me. In any relationship there is give and take. There is compromise. All of that is necessary and good, but when we compromise ourselves, our very core and our very being, that is when it is no longer healthy. THAT is when we have to pay attention to the inner voice that looks in the mirror and barely recognizes our reflection.

Marriage, like any relationship, is hard. Being true to ourselves is even harder. My daughter is my hero because even as she enters the cruel world of tweendom, she stays the course. I'm smart enough to know this might not always be the case. Middle School and High School are other-worldly planets where the rules seem to change daily. Puberty and hormones often take over and cut down self-confidence and ability to be ones true self. Acceptance often rules over self-worth. I remember. I recall exactly when I went from believing (at 10) I owned the world to realizing (at 13) it owned me.  I also know that I will fight damn hard to help her stay true to her amazing spirit. I know that I will prioritize that over grades, clothes, looks and even friends. All the while, thanking her for motivating me and inspiring me to remember my own.

Happy Noniversary

 

Today would have been fifteen years married. Twenty years since we started dating; that’s half of my life. Half of his too. We checked the right boxes. Wedding, house, dog, kid, another kid, cat, new house, another dog, picket fence. We made the right promises at the time – always and forever, until death, cherish, honor and, of course, love. And I still do. It confounds people when I say that. I think it even confounds him.

I love him still. I always will.

It just is. I used to believe that with enough time, therapy and arguments, it would end. I realized one day that it never will. In many ways I am grateful for that. We have been through it all together and even though we are now “apart,” I hope with every fiber of my being that this is the start to something we always struggled with, friendship. I hope that we are able to find our way, however difficult, however heartbreaking and however long it takes.

When we fight now, it’s really no different. We have still not found the right or best way to communicate. We drive each other nuts. We hurt each other regularly. He is fond of saying “we know just which buttons to push.” After 20 years, I think we are just on autopilot.

The love we had is bigger than the struggles, bigger than the messes and bigger than even the “right decision” to be apart. The sun always rose and set with him, for me. Even if that has changed, my horizon is not right without him in it. Our family is a new version but we are still very much a family. Our incredible kids are a gift I’ll be grateful to him for, forever.

Someone asked me recently how much of our marriage I was happy and when did I know it was over? Both are such difficult questions to answer. We’d likely each have unique response too. What I do know is that every time I talk to someone who is still in the throes of this mess they call “divorcing,” I feel blessed. We survived. We came away different. We came away apart. We came away changed. But, we survived and each of us is thriving.

I think the best gift we’ve given each other since is acceptance. We accept that we were not meant to be. We accept that we are each happier now. We accept that we were broken and unmendable.  We accept that our wants and our needs were too far apart. We accept that this, while life changing and heartbreaking, is better.

But I regret nothing. I’d change very little. This was our story. We wrote it, we lived it and we ended it with a level of grace. With that chapter completed, our own stories goes on. We will always be characters in each other’s tales. The vows of marriage are over. The vows of family endure. Happy noniversary to that.