next steps

“Everything ok?” The text from my mom interrupts my morning ritual of waking up early only to be rushing toward the office, late as usual. “Yes.” I reply, curtly. I know what is coming next. “Because your Facebook post seemed a little…”

Just moments earlier I had posted a photo of the sunrise alongside my brilliantly insightful and deep comment, “another ‘start over,’ another ‘change everything,’ another ‘make a difference,’ another ‘write a new ending.’” I reflected momentarily, “shit. Now everyone is worried I am coming unhinged.”

it was just a sunrise

In reality, at least to me, it’s perfectly clear. Each day, these days, is a new chance for me. A fresh, new 24 hours to either get it all right, or get it terribly fucking wrong. I am exceptional at both…and newly accepting of my ability to swing from one extreme to the other. My life…is under construction. Perhaps it always will be.

I fell off the blog-o-sphere because I couldn’t stomach being so wrong. I was so wrong about where I was in life. I was so wrong about having it figured out or at least being on the right path. I had proclaimed that I had found love and then was proven so wrong. I think it’s safe to say I was embarrassed – the way you are when you recommend a restaurant, giving it your enthusiastic endorsement, relying on first-hand, “insider” knowledge…you ate there yourself last week or you know the chef personally - only to later hear someone rating it as terrible. It’s not so much that I doubt my own assessment, it’s more that I fear losing credibility. How will anyone ever trust anything I write? In all honesty, it’s all true – in that moment. The universe has a way of unraveling truth and we all have a way of revising the story to fit a new way of seeing the truth. So my revision is this – it turns out, when I wrote those words: “this might be a love story,” I was very right, I was just focused on the wrong character in the story.

Has anyone ever told you that you have to “love yourself” before you can love someone else? Have you rolled your eyes along with me at those words? I found it annoying, a cliché, to the scale of (I’m sitting here contemplating a phrase that annoys me more, but ten minutes have passed and nothing. I will come back to it). Let’s leave it at – it was lost on me. What does it really mean anyway? If loving myself was a requirement for loving another, well…it looked like a life of solitude for me.

I mean, I didn’t hate myself but I always felt I was in search of someone to complete me and make me whole. It never occurred to me that I could find peace in the idea of a life that didn’t require anyone else to be full. I am still not there – but I do see that possibility now. Sure, you could argue that any self-respecting “cat lady” reaches a point where she tells herself SHE CHOSE THIS…but I am feeling hopeful that it’s a genuine epiphany and if not, well – cats are pretty awesome.

So, why am I writing again? There are a few reasons…

First, I love it. I find myself in the reflective process – I understand myself better as I explain myself to you.

Second, it is the most honest I can be…I won’t allow myself to write justifications or bullshit, so therefore I am my most honest in my writing. This also forces me to accept that sometimes, I get it wrong. Sometimes the restaurant wasn’t really that great – I just wanted it to be. Sometimes it’s not really love – I just wanted it to be. Or perhaps a better way of seeing it is this: Sometimes the restaurant is perfect…in that moment. Sometimes the love is just want you need…in that moment.

Third, it’s a great excuse to sit alone and drink. Seriously…try it yourself. Pour a big glass of whatever it is you enjoy and sit down in front of a laptop in a dark room. When your spouse or mom (or cat) comes to check on you, declare in your most “Earnest Hemingway” voice… “leave me, I’m writing.” The first few times there might be guffaws, but those guffaws will progress into “yeah, rights,” followed shortly by, “again?” to a final settling point of, “Ok, need anything?” PS. To get to this final stage, it might require receiving payment for your writing. I will let you know when (if) I get there.

The final reason I am writing again is that – I feel ready. In the past few years I have found a whole new world. I know this sounds dramatic and I wish I could say it in a less aggressive way but it’s pretty true as stated. I have been dedicated to the practice of yoga for the past couple of years and, as you know, spending a lot of time following a trail through the woods. Those two things have come together in my life to teach me a few lessons. The biggest is to stop seeing a world filled with rivals that I need to out-perform, but rather to see us all as connected…each doing our own “best” to get through. To rely on myself and have faith in my own ability. To enjoy my own company and know I can find happiness even in a life without traditional partnership. To see the uniqueness in each of us – we each experience the world through a lens that will never be repeated. I am not across the finish line yet, but I am eager to continue the journey toward a different sort of completion. One that may, or may not, involve a true love or someone to laugh across a campfire with…that just may not be my path. The last thing I will mention is that I now appreciate so deeply the love I see exchanged between others. The love and support I receive from my yogi friends. The kindness of strangers. The loving exchanges between partners. I see it everywhere…and it’s beautiful.

Happiness is a practice. Everyday, it requires we all look around and appreciate the good we see. It requires that we smile and enjoy the love around us even when it’s not directed toward us, even when it doesn’t look like we thought it would, even when it’s fleeting. It is in those moments when we realize it’s coming from within us…it was there all along.

Next week I will depart for yet another solo trek along the Appalachian Trail northbound toward its terminus in Maine. I am so far from that goal that many of you are probably scratching your heads wondering if I have a job (I do) or if I am running from something (yes, laundry) or if I just have no understanding of distance (well…) but I have committed to returning for a minimum of a week every year to keep moving north on the Appalachian Trail. Even if I never meet anyone’s standard of “progress” I am going to keep at it because the wildness of it all is, I think, life’s best teacher.

More to come if you want to follow along…I depart in 7 days.

a hard look in the mirror…

a little over a year and a half ago, I disrupted my life, the life of my husband, the lives of my daughters, the lives of just about everyone in a 5 mile radius, and made a selfish decision to live a different life. I pushed away the comforts of my world – a beautiful family and a loud, loving home in favor of chasing a dream. Tonight, like so many nights since, I sit alone with a glass of wine and a glowing laptop screen as my companions, wondering if I made the biggest mistake of my life.

I have always had this romantic heart. I haven’t always shown it. In fact, to this day, few people know about it. But it beats strong and I have always waited patiently to be noticed by “my person” and I have always been sure that man would march into my life and insist to spend every moment he had left with me. As the years ticked by, I (like everyone else) came to accept the world didn’t work the way Disney had told us all it would. I actually had to be more than “just me” and even then, no one would feel so moved by my very existence. I started to see life as a compromise and love meant finding someone you could get along with – a friend – the rest was just getting through the day so you could wake up and do it all again the next.

I eventually found the man I would marry and build a family with…and he was funny and we laughed together. We shared common interests and had similar priorities. We had enough in common that everything else was workable. We established our roles and our routines. We chased our individual dreams but built a home and a family together. We grew different and apart but stayed grounded and connected through our family. Over time, we talked and laughed just as much as ever, but rarely with one another. We created alternative worlds and we passed in the doorway, one in – one out. We didn’t fight and we didn’t hurt one another, we simply didn’t stop what was happening. We failed to intervene. We didn’t stop loving each other overnight, but we did stop loving each other. I began to feel hopeless and I gave up on love. Like so many women (and probably men too) I focused on the kids and my career and ignored the glaring hole.

until...

I went for a run one Saturday and in the middle of the run, it hit me. It wasn’t over…it didn’t have to be. I could end this relationship and have hope of finding real love. I knew it also meant I could spend the rest of my life alone too. I knew it was going to hurt people I never wanted to hurt. I knew – but I didn’t know. Not really.

I didn’t know that the loneliness of missing your kids is so far beyond anything I could imagine. I didn’t know that the house would be so quiet or that taking down the Christmas tree would be a form of torture. I didn’t know that I would watch my kids sleep just to get more time with them. I didn’t know I would eventually fall into real love only to have my heart broken. I didn’t consider that if I stayed the same person, I would get the same types of relationships time and time again. It has taken me all this time to realize I had to change. In so many ways, it may have been ME that was the problem all along.

I am not the type to beat myself up or lament a decision. I don’t regret any of my choices and I even feel a little bit of pride that I was able to take a big step off a cliff. In the process I have learned a lot about myself and what I am capable of…and I feel as though there is no storm I can’t weather. Actually, it goes deeper than that, I truly believe I grow most in the hardest times. I have not found the thing I left seeking…or at least I have not found it in another person yet. But I have found something very special inside me, and in the friends who gather around me, heartbreak after heartbreak, listening to my sad stories, nodding their heads in solidarity, supporting and advising as though they haven't heard it all before

I think this was perhaps my path. I needed to explore the world alone for awhile with only myself to rely on to begin to appreciate what is inside me. I still don’t know how this story will go. I might spend more nights alone than connected. I might always wonder if I destroyed the only love I will ever know. I may always tear up when I think about how I put myself ahead of my kids, if only in this one decision, it’s magnitude forever shaping the people they will become. But I will do it all with my head held high because I was at least brave, if naïve. At least active, if impatient. At least passionate, if foolish. I sit here tonight, alone and at peace with what comes, what goes, what is, what will be…knowing that I did more than put one foot in front of the other, I dared to change course. 

“The reward for the climb is not praise or promotion, it is a new view.”

I will take my lumps whatever they may be, gladly, in exchange for the view.