Held

The idea of taking a leap and investing in myself is always agonizingly inner-monologue guilt inducing. Not because I feel less than deserving or because I view it as a bad way to spend money. However, it always feels irresponsible.

Match and I support four children. Two we share with our Exes. Right now I have no real income. I help one night a week at the family restaurant. Mostly to help alleviate some of the stresses that come with a family run business. It adds a little structure and child-free time to my current days as a stay at home mother. Yet, I discovered early in that while being home with my girls is a gift it is also so hard and more work than I ever had when I worked and parented. The baby is three, we settled into a good rhythm, but some days everything is upside down. There is laundry half down and piles waiting to be cleaned. The floor is speckled with Play Doh or nail polish or chip crumbs. The dog has left nose marks over the front windows. Dishes sit fora a day or two in the sink. The trash is full before I can empty it. Now, we always bounce back into less clutter and craziness, but it takes days. The cycle repeats every week and its gets old.

So I decided that can’t be all there is if I am going to be a good mother. Motherhood is the biggest, strongest, most important thing about me. Yet, it also is not enough on its own because it calls for so much of your heart, mind and body. Raising humans is wonderful, but absolutely depleting. You will never realize how taxing interrupted sleep, repeating yourself, or picking up little people emotions all day can be. As no one will give you more sleep, listen to you and your objections till the dawn breaks, or send you to time out to get yourself together– you start to parent yourself as well as your kids. Just not as well. To be there at my best intentioned, I need time to be something in addition to being a mother.

So I started with a dinner here and there with my friends. My people who love the spend time with me at my messiest and my best. Those who offer stern words of advice, atta-girls, and forgiveness for the things I can’t forgive myself for. Being a friend, eating a whole meal uninterrupted, having an intact conversation helped. Until that wasn’t enough to keep things going. I started to work one day a week at the family restaurant. It took a while for everyone to adjust. There were a lot of tears and meltdowns at my absence. Yet, helping my family and getting a few hours to just be a working adult did a lot. Now, a few years in, everyone is okay with their night with Dad. I got space and everyone grieved the fact Mom misses one bedtime a week. Now, about a year ago, I needed to get myself in order. I needed to figure out what I would be other-than-mom once the baby is in school. What would fill my days? What would help us financially, but not be a band-aid? What would be a career that would have some sort of acceptable purpose?

A poet– although she doesn’t call herself that– I follow on Instagram who was real life local to me had online workshops and classes about the process to kind of sort through these things. I honestly am always told two things: Write or work with kids. Yet, at thirty-eight with the responsibility of a house, car, family, and kids, I wasn’t sure that this advice matched my insides or how to do either at this point in my life. Yet, I was able to say that I wanted to try this course. Maybe see if it helped me get back to my fiction writing roots. I hadn’t had any urge to write made up things about made up people since my divorce– but I had managed to write here about so many of the things that happened day to day. So I spent money on myself with abandon and promised the kids wouldn’t get less because of it. It was a really good thing to go through and learn from. I developed some practices. I got clarity. Story idea began to filter in again. I didn’t feel that sure of things at the end, but from last year to now I put a lot of things into place. I started to figure out my non-negotiables. The course gave me language like that. Made small decisions concrete and sensible for the type of life I aimed for. I looked at the things that were sucking my energy without giving back and I figured out how to mitigate those things so I wasn’t drained by them. I began to understand this concept of discipline, faith, and being intentional. I stopped giving time to a lot of things that did not help align my life with my goals. I picked up a few more that aligned with work I want to do in the world. Most importantly, I stopped waiting for everyone else to be ready. I did it kindly and without over burdening. I went to more dinners. I take a monthly yoga class with the poet I dig where I get to drive in the morning by the ocean. Time to think in an uncluttered space was revolutionary. I hadn’t realized how bereft I had been from just sitting with my thoughts. I began to figure out what parts of my life were non-negotiable and to my surprise I din’t get the push back I envisioned. There was room. I just had to fill it up.

A year went by and as I was putting things into place that mattered to me and trying to figure out what else I need to do– I realized my hokey vision board I had made as part of this course was filled with things that had come into being. I started to look at grad school, jobs, trying to figure out how to get published/work with kids. Do I start as a paraprofessional? Do I finish getting licenses to teach? Do I becomes a social worker? Foster parent? Do I get a job with benefits and hours that work for childcare so Match can make a change? Do I volunteer and write as a hobby? Do I go study the politics of education and go in with the policy part? Do I write about all the things these kids of mine have going on because blended seems so hard and are they represented? Do these kids know they were made for their lives? I started to play around with writing a children’s book or series. I put ideas in a notebooks. I make sure I catch them when they come.

Yet, at the close of the year I am having trouble making decisions to take a single direction by forty. A responsible, non-financially disastrous path that had me answering some sort of life calling. Dharma– that mysterious thing the appeared from time to time. Yet, to make a book, I started to get overwhelmed with all the things I did not know how to do. What software should I write with? Who will illustrate? What if my life experience taught me awful things and I am going to give out terrible advice in these books that will ruin lives forever? How do I publish it after I finish it? What if someone already wrote this story and its already in the world? How much will it cost? Will I have ideas for a second book?

So in the middle of my wondering, I find out the poet I took the class from last year had finished her book, it will be published this winter, and she’s created this cool internet space called The Reclamation Room that looks like an online space for writers to hone good practices, get advice, and make network. I had just paid off most of my credit card. I jumped on board. Although a lot of the things there, I already know. I know that writing down things is what made me get through my divorce and parenting more grounded. That it helped keep my eyes on the horizon when my internal barometers and measurement tool were too jacked up to work right. It felt so good to just not have secrets and fuck it if everyone knew some things.

I know sometimes it was so raw it worried people. I don’t do that as much now. I’m less raw and so is my writing. I aired dirty laundry so to say. Yet, if I didn’t put it out on in the world– it was in me. It was like writing cleared it and turned this negatively charged energy into something less nefarious. It made bad things good. It made me strong. It let me reach conclusions. More people than I realized related. More people than I realized were in things that weren’t good for them. That shared feeling was magic. Those fabrics and threads that intertwine between people feels big : me too, me too, me too.

So now, here I am, making more decisions to make things work the way I need them to: scheduling time, reflecting each day, making a space that’s mine (which is a project in this house), and putting my ass in the goddamn chair. Writing got me through and it will bring me to the next chapter too.

Yesterday, I learned about a new opportunity. It was one of the things that made me take the course. I liked what I heard too much. Yet, I will finish what we started first. If it is what is meant to be, it’ll come around again. Motherhood s still the thing my life always seems the most devoted to, but its sharing now with other things because it can’t work the way I want otherwise. Summer is a hard one to think of adding more expense on top of the splurge I just had. Yet, I think I can keep things going. Schedule time, use the tools, make the art, love the kids, make the world a little brighter, be intentional, say no to things that don’t align, and make sure to yes to all the things that do. It’s a process, but I trust it. I feel like a friend reminded me who I was all along and just forgot about. I don’t tihnk I could ever let myslef forget again…