Making Space

(As I started writing this, Alexa *smartly* started playing ‘the space between’ by DMB)

Do you remember learning in elementary school how forest fires work? In a natural and unspoiled world, the fire ignites organically, and the flames engulf all of the old trees and brush in order to make space for all of the new baby trees and sprouts.

In my mind, this has been a metaphor I’ve revisited so many times in my life to compare and explain what’s happening when something in my life crashes down and bursts into flames. Like when my dad passed when I was 11, and then when I endured my first divorce at 26, and on and on and on. Because that’s what life does, right? Shit happens and then we die? I mean, that’s at least what some of my more colorful friends shirts and bumper stickers said when I was younger.

To be fair, it’s not that far off. But that broad blanketed statement (like many) is a little too dumbed down to be much more than off-the-cuff humor. It’s the stuff that happens between shit and death that keeps us hanging on and makes this craziness more than worth it.

It’s the happy birthday celebrations after an especially challenging year. It’s the Christmas morning when you’re awakened by the smell of cinnamon rolls wafting through the air. It’s the first kiss that feels like the last first kiss you’ll ever want. It’s the long road trip to the beach when you’re exhausted and have to pee and don’t have as much as another ounce of patience to make it one more mile. So you park and drag your tired stiff self down to the sand and take it all in for the first time; that hot smooch of sticky wind, the white creamy welcoming sand, the salty taste of endless ocean, and your toes mercifully digging in to relaxation….at long last. It’s the moment when you reach the end of your hike, when your legs are throbbing and your pulse thumps beyond your chest, but that view!! That view could cure even the deepest sorrow.

That’s how this all works. Life. It’s ugly, and messy, and sad, and joyful, and incredible all at once sometimes. But it’s life, and it’s a blessing to experience ALL of it, not just the beautiful moments, but the ugly ones too. Those are the forest fires. Those are the moments that feel like an ending and are endings, but they also happen to clear the way and make the space for more beautiful moments than you could ever imagine. And those moments will happen at EXACTLY the right moment. Not on your time. Not on your kid’s time, your mom’s time, your dog’s time. In God’s time. The right time. All because space was made and the forest was cleared again so that we finally see those trees.

Lost in Translation

When it comes to relationships, how many times do you ask yourself ‘what if?’. How many times do you question each of your wants and intentions? How much do you worry about the finality of it all? When you’re middle-aged and have already been unsuccessful, be it in relationships or marriages, I think it may just be natural to question things. Do we want the same things? Is this really worth my time? Am I in love with the idea of us, or am I really in love with him? I mean, at any age, these are questions that hold water, but at 44, these questions feel like the difference between happily-ever-after and ‘here-i-go-again-on-my-own’.

Let me just say here, because it’s been churning through my mind all day, that if I ever actually write THAT book or become somewhat of a guru somehow or someway, I hope that Brene Brown invites me onto her podcast, because I am absolutely certain that we would also best friends.

Okay, that’s out there. I feel so much better.

But truthfully, here’s the deal. I’m a single mom and have been for almost a decade. Nine years, at this point, but a decade really because it was 2011 when my husband and I separated. And unlike Glennon and countless others, I have not moved on to women. I have (maybe) not found the love of my life, and life is a struggle every single day. BUT, I am a survivor baby. That’s just who I am. And I know this because my dad died when I was 11 and I was a daddy’s girl. I didn’t know my mom until my dad passed. But, by the time my mom did pass just 8 years ago, she had become my EVERYTHING. And then she, like every pet I ever had, walked across that rainbow bridge.

She did it with such Faith and dignity, and love and beauty….and acceptance, that I couldn’t say no. I could only support her plight and love her all the more for her strength, her dignity, and her everlasting resillience.

That’s what we do as lovers. As survivors. As daughters. We love until they leave.

As a unicorn only, I can tell you this. I want to always be this way. I want to love until they leave. I want to always be able to say that I did all that I could do, and want to do everything I could’ve done until I can do no more. And honestly, after two divorces and one HUGE broken heart, I think that for the most part, I can say exactly that.

Would I love to have a happy ending with the love of my life? Absolutely I would.

In truth, I am hard to love. I love big, and oftentimes it’s too much. I’m not clingy. Not dependent. But sometimes I can love so much that people tend to think that I don’t need them when in reality they make me completely complete to the extent that it scares the hell outta me and I retreat right back into the shell out of which I crawled during the excitement and the newness of beginning. Beginnings are that way. They bring out the best of us. And as relationships move on, beginnings fade into doubts and fears and before we know it something else has taken over and the very same communication that brought us beauty and clarification in the actual beginning looses strength and fades into apathy.

Apathy is tricky. It seems and feels easier than actual feeling and communication. But eventually, either within the relationship or long after it’s over, we realize that we missed out. We stopped trying out of fear of rejection. We didn’t want to disappoint, so ironically, we disappoint ourselves AND our person equally.

I’ve been with my person for almost a year (off and on). He is incredible. I can talk to him about anything. He truly doesn’t need anyone outside of God. I struggle with this. He struggles with my independence as well, which is really the same thing, because I am nothing without my relationship with Christ. And still, I wonder.

I don’t know if we are right, if this is right. I have had so many moments of affirmation, but I’ve also had many times of questioning who we are and where we are. All that I can say is that I vow to keep trying until God tells me otherwise.

I think that it’s all we can do as humans. We can accept, and love, and glorify with our whole hearts. We can ask God for signs and for Grace. We can do our parts. But in the long run, the only one who actually SHOULD have say is God himself. He created us. He has known us forever. Literally. His knowledge is way deeper than ours.

So before we resist. Before we throw in the proverbial towel. Before we call it quits with all the decisions we have made, shouldn’t we sit with those decisions and simply breathe? Shouldn’t we first see where HE leads us?

It’s not all about you. Really.

Picture it. Farragut (TN). 1993.

I was 17 and so smart and cool as I pushed open my upstairs window so that I could sneakily smoke my Marlboro Red without stinking up the house. Just three puffs in and there’s a piercing knock at the door. All I can hear is my mom’s muffled mad voice ‘Heather, are you smoking in there????’. There’s almost a cry at the end of her pitch in that sentence. I hear something in that that I haven’t heard since my dad passed 6 years ago. Was that…could it be…vulnerability?

My mom’s confidence cracked every bit as much as her voice in that moment. I heard that. More importantly, I felt that. Not as much as she did, but in that moment, I thought I knew everything she was feeling and THAT made me feel like the worst daughter ever. Period.

Of course, I had been smoking and I HAD to open the door because she made me open the door and my mouth – to truth. Lying to my mom had always been an impossibility. She was simply too smart, too scary, and too unpredictable. These, my friends, were truly the best of times and the worst of times, right up until I myself became the mom of a couple of teenage boys.

Now that my oldest is 20 and struggling, and my youngest is 13 and aloof, I understand what my mom meant just following those two puffs, when I hesitantly opened the door and a small cloud of smoke to my mom’s face, all twisted in the thunderstorm where disbelief collides with disappointment and sheer and unceasing guilt and remorse. She had blamed herself in the same way that I am blaming myself now. Was I too hands-off? Have I not motivated or driven them enough? Have I not encouraged them to take initiative and seek true purpose? Maybe I should’ve place more importance on money and success??

I don’t know. I’m no expert. And honestly, I feel like this age is the toughest age when it comes to parenting, and I am failing miserably because I am worried 100% of the time. Did my mom worry this much? My guess is that she did. In truth, at my ripe old age of 44, I still remember 20 like it was yesterday. And that was a damn hard yesterday, my friends, even with a husband and an education and career path. Also, we had no pandemic to challenge all of our plans like my kids have had. Just saying.

The thing I keep coming back to in my thoughts – the one saving grace – is simply these two facts: 1) I never once felt it was my mom’s fault that I smoked and 2) I haven’t turned out so bad.

So while most of us parents may lose lots of sleep wondering what we’ve done right or what we could’ve done better, what we really need to know is simply that we did the best we could with the circumstances we were dealt, and that our kids are healthy, intelligent, and loved. Those are the seeds, the bulbs, the water and the sunlight, but the blooms that blossom? Those are all theirs. Sometimes we need to simply sit back and watch them bloom into their own colors.

Returning Baggage

There comes a time in your life when the switch flips. Not just the ‘oh yeah’ of ‘I need to lose weight and get healthy’ or the ‘it’s time to settle down’ of obligation switch. Those are powerful switches too, but the greatest of these? The greatest of these is the switch that charges us with the challenge of returning our baggage and leaving all our dysfunctional patterns behind.

For years before my mom passed, she religiously watched Dr. Phil. If I went to her house in the afternoon to help her fold laundry, we folded methodically through the tears, interrogative reproaches, and the lessons of the great Dr.. The one thing he most loved to say whether he was talking to a parent whose teen was out of control, someone suffering with substance abuse, or a wife cheating on her husband for the umpteenth time was simply ‘how’s that working out for ya?’. Every single time, without fail, we the audience would at least think if not say out loud ‘clearly, not very well’.

The same goes for baggage, right? I mean, not the Samsonite kind, but the emotional kind. The stuff that leads us into love and intimacy only to force us into heartbreak years later. It’s the same stuff that we pack and unpack through every monogamous adventure. What’s that they say about doing the same thing over and over again? Something about insanity, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s completely possible for some of us to go through life carrying that baggage like a medal of honor, never letting it go and never setting it down come hell or high water. We may cling to it like a safety blanket, or a shield, or a wall, or an excuse to prevent us from taking chances that may get us hurt again. Others of us may have never decided to pack a bag in the first place. Those people are my people. Not because I’m like them, but because I wish I were. It must be truly liberating to be so flexible that you are at ease with each moment, each relationship as it exists entirely on its own accord without the impact of past hurts or disappointments.

But for those of us who have been hiking a while and maybe adding the weight of repetition along the way, we may just get to that place where we finally see that switch on the wall. Maybe we see it because a light has come along and showcased it. Maybe we see it because we’ve done the work to de-clutter the wall. Maybe none of that just happened, but maybe it was suppose to have happened right now, just as it did, because the timing is perfect. God’s timing always is.

IF you’re lucky enough to see that switch, take a deep breath. Say a heartfelt prayer of thanks. Close your eyes tight to fully digest this magical moment. They don’t happen often, these moments. Then sit down with that luggage and unpack for the last time. It’s time. This time. You, my friend, have come home.

Letter to an Ex X

Dear X,

If I had known what I know now, we wouldn’t have gotten married. We wouldn’t have had an amazing child together. I wouldn’t have stopped trusting so openly and without cause. I wouldn’t have been carrying around baggage. I wouldn’t question myself on every single decision. It’s likely that I wouldn’t have sold the family business. I wouldn’t question my mind.

But it happened. You conned me. You fooled me, my mom, my family, and your step-son. When it comes down to it, you felt unworthy. You started using more routinely. Because, I believe you were already using. You decided that you couldn’t do it without superhuman characteristics. So you sold your soul, and your wife, your ‘sons’, your dreams, for something that made you feel so good at the time.

I have a hard time understanding, because I haven’t been there. I won’t even take antibiotics. But I have been addicted to things. I ‘needed’ cigarettes for many years, and diet coke, and sugar. So that makes me just as ‘bad’, even though I manage to hold a job, pay my bills, pay for our child’s holidays, birthdays, school functions, soccer, karate, church functions, and playdates.

I have accepted that you will never be a part of anything financial in our child’s life. That you will forever disappoint him because you cannot test clean. I’ve watched every episode of Intervention. So has my boyfriend. We have talked in great length and depth about how we will never unburden ourselves or Ethan from this massive web of destruction you have casted upon our lives. I have had nightmares about what you are doing to destroy your life, and how that affects our son. He loves you, but he accepts that you are not here. You cannot be there for yourself, let alone him.

You talk as though everything wrong you have ever done is in the past, yet you have zero proof that you are any closer to that next milestone of where you ‘should’ be. You have clued me into how you cheated on your lab tests. How you used until 3 days prior, and then switched to suboxone – the very drug that now, people are getting hooked on. The very drug that could kill someone like me. I didn’t deserve this, but no one that lives through the cleaning up of an addict does. Why should I be immune?

I shouldn’t. That’s the truth. It was God’s plan for me, and God will continue to see me through. Losing our home, my car, your job, your income, your support, is not the worst of it. In truth, the worst of all of this rests in something much deeper.

Our child has learned that he can only depend upon one of us. Now, he is happy to lean on anyone else. This creates the gang-mentality that I will likely have to always combat. I always dreamed of having the family I didn’t have. That will likley never happen because of the environment your addiction has created within our lives. But as a Christian, I am supposed to forgive you, accept you, and turn the other cheek. And this is the worst part. I hate myself for not being able to do any of that.

You have ruined my life. You have ruined our child’s life. Instead of starting from the bottom and working our way up, I am forced to start in the trenches. Our son is 8. Your addiction, you say, began when I was 5 months pregnant. You are repeating what you knew. I am a workaholic, repeating what she knew.

You had a horrible childhood. Your parents both had serious issues, and were heavily medicated. They spent most of your childhood unemployed because of it. Guess who gets lost in the shuffle?

I refuse to disappoint our child. He deserves a family who shows him love, who teaches him how to love unconditionally. I may not be able to reconcile what you have done, but I can work to improve the future of our child. And while I may have spent the bulk of my life believing that I don’t deserve more, I believe that I absolutely do.

So my plea to you is this – please work on you. With everything you are, and everything you ever wanted, work on you. Make strides in that direction. Go to meetings. Make valuable friendships, based on trust and clean living. Pray. Listen to what God has to offer. Earn a living. Be a grown-up. Show our child what it’s like to be a man.

We will take your recovery seriously when you do the same. When you’re finished with the lies, the manipulation, and the fiction. Our son wants his dad back. You told him the truth. Now live the promise. I refuse to assist in the lying, in the promises, in the fairytale. The work is yours to do. Whether you do it or not, our child will feel loved, with or without you. It’s your call. I cannot do it for you, and I cannot help you anymore.

If anyone out there is contemplating destroying their lives, consider this. When you were a child, you had those lucid, beautiful moments. You will continue to experience those, but not if you are leaning on substances. Those are lies. BE YOU. Naked. Truthful. Genuine. And vulnerable. Beauty is found in solace and serenity. Not in substance.

Solitary Contentment

Do I enjoy alone time? Absolutely! I always have. I can remember as a young child, sitting in my room, listening to albums & playing paper dolls for hours on end. On some days, the only reason I left my room was to eat. Truth be told, If I had been blessed with a real working kitchen in my room (at least with a microwave, fridge, and pantry), my mom and dad probably would’ve entirely forgotten me!

While mom was busy taking care of my dad, I was busy amusing myself. Not that she didn’t do her part of the raising, but the ‘entertaining’ part was up to me, especially after dad’s kidneys failed.

As only children, most of us learn at a young age how to self-entertain, self-console, maybe even become self-aware, and have a strong sense of self-love. Maybe that’s why we (as a species;) come across as so self-absorbed. In reality, most onlies that I know are actually so self-aware that we can become rather lost in our own thoughts and appear to not care what others are feeling or thinking at all. BUT also in reality, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most of us truly want to understand others, but we’re too afraid of putting ourselves out there, which is really what it takes to form healthy relationships.

As onlies, we don’t always know how to relate to others or how to reach out and ask others for help. When we feel as though our worlds are crumbling, many of us turn inward, to the only person we can fully rely upon; ourselves. That’s not to say that people with siblings aren’t the same way at times, but I would say that onlies have nailed the whole solitary confinement thing….to a fault.

I remember when my boyfriend (also an only) and I started dating. We fervently read every article and blog we could find on ‘only’ couples… ‘only’ to find discouragement and disappointment. Most opinions and stories erred on the side of either ‘don’t do it’ or ‘it never works out’. After almost two years together, I think we would both agree that this is not true. Like any other relationship between any two people, effort has to be made, people cannot take one another for granted, and compromise and full communication should be practiced daily.

In fact, I would say that the most difficult factor in an only dating an only is that we are so fiercely wired to turn inward when we don’t know how to react to an emotion that we choose instead to bottle up the hurt. While my boyfriend and I rarely fight, I can honestly say that any and all of the disagreements we’ve had have resulted from one thing; a lack of communication.

Lesson… in progress…

Still, communication takes lots and lots of effort from both people. Leaning on each other when we’re accustomed to sucking it up solo is the first step. While that feels a bit awkward and out of our neat little boxes, it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as I had expected. I think this is monumental and essential for all couples, but especially for relationships involving two onlies.

While one only can understand another only better than anyone, we also tend to have the same passive aggressive tendencies, and let things go on far longer than we should. It’s far easier and less confrontational to shove those small disagreements under a rug than to sweep them out into the open and work through the kinks. Unfortunately, as we all know, if you gather enough small things together they collectively become a very huge thing. That huge conflict under the rug becomes a major obstacle over which neither of us can avoid tripping.  And because we really ARE two separate people, with two separate pasts and two separate loads of dirty laundry baggage, we’re not always going to completely understand. And that’s okay.

We all come at these relationships with our own muddled perceptions, and whether we’re onlies or otherwise, it takes oodles of communication, effort, and determination to build a strong healthy relationship. But above and beyond everything else that takes effort in this world, love is worth every last bit of blood, sweat, and tears. After all, we may have come into this world alone, but that doesn’t mean we’re supposed to live a lonely life. Like my good friend Michelle always says (and I couldn’t agree more), there really is a ‘lid for every pot’.

Tracks of My Fears

I have always, and I mean always, had an unexplainable desire to go off by myself and hike the AT, or get lost in the woods for a few weeks, or get lost in a city without ever speaking to a soul. That’s not depression. That’s just me. That’s not me vying for attention, or trying to get people to worry, or trying to prove something. No! Instead, it’s quite the opposite. That’s just me wanting to become better acquainted with…well, me.

A couple of weeks ago, I almost gave up publicly posting anything to my blog, or anywhere for that matter. My boyfriend and my best friend were worried about me because of things that I had posted. They didn’t understand, and I can appreciate that. Writing has always, and I mean always, been my outlet. When I feel powerless over the direction of my day, powerless over the intensity of my emotion, or powerless over my powerlessness, I write to protect myself from becoming too sad. Since I started publicly blogging 18 months ago, I have felt an added layer of satisfaction and fullfillment with my writing therapy. Somehow, sharing what’s going on in my head with a large of community of people makes me feel less selfish, and more like a part of something much bigger than myself.

Last night, I watched the movie ‘Tracks”. If you haven’t seen it or are unfamiliar, the movie is a re-telling of a real life event where a woman takes off on a long journey with four camels and her black dog to trapse across the deserts of Australia on foot. Some movie reviewers take issue with what they consider the movie’s lack of character development or a lack of plot in general. I have to disagree, even though I am always a fan of a good character developing plot. I love getting into other peoples’ heads. It truly is my favorite thing to do. But there is something about the acting of the Mia Wasikowska and her depiction of the real life heroine Robyn Davidson that cut me to the core, and left me with a deeper understanding even though the dialogue was almost non-existant. You can learn so much from just flashbacks, expressions, and body language, and that IS the magic of fantastic acting.

I doubt that I will ever trapse across a desert, hike the AT, get lost in the woods, or get lost in a city without ever speaking to another soul. At least I doubt I will do any of these things alone. But there is something to be said for taking a pause in life to just be, and learn, and delve deeper into the whys and fears of your own mind. Getting in touch with the soul is a powerful way to denounce that pestering ego that tends to kill our happiness with all of its untrusting and demeaning ways. But, having said that, just a word of caution. TOO MUCH time alone, delving deeper into the soul, can lead to an isolated spirit, separating you from those you  love & making you feel like you’ve fallen out of the universe, and are no longer part of something bigger. As humans, we all need to feel that we are part of something bigger, whether we belong to any labeled religion or not. It’s all in how we are wired.

So take a few breaths today. Maybe even meditate your way across a mental desert, but go deeper into you, to love you, and understand you, and watch as your tracks become a guide for those who have been lost themselves.