A single mom to three boys working hard to live my truest life. I hope as I share the beauty, the gratitude, the grief, the hard…you find inspiration + hope to show up to your life as honestly as possible.
All in Healing
You hear this all the time once you’ve become single: “Just date yourself!” Or someone asks a single person, “are you dating?” And she says “Myself!”
I don’t know if anyone else has sat down & dissected what this truly can be and mean to ourselves, but I sure have.
Not only letting other people love the worst versions of myself, but allowing MYSELF to love the worst versions of me.
Also allowing myself to love versions of my physical body that feel foreign, as my physical body has changed drastically over the years.
Whether or not you have sex before you’re married has absolutely nothing to do with how your sex life is while married.
Can you even believe that?
Because I sure haven’t for the majority of my life.
“I want to share something with you, but it’s a really hard thing for me to share. Are you able to hold space for me?”
“I have something I need to talk about with you, but being vulnerable is scary for me. Are you in a place you can hear my heart?”
Parenting kids not born to us is a nice spotlight to see how imperfect we are 😅 I mean, parenting in general highlights our impatience, selfishness, low tolerance, it reveals trauma that may have been buried for years.
When parenting children not born to us (IMO parenting any kid ever), understanding TBRI is crucial.
To raise boys into men feels sacred & important. Maybe I overthink everything (I do), but maybe it’s because I feel the way society has (quite poorly) raised men so far is due to not thinking enough.
Im not a man-hater. I don’t think alllll men suck. Im aware there are plenty of women who kinda suck too.
Pole dancing is helping me heal. I know, I know, I sound like a heretic.
I’m soooo bad at it & that’s not me being “humble” or “modest,” that’s me stating a fact. I’m going to keep showing up anyways.
This bed holds redemption. It is marks of healing, abundance. New mercies. Not just the baby asleep on it, tho he’s 💯 those things too.
While married I purchased a king sized memory foam for us. Me, my former husband, + S and I slept on it.
“We don’t support adopting {an infant} while pregnant. If you’re pregnant, agencies won’t allow you to adopt. Virtual twinning is frowned upon.”
We had driven an hour to her Beaverton office for our final home study visit. We’d soon receive our official home study license & immediately submit our applications to 5 agencies across the nation + apply for a number of grants. 3 days later I’d test ➕ for pregnancy.
Love isn’t enough for a relationship.
Hear this: I still love both fathers to my kids. And differently. No one really talks about this part of divorce or significant break up.
The only models I’d seen growing up of divorce were where 1 or both former-spouses HATED the other. I’ve unpacked this quite a bit; I see it stems from deep hurt/betrayal & facing that seems TOO MUCH so we instead hate. I get it.
It’s only been two and a half weeks since I shared I’m pregnant, but that time has felt exhaustingly long.
… It has been a calling of sorts to share some of the What Would Typically Be Private pieces of my journey + heart over the years.
I hold the hope + carry a conviction of loosing chains of shame for others. The response through my years of sharing is that that is exactly what happens when we choose to shine light in our own hidden corners where shame and pain reside.
That good ole monthly flow should have started Monday, November 11. I was sure it would, I kept telling myself it would, because why wouldn’t it?
I struggled to conceive when I was adamantly trying — and married, have you — and had lost two in the first trimester. The last one we said goodbye to was after two thriving ultra sounds, a heart beating to prove its life. Then on May 11, 2018 I lost that baby so fast and so painfully, I couldn’t imagine trying to put myself through this again.
After multiple seasons, back-to-back, of grief and weary-heartedness…I am proud to share that the Lord laid it on my heart to put together a daily devotional. Specifically for the weary-hearted, hungry for worship.
Because that is where I’ve been: weary. Tired. Broken down. Disappointed. Grief-stricken. Devastated. Over and over again for a few years now.
I have poured my soul into journals, my soul soaking in scriptures pointing me to be honest in my sorrow.
There is so much power in our woundedness, in our brokenness, in our weaknesses.
I mean, the Bible says it a few times and we love quoting those scriptures, but do we believe them?
I’m not so sure many of us do, because we continue to hide the “ugly” pieces of ourselves and attempt to fabricate something else for the world (and ourselves) to see and accept as us. I do it. You do it.
Codependency. It’s a bish. One I was sure I didn’t struggle with, but over the last two years I see that I definitely do, it just looks differently than I was told it would.
I recognize that my codependency looks very much like ignoring myself, not staying true to myself, diminishing my actual emotional/mental/spiritual needs in order to ensure the other person in the relationship is comfortable and not as bothered as maybe they should be to meet me where I’m at.
It’s me saying I am going to be your ride or die, even though riding with you is going to kill me.
HERE IS A THING:
A very real and present fear I have (too consistently) is that as my kids grow older, they’ll realize what a loser mom they have.
Like… he has a REAL job and got a REAL BIG DEGREE with income coming in no matter what during coronapocalypse. He OWNS his house. Do I have a degree? Noooope. What about a “REAL” job? Well not one I clock in and out of from 8 am to 4 pm Monday through Friday. I make coffee for people, I write, I photograph, I speak, I build websites, and whatever else in between. I definitely don’t own our house.
I have decided to simply show up here in my little corner of the internet world again. As I am. Today. Right now.
When I was newly married, I blogged A LOT.
I just sifted through many different posts and archived/hid them from those years because it feels too raw to keep them available — I have lots of complex feelings about it all. Tears welled up and memories coursed through my head.
The last two years have been really something for me.
If you go through my blog posts you’ll see I was recently in a relationship but if you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see after almost a year of being together, we are no longer. We were so cute, too. Our little blended family.
You’ll see I wrote a letter to my former husband on our anniversary which was just bleh and sad and read by way too many people. If you keep scrolling through my blog posts, you’ll find I wrote about foster care and hard goodbyes and you’ll even find posts about us adopting a baby girl making us a family of seven at the time.
I’m a person who loves sentimental things…a person who sits in a chair and has ink etched into my skin by way of a needle to mark a change or a transition. Tattoos mean so much to me.
I am also a person that wants to do her best raising the kids entrusted to her. I don’t want my kids to be afraid of pain, unsure what to do when loss hits us, or uncomfortable talking about grief.
My favorite tattoo is of swallows. They represent the kids that will forever reside in my heart. Two of them are solid black, meant for Sage and Ira. The other five are just the outline — meant for two babies my body miscarried, two girls I fostered for over a year, and a baby girl whose adoption to us was disrupted. Each life as valuable as the next, all beloved.
When I was staring separation and divorce in the face, I was sure I was going to die of shame. So much shame wrapped up in the dissolution of a marriage — in my family and community and online and as a faith-based person.
I was confident divorce would make me Not Good Enough.
But one day He spoke so clearly into my shattered soul, saying “When you say you aren’t good enough, you are inherently denying My Truth. I say you are a glorious work of Myself, I say you are My masterpiece. …
