What I'm Learning About Myself

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 — or maybe I hid those posts — 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 find that my kids are still the sweetest, asking about my tattoo and wondering which one is theirs and love naming all the birds etched into my ribcage.

You’ll see I wrote a letter to my former husband on our anniversary which was emotional and sad and read by way too many people.

If you keep scrolling through my blog posts, you’ll quickly discover 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.

It’s been two years since I consistently wrote blog posts, and that’s because most of the time I feel like what I have to say is too personal and doesn’t mean anything to anyone…and also most the time what I have to share directly relates to other people whose faces have been all over my online spaces, and I just want to protect them.

Here’s pics of my kids tho.

quarantine day 864.

I had a real beautiful life a few years ago, with a lot of hidden grief and unknown trauma… sometimes I wonder if going through life numb and intimately shut-down was better than feeling every damn thing.

But then I think about how lame of a life that is — that isn’t living, it is pretending… in a shell. And what’s the point of that.

I still have a beautiful life, but it is a whole lot different now. And nothing what I expected.

Currently we are living through a pandemic where the economy is crashing and businesses are closing and we are all unsettled. A lot of people have died in a very short amount of time, worldwide. We are currently in lockdown, ordered into isolation by the government, hoping to flatten the curve of a virus that decided to spread like wildfire.

The truth is throughout each day I experience a range of emotions.

I go from feeling sad when I wake up, wondering how in the world we will get through another day in our teeny tiny small living space without a TV or many outdoor toys…to feeling confident and conquering as I finish pouring my french press + cream into my mug. One moment I feel calm and at peace, knowing Jesus is with me no matter what — and the next I am anxious and nervous, paralyzed wondering if I am going to have to live in my former husband’s shed if we are forced into militarized lockdown. I mean I don’t know. But I know neither of us will go more than two days without seeing our kids, because everyone’s mental health matters.

One moment I feel good about how much I have cut out of my financial budget, how little I spend, sure that I will be able to pay my rent over the next few months…the next moment I am petrified by fear that I will not be able to cover all the bills and my car will be repossessed in the middle of the night and we are all going to have to file bankruptcy and will I seriously have to move again and if so, where?

If I let my mind wander down the What If’s — which I am super good at analyzing all the ways something can go — it gets really overwhelming.

There is a super power and I have it:

it is being able to spend too much time imagining scenes and analyzing imagined conversations that have never and may never happen. I get so stuck in my head sometimes, and don’t quite know how to get out of it.

Over the last two years as my whole life exploded over and over again, I have learned a few things about myself…

I want to find myself, be true to myself, and be true to my emotional needs (which are kinda complex and overwhelming to even myself…let alone someone else).

Revealing highly personal and even “shameful” things about myself reveals my determination to understand the truth of my experiences — so I can discover who I am and come to terms with my emotional complexity. Because if I can understand the complexity of who I am and where I’ve been…maybe I can help you live fully too.

I have experienced that while revealing personal and often “shameful” things actually creates a huge space for GRACE.

I found that I can forgive and work with pretty much anything, but I can’t work with a consistent liar. I mean like, really intense lying? Especially if I have worked hard to make a safe space with lots of grace? If you can’t be honest, then what is even the point of being in relationship. I’m a bit hardened here.

I’d rather be rejected for who I am, than loved for lies / loved for who I’m not.

I realized that I am acutely aware of my intuitions, and my intuition is REALLY GOOD, but more importantly that I don’t act on it as much as I wish I would. I don’t trust myself like I should, and I need to figure out why in the world that is. When my intuition and gut feelings are mostly right, why do I continue to ignore them? Do I feel I am not worth listening to?

I struggle to believe that anyone can truly and sincerely understand me, and therefore actually love me fully. I feel misunderstood by 99.9% of people and know that Jesus is really the only One who can ever understand and love me fully…but why is it that I can understand others on an intimate level and yet I feel so often misunderstood? Even by people I am terrifyingly vulnerable with? Is it because I don’t explain myself enough? I feel like I explain myself TOO much. #enneagramfour

I’m learning I am so good at repressing and justifying things that hurt me, because I really want the other person to receive grace. But I end up not having boundaries, which is actually NOT loving of me, it is enabling.

I learned that I really long for someone to come into my life in an intimate way, and appreciate the secret self I have been privately nurturing and hiding from the world. On the flip side: I am seeing that I am really shut off. Self-protective. There is a piece of my heart that is so burned, so hurt, so wounded, so betrayed… I don’t know how it could possibly soften. How can it heal? Will it? Do I want it to?

Often I think it would be easier to just get back in a relationship I am familiar with, because I can operate in it, and though I won’t feel safe or seen spiritually and emotionally (and therefore sexually), it is whatever. Because at least I won’t feel so lonely? At least I will feel like I have a WHOLE family unit again? It’s so much cuter that way.

But I don’t want that.

I don’t want another relationship meant to be sacred only to live with hearts shattered and secret betrayal. I don’t want to live unknown, unseen, misunderstood and not fought for. I am worth the sacrifice of comfort, just as I believe someone else is worth sacrificing MY comfort and heart and self.

Plus there’s these two. These two are really important and worth making sure I do life and healing right.

It’s still hard for me to say I am a “single mom.” This is because one one hand, the term implies I am the sole parent and I’m not. Their dad and I basically fight over time with them — I mean not really, we have a good coparenting relationship. We split time with them 50/50.

But another reason is because it just feels foreign to me still. The reality that I am a mom not married / with the man who helped me become a mom. It’s just weird for me as it is so far from every possibility I deemed for my life.

After the breaking of my heart yet again earlier this year through a ridiculous break up (the whole thing felt like a reality tv show), it has been hard to imagine life without that man. The one I met a year ago and began rebuilding a life with. But for now, it is what has to be that way. And it’s hard. Like harder than I thought and I yet again find a new level of grace for people who have been in these shoes I’m in.

As I work through self-healing — which is exhausting — I hope to work towards being in a place where I know what I offer…and what I deserve. Yes, grace and understanding are huge and important, but so is basic truth-telling, trust building, and actual vulnerability from both partners.

I hope to be with someone who I can see past their defenses and they can see past mine, inspiring each other into our hearts and minds. I imagine being in a relationship where we encourage each other to move towards connection instead of away from it; someone who invites me to continue my healing work and is willing to hold their hand out when it is too much to carry on my own. Someone who is in touch with their heart and mental health, prioritizing both of those things and encourages me to do the same.

I know that even in the healthiest of relationships people will get triggered by certain words, phrases, behaviors, etc. But it isn’t the getting triggered part that is an issue…it is how both of us deal with and treat those triggers that will matter. Reacting by projecting blame and anger towards the other completely dismantles and opportunity to hold a sacred and safe space for mutual healing. You know?

I hope to one day be in a relationship where I am healthy. He is healthy. WE are healthy.

But until that day, I have a lot of healing and growing to do.

The healing journey is full of grieving the past and what all was lost — big and small.

Healing means letting go of a stagnant relationship…which feels impossible for me to do right now. I hate feeling uncertain and this transition brought nothing but more uncertainty.

Healing means forgiving myself, which is a road I can’t seem to even find on a map anymore.

I am no where near trusting Love in an intimate-relationship-type of way, but I think if I get there one day, trusting Love will be a sign of some major healing.

One day at a time, right?

Since we are cooped up at home, I’ll be here processing and maybe sharing more? If for no one, it’s for me. Getting back to what I know: processing through grief is healing.