Preface…

Hello & welcome to my first blog, my 2nd chance in life, and my opinion on how it’s all going! 

I’m a Cleveland girl. Born, raised, moved away from when I found my true love, and returned to when he casually informed me (after a 35 year marriage) that he hadn’t love me for the last 15 years.  (Excuse me??) I was 60 then.  60 was a heartbreaking year. The worst in my life. So was the next year. And the next year. And the next. And the next and next and next. Seven seemingly never to end years of mindfully processing broken dreams (but some happily still kicking), alibis I questioned (and never found answers to, or found the answers were lies), paying attention to soul-deep voices of self-truths that were rooted so firmly that betraying even one caused a kind of death in me.  It was seven years in a blackness I never knew existed. Or how to be there.  Or how to survive. Or how to escape… without learning its ‘eyes wide open’ lessons first! 

So I leaned-in, and I learned.

Looking back and metaphorically speaking, I was always looking for a light to help step me through that darkness. A light that would serve as an anchor or beacon. And although my Nashville and New York kids were always a bright light for me, they were also always sad for me. I had to get better so they could get better. Getting better was my job. No one else owned that. Just me.

I also realized I had never lived alone. Suddenly I was. I was alone, in the middle of a divorce, clearly wigged-out! It was the worst kind of combinations. On top of it all, like ugly looking and awful tasting frosting, was the misery divorce spews-out everywhere. On everyone. On everything. And I was trying super hard to breathe through it all. It was like walking through my life without air. And when there was air it reeked of my ruin.  Sometimes I would get up at 5 a.m., drive to nearby Huntington Beach to park, pray and cry. Sitting at the shore of big Lake Eire I felt incredibly small, completely broken, freaked-out, valueless and stupid. Really stupid for so many reasons. And yet I knew that I knew… that God had showed up during those years just for me. Because no matter how messy it all got, how far I was realizing I had fallen, how loud and nasty and never-ending it all seemed… there was a peace in me. I still can’t explain it and it  remains to this day.

Eventually I figured out how to breathe again. I also found my laugh, my smile, my energy. My mornings slowly started feeling a teeny bit settled, and I was going 2 to 3 lovely minutes without thinking about the angry divorce place I was standing in the middle of.  I practiced breathing, which sometimes got out-loud noisy, while fast-walking around the public golf course in my backyard. My presence-of-mind was becoming mindful. I was changing from “victim to victor.”  Everyone says, “Give it time. You’ll survive.” Oh my dear God… I actually was! Surviving!

Oh my dear God… I actually did. Survive!

Today the light at the end of the tunnel is NOT another train. It’s a cleaned-up, fresh smelling, smarter and passionate  entrance into my future.

Today, seven hard and earned years later I am… blooming.

And yes, I may be a late (in life) bloomer but I’m blooming none-the-less.

And i’m feeling a little spring green.

And the Beatles, She’s got a Ticket to Ride is the song playing in my head!  

 

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