April 20

Before my hip started randomly hurting like mad, I went on the best sunshiney bikeride. 

 

Black and white pictures of dogs

I left the country for a while to do the whole Eat, Pray, Love thing and it was the best. I also haven't written a blog post in months so here's some pictures of dogs. The Weimeriner (sic) is my brother John's. The sleeping pictures are after they played like mad with her. It was all fun and games until Koda figured out how to open the gate. Good thing my parents don't live on a crazy busy street. Oh wait. 

 

   

Did I ever mention that I love dogs? 

On waking up alone

July 22, 2016 "I woke up this morning thinking I was still in bed with S___, relief when I wasn't"

I woke up quickly with that feeling you sometimes get, not knowing exactly where you are but with a vague sense that things are familiar. I thought I was in S____'s house. Overwhelming dread.  

I opened my eyes and reached out my hands to feel if S____ was there in the bed. He was not. I was alone. The realization hit. I was not in the Queen sized bed at S___'s house. I waain my own king size bed in the apartment I now shared with my dog.  

The importance of my emotional safety cannot be overstated. Marriage is not about being happy all of the time. Marriage is about learning how to become the person we need to become in the space that allows us to be safe while making that growth. 

That bed, the one I worried with dread was where I had awakened, was not a safe place for me. I learned so much during the months that I spent there about how to soothe myself, how to create my own safe space in the middle of emotional chaos, how to establish and maintain boundaries. I left that bed a much better person than I had been. But the leaving of that bed was a relief so strong I never wanted to go back. 

I had become new. 

When I woke up thinking I was back in that terrible place, it felt like regression. 

And backward was not the direction for me.  

So here's to 10 months of forging a new independent path, to a lifetime of progression, to the goal of always waking up in a bed that is a safe space for me to land. 

Dog pictures

I really don't have anything to say except Gracie and I have moved and she has a backyard and a puppy friend. 

Meet Koda 

 

 

And also she is so happy here and so tired from all the playing. And it makes me so happy. 

 

 

So yeah. We're good. But also I need to finish unpacking and if you want to come help, you're more than welcome. 

The only life you can save.

"Try to avoid lamenting how sad it is that people 'throw away their marriages these days.' Try not to generalize. I have met hundreds of divorced women who didn't throw their marriages away. Most of us fight like hell for our marriages until we realize that we can either save our marriages or save our souls."

Regardless of how you feel about Glennon Doyle Melton, this is my truth. This is the truth of so many women. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant. I believe that marriage can and should be the supreme partnership between a man and a woman. It should be the way we help each other and learn from each other, and it should be the way we learn how to because like God. To become perfect and loving and selfless. That process can be hard. The growth can be painful. It can be stretching, expansive and terrible. But it should not destroy your soul. 

Just after my divorce, a friend told me, "When I first met you, you were so happy and just had this light.  I slowly watched that light go out. It's nice to see it coming back."

The day I moved out of a home that had been slowly crushing my soul, knowing that I had done absolutely everything in my power to save a marriage that would not be saved, was a day of release, of lightness. I do not look back because I know that it is onward and it is upward from here. 

Me and Jesus

I asked Siri to play some music for me the other day. She decided to get mouthy with me. 

Good ol' Siri.  

On consent

The other day I was on a date with a boy I had been liking quite a bit. He touched the top of my bum. And I said, "Don't touch my butt." He said, "That's not your butt, that's the small of your back." 

Later I said, "Let me explain this to you: from here to here is my butt. This is where you don't touch." And he said "Okay" and then literally grabbed a handful of my bum and started laughing. 

Can we all be clear that this is not okay? When I tell someone not to touch me and they continue to touch me that violates my boundary and violates consent. I literally had to push the man away from me and say, "That was not okay." While he continued to laugh, I began to cry.

I hope you are never in a situation where you don't feel physically safe, where you wonder if someone will take physical advantage of you. If you've ever been in that situation, I'm sorry that happened to you. 

The saddest part of all of this is that the guy thought it was really funny. I tried to explain. But he didn't get it. He thought I was being "sensitive." But let's be clear: when someone asks you not to touch them and you continue to do so, that constitutes assault. And that is not okay. Period. 

The cutest tiny humans on the planet

 

 

Anxiety and dogs and such

My dog. She has anxiety. Here she is as I got home one night: panting her brains out after she shook the bottom out of her crate. 

 

The other day when she broke out of Janae's metal crate I had had enough. 

 

 

This is my girl at the vet. Thinking about what she did as we decided to put her on daily medication. 

 

You guys. I know she isn't a human. I used to make fun of this, but really, my dog is on anxiety meds. And I don't even care because it's either her, or me. Or maybe both. 

Love and loss and moving on

In the process of moving out I changed the name of my Pinterest board "Love" to "Love and loss." And then as I realized that I wasn't in a dark tornado of death that would never end, I created a new board, "Love and loss and moving on." It's interesting because this process of love and loss and moving on has been so educational. I've recently started socializing again (sometimes even with men!) and each new experience I have or person I talk to teaches me something new about love, loss, moving on. Everyone has a story about each of those things. But the stories that cut me the most are the ones about the losses of children. Kids in divorce who have to move away, children who are killed by cars, children with cancer. There's something about children, the way they embody love and forgiveness. The way they model who to be. It makes their loss hurt so much. So much more than we even knew we could feel. 

The first pediatric trauma I took care of was a boy whose foot had been severely injured when it was run over by a truck. He was screaming and it made me cry. (I cry a lot. It's a thing. I cried the other day on a breakfast date talking about how much I love and miss my nieces). Staci, teaching me who I wanted to become as a trauma practitioner taught me. "I love it when a kid is screaming. A screaming kid is breathing." I spent an entire session with Kate in therapy asking "How can I take care of a traumatically injured child and maintain a sense of composuse?"

Two years later, a little boy was hit by a car. Severely, but not critically injured, he looked up at me and said, "Could I be dead?" That moment the tears were not because of the pain but because of the gentle innocence as I said, "No bud, you're gonna be okay." I learned to hold it together. 

The thing I've learned about love and loss is we don't feel loss unless we've loved. Real love. Strong love. Transcendent love. Love helps us grow, expand. Loss wrings out our imperfections, and if we let it, loss leaves us better than it found it. It's a hard way to learn, but in the end we can minister to those around us, love them more genuinely when we have learned through our own losses how to sit with people in theirs. How to just be there. To say yes. Yes it hurts. It hurts so much. And I am here. You don't have to be alone while you feel this. I am here with you and I hear you. 

I thought for me that love and loss and moving on would be about my marriage, but really for me, it was about my Toby. That bright eyed five year old who just wanted me to get married so I could sleepover. The six year old who left me notes in the mailbox to find as I came home from work at 4 am to tell me that he liked me, loved me. The seven year old  who wanted to sit next to me me in the quiet and color because it was so peaceful. That is my loss. But it is also my gain. My growth. My love. My expansion. That is the hurt I carry in my heart. That my Jesus carries in his. That my Gracie carries when she is alone. But man. I am so glad I feel that loss. I think this is different than love, loss, moving on. This is love, loss, and keep on loving and living. I know the sting will lessen over time, but I will always have a space for the love that Toby taught me. The loss that I felt in having to leave him behind, and the growth of my heart from the terrible and lovely process of learning that I had no regrets because I had learned to love him with my whole whole heart.