In The End...

November 25, 2000 was the day that my whole life changed.

I spend a lot of time (likely much more time than is necessary) thinking about what would have happened if I had turned that date down? Or if Nick would never have asked in the first place?

In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter. Despite the fact that Einstein did indeed believe that time travel was possible, we have yet to see any evidence of it, and so it’s just a redundant thought-it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.

But.

I’ve had three November 25ths now that technically mean nothing anymore. It’s just a date on the calendar, a memory of a time long, long ago with people who, good Lord, were 21 and 20 years old and were just pretending at being adults.

But November 25th does mean something to me. If I hadn’t gone on that date 18 years ago, then my life would be this whole other life-Sliding Doors and all that.

Divorce is such a strange beast. But I do know that it is very, very possible to grieve something that you know with all of your heart you are better off without. I look back on who I was inside of my marriage and I am so changed-I don’t recognize that girl anymore. And I am trying to make peace with the idea that the idea of that makes me both extremely happy and a tiny bit sad. I am thrilled that I have grown up, that I am not that girl anymore, that I know my worth and I’m not going to settle for less.

But, very importantly, sometimes I miss how she trusted without hesitation, she loved with her whole heart and just flat out owned her emotions without questioning every motivation.

18 years later, I know to my bones that I would do it all over again, even though we break up in the end.








"What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?"
-Valarie Kaur

Practically Unperfect in Every Way...

Sometimes…I am this girl who fixes her hair and wakes up at 4:30 to workout and keeps spreadsheets on every last little thing and seems like she is totally put together.

Sometimes…I am a girl wearing a white sweatshirt that I’ve only worn three times since I bought it and I manage to get black ink right in the middle of it in front of a customer paying his water bill.

Lest anyone ever think I’m perfect, today I am the second one.

(No one thinks I’m perfect. It’s just a sort of metaphor.)

Anyway, things making me happy of late:

SSR Podcast

Oh my goodness, I am loving this so much! SSR stands for Sh*t She Read and Ali Hoff Kosik basically deep dives into a young adult book-or, in episode 19, an entire series- yes, Sweet Valley High gets the attention it so greatly deserves. I can’t even properly find words for how excited I was to find people conversing about Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield in a loving manner.

So far SSR has 21 episodes, so I intend to listen to most this upcoming 3 day weekend and get my 80s/90s girl book geek on. (Episode 7 on The Baby-sitters Club and episode 18 on Beezus and Ramona are at the top of my list.)


The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

YA is not usually my chosen genre, but this novel did not read like YA to me. Going in, all I knew was that the main character was the granddaughter of a famous novelist who lived in and created the Hinterland, a land of basically creepy fairytales. It reminded me of Night Film by Marshia Pessi only much better (Night Film was not my favorite by a long shot-I think that it’s difficult to write with a premise that something is so amazing that people will buy into an art form as a living creation and that was my big issue with it-in The Hazel Wood, maybe because it’s written for a purportedly younger audience, this was less of a stretch).

It was a nice addition to my fall reading list.

The Hallmark Chanel Countdown to Christmas App

Who knew this was a thing? It’s an app for your phone that syncs to your calendar to let you know when the new Hallmark Christmas movies are airing, and then you can check them off once you watch them. It’s just what this Type A, list loving, Christmas geek needed in her life.

April and I will be seeing Les Misérables on Sunday and I am most excited (I have seen the movie but never the musical itself). I’ve learned to leave time open to just do what I feel like doing-more difficult than it sounds for me because when I don’t have my schedule sometimes I feel overwhelmed and I basically crash hard. I know that sounds sort of crazy-I am sort of crazy, you know-but when the hours stretch around me with nothing exactly that needs doing, I just get a little too lost inside of this notion that this is what life will be like for years on end once the girls leave.

In reality, that isn’t true. (I think.) But there is a line between blessed solitude and sheer loneliness that I can bump up against if I’m not careful. And I’m lucky, I’m an introvert who enjoys being alone, but as always, I put voice to my crazy because it allows me to own it and accept it as my cross to bear.

From the bottom of my heart, I truly do thank you if you take the time to read my blogs. Sometimes writing a blog post is just my most favorite part of my day, and I am always most amazed whenever anyone reads them. Facebook has changed its algorithm of late, and so my posts about my blog don’t get the same traction that they used to, but I love posting my words too much to let it go. Thank you for letting me feel that they mean something beyond my own headspace.

Grace in the Happy Ever After...

I dearly wish life were a Hallmark movie, with snow that magically falls without making slush and endings that you can see coming a mile away.

This past weekend I had a most glorious couple of days celebrating this impending 40th birthday with some of my dearest and closest friends. We laughed and ate and (some of us) drank and just completely enjoyed getting to spend time with each other sans children.

(I am beyond grateful to them and their families/babysitters for making that happen, because in my world, I have older girls who were at their father’s house for the whole weekend, and they have younger kids, so this required a lot of time and effort on their part.)

The centerpiece of this weekend was that we had readings done with my friend, Matt Muschott. I have had a reading done by Matt prior to this, back when my divorce was fresh and new and all I really wanted to know was if I was going to live to see the end of that tailspin of grief. His words to me at that time brought such comfort to that panicked girl-they were not a promise that all would be well, but they were a promise of a much greater picture than I could see at the time.

Matt has been blessed with a gift that he graciously shares and I am all the more fortunate for his appearance in my life.

So, this past weekend, we had readings done, and we all agree that they were profound and life affirming.

My personal reading was again in the vein of, what the heck comes next? Because, as I said to him before he began, I am scared. I am scared every single day that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m not doing this right.

And again, his words were a comfort, if also a bit of a challenge, a bit of an idea that I can allow myself to dream bigger and bolder than I ever seem to think possible.

But mostly, he told me that my saving grace is my girls. That we are our unit, that I couldn’t ask for better help along this journey. How lucky am I, he said, that they chose me to be their mom?

And so today, I was looking back over some old writing that I had done for the blog but never seemed to find its way to the actual print, and I found this:

“Things are so much better now.”

These are actual words from my Betsy. The question to her was, “Do you miss the way that our family used to be?”

I can’t quite explain how this child always knows just the right way to say something to her somewhat wayward mother.

I wrote that in March. I remember the conversation. Betsy said, “Things are so much better now,” and then she proceeded to talk about how much I have changed. And it’s true.

I worry to an absurd degree that the girls will end up like kids on an after school special. I definitely know people who have struggled when a parent left. But, at least for us, so far, we are changed in ways that has strengthened us as a family, that has turned on its head the idea that somehow living in separate homes was not the ideal for our kids.

I certainly understand that the absolute ideal in this world would be for my kids to have parents who live together and love each other. But our reality, which has been hard fought for, is something that, honestly, I am proud of.

Things are so much better now.

Indeed, Miss Betsy Anne, they are.

I still don't know the ending, I still don't live in the magical snow globe of a Hallmark movie, but I'm trying (so hard) to make peace with the idea that our happy ever after still exists, in a completely different form than we imagined 18 years ago.