Etymology of a Heartbreak...

It's time to pivot.

This blog has been my solace, my voice, my hope in a sea of grief and loss and abandon. It's no secret that the end of my marriage was beyond the most difficult period of my life. The complete tailspin of grief that came after- this blog has become a record of that. Reading back through some of the posts from the first year after the divorce is painful to me now, knowing how hard that girl I was then was trying to hold it together and be positive in the face of this obstacle that seemed the size of a mountain.

January 14, 2016:

I wish I had some sense of direction, some sense of what the heck I'm doing. Trying to convince myself that this won't always feel so heavy and all-encompassing. It's hard to imagine how this ends.

There remain bits of my divorce that I don't talk about on the blog. There are pieces of my grief that lie only with my sister and my therapist, and there are huge chunks of this process that remain on pieces of paper that only exist for my eyes, and perhaps one day for the girls.

February 2, 2016 (the day before my divorce was final):

Please let this be a beginning-a good beginning. A hope, a peace. I pray that for you, dear Joy. I pray for good to come, amazing things you never even knew you wanted or needed. And that you read these words with a smile at the joy you realize only with hindsight that you are about to experience.

My children watched me fall apart. I rocked their already shaken world to the core. It breaks my heart. I can't take it back, I can't do anything other than heal. I hope that I have shown them that as sad and broken as I was, I have managed to grow and learn and create this new life for us.

I know that grief doesn't actually end. It shifts and morphs and becomes a part of who you are and what you present to the world.

April 13, 2017:
Life is so much bigger than me and my melodrama that only lives in my head. And yet, and yet, and yet...whenever I hear bad things, this is where I go. This is the hub around which all of my understanding of pain swirls.

That will forever be true.

It will also forever be true that I am grateful to be divorced. There was a time when that wasn't true, when I honestly believed that I was never going to genuinely feel happy again-when I believed to my soul that there would always be this hole in my heart that no amount of tears or anger or smashing dishes (at the suggestion of my therapist) would ever be able to heal.

But heal it has.

I'm not saying that I'm completely cured by any means. But I do know that I'm at a place where it no longer pains me to say that I'm divorced. Bit by bit I have released that feeling of shame that I carry over allowing my marriage to end.

January 16, 2018:
Life is so much better than it ever was. That's a blessing, Joy...if you had planted your feet and refused to move, none of these blessings would have been able to move.

And so, we pivot. We have indeed reached the bend in the road. The grief is still there, wound inside my bones and blood, as real as anything I've experienced. But it's purpose has shifted.

There are pieces of me lying inside of all I have written, seen and unseen. My goal moving forward is to embrace all of this joy for what it is. I want to continue to write my truth, but from this new perspective. From a heart changed and shifted, from a hope I honestly thought I might never hold again.

This new bend is scary and unknown and glorious.

"So this is what the truth feels like
This is more of what I had in mind"
-Gwen Stefani

Love is an Abyss...

I used to believe in soulmates.

Honestly, deep in my bones, I believed that there was one person in the world that was created as basically my other half, the person that would bring out all of my best qualities and make me a more interesting person.

I called him Joe Garbarini.

Joe Garbarini was, of course, a character in a book that I read my freshman year of high school. He was a cool, motorcycle riding, Shakespeare loving, Catholic Italian boy, who naturally fought all the time with Debbie Lesley, the spoiled, rich girl whose parents divorce necessitated her becoming a waitress at the restaurant that Joe's family owned, The Heartbreak Cafe. Never fear-all of the verbal sparring was merely foreplay for the genuine feelings of love that Joe and Debbie discover for each other by the end of the six-book series.

Naturally, I am Debbie. Especially when I was a geeky 15 year old who hadn't quite grown into my nose (I know, I still really haven't grown into my nose).


In any case, Joe Garbarini held my heart for 6 years while I waited for whoever it was that my soulmate was going to turn out to be. For a dorky, shy girl who desperately wanted to fall in love but who had not the slightest clue how to actually go about making that happen, making up a romance in my head was as good as it was going to get.

In reality, I'm still pretty head over heels for Joe.

This is where all of my blog posts tend to delve into the shattered pieces of my marriage and how I haven't the foggiest idea how to move away from that person that I used to be crazy in love with. But that's not exactly where this one is going to go.

No, this blog post is actually about The Time Traveler's Wife, which is my favorite book that I have read as an adult. The main plot of the novel is that Clare has known her husband, Henry, basically her entire life, as he is a time traveler and has appeared to her since childhood. When Clare finally meets Henry in real life, he is this young, twenty-something boy pining over a lost love.

The plot obviously goes in many different directions than just that, but the reason that I love it is for that single point alone: she has been in love with this man her entire life, and when she meets him, he is not the man that she loves. She has to wait for him to grow into the man that she adores. She has to patiently bide her time while he grieves the loss of another love. And he is constantly leaving her, not because he wants to, but because that is the hand that fate has dealt him.

It's really no wonder that this resonated so deeply with me, reading it for the first time while my husband was deployed to Iraq, a 23 year old boy at the time, me a 24 year old military wife, thrust into a life of decisions I was ill equipped to make, buying a house all on my own, trying mightily to pretend that I wasn't scared out of my mind for a million different reasons.

I've thought a lot about that girl-that 23 year old girl who knew nothing what she was doing but who had grasped onto the idea that Nick was her soulmate, and that was her lifeline-everything else could fall to bits but she knew to the depths of her soul that Nick's jagged edges fit inside of her broken pieces and so everything would be okay.

Honestly, when you begin your marriage there, is it any wonder I fell so far apart at the end of it?

I carry these girls inside of me still-the 15 year old me with the pretend boyfriend, the 23 year old newlywed, the abandoned 36 year old woman-and I wonder what that idea of a soulmate even means.

What I do know, what I was telling myself the other day when I finished a book that reminded me of The Time Traveler's Wife and therefore started my mind down this particular rabbit hole-I know that one of the best things about who I am now is that I have no expectations of that. Falling in love-as all encompassing and amazing and wonderful as it is-is only one small part of what it is to be someone's soulmate. In truth, it's about understanding that someone is coming into your life with all their own baggage and experiences and hurts and joys, and perhaps, they will provide solace for your own hurts and joys.

It's nothing and everything more than that.

Last time I saw you
We had just split in two.
You were looking at me.
I was looking at you.
You had a way so familiar,
But I could not recognize,
Cause you had blood on your face;
I had blood in my eyes.
But I could swear by your expression
That the pain down in your soul
Was the same as the one down in mine.
That's the pain,
Cuts a straight line
Down through the heart;
We called it love.
-The Origin of Love

Let the Words Fall Out...

I'm trying something slightly new this year: I'm not making a "resolution" for the new year.

My resolutions have always been more geared toward changing some aspect of my life for the better (and yes, that always involves reading) but this year I decided to take a different tack.

I adopted a word.

I heard about this on the Elise Gets Crafty podcast (I follow EliseJoy on Instagram and enjoy her immensely, despite the fact that she is the craftiest person ever and I am most decidedly not.)

Elise chooses a word every year, and this year her word is reach, as in getting out of her comfort zone.

I loved that idea, but I wasn't jazzed about that word. In typical Joy fashion, I pondered and wrote and bounced the whole idea off of someone who looked at me like I was loony, and I just couldn't figure out what I was wanting to say.

I wanted to say that I want to try new things, that I want to keep proving to myself that I can do things that I completely believe myself incapable of doing, I want to fall on my face and pick myself up and do it all over again.

I want to figure out how to work at this job that I love, and come home to my kids and not just collapse to the couch, but somehow still be that mom that used to occupy all of my time. That's a hard one-the girls are getting older, and while we still have so much fun together, they are completely resistant to the super fun games of clean your room and let's see how many vegetables you can eat.

I want my family to understand that I love them, that I am well aware that they make my life possible. I want to make time to spend with my friends, which has become somehow more difficult as our children have aged, which makes no sense but is still true.

I want to keep clearing out my house, shedding all of these things that we have somehow amassed, and be able to actually feel that my home is a sanctuary of things I love and cherish.

I mostly want to feel such joy in my life, I want to feel like every day is full of fun-there was such a stretch of my life that felt like existing without feeling, because feeling was just much too overwhelming-and having finally shed that weight, having embraced that grief for the healing and grace that it brought, and feeling like there is finally a new bend in this road just ahead of us-it's a bliss that I don't want to take for granted.

So, finally, after all of the overthinking that I do about everything, I came up with a word to encompass all of that.

Brave.

That is what 2018 is going to be for me. Brave. Every time I think that I'm going to look like a goon, or that I'm scared because I don't know what the heck I am doing, or that I'm overwhelmed by the idea that I am the only adult in my house, I am going to be brave.

I spent the past two years living, growing, and blessedly thriving through something that took me to my absolute nadir. The next bend in the road may be full of roadblocks, but so be it. 2018 is going to be glorious. Or not. But I can promise, it's going to be full of new adventure.

"She was brave and strong and broken, all at once." -Anna Funder

Seriously Purple Prose...

Love is elusive for me.

Always has been.

I fell in love for the first time at the age of 21. The preceding years of my life had been mostly a panic that no one would ever find me attractive. I had a romantic's heart coupled with a completely nerdy, homebody life-I was as shy as could be, I rarely spoke to anyone in the four years that I was in college (my professors being the one exception), and all I wanted in life was to be swept off my feet by some boy who could get past all of my awkwardness and see that Cinderella underneath.

All of that happened. Which is amazing. But true.

So, when my marriage crumbled at my feet, my natural inclination was to panic again. After all, it had taken 21 years for someone to succumb to my awkward charms the first time. Now I was older and grayer and still ill at ease in most social situations.

I have wavered in the past two years between being completely certain that I will never fall in love again, and being completely certain that I absolutely must fall in love again for any of this to make any sense. After all, I tend to reason with myself, surely this happened because the true love of my life is still out there, making his way to me? Sure, we both got waylaid, me by a marriage and children-so heaven knows what could be holding him up? Family, distance, maybe he's been mauled by tigers in India-literally anything.

And then of course I waver back to the understanding that I have with my brain, that I am never going to fall in love again, and that I am going to just shut down that part of my being, and therefore I need never again live through the agony of being abandoned by someone that I trust with my life.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the middle.

I have grown fond of saying, "I'm open to falling in love again, but I'm not looking for it."

That's, of course, easier said than done. What on earth does that mean? I think that I want it to mean that I totally want to fall in love but I don't want to do anything that might suggest I lay my feelings on the table to be hurt. It's not possible. I can't only have all of the upside of being in love without any of the possible negative consequences.

My head and my heart are battling it out to see who wins this fight.

What is my point with this particular post? Well, someone just recently asked me how it's possible to figure out when is the correct time to start dating again? (I know, it scares me too, that there may be people in the world who think I have actual insight into these things, as if I have any idea what I'm doing.) My answer for that is for me, figuring out if I want to go out with someone, if it's worth my time or, more importantly, if it's worth whatever sliver of my heart might go with it, it's a very organic process. I have figured out that I really have to get to know a person, and for me, that is done in real life and not over the internet. (Mind you, I know people who have met their spouses on the internet and they are perfectly suited. So I'm not saying it can't work, it just doesn't for me right now.)

I'm just a bit too damaged to trust anyone very easily. It complicates things a bit.

Figuring out the pieces of me that remain from this divorce has been such a time consuming process. So even though I do worry endlessly about falling in love again, and how it would work, and what it would look like on a practical level, ultimately none of that matters.

What matters in the end is that I'm content with who I am, in love or not.

Two years ago, at our Christmas Eve service, all I could think was that there was a huge hole where Nick belonged, that the girls and I would feel the loss of his presence forever. How would I ever just move beyond Nick? And this year I had a realization that our family has changed and morphed to the point that it no longer feels like someone is missing.

It's a sign that this dented, damaged heart of mine is healing.

"Every word, every lover's sign we make has been made before."
-The Lover Speaks

My {Favorite} Year, My {Least Favorite} Year, My Year...

2017 is not going to end up being my favorite year ever.

That said, it is not my least favorite year ever either. (No, 2015 takes that prize.)

As always, I read a lot, listened to more music and podcasts than I properly know what to do with, watched my fair share of movies, and very little television as compared to years past. 2017 is the year that I learned to make peace with my limitations, the year that I began to recognize that making time to marinate in things that I enjoy is just as important as my never ending list of tasks to be accomplished, and to accept with two hands the grace that I have been granted through not one ounce of my own doing.

First, two articles to set the mood:


The Ultimate Best Books of 2017 List

Literary Hub has graciously done all the math in rounding up all the best books from the book lists for 2017. Since math is most definitely not my thing, I am appreciative. And proud to have read at least a few of the top books of 2017.


7 Stages of End-of-the-Year Reader Grief

This article from Book Riot is me. The end of the year is a whiplash of emotion from I can't believe I didn't get to this book, and that book, and of course this book, to my inevitable reassurance of myself that next year I will read all the books. I am Linus, quite convinced that next year I will meet the Great Pumpkin.

That said, here's a list of things I loved from the year 2017:

Best Books:

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. Hands down, my favorite book of the year.

This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel. About a topic I love, of course, but told in such a way that I am still mulling it over.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty. Not technically a novel from this year, but I read it in February and loved it so, so much.

Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance. So many feelings about this book. But I would recommend it.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. One of those books that 8 million people recommended to me, and I read it and was not blown away until the very last page, and then I set it aside and my life changed.

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins. So much better than Hawkins other book. So I'm sort of grading on a curve.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. Finished this over the weekend. So good. Still rattling around in my brain.

Best Podcasts:

The Popcast with Knox and Jamie On Wednesdays, I popcast.

What Should I Read Next? with Anne Bogel Of course.

The Rewatchables I love, love, love the You've Got Mail episode.

Literary Disco Pardon me while I crush so hard on Rider Strong.

On Being Every week, this is a gem.

The Daily I start my morning with this and Up First from NPR every week day.

The Lazy Genius So good. And she gave me the best turkey recipe, thus saving Thanksgiving.

Best Movies:

Baby Driver

Wonder Woman

As far as new movies that I've seen this year, that's it. I really want to see Dunkirk, Ladybird, and Call Me By Your Name. I'm not a real fan of sci fi or comic book movies. It has made my movie list shorter every year.



2018 will be an even better year, Charlie Brown. Quite possibly the best year ever. Or at least, probably not the worst. We will hope.

Walking on Broken Glass...

Today is a day.

Today is the day that I signed my dissolution papers. 2 years ago, so terribly sad and hurt and all the things that I have mostly blessedly put behind me.

2 years seems important.

14 years ago Nick came home from Iraq. On his birthday. Which is today.

The irony of it does not escape me-14 years ago my life felt like it was finally beginning, after such a year of ache and worry and longing for my husband. 12 years later to the day I ended my marriage.

My life, this blog, my decisions about everything from my kids to my hair-everything revolves around that decision that I made 2 years ago.

It was me who filed the paperwork, me who hired a lawyer, me who wrote out the dissolution-it was effectively me who took all the steps, who put the final nail in the coffin of what had been Nicholas and Joy.

It was also me who did not want to end my marriage.


I did everything Nick ever asked me to do, up to and including divorcing him.

I found myself saying to someone the other day that the blog is about the fact that I don't believe in divorce, and yet I am divorced.



The fact is, 14 years ago, I couldn't have imagined I would ever allow myself to be divorced. I thought that we had lived through the hardest thing, the gut wrenching pain that accompanied a spouse being deployed to a war zone.

In case you are wondering, the divorce was much harder. On me, anyway.

Life is changing, as always, life is moving along and taking me to places that I would never have reached if I had stayed married to Nick. Life is shifting, turning corners at what sometimes seems a breakneck speed.

It's bliss.

Bliss that I wouldn't have if I had stayed married.

It makes my head spin.

I know in reality, it doesn't even matter. I am divorced, and if I can be divorced and be even happier than I was when I was married, then that should just settle it, and let's move along, shall we?

I can't explain in words how sad that sentence makes me, while at the same time offers my heart such peace.

Inside that moment 2 years ago, that girl trying so hard to hold it together as life shattered all around her, all she wanted was to believe that inside of sadness there could be hope. That is what I'm offering her with this post today.

Everything that I write is for her. Everything is to try so hard to make her understand that life is beyond anything she ever dreamed. Letting go of the thing that she held most precious in the world led to life beyond her imagination.

It's a Hallmark movie metaphor, I know. But it's true. So cue Paul McCartney singing "Wonderful Christmastime." On the face of this girl healing through grief and time and more grace than she could ever have been worthy of.

New endings, old beginnings...

"To love without knowing how to love wounds the person we love."
- Vietnamese Zen master, Thich Nhat Hahn


We are nearly to the end.

I don't really mean that, of course. The end will never actually come, the end will become a new beginning before I've even realized that that an ending came to pass.

But that's a bit out there.

What I mean is that we are nearly to the end of the year of letting go.

One of the best parts of being born on Christmas day is that you get to become a new age just as the old year fades away, and the new year becomes a time to focus on the future.

For the past two years I have somehow found that giving a name to the year ahead of me gives it some purpose. Calling 2016 "the year of transition" made me feel like I was actually accomplishing something besides just wallowing in grief. If you have read my posts from that year, you know that I really wasn't doing much more than that-but calling it a transition allowed me to feel free of expectations that I get it together and move past the end of my marriage.

My divorce is the prism through which everything gets filtered.

So, what does it mean to be to the end of letting go?

I physically have let go of so much this past year. The more things that I purge, the more layers peel away, and my soul feels lighter and lighter. I am breaking a cycle inside of myself of hoarding not only so much stuff, but so many emotions I could drown in them. Writing down all of this grief has been such an outlet-I would likely still be unable to get up out of bed without it.

And so, as that particular chapter is coming to at least something of a close, I am looking forward to my new year, my next adventure in this tiny little life that I lead.

I'm thinking that I'm going to call it the year of peace. I am so blessedly at peace right now it barely seems real. There was a time when I was most certain that I was never going to feel peace ever again. When I was sure that all of my best memories lay behind me, memories that lay inside of such young adoration and babies and a struggle to make life out of very little money but such love.

I had a small moment of clarity, in the time between when Nick told me that he was leaving and when he actually left, when I was immobile and scared beyond anything that I had ever felt before and completely sure that I was trapped inside of a nightmare-and in that one tiny moment of clarity, I felt like everything would be okay, and that this horrific moment in my life was going to lead me to a place that I had only ever dreamed of, a place where I was at peace.

I've said that the final two years of my marriage were unhealthy. But on the surface, everything was fine. There were days on end where everything was just fine, where I was certain that I was inventing the distance that I felt creeping into my marriage. It was like dancing on a knife's edge, everything perfect until the slightest turn undid it all. I would tell myself that I was such an ungrateful wife, imagining that things were off kilter when they were clearly fine.

Obviously, the lesson to be learned here is to trust your gut.

And yes, I have now have trust issues that go deep.

But my point is, I have a peace to my soul now that I simply have not had for a very long time. An understanding that I am in charge of my life from here on out, a firm grasp on the idea that being assertive does not mean that I am pushing my own demands onto other people, but rather that I am standing up for my own thoughts and feelings, giving weight to my own opinions. I still would rather listen, I still would rather hear why you think a certain thought and understand where you are coming from, than offer up my own opinion (my family will find that to be an untrue sentence, but everyone else will understand it)- the point is, I can offer them now, I know to my bones who I am and what I think.

So, for today anyway, I am at peace. This restless soul has found purchase that has always eluded her. And I know that somehow I found a way to communicate that to that lost, lonely girl who only wanted her life back.

I told her that the life ahead would be bliss. And so it has.

Love is: I gave you everything I had to give.
-The Lover Speaks