Ode to Dylan McKay (and all those heartbreaking boys I loved before)...

The girls and I have been binge watching old Beverly Hills, 90210s.

I love, love, love watching shows that meant a lot to me growing up with my girls, and watching them fall in love with characters that I love. Watching them fall in love with Dylan McKay and make fun of how many girls Brandon falls for is such a delight.

I’m kind of anxious to see if I still love Dylan McKay as much as I did when I was 12 years old.

I tend to love emotionally unavailable men, be they fictional or real. But I have learned in the past couple of years to not equate anger with passion, not to crave angst and torment as proof of love.

A few weeks ago, I was reading something and the person said, “I want to be devastated by love.” And I thought how the young me, definitely the me of my teenage years, would have whole heartedly agreed with that statement. I yearned for someone to fall in love with me like a starving person craves water.

There are bits and pieces to my life that won’t ever make any sense, and trying to pin point all of my faults is not the most helpful exercise. But I do know that this new Joy, this grown up Joy, has learned the rather hard way that love is capable of encompassing much more than just the highest of highs and lowest of lows, love can be an easy flow of respect and compassion and trust.

I’m working on it.

Things I love this week:

To All The Boys I Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

All the hearts. I need to preface this by saying I do not like much Y.A. literature. Every time someone tells me to read the new, hot book, I usually read it and feel like, eh. I seldom jump on a bandwagon that everyone else is on when it comes to books (and yes, I’m a bit snobby about it). But I am completely and totally charmed by these books. I ran to the library last night to get Always and Forever, Lara Jean, which is the final book in this trilogy, and so I can’t give a final verdict.

Lara Jean is modeled on Beth from Little Women, and as a fervent Beth fan, I felt that I had to read these and see what all the fuss was about. I have not been disappointed. Lara Jean is such a genuinely likable character, awkward but well meaning, and I love that this storyline wraps around these boys coming to find just how lovely it can be to fall in love with the nice girl, the quiet girl, the girl who would “like to be at home with my sisters.”

It’s a delight.

Pantsuit Politics

I don’t talk about my own politics on the blog, but I have mentioned this podcast before. I love the nuance that Beth and Sarah bring to their discussions and their dissection of certain events from the past week is a much-needed middle path through a thicket of briars, and one that I came away from having learned something new.

I always tell my mom that we have to love the seasons in their place, and we are so blessed to live where we truly get to experience seasons. So, while I will freely admit that ice scares me when I have to drive somewhere, I do love snow when I am at home with my girls and a good book. I was blessed with both this past weekend.

Winter Wonderland...

So, in my last blog post, I was all about how time stands still when my girls are gone.

This week, life has returned to normal at a breakneck speed.

The girls and I took down Christmas for 5 hours on Sunday. I loved having Christmas up for that extra week, because I love Christmas so very much, but it was most exhausting. The girls still like to make our Winter Solstice tree out of the real tree-basically, we take the tree outside and put fruit with peanut butter and birdseed on it. We also had our Epiphany celebration, culminating in our Wise Men figurines making it to the stable. We blessed the house and had our Epiphany cake.

(When Betsy was five years old, we were walking around, blessing the house, Nick carrying the incense with his normal, ‘Why did I have to marry this crazy lady?’ look on his face, and Felicity was just little still, so I was carrying her, and Betsy looked at me with complete sincerity and said, “Mommy, why do we do weird things like this?” It remains one of my very most treasured memories.)

This week has been full of time spent with good friends, a much-needed hair appointment, Math Club for Betsy and dance for Felicity, small group...which makes my heart so happy, but makes my body so very, very tired.

This particular life I lead- it can easily feel overwhelming. When the girls are home, we want to do so many things. We have gotten away from doing all the things but we want to spend time with friends, watch all the movies, read all the books (maybe that one is just me).

Things I love this week:

What Should I Read Next? Episode 165: 1000 Books to Read Before You Die

Normally I don't love lists like this, because there are so many books to read, way more than 1000, and many that are hardly classic literature. But this discussion was just amazing and I couldn't get enough.

The Christmas Sisters by Sarah Morgan

Such a delightful read in the week after Christmas about 3 sisters trying to sort out their lives at their family home in Scotland. Nothing life changing, but a lovely read, especially with a cup of hot chocolate in the light of my Christmas tree.

I'm so looking forward to being snowed in this weekend- the girls and I are watching all the Disney movies in chronological order (my favorite way), we have managed some sledding, and I have an overdue library book to finish.

Life is pretty grand.

Brave New World...

2018, the year that I named my year of being brave, ended up being pretty much exactly that. From actual bravery in flipping around on a trapeze bar to opening myself up to possible rejection and hurt, I think I managed it as well as one could expect from a rather anxiety ridden, awkward girl who is deathly afraid of, you know, rejection and hurt.

Mostly 2018 will be remembered as the year that I finally felt like I was doing more than just treading water and trying to keep it all together. My time, mostly, is spent on things that I truly enjoy-and learning to enjoy the mundane has been a wonderful experience. I am most grateful for my family, who graciously provide a vacation for the girls and me (and a million other things that would take reams of paper to name), and for all of the fun that the girls and I have had in the past year, from ziplining to our movie nights to all the musicals. My life is blessed. I say that word a lot, probably to the point of being annoying, but I know of no other word to encompass how completely lucky I feel to have been not only born into the family that I have, but to have been given the opportunity to raise these two precious girls who are just the most fun people I’ve ever gotten to spend all of my time with.

In 2015 my life shattered-and that is the only word for it, in 2015 my world shattered and nothing could undo it, nothing could be done about the fact that I was forever and always going to be a different person going forward.

I don’t mean to belabor it but I never for one moment believed that I would love my new life more than my old life. After all, this new Joy had faced the ultimate rejection-and, as I’ve said in past posts, I sort of hated her for it. Anyway, just to say-I never expected to love this life, this single mom life, this working mom life-I never expected that I would love it more than that stay-at-home mom life, that life where I had a partner who loved me. I never, never, never thought that I would think that I prefer this sometimes lonely existence over that life where for a very long time I felt loved and cherished.

But what I realized in 2018 is that I totally like this life, this mom, this woman that I am now, so much more than the person that for fifteen years thought that she had it all.

I promised myself, entering into 2016, that by 2019 I would have most of this figured out.

That isn’t going to happen.

Because I have learned how to be alone. How to take care of things by myself. How to budget and parent a teenager and straighten my hair and all the million things that I’m always writing about.

What I’m still struggling with is imagining my life beyond these things-beyond being Betsy and Felicity’s mom, and Dave and Dina’s daughter, and thinking that maybe, possibly, there is some bigger plan in action here.

And so my word for 2019 is going to be trust.

I’m going to trust in myself, trust in my heart and my gut and all of those bits of me that let me down so terribly three years ago. I’m going to trust in the idea that there is a great wide world out there, waiting so patiently for my tiny little snail like steps to get us there.

We’ll see, 2019. I’m going to try my best, and probably fail a lot, and hopefully make sense of all the pieces that still seem to not fit together just as they should.

In the end, there are parts of the past few years that will never truly make sense, and I know that. But mostly, mostly, the person that I am staring at a whole new decade-she is who I want to be.

All the best is yet to come.


********************************************************



All the best things of 2018:

(According, of course, to Joy)

Movies: Mary Poppins Returns; A Star is Born; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; A Quiet Place; Incredibles 2; Ralph Breaks the Internet

Books: Paperback Crush; The Immortialists; The Ensemble; Bachelor Nation; Hey Ladies; Us Against You; You Think It, I’ll Say It; Sea Witch



Musicals and Plays: Hamilton, Rent, The Humans, Les Misérables


Podcasts:

Daily and/or Weekly
The Daily; Up First; The Lazy Genius; Pantsuit Politics; What Should I Read Next?; The Popcast; From the Front Porch; On Being; The One You Feed; Diane Rehm On My Mind; The Bible Binge

Series
The Dream, Heaven’s Gate

Episodes
SSR-The Baby-sitters Club and Sweet Valley High episodes
Typology-Lisa Whelchel
The Cut-Beat Around the Bush
Simple-The Liturgical Calendar
Literary Disco-Cat Person

My Winter Song...

I have entered into the abyss that is the official “12 Days of Christmas.” It is, for me, a time of reflection and a bit of darkness and a bit of light-everything in the past year sort of rolled into one.

I can’t quite remember when I started observing this time in my life-it used to be that I would write down my dreams only in this 12 day period (supposedly the dreams correlate to the next 12 months of your life). I write down my dreams every day now (yes, I am obsessive, I am aware) so this time period has turned instead into a time dwelling on the past year and looking ahead to the new year.

It has also turned into a time of alone for me-the way that we have worked out our schedule for the girls has turned into this time being a week that they spend with their dad and his family, and so for me, that means a lot of time alone, watching movies and reading books and cleaning.

I have learned in the past three years to pace myself-to remember, in the hustle and bustle of the time leading up to Christmas, that this time of quiet and alone is coming. I save up my most favorite Christmas movies (the ones that the girls have no interest in watching). I have three Christmas books that I purposefully haven’t started before this week (plus a nice, healthy stack of new books that were a birthday present from my much too generous sister). I love the idea of deep cleaning my house-a task much easier done when my girls are gone.

I still miss them, of course. I tell anyone who asks me about being divorced, and what it’s like to navigate various parts of it-sharing your kids is the hardest part. It feels like a piece of you is missing, no matter how much you may be craving some time to yourself. My girls and I are a unit, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything-having two girls (which was always my dream) is just as much fun as I always imagined it would be.

The old me got very caught up in doing everything just so. The twelve days of Christmas were observed in a rigorous manor that involved a thorough reading of each day from a book that I bought about just that topic, a recording of our dreams every day, and, of course, our Epiphany celebration with just the perfect Epiphany cake.

The new me has let go of a lot of that. The time that the girls and I have together has become about doing things that we truly enjoy and letting go of the rest of it-for advent, we love watching our Christmas movies and we always read The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Of course, we still read a lot of books-but we don’t read nearly all of them anymore. We still decorate all of the trees-and we still love them all so very much-but we don’t bother about all the decorations-just the ones we like, the ones that have meaning or, as is more often the case, that remind us of something that we love (Betsy got an ornament this year that is a replica of The Waltons house and she has already declared it her most favorite ornament ever). We bake and sing and look at lights when we have a chance-but they are things we fit into what we are already doing.

My point with all of this is simply this-life changes. I’ve had some people recently in my life reach out to me, to ask me about my routine and especially my schedule with the girls-and the most important thing that I can think to share with anyone is that being flexible does not come easily for me, and so I have to work out exactly inside of my head how life will look on the days that the girls are gone.

It takes time to work all of this out. It takes time in a way that just nothing else does-life is different than it used to be, and so you have to invent new traditions, some that involve your kids and some that don’t. It you are anything like me, you have to prioritize and plan and make peace with the idea that you aren’t going to check every single box of that perfect family holiday.

Of course, as always, I am writing for myself and my perspective-I try never to presume that anyone else feels exactly like me. But I’ve had quite a few people reach out to me lately, people who are just at the beginning of this notion of their family looking so different from the way that they started out, and I never want to seem like I had this all figured out and under control from the beginning. I definitely didn’t and what I’ve learned has all been trial and error.

What I definitely know after 3 years of Christmas being completely different-your kids will not remember that they didn’t make a perfect gingerbread house, or watch every Christmas movie, or what have you. They will remember that you were together. Period.

It's Coming On Christmas...

"It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees…”

Christmas is my favorite time of year. Of course. When your birthday is on Christmas day, you don’t really have much choice-but I’m pretty sure I would love Christmas regardless.

Christmas in my world is about a lot of movies and television specials that I share with my girls, some of my most favorite books, hot chocolate every night, twinkle lights, and a tree in every room. Fun times.

This past weekend we went to see The Best Christmas Pageant Ever at the CPAC, which is our local community theater. Every year I read this book to my girls and every year I cry at the end (they hate that I cry, but I just can’t help it). Mrs. Bennett read this book to my class in the 5th grade and I am always reminded of the way that she emphasized certain words as I am reading it aloud. Mrs. Bennett and I didn’t get on all that well-which is a bit odd, because mostly I was always a teacher’s pet-but she read books that I love still and have shared with my girls- Soup, The Secret of NIMH, and most of all, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Anyway, other things I’m loving this week:

Bookselling is the Most Over- Romanticized Job in the World

Like all girls who dream of growing up to be Kathleen Kelly, I tend to imagine that nothing could possibly be more fun than to run a bookstore where all I did in a day was recommend books to people and host a super fun story hour. In reality, of course, bookselling is a somewhat tedious job full of math and algorithms and no end of things that this English major would find mind numbingly boring.

(On this note, I follow Annie B. Jones on Instagram, who is a real life Kathleen Kelly and owner of the Book Shelf in Thomasville, Georgia, and her stories are a delight, despite the obvious truth that she does spend time at work doing much more than reading.)

The Cut on Tuesdays

Okay, I listened to the episode from November 11, 2018, titled Beat Around the Bush on the recommendation of Laura Tremaine (who is another great Instagram follow). I’m not really going to say much more here because it’s way too TMI, but if you listen to this and want to have a follow up conversation about this, I’m down with that. (This makes me so desperately want to have a pod cast club in the same vein as a book club, because sometimes you just need to discuss.) And if this isn’t your speed, it’s cool and we never need to talk about it.

Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Moss

If I make a list of books that I loved this year, this one is going at the top. It's a coffee table type book all about the genre of "Young Adult" books of the 1980s and 1990s. So, right up my alley. It's an homage to all my very favorites (The Baby-sitters Club, Sweet Valley, Fear Street, Lois Duncan) and also some books that I completely forgot about (Camp Sunnyside Friends, Sleepover Friends) and some that I had never heard of but now desperately want to read.



Life just now, in my last few weeks before 40, is full of 1990s music (particularly 1997) when I'm not jamming to Christmas music (and as always, the Hamilton soundtrack). It hardly seems real to me that it's been 20 years since I was that girl who so desperately wanted to know where her life was headed-would she fall in love ever, would she have two girls, would they love The Brady Bunch and Annette Funicello and all the Disney songs?


How I wish I could tell her, calm down, you get all of that and so much more.


I'm hoping the 60 year old version of myself is thinking the same thing.

By the Way, I Forgive You...

“Over the past years of getting to a healthier place, it’s been important for me to get rid of my really finite standard of normalcy and understand that maybe the bad and ugly things are part of me, but I don’t have to submit to them. And that the existence of anxiety or depression does not negate my own capacity for joy, or my intelligence.”
-Julien Baker


I so desperately want to write, truly write, what it is to grieve something that you miss less and less with each passing day.
-Me, in my journal, yesterday

Gracious. I have worked this particular post out more times than I can count. The words never quite catch the way I want them to.

I’m coming to this understanding, as I wind my way through this process, that the person that I haven’t forgiven is that girl that I was about 4 years ago. The girl that was trying so hard to hold everything in life together, the girl that missed a million red flags waving right in her face-I have a lot of anger at her.

She messed my life up, you know. There are so, so many days that I wish I could grab hold of her and say please, for the love of all that is holy, stop.

The thing is, I love my life. I have found a place of contentment that I never knew before, and I can’t say why that is-it may be that earning my own paycheck gives me a sense of control over my finances that I didn’t have before, it might be that my relationship with my girls is so much stronger since we spend so much time together just as the three of us, it might be that I have a belief in my own abilities that I just didn’t have before. Maybe it’s all of that. I don’t know. What I do know, what I want every last one of these blog posts to make clear is this: my divorce was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Now, I get it if it seems like, then why write all these posts at all, Joy?

Mostly, the answer to that is that it’s taken a good long minute to get here. It’s taken a lot of healing and a lot of growth and a lot of looking around me at my girls and my family and my friends and coming to grips with the idea that I like this version of me.

And coming to grips with the idea that I have to forgive that girl that I was for getting me into this mess. Because, jeesh, as hard and long and drawn out as all of this has seemed, the reward has been great.

It’s all going to be all right in the end.

"Emptiness is just a lesson in canvases.”
-Julien Baker, Appointments

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