When you belong nowhere, 2 years later...

My March article for Still Standing Magazine.

"In two years I've grown.  I've healed.  I've spread my stupid wings and have seen where they can take me.  To some beautiful place where all that is missing is everything I wanted with me. But 2 years later, I'm Standing.  Still."



http://stillstandingmag.com/2015/03/two-years-later-belong-nowhere/

Driving the Struggle Bus

Am I happy?

More so than I've been in too long. 

And it feels fab! 

Truly. 

Fabulous. 

I've taken a break from social media and it's made me look at life differently. After living my life in such a public way, taking time to live privately has been cathartic. 

I've got my divorce papers. I was ready for them. I was strong and ready and anxious to sign them.  

Then I opened them and had a complete and total good ole fashioned go to pieces.  

Seeing the name of the person you married in that context of ending something that was so much of who I was was harder than I wanted it to be. 

But...it's ending something that no longer is. I'm divorcing someone that no longer is to me what I fell in love with and someone I no longer am. 

That's heavy.  It's a very heavy load I've been shouldering, alone, for far too long. 

I recently saw some people I haven't seen in awhile and they all showered me with hugs and love and kindness. And the words, spoken from a lovely soul who has the biggest heart of anyone I've ever known said, "I've missed your smile, it's so good to see it again." 

I can't even say how incredibly good it feels to truly have it back. 

Life isn't easy, things fall on you that are meant to break you and the beauty that comes from walking away with your head high is a powerful thing. 

My head's not always high. I'm grieving the ending of something I didn't expect to end. I'm a lover, I'm a forgiver, I'm someone who needs answers and the struggle bus I've been driving is because sometimes there just aren't answers. And that's hard. 

What's harder was having so much inside me that was unfullfilled for so long. For chasing a love that died a long time ago. For running after answers that would never come and even if they did could never truly make sense. 

There's a peace in making a decision. 

And I feel like I've let the weight of the world and so many unfullfilled promises finally slip off my shoulders. 

So many decisions have been made for me and the control freak in me fought it at every turn. 

It's hard letting go of a dream you had. Even when the dream no longer fit, no longer was a benefit and no longer brought me anything but pain.

I don't have a happiness that lights my smile. Happiness, I know all too well, is fleeting. 

What I have found is a joy that cant be denied. I haven't had the luxury of Facebook to tell me job well done. I haven't had Instagram to tell me that I'm going to make it. 

What I've had, what I found, is that as much as I miss being part of something, the healing I've found with finding myself has been healing in a way I didn't know I needed. 

Dang, that feels good. 

With that understanding, I also know I'm meant to be part of something. I'm better when I'm part of a team, when I have someone else to love. 

I haven't had that but I found something really special I wasn't looking for. 

I found a love, a pride, a peace that can only come from not only believing in but loving yourself. 

What I went thru, what I've faced should have damaged me more than it has. But God has placed an impossibly strong belief that His plans are bigger than ANYTHING I can imagine for myself. 

I lost a lot. I gained even more. And I'm excited, I'm hopeful and I'm ready to see what the next chapter of this crazy life brings me 

Devastating day and the prayer of a stranger

Today I had to do something that I've been dreading for the year we've been discussing it. I had to meet my soon to be exhusband, that I haven't seen in 8 months, to sign a form destroying the 10 frozen embryos that we have. 

Devastated. 

I was shaking, I was crying, I was damn near close to hysteria and I was completely shattered.  I am one of the lucky parents who got to hold and see both of her babies after they were born. A lot of parents who lose premature don't get that gift. I saw that Tucker looked like me. For so long I'd wondered what holding a baby that was part of me would look like. And I held him. And he was perfect.  Then weeks later, I held Fletcher. And he looked just like his Daddy. 

The embryos are my last hope of having a baby that has the characteristics of their brothers. It's a hope I've held onto for a long time. 

The thought of destroying the hope I had for each one of those embryos broke my heart in a way no one can understand unless you've had to face that impossible decision. 

Do I want to be tied to a man who walked out on me because life's hurts were too much?  No. Do I want to have babies that are siblings of my boys?  

More than anything.

I begged, pleaded and cried with him to let me have them.  He was ok donating them to other families so they wouldn't have to go thru the hell we went thru. He was ok knowing he may have children walking this earth that he doesn't know about, but he won't allow me that. I offered to move out of the state, country,

sign away all rights, he won't agree. He's fine with other people having our kids, just not me. 

I sat outside the dr's office with that form, head on the steering wheel, my body racked with sobs coming from a place of despair I didn't know I had. 

I couldn't turn the form in. Not yet. It's too big of a decision that I have absolutely no peace about. 

I reached out to some friends and family and asked them to pray for me. Of course my loving, selfless prayer warriors circled around me and one specifically asked that God would give me a word, a song, something specific that would help me thru this. 

I went to Walgreens and had my head down, trying to cover my tear stained face and hide the tears that were falling and I wasn't speaking to the cashier but I heard her talking. Then I realized she was praying. Out loud. She was praying for me. I looked up, tears running down my face with a look of total loss and she said, if you agree then just say "Amen."  I looked at this beautiful lady who had no idea the gift she had just shared with me and whispered, "Amen."

I've had some exciting doors open for me over the past week that have given me a hope and peace for motherhood that I haven't had in a long time. Naively I thought that would replace the brokenness of losing the hope of what the embryos held for me. 

Life is heavy. Way too heavy sometimes and today I was literally crushed under the weight of decisions that are being made for me that I have no control over. 

And I lost it. 

And in that brokenness, the kindness of a stranger and her heartfelt prayer that God would hold me, guide me, keep me and love me until I can see the light at the end of the tunnel lifted some of the weight that made me feel like I was drowning. 

I don't know what tomorrow holds. I know that sometimes the circumstances we face today are so devastating it's hard to see past. But I also know that in my darkest hours, the moments I've felt completely alone and forgotten, God uses the most unlikely people to speak to my heart. 

The prayer of a stranger, spoken out loud in faith and belief gave me the push to keep walking forward.