Me?
A whole lot of shit!
Starting with my closet and the clothes I’ve been holding onto for security.
I have never been one to buy into the new year as a chance to start fresh. To make promises and resolutions of who you will be this year.
However, something about the end of a decade and a new one caught my thoughts. Reflection has me FINALLY ready to release lots of old stuff!!
The 2010s were by far the hardest decade for me. They started with my relationship with my high school sweetheart and partner of 17 years exploding in a nasty and ugly divorce and custody battle. I found myself a single mom with sole custody and no child support working 3 jobs to provide for my son and keep our house.
I went back to an industry that was unfulfilling yet provided a stable income. I did what I had to do even though it was a job that was a man’s industry. I was only successful because of my girly figure and the fact that I was the only female in the industry in a few hundred-mile radius. (that same figure that I had achieved by working 3 jobs, not sleeping and often eating cereal for dinner because I was exhausted)
I found a faith I could have never found had I not let go of my safety nets.
I believe we all deserved happiness, but sometimes we have to look hard to find it because we are so off our path. I was willing to dig deep and do the work. Deep was a place I went for several years. It was lonely, hard, and dark.
When I emerged, I decided to go back to school. Working full time, parenting a middle school son, and in-class 3 days a week was hard, but not as hard as the few years that lead me to where I was.
Somewhere during all that self-work, I found a man who loves me. The kind of partner every girl wants and deserves… the kind that adores her to the tips of their toes.
We began building a life, a family, and a future.
We co-parented a teenage man-to-be through a year of his self-discovery, diagnosis, and evolution, leading to his own empowerment.
I thought I had been through some hard stuff, until the last year of the decade.
Watching your child experience the things I did is full of all the feels, not the good kind. I felt I had no one to reach for or to understand.
Through it all, I kept praying, praying that this was the worse while I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.
In reflection, I see all the rough shit… that lead to all the amazing experiences. We are all still alive. We’re healthy and THANKFULLY, our family’s connection is deeper than I could imagine—more than I could have prayed for.
Yet, I have been afraid.
Afraid to say our family is ok.
Our son is ok.
To call my business successful.
See, I accidentally started my own company a few years ago, then business kept growing, and my husband accidentally began working with me.
A future where our son is healthy, where our business is thriving and one where there are ups and downs, but more ups than downs.
I am accepting that my girly curves have become womanly curves. I am embracing that our business is growing and providing in ways I could never have dreamed of. That accepting and embracing instead of being afraid of our success won’t jinx it. Instead, I am opening to the universe and all the abundance it wants to shower me with.
So it’s time for me to clean out my closet and give away all the “clothes that might fit me again” and my work clothes I’ve been saving “in case” our business doesn’t work out and I need to go back to an office setting again.
I encourage you to embrace your life and clean out what is keeping you heavy, what’s weighing you down.
Photo by Sarah Brown on Unsplash