30 Days of Thanks: November 19, 2020

Love.

It's a simple word, but intricately complex. It finds us at unexpected times, wrapping us, carrying us and reminding us that we are necessary, vital, and worthy. We can spend ages seeking it, when it is there, in the simple hug from a child, a text from a friend, or even a smile across the room or zoom. We have our friends that we love, family that we love, partners that we love, children, and animals too. There is a love for the land, and a love for the community, all of which manifest in our lives in multitudes if we only recognize it as love.

I see the love of my virtual community in their comments, likes, sharing and engagement. I see the love of my friends and family with the texts and calls and visits. I see the love in my children when I get my goodnight hugs, asking to turn out their lights, and their desire to share their day with me. I see the love of my coworkers in the thank you's, acknowledgements of my efforts (and others) and the generosity of spirit they demonstrate in caring for their patients and families. 

I love often through giving, whether it's cooking a meal or a treat, writing words of encouragement, or sending a package, that's how I often express my love. My children hear I love you daily, my friends, not nearly often enough. I choose to express it more through my actions than my words, in hopes that they will experience the love that way. I struggle with the verbal vulnerability of saying I love you to my friends. This year, while challenging in so many ways, I have had to face that vulnerability directly. It has presented it's own difficulties and I am thankful for the courage to face it.

Why is it so challenging? Divorce, loss of love, an entire upheaval of your life and beliefs changes your heart. With the ending of my marriage I retreated, holding my love close to me and my children. I was still generous with offerings, but certainly more cautious. If something that was supposed to be indestructible (my marriage) had failed, I reasoned that I was unloveable, unwanted and unneeded in society except for my children and parents, unworthy. While my divorce set me free in many ways, it also restricted my heart. I refused to allow people into my space for a significant fear of being hurt or found lacking. Through lots of work in therapy, and out, on the trauma of the divorce and other aspects of my life, I began to soften, allow a few people into my sacred space, yet I still remained apart, unable to trust someone with me.

There was discontent, a desire to belong, be a part of a community, yet the fear reigned. Fear trumped love. As I studied love in all of it's different forms I found myself being surrounded with it, enveloped, and discovered that even in the darkest moments of anxiety and depression there had been love, I had just been denying it. Recognizing love, accepting love meant being vulnerable, a place I was not comfortable, a place that triggered fear and anxiety. There is no security in vulnerability, only trust, faith, and hope. I had to choose: lead with love or lead with fear. I choose to lead with love, and that meant embracing my vulnerable self and sharing her. It was time to find someone with whom I could trust me. In opening myself I gained not only 1 person who I could trust, but an intimate group. For these individuals I am grateful. For these opportunities to be raw, vulnerable, and me I am thankful. For the growth in the past 10 months I am thankful. Yet, as I feel myself at the point of a significant change I feel the pull of leading with fear, and must find my courage to leap with love.

Today I am thankful for love, for vulnerability, for trust, for community.

Advice and affection

My friends can I give you some well meaning advice, since so many of you feel the need to give it to me......

Please stop telling me to go enjoy myself or do something fun on the nights and weekends I don't have my kids. I get it, and in fact I remember those days and looking at the single parents thinking it looks amazing that you get an entire weekend to do what YOU want. What you don't see is the crushing loneliness and emptiness and quietness of your home. You don't hear how much more silent your home is at night when they're not home sleeping in the rooms around you. You tell me to go have fun and enjoy myself, but then I come home to an empty lonely house. You, my friends with your partner would come home with someone and have someone to enjoy your time with- I do not. Ten months later and it still stings.

Personally, I am still learning to balance my nights and weekends that are kid free. It's a delicate process of making sure I have personal relaxation time, get my chores done and be able to sleep without anxiety and loneliness. So please, it's not a vacation for me, but a fact of my life and inherent reminder that I am no longer part of a 2 parent household that is filled with continuous crazy weekends.  Some weekends and nights it is easier than others, and it is always easier when I know that there is someone that I can talk to (or message with) so I don't feel so lonely. The first few months were the worst on the weekends. I filled them with so many chores and work that by Sunday evening I was beat and all I wanted to do was crash. Over 10 months into this routine and I am slowly learning to manage things. A few weekends ago I had a great balance of a personal day and a chore day, and I was lucky enough to have a friend pretty much on speed text when I needed to connect with someone, but that balance doesn't happen often enough.

This brings me to my next piece of advice: affection. Hug your single parent friends (assuming they're the hugging type). Seriously. I love my children to pieces and I cherish my hugs and affection from them. But there is a significant lack of physical affection in our lives now as single parents, and for some of us this is our love language. For me personally it's my 2nd major love language (if you're confused go take this quiz). It's like living in a desert sometimes, no one hugs or touches in this society and you feel like at outcast at times. Not only are you not receiving any physical affection, but at times you are surrounded by it. It's everywhere, in the books you read, shows you watch, even a trip to the restaurant or the mall. When you don't have it, it can seem like it's everywhere. So, take a risk, you don't know what a little hug might do to brighten your friend's day. I'll always take a hug, but be forewarned you may make me teary.