Living with Abandon

I was 45 before I had the chance to really live on my own. Before that I had been married for twenty years. Before that I was a student supported at least in part by my parents.

It was a thrilling as it was terrifying. For the first time I could organize my life as I wanted. My dreams had no more limits. Looking back over these two years of emergence from my cocoon of living safely and going along with a plan created by someone else, I realize I made mistakes. My eagerness to prove myself could be compared to a baby, whether human or new foal, taking her first steps. I couldn’t go fast enough on my wobbly little legs and they at times collapsed beneath me.

But the good news is life is about learning and growing. One bad moment or misstep does Not mean we weren’t meant to run or succeed. We are like clay and need to be flexible, willing to be reformed by the lessons of life, molded into a new creature that would be unrecognizable to the one we were before. Could the gracefully dipping and swirling butterfly recognize its former crawling, limited self? Within us is the potential and when we feed it and allow it to blossom we come into our fully created selves, and then we keep emerging more and more, hopefully mostly in the right direction but occasionally in the other. As long as we don’t give up or give in we can become what we always had in us and this is what those around us need. This is our potential as well as our service, our highest & best.

The Practice of Waiting

Today I want to write about waiting. I’ve been thinking about this, the way some people can’t wait for the light to turn green but I am relieved when I finally hit a red (don’t get me wrong, sometimes I’m in a terrible hurry too!). I am always looking for an opportunity to finish applying my makeup (when I bother to wear it) or send a text I had meant to hours or days ago or check a list…

On Thanksgiving Day I was reading about the Pilgrims and their wait, which must have been excruciating, for their ship and its team to be readied and for all the details that went into their historic voyage.

Moms know we spend half our mom lives waiting at activities practices or pickup or drop (why I bought a house across the street from the school, to avoid this mind numbing twice a day practice!). Sometimes it drives my kids crazy that I am not just sitting waiting doing absolutely nothing focused solely on them showing up but usually I am engaged in some activity, on a call or even typing a document on my laptop.

I feel like all of these tiny waits have parallel application to the bigger waits in life, waiting for the right job, spouse, your baby to sleep through the night (keep waiting!), your toddler to learn to use the potty, the kids to leave your home for college, and on and on. I know many who wait for a painful situation in their marriages to change and others who wait for the right person to love snd be loved by.

The bottom line is that life is not static. Even when we get what we were waiting for, even our biggest wish, things change. Our human nature knows this which is why when we that really big thing we’ve been wanting and waiting for (house, baby, dining room table, new skis, piano, puppy…insert yours here___________) we are onto the next desire! The level of desire varies by personality as I find some people are just more content in general with the status quo and then there are others who are so ambitious the sky is the limit.

Life gets derailed sometimes too and an entirely new list of things or priorities can develop and then there is even more waiting.

It is trite but my thought on this is that we need to try to enjoy the journey so to speak, even the less exciting, oftentimes monotonous, sometimes extremely painful or stressful parts and try to find joy in them.

Just something to consider next time you’re stopped at a red!

What would Jesus do?

I was disturbed reading my church bulletin today. First there was a notice that they had had to suspend their historically annual Thanksgiving meals to a needy community due to the pandemic.

The second thing was a notice to the congregation not congregate with other parishioners before or after the church service, to “move immediately to your vehicle” following the service.

This all sticks in my craw because it does not align with the way Jesus lived. In a time when leprosy and other communicable diseases ruled the day, in his public ministry Jesus regularly surrounded himself with and physically reached out and touched these “untouchables.” So did others of his followers like Mother Teresa. They were not afraid of catching something. They were not afraid of inevitable death. They did not sequester themselves. Christians throughout history have chosen to gather together as the Bible commands even at the threat of death. Now we are going to forgo this for fear of sickness and death?

What are we doing, church?

To do …or not to do

I am sitting here in my “command center” at my dining room table which serves as office and school room as well as a place to gather for meals.

Sometimes as moms out day starts off fairly sane, hopeful, with us feeling in control. Depending on the day this can quite quickly erode depending on the level of cooperation of the members of our household and the demands of the day.

I wanted to share a little trick I finally learned after 15 years of momhood and 40 plus of being a woman. A year or so ago I was feeling really discouraged because even though I was getting up at 4:00 am I felt I was not accomplishing but a small portion of my to do list and as they do that to do list was just as long at the end of the day as the beginning once the new tasks had been added.

I don’t recall who had suggested it because I hear so many great tips and life hacks but I decided to incorporate it. So I decided to keep a log of Everything I did in a day, not just for my hourly fee clients, but Everything (short of bathroom breaks & showers). That practice has continued for the past year and the result is that at the end of the day I can see exactly how I spent my time. The description is only as long as I need it to be, sometimes just a word (household, feed kids, pet care…) and sometimes it has an amount of time listed and sometimes it doesn’t. I keep the list in my notes on my phone which makes it very easy and convenient, not a burden.

If you try this you will find at the end of the day you have actually accomplished quite a lot, even if it was making three meals (& cleaning up after them!) for your family. It will help you see your time wasters and it will help you identify what you can delegate to professionals or members of your household or the random person who offers to help. 😅😇

It does not take the place of a to do list. It is a partner to it, a mirror of it, the other side of the scale.

It is the truth. Instead of accusing you of how little you accomplished because your to do list is a parchment rolling out the door like Santa’s wish list pictured in Christmas lore. It is confirmation you are doing your best. It is a reflection of your priorities. It makes you realize you did take time to be with your kids or take care of yourself, or maybe that you need to. Try it & see. ✨

Not about the election but other tough stuff

This is Level II stuff. Please don’t read if you think everyone can just get along after divorce. This is not everyone’s experience although it is what I hoped for and jealously long for when I see it in others’ post divorce lives.

I thought long and hard about posting but this is for those who have been where I was, am, and feel alone. If it can help one person, I can be vulnerable. I stayed quiet for so many years, trying to preserve a facade.

Here is a truth. When you have kids and you divorce an abuser, you are more free but you still face it, whether it is directed at you or your children (way worse!!) constantly.

The worst is when others join in. Perhaps a girlfriend (or boyfriend) of your former spouse. Perhaps third parties. Perhaps even institutionally.

One day you go to the park to run with your kids who have been stripped from you every other week and they are not there like usual with their dad and instead a big man approaches you and tells you to stay away from the park. He is a hired “hit” man doing the bidding of the abuser. Someone who bought that guy’s story like so many do, and even you used to.

He threatens your children. He threatens you. You try to report it to the police and they say well you are not in harm, call us back when you are.

Staying away, forgetting your kids, is not an option when you are a mom. You are always mom. You don’t just take off every other week and forget about your precious ones.

You tell others and they say it will all work out.

Listen to me. This is how women and children end up dead. Because no one listened, no one believed them.

The abuser will convince anyone he can that you are the bad, crazy one. He will make you doubt yourself.

The story is not hypothetical. A man was sent to threaten me to stay away from my kids. A big man. A man who wouldn’t identify himself but gave his name as Joe Smith. I now know his true identity. He and his cohorts made fun of me for being a lawyer, an old line borrowed from my ex I used to hear frequently. He stalked me halfway home.

You cannot make this stuff up. I am sharing so you know what can be in store if you bravely step out. The less you let them control you, the stronger you become, the more harassing and threatening they become. You have to stand strong for your children. And never stop watching, protecting and standing for them.

Believe in Yourself

It really hits home, you really realize how someone messed with your mind, and how you let them, for so many years when, the first weekday of “falling back” from Daylight Saving to standard time…he calls to tell you it is time for you to pick the kids up from his home snd take them to school, insisting that it is 8:30. You are sitting in front of your computer with your phone next to you and both say 7:30. You check your other clocks, thinking it is possible you could be wrong, somehow you messed up or are missing something. That even though you’re a lawyer who practices in three jurisdictions, passed three Bar exams on the first try, you can’t tell time correctly! Guess what? I wasn’t wrong. Not now. Not all those times I believed it…that I didn’t understand a situation, didn’t remember correctly, didn’t know what my kids needed, couldn’t keep track, couldn’t manage money, couldn’t stay calm, etc. Not saying I don’t make mistakes. But I can tell time. I wasn’t always wrong when I believed I was. I wasn’t always at fault for everything that happened. And neither are you. Believe in yourself.

We can choose bitterness or love

My current book club book is Indigo Girl. It is a historical fiction novel about 17 year old Eliza Lucas, left in charge of her father’s plantations in colonial South Carolina. She fights every day to make a profit from the indigo crop and stakes her family’s fortune toward it but experiences nothing but failure upon failure. She says “I was a butterfly pinned by its wings to the canvas of my failures.” I stopped there for today because that so accurately describes how I feel at this moment in time. But of course Eliza’s story is now history and I know she goes on to marry one of the signatories of our Declaration of Independence and is credited with beginning growing indigo successfully in what was to become the US.

Left with two little investment houses as my only resources at the conclusion of my twenty year marriage two years ago, I have tirelessly worked to secure my family through hard work and wise investments, to grow that little into enough to sustain my five children through college.

This year I staked all I had to purchase a house that I beautified with a great team and a lot of sweat and panicky nights. It’s value was doubled.

I was also under contract to buy another house to beautify but 3 days before my closing the finance company I was working with and which had approved the property and issued final terms withdrew due to COVID. Left high and dry I scurried to find alternate financing but no one was lending. Everyone was panicked and running for cover.

I fell on my sword and pleaded with the seller to split the escrow with me, to share the burden of the unprecedented COVID pandemic. Instead she hired a lawyer who has not stopped at winning the escrow when the judge did not find COVID a valid excuse and now seeks on top of that tens of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees as sanctions.

I could never have conceived that something I entered into to provide more for my family would cost me so dearly. I could not have imagined I would fail so deeply.

All I can do is learn and remember that, like Eliza Lucas, this is not the story’s end. I believe money is not finite. The more people try to take from my family the more opportunities arise. I say to that attorney who opposes me, at Jesus’s suggestion, if you would like my only cloak, please take my tunic too. You are a man and I am a single mom of 5 (8 if you include our non human members!) in a new land but I give it freely in love. You must need it more than me and I hope it fits you as you hoped it would.

Notes to Self…and Maybe Others

My current self says to my past self…

Think about why someone would want to move every time you become settled…

Why would he talk you into building a house that becomes your dream house as you fill it with babies…only to talk you into selling it with the dream of raising your boys on a large plot in the country …to end up renting someone else’s rundown home…

Why would you later uproot again from the place your five children know to move to another state where you cannot work…

Why did you give up the perfect situation you created for your family for the promise of a new life that in reality was an apartment where you valiantly crammed your big family?

Why did you sacrifice your dreams for his shifting ones that were never actually pursued?

Why are you giving up your precious, hard earned NY Bar license because he says it costs too much at $99 per year?

Why are you letting him cash in the 401k you earned?

But then…I am proud of you for not listening when he said you couldn’t get a job after 10 years home with your babies, and for finding a position on your terms.

I am proud of you for making change despite the odds, and for how far you’ve come in this strange new land.

I believe in you. You can do it. Your children are watching and they see too. They are learning by your example.