Today, I committed a revolutionary act.

I let my daughter sleep.

We have both been taking turns dealing with various levels of illnesses over the last couple of months, and not always successfully, so for once, after a kinda rough night of alternating between sneezing and blowing her nose, I let her sleep.

During the week, she has to get up no later than 5:30 am, in order to be out of the house by no later than 6:20, so that she can be dropped off with the same sitter that she has had since she was 18 months old before I go to work.  From there, she will walk to school with the same kids she has known all her life.  We go through this exercise because, unfortunately, she is not good at waking up on her own to get to school on time, and truancy is a real thing that parents are held accountable for, and this is my way of making sure she gets to school on time every day.  Despite all of her activities, we do try hard to make sure that she is in bed by 9:00 on school nights.  Although it doesn't always happen that way.  Then she ends up not getting as much sleep as she should.

So today, I let her sleep.

Lately, our Saturdays have been busy.  After having to move her bi-weekly hair appointments from Friday afternoons to early Saturday mornings to accommodate both her new Drill Team schedule, and her very popular hair stylist (who just happens to be the salon's owner.  Who is just that GOOD!), and trying to accommodate her visitation schedule with her dad, balanced against church activities, a doctor that will mercifully see her on Saturdays, and everything else on her packed calendar, sometimes even a nap is asking too much.

For the past 17 years, we have gotten up and gone to same church almost every Sunday morning.  Up until a year or so ago, that meant unless one of the choirs we sing with was performing somewhere else, we were there.  Rain or shine, sick or tired or worn out, we showed up.  It finally occurred to me the year that I kept showing up to church so sick that I could hardly speak, that with the number of children and elderly people at church, that spreading what eventually turned out to be strep throat that morphed into an ear infection, amounted to nothing more than a foolish consistency that didn't impress anyone at best, and exposed vulnerable populations to very dangerous diseases for no real reason except ego, at worst.  I know how much I don't like it when people who are sick are spreading the germs around, so I decided not to do the one thing I quietly hate.

So today, I let her sleep.

In our push to make sure our kids are kept busy so as not to get into any kind of trouble, I think we forget that their bodies and brains are still developing.  Getting adequate food, water, exercise, and REST are huge parts of that development.  We adults love to brag about how little sleep we need to survive, and pass this unhealthy mentality on to our children, as examples of toughness, or fortitude, or whatever.  I admit to being steeped in these kind of attitudes, and this whole self care thing is new to me, and I am still learning when to push ahead, and when to slow down, for both my daughter and myself.  It takes time to learn to prioritize your family's and your own health and well being after a lifetime of not doing so.  One small step at a time.

​So today, I let her sleep.

I am sitting on the edge of my bed, typing this blog post in the waning hours of another year.  As I sit, it occurs to me that I spend quite a bit of time just waiting for things to end. A boring meeting, a long work day, a hard year, a difficult relationship.  When my natural impatience kicks in, I think of the words of wisdom given to me by my father during a very frustrating period in my life: Is this season over, or are you just trying to bring it to an end because you are tired of dealing with it?

While years will always end on December 31st, this particular year, I became much more cognizant of the different seasons that we all go through, and it is how we deal with those seasons that determine what comes next in our lives.  Did we just wait impatiently for the season to end? Did we pray, study, or try to learn from the season?

I retreated.

Overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that both I and my daughter were involved in (for the wrong reasons), and emotionally drained from those background episodes that we all go through (and a couple of incredibly devastating items that exposed me to a type of pain I had never experienced and hope to never go through again), the burnout that had been threatening to take over for years finally tapped me on the shoulder and loudly announced it's presence.  Either deal with it, or it would deal with me.

So I took a month off.  Of EVERYTHING, except work.  That month was the first time in memory that I wasn't always waiting for one thing or another to end.  I suddenly found myself more aware of what I actually did with my time, my actual feelings about what was going on around me, and the reality that all my impatient waiting around for this event or that tantrum to end was just me trying to force an end to a particularly painful season, because all of the distractions I'd lined up to help me deal with it had stopped working long before I ever admitted it to myself.

As my daughter started high school, and slowly added, or added back, activities that meant the most to her, I had to come to the realization that, first and foremost, I had to learn to prioritize myself.  For me, that started with not making decisions based on what I feared was being said about me when I was not present to defend myself, which in turn completely freed me from putting myself in situations where all I could do was wait for the eternal "it", whatever "it" was, to be over.  It took me far too long to figure out that this was no way to live.

This is where I get honest about therapy: had I not found a good therapist (who understood both my Christian perspective and my worldly perspective, as well as the sometimes difficult intersections where they overlapped), I don't know that I would have ever gotten to the point where I realized that occasionally, my own inner voice was was the relentless master in the endless game of three dimensional chess that my life had become, that I was destined never to win.

While the sun sets slowly over 2018, for the first time I am actually looking forward to the new year.  Not just rushing to be done with all of the bad, but finally, the feeling that I may actually done with this season, and prepared to move on to the next.

So one year ends, and another begins, as we move from season to season in our lives.

But is this season really over, or did we just try to bring it to an end because we were tired of dealing with it?

So it seems the theme of much of this past spring and summer has been growth and change.

I watched my daughter navigate no less that three Rites of Passage in the space of six weeks:  Confirmation, Middle School Graduation, and her first plane ride out of state without me.  She wasn't even kind of worried about her first day of high school; it was me that was a bundle of nerves.



We are now on that last stretch of childhood: the journey of the teen as she makes her final approach towards adulthood.

My daughter, who I jokingly refer to as The Teenager in all my social media posts, has surprised me in all the best ways one can, especially a Mother that has told her repeatedly that "I do not like surprises":

- She has pursued, and succeeded, at a goal she set when she first saw the movie "Bring It On" back in elementary school: After realizing that she wasn't really feeling the cheer squad, she tried out for, and made, the drill team at her high school within the first month of being there.

-Realizing that she would need to keep her grades up not only to graduate, but also to remain on the Drill Team, she went back on her medication for ADHD, completely reversed the slide in her grades, and is back to being the primarily A and B student she was in elementary school.

-Most important to me, though, is she has acknowledged our hereditary issues with depression and anxiety, up to and including her own, and is committed to working those issues out in such a way that she won't have larger issues dealing with them later.

She fascinates me sometimes, this daughter of mine.  As frustrating as these years can be, and believe me, between ADHD, depression and anxiety, combined with all of the other teenage hormonal stuff, the parts I don't talk about are going to give me gray hair before this is all over and done with, I sincerely pray and believe that we may both make it through these next four years mostly unscathed and hopefully in one piece.

I can see the beginnings of a person who pursues her interests passionately, and will stick to things that she actually wants to do until she sees them through.  The key words in that sentence are the SHE WANTS to do.  I am learning that at this age, picking one's battles as a parent become paramount in keeping that trust relationship strong, as well as LISTENING twice as much as I talk.  And while I might be losing some respect with other parents for not embracing an Authoritarian parenting style at all times (I keep it in my back pocket to be whipped out on an As-Needed basis), what I hope to see is a young lady who learned to stand up for herself, even to authority figures,  respectfully, and in appropriate situations (see note above about learning to pick one's battles).

We have both come so far, and still have so far to go...

These next few years will feature change and growth on both our parts; she, preparing herself for further education and eventually, a career; me readying to be the parent of two adults, the coming empty nest, and firming up my retirement plans.

Mostly, though, I will be watching her: how she grows, what she knows, emotions she shows, her ebb and flow.  Trying to be there when she needs me, and learning when to pull back and let her go on her own.  Reading her like the absorbing novel she both currently is, and is slowly becoming, carefully turning each page because as exciting as all of this is,

I both do, and do not, want to reach the end to the journey.

So this is a new one for me.

The title of this post was a request from someone who had read a couple of my other blog posts, and was somewhat alarmed by the tone.

So there you have it: A blog post titled I Am Beautiful.

You also need to know that I strive to create a world where women don't have to make affirmations like that.  I've explored my self-image in this space on separate occasions, and even if it seems to be a fractured reflection in a cracked mirror, that is no excuse for other people's petty cruelty towards anyone that does not fall into their specific, and often narrow, definition of "beautiful".  Believe me when I say, that when you post to your blog with a title like this one, the anonymity provided by the internet will bring you unlimited numbers of people gleefully willing to list all of the reasons you are not, which is why I was reluctant to use this title.

The world is a very big place, and there is room in it for more than one strictly enforced, exceptionally hard to attain, definition of "beautiful".  And goodness only knows that just because someone has the desired physical appearance, there is no guarantee that what is going on on the inside is beautiful in any way, shape, or form.  But I have talked about that before as well.

This blog post is not about either of those ideas.

Somewhere in the world tonight, a girl is looking at herself in the mirror, and wondering why her classmates are so mean about her super frizzy hair.  No, it doesn't look like the girls in the magazines, but she thinks it's okay.  Her parents tell her to suck it up, and that people are mean in general, and to get used to it, not knowing that their ideas about "toughening her up" are only partially useful.  Yes, people can be short-sighted and evil, and kids are often no more than their parents instill in them at a certain age, but it wouldn't hurt to explain these things while emphasizing that other people's opinion of you is none of your business no matter how hard they try to make it so.

Somewhere else in the world tonight, a teenager is contemplating another Monday at school, where she has to wonder why she gets the grief she does from both her peers, and now, even some of the teachers in her life.  Whip-smart, funny and kind almost to a fault, she has begun to notice that she is treated more harshly than her conventionally attractive peers.  She  is in the season in her life where she is exploring her identity, and the negative feedback she receives for her maybe too brown skin and prominent ethnic features has her questioning her worth in ways that, if not countered with any positive messages about accepting oneself as is, and being comfortable in one's own skin, could lead to devastating psychological consequences.

In yet another location, a woman stares in her closet for the thousandth time, wondering what to wear to work in order to best camouflage her "flaws", whether real or imagined.  Stomach not flat by any means; hips maybe a little too wide, breasts not as, well, anything, as they once were.  She contemplates the inevitable signs of aging, and silently laments the teeth she never had a chance to get straightened.  She does all of the right and correct things regarding eating in moderation and getting regular physical activity, and yet she still just looks like, well, herself.  She gets dressed in everything she needs for the day, including the mask she wears to hide the fact that she is thinking anything other than all is right in her world, knowing that if she shows her actual vulnerability, there are those in the world that will see it, and take it as license to show her absolutely no mercy.

And I know them, and they know me.

We are all bound spiritually by the knowledge that not conforming to convention can make for  an attractive target for some of the worst people.  What that we could live in a world where we could live in the peace of being comfortable with our imperfection.  Whatever we want to fix would be between us and the God of our choosing, and  those that would spew their own insecurities and negativity in our direction would either keep it to themselves, for once, or re-direct their energies into changing whatever it is that they don't like about themselves that causes them to expend their venom on others.

If you still don't get the point: Whatever you think of what someone looks like is on you, and yes everyone is entitled to their opinion.  But no one with an ounce of decency would dare to treat anyone like less of a person merely because they do not find them aesthetically pleasing.

No. you don't get to treat people badly because you don't like the way they look.  Most people have more than enough going on in their lives without you dumping your fears and projections onto them.  Keep that crap to yourself.

If my experiences on the internet, or in real life, are any example, that might be too much to hope for.

​But a girl can dream, can't she?

It was the best of years; it was the worst of years.

As it were.

Normally I would recap the year, talk about lessons learned, and express my hopes for the new year.

Nope.  Not this time.

I am ready to leave the past exactly where it is.

Because this year broke me in ways I never thought possible.  And for once, I learned my lessons in ways both immediate and incredibly painful.  And you have already read all of those stories.

I am focused on what's next.

So what IS next?

This is the year I finally start to pay a little attention to myself.  I have spent so much time and energy attempting to be all things to all people, that my own health and well-being was reduced to putting out fires that flared up from my benign neglect of me.  It was terrible to realize that I finally started losing weight more by happenstance than design.  I decided that since my job was so physically demanding, that I shouldn't blow this opportunity to better my health, and eat more mindfully.

Minding one's mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health should not be some incidental thing that one stumbles across in the midst of constantly doing everything for everybody.  Non-stop self sacrifice makes for wonderful novels and t.v. movies, but realistically, the actual toll that pointless martyrdom takes in enough to drive even the most reasonable person around the bend.

Having taken too many drives around bends I never saw coming, I am DONE.

Although I will always prioritize the needs of my family, the days of sacrificial neglect of self are now behind me.  I am moving forward.  For my own best interest and piece of mind.

​See you on the other side.

This was supposed to be a post about finding peace.

That was before a couple of people who seem devoted to disturbing my peace pulled their usual loud conversation to make sure that any peace I was feeling at the moment was incredibly short-lived.

That was also before I found out the full weight of what was going on with both my children.

All before I was due to take a much needed week off.  A week that was supposed to be comprised mostly of rest, with a few errands, a little binge-watching, and a great deal of cooking thrown in.

While all of that did actually happen, I also managed to get in a desperately needed week of prayer and introspection. Honestly, I absolutely needed the time off.  I was beyond exhausted: mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  After moving from one high-stress environment to another (different type of stress, but still), and everything going on outside of work, I was hurtling rapidly towards complete burnout.Ten days off might not seem like  a lot, but I took what I could get, and endeavored to get as much rest, and perspective, as I could in the allotted time.  I think it was productive.

One of the first things set on my spirit was the phrase "For all of his knowledge, He has not wisdom".  After racking my brain, and searching the internet, I found out that it was a bastardized version of a Lord of the Rings quote.  Looked at in the context of my prayer life, however, I understood it to mean that while we tend to prize intelligence, we also need to take a closer look at whether or not wisdom is gained to go along with that intelligence.  As it pertains to a certain situation that I am dealing with, I have come to the realization that intelligence and wisdom need to go hand in hand; wisdom is intelligence refined by experience.  Intelligence without the wisdom to use it correctly can make for some incredibly cold, unfeeling people, who in turn can create difficult and uncomfortable situations for anyone that has to deal with them.

Somewhere in the middle of that train of thought, I suddenly found myself thinking about the novel, The Catcher in the Rye.  What struck me most was the protagonist, Holden's, vision of someone hiding in a field of rye, waiting to catch people before they unknowingly went over a cliff.

After spending a good two hours wondering how all of those notions were connected, it finally occurred to me that faith was both at the intersection of knowledge and wisdom, and if you look closely, surrounding both concepts. If that sounds confusing, think of it like this: Faith can be the lens through which we view the experiences that move us from mere knowledge to wisdom. When both knowledge and wisdom fail us, as they sometimes do, and emotion takes over, Faith (in the form of prayer and meditation) can also be that catcher in the rye, waiting to catch us before we throw ourselves off cliffs of irrational thoughts and actions.  Where knowledge and wisdom propel you forward, faith steadies your journey, and sometimes, lights your way.

It was in this notion, that where my knowledge of how to deal with people and situations, and what I had hoped was hard earned wisdom for dealing with difficulty began to fail me, and my emotions were ready to take over and send me running toward a cliff taking me I don't know where, my faith was there to catch me, and remind to stop to consider the results of hauling myself over emotional cliffs.

My situations are not likely to change anytime soon.  But I do feel a little more at peace in dealing with them, knowing that in the midst of it all, I can stop and center myself using all of the tools that I have developed over the years to keep myself on track.  

Or at least keep myself from going over the cliff.

Paraphrasing another quote, Of these three remain: Knowledge, Wisdom, and Faith.  The greatest of these is faith.

Like most teen girls, my daughter is a master of the selfie.

​No reservations, only a little self conscious, and the only thing she needs is a phone.  Whose phone doesn't matter.

This past Sunday found her skimming through the gallery on my phone, looking for pics she had taken of herself at various times in the past few months.  As she scrolled, I came across a picture I had taken of myself while I was trying to figure out the camera on my new phone.


"Wow.  That's actually a good picture of me! I kinda like that one!"

Then like a scolding mother, a teen voice reprimands me from the passenger seat of my car:

"What did I say about talking about yourself like that?"

Like most adults, I have what I consider a self-deprecating sense of humor.  Unlike most adults, I have a rather bad history of people reminding me of what I am not, and my daughter has unfortunately borne more witness than I am comfortable with of people that should know better denigrating me both in my presence, and behind my back.  So she is especially sensitive to any level of negative self talk that I engage in. There is a precedent for this.

About 3 1/2 years ago, I wrote in this space about my struggle with my physical appearance: ​http://www.houseofperpetualdistraction.com/thoughts-feelings-impressions-blog/1  For the most part, I thought I had made peace with the fact that some people will always treat me in a pretty cold fashion, if only because they do not find me what is popularly considered attractive.  I was also aware, if only peripherally, that I was not alone in what I experienced.

A few days prior to the car conversation, I had run across an article that sent me back to an older Reddit thread about what life was like for ugly women: www.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/24ddtl/what_is_life_like_for_an_unattractive_woman/

I have rarely felt such kinship, with so many other women, about such similar experiences.  We are the people who are either completely ignored during group conversations, or loudly derided for daring to speak up.  If we are not being thoroughly overlooked, we are being thoroughly looked over for whatever offending flaws (I was recently told while walking down the street, completely lost in my own thoughts, that "My ugly ass needed to smile more.") random passerby feel the deep need to point out to us. Male friends and acquaintances, although they may howl with laughter when talking with us privately (and only privately) do not dare to be seen walking down the street with us, lest they be seen by anyone they know in the company of someone not thought to be sufficiently attractive.  I have lost count of the number of times I thought I was walking somewhere with a male friend, only to have them either trotting a mile ahead of me, or walking just far enough behind me to give me the appearance of walking alone, and making any friendly conversation all but impossible.

One more time, for the people in the cheap seats:  Having been called ugly, in some way, shape or form, every day since I started Kindergarten at 4 years old, I am WELL aware of how you feel about my appearance.  There is no way I could not know.  Your attitude and behavior have spoken way louder than the words some of you are too discreet to say to my face anymore.  Note: I said SOME of you.  I never know whether or not my day will be a quiet one, or one when I will have to deal with yet another "opinion" being shouted at me as fact.  And no amount of well meaning friends telling me that they think I am beautiful is going to erase 40 years plus of treatment that is still ongoing to this day.  Maybe, one day, we will all truly be free from the grip of popular, societal standards of who we are supposed to be, or at least emulate, but that is a long way off.

So we come to this past Sunday in the car.  This is the picture in discussion:

As I am reprimanded, and rightfully so, by my daughter, I am also reminded that my daughter doesn't define me by the same terms that the world does.  She doesn't see me as fat, or ugly, or any number of shorthand terms for not enough.

She just sees me as Mom.  Sometimes annoying, sometimes wonderful, sometimes just getting the two of us through the day, but just Mom.  She is looking to me to give her clues as to how to relate to, and navigate the larger world around her.

This is where I need to learn to balance the way I respond to the way I know the world sees me with the image I project for my daughter's sake.  I do not believe that I am hideous.  Different, definitely.  The popular term nowadays is "unconventional". I do keep up my appearance on some level: I love my dreadlocks, I buy clothing that I feel flatters me, and that I find comfortable, and I smile and am friendly to those I know.  I also make quite a few jokes, sometimes at my own expense.  I have to watch that tendency.  Because my daughter doesn't see it as self-deprecating humor.  She sees it as putting myself down before someone else does it for me.  She doesn't like it, and let's me know without hesitation if that's what she feels I am doing.

Let me pause here to say that I think my daughter is gorgeous.  I know all mothers say that about their children, but both comments made to me, and comments overheard, bear this out.  What I have tried to teach her about her genetic blessings, as it were, is to keep it all in perspective.  That fact that she is beautiful is great, but it is also the least important thing about her.  To be intelligent, kind to others, and overall, a person of good character that can be respected, is something that will always stick with you in life.

But I know the world turns on physical appearances, and "in it but not of it" is not going to help us here.  We still have to function in a world of people who are not of the same mind, heart or spirit as we are, and those people can sometimes be quite cruel.

What I am learning from my daughter is actually her taking to heart and putting into practice what I have always told her: do NOT allow anyone else's definition of you to override how you feel about yourself.  I figured that I should start teaching that lesson from Day One, rather than have her learn it later in life like I did.  I have to come to admire my daughter's strength and confidence, and hope that life doesn't dull that sparkle still glimmering in her eyes.

What I hope to teach her, is that even if the world is still determined to try to find more interesting and clever ways to try to pull you down using some random way that you are unacceptable, try to retain your strength in what you know about yourself, and what God knows about you, and has put on your spirit.

My ultimate wish, and prayer, for my daughter is expressed in a song released in 2005 by Gospel artist Kirk Franklin.  I loved the song long before the sign language ministry with which she performs added the song to their repertoire.  It deals with, among other things, learning to see yourself the way God sees you, and loving yourself accordingly.  I can't possibly wish for more than that level of self acceptance and love.  For her or me.​

I was 21 when I realized that I wasn't stupid.

And I fully realize that that is a strange way to start a blog post.

But stay with me here.  If the little voice in your head is the one that was the loudest and/or most prominent during your formative years, then mine was one that sought out, loudly proclaimed, and ruthlessly exploited every real or perceived flaw while largely ignoring anything even remotely positive.  Such was the substance of my young life: an almost daily litany of what I was not, interspersed with rare, positive commentary on the off chance I accidentally exceeded expectations.  If the negative receives the most attention in a young life, the negative is what they will remember most.  These are the things that inform all of their early decisions, and the first quarter of their lives are spent working it all out, for better or for worse.  At least the only thing a poor self image earned me was a kid out of wedlock, fairly consistent employment, and subsequently housing, issues, and a curious inability to stay out of the fire for always falling back into it.  I know there are people who went through less than I did, but their lives turned out far worse.

I was 32 when I found out there was a name for what I had experienced growing up.

I will be the first to say that "abuse" is an overused term in today's society. But I will also say that words can hit harder and hurt longer that even the most brutal fist.  Especially words stated repeatedly, and forcefully, and combined with a heaping dose of gas-lighting during any confrontation.  And Dog-forbid ANY attempt to put a stop to it.  But the very nature of abuse, is that it thrives in silence and denial.  Physical and Sexual abuse, obviously, but those cannot survive without their first cousins, Verbal, Psychological, and Emotional abuse.  Like most families, it is the cousins that first made my acquaintance as a child, although, as I stated earlier, I did not know their names back then.  I knew Shame.  I knew constant, subtle ridicule disguised as jokes.  Fear of being noticed for the smallest mistake was the shadow that followed me into every interaction, driving me to a kind of perfectionism that can only end up in the inertia of a fear of failure so paralyzing that you end up doing the bare minimum to get by.  Or alternately, overdoing every task to make sure that you miss NOTHING.  Failure is seen right away, and remarked about into infinity.  And even if you do eventually fly, no one is going to notice or care anyway.  Or only notice grudgingly.  While you are encouraged to accept this unquestioningly, under the guise of being the bigger person.

It was also around this time, around the birth and early years of my daughter, that I decided that this meek defeated version of me was not the person I wanted my daughter to see growing up.  I was going to have to decide exactly how I wanted to deal with all of the residual damage of my own early life in order to avoid passing it on to my own children.

I was 35 when I finally began to make some sort of peace with my past.

I will always remember a speculative conversation I had with a former pastor.  I asked him if he believed in generational curses.  To paraphrase and shorten his very thoughtful answer, he stated that while it was possible, it didn't always have to be probable.  I was always free to take steps to circumvent what I saw as the mistakes and errors of past generations.

It is important for me to pause here, and tell you that I do not blame anyone for most of what happened during my early years.  If the axiom that hurt people, hurt people is true, then in reality damaged people often don't know how to do anything but damage others.  Or at the very least, operate in damage control mode.  For me, the more I explored my early influences, the more I realized the issues were less with the who (in most cases), than the what: What was said (or not said); What was done, and/or not done; and What action taken, or lack thereof, meant to my life at the time all of these things were going on.

It was only after I started to put these issues, and the involved personalities, into some sort of perspective that I decided that I was going to be okay.  I was going to deal with, and move past, the lies that were drilled into me about who I was, and realize that my life was about more than just doing what I needed to do to get by.  Yes, there was always going to be some element of that, but my dreams meant something too, and finally getting some sense of self worth would go a long way towards making me brave enough to pursue the life I WANTED.  

I can put together the kind of life that will be an example to my children of celebrating even minor successes, and not falling apart during failures.  Because unbeknownst to me, I was actually capable of dealing with far more than even I knew.

Because the only way to create emotionally healthy children is to be emotionally healthy.  And neglecting serious self care is about as far from healthy as you can possibly get.

Because prayer, faith and willingness to put in a lot of work: physically, spiritually, and emotionally, count for a lot more than I ever realized.

I will live.
​

​One of the more interesting things about child rearing is watching them experience growth spurts.

One day, they are still the small person that you always see, then suddenly, over the course of days or weeks, they shoot up, or out, several inches, sometimes radically changing their appearance.  With my kids, as their bones lengthened, they would often experience severe pains in their legs and arms as their bodies struggled to keep up with the rapid changes taking place. I would talk them through these literal growing pains by reminding them that these were necessary processes for them to grow to their fullest physical potential.

I didn't tell them that the process would continue: physically, socially, emotionally, and in other incredibly uncomfortable ways.

This has been perhaps the longest few months of my life.

Trying to pass the probationary period on my recent promotion has been relentlessly competing with serious issues with my children, activities that I committed to not really realizing the actual social and physical cost, and several micro items that left me wondering if this is what I worked this long and hard for.

In so many ways, we are all experiencing growing pains.

In her final year of middle school, my daughter is starting to realize that everything counts. In a lot of ways, she had been coasting on intelligence and charm, and it is now being made clear to her that she needs to put in more effort to get to her ultimate goal of a college degree. She is also learning that merely being loyal is not always enough to maintain a friendship, and that you have to be a little bit more flexible as you and your friends are all trying to find your place in a world that is working hard to fit you in the neat little box it already has for you.

My son has just learned, in the hardest way possible, that just because someone calls themselves your friend, this isn't always true, and you have to be very careful of who you hang around.  He now has to join that group of young men facing the world with a criminal record, that while minor, still leaves you marked as someone who might not be trusted with anything, much less a job.  He is currently attempting to put his life together in another location, and with quite a few strikes against him.  His heart is in the right place, but he is also finding out that sometimes, that might not be enough.

I have spent the last 16 years of my life working towards the job that I finally obtained in April of this year.  So no one was more surprised than me when I got the question put on my spirit of "Now what?"  It occurred to me that while I was planning my future around a specific job, I hadn't really planned much past it.  I also hadn't thought about much more than the things I had to do in order to support my children and survive.  Someone I consider a mentor once asked me what I really wanted to do with my life.  I didn't answer her because I had been taught that my dreams were impractical, and that I needed to concentrate on doing what had to be done to provide a life for my children.  But now I find myself at 45 years old, only five years away from my daughter leaving home for college, and asking myself what I really want to do once she's gone.  Do I take steps toward my dream career of writing professionally, or do I remain the solid, steady person that I am expected to be as a single parent of two?

Growing pains don't stop at 18.  Or 25. Or 30.

The truth is, growth is a lifelong experience.  As it should be.  Stagnation kills, and once you have decided that you don't have anything else to learn, you slowly begin to die: spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and occasionally, physically.

If you were to look at life as a football game you would see that my daughter is finding her way through her first quarter, my son is deciding what strategies to employ during his second quarter, and as I rapidly approach half-time, I am trying to figure out exactly how I want my second half to play out.

Ultimately, I pray that we will all eventually get to where we were meant to be.  The journey is currently getting more than a bit rough, and the destination may not necessarily be clear, but a lot of times, growth is just exactly that way: a lot of movement in often random directions.

But continue forward we will because continue forward we must.  Because going backward is not an option.

  I have mentioned on a couple of occasions that I sing with a few choirs.  

In the last couple of years, my now teen daughter has joined me in all of these choirs.  Mostly because she was always there anyway, learning the music, and would end up sitting in the choir stand, singing with us.  And as these things go, especially with smaller choirs, she has a song or two that she either leads, or co-leads, much to her teen-aged chagrin.  Of these songs, the one that has been playing in my head a lot recently has been one called "I Will Live".  It has to do with watching one's verbal reactions to the ups and downs, more specifically the downs, of life.  It posits that what you say affects not only your own attitude, but the energy in the world around you.

This is not an unusual stance.  Most major religions of the world have sayings along those lines.  Even the most hardcore of secularists believe in some level of Karmic energy:  What you put out into the world is what you receive back from the world.  Especially in moments of crisis and deep stress, it can be very easy to absorb negativity and reflect that back into the world. When your guard is down, and you are at your most vulnerable, can unfortunately be the times that bring out the worst in the people around you. The challenge then becomes not allowing the negative influences to turn you so negative that you began spewing that back out into the world.  Which is incredibly hard when your emotions are raw and exposed.

Three weeks ago, I received a call no mother wants to get.  My son had been arrested in another state, and in all honesty, there was darn little I could do about it.  We've talked extensively in this space about the different ups and downs that I've had with my son, and like most parents, I immediately went to privately beating myself up about the entire thing.  My reasonable mind knew that as an adult, I only have so much say over decisions that he makes, and that realistically speaking, he needed to be held accountable for those decisions.  Unfortunately for me, there are those in my circle who would choose to kick a person while they are already down.  No mater how reasonable I tried to remain, once it became obvious to me that my efforts were futile, in a moment of weakness I started down a very dark rabbit hole.  I allowed my anger and hurt to dictate my response to the negativity being hurled at me, and I responded in kind. In front of my daughter, which I may regret for the rest of my life. Granted, this had been brewing for years, but the mature thing to do would have been not to engage, but again, when your guard is down, you are clearly not your best self.  Mercifully, I was still within shouting distance of my right mind, and my more reasonable side decided that I'd better get in front of this before the rumor mill, and I decided to seek broader support through social media.

On the worst night of my adult life, Facebook actually saved my sanity.

Because what I got over the next couple of days were people putting aside their judgement (if they judged me at all), to offer me voices of reason (this really could have happened to anybody), support, comfort, and prayers.  I learned that when people are in a storm, this is not the time to offer negativity.  Their head is already likely in a very dark place, and your blame and condemnation is not needed.  Put out into the universe what you want to receive back when it's your turn to go through the storms of life: peace, concern for those in the middle of the storm, hope, and if nothing else, prayers.  The simplest gifts that I received that I appreciated the most were the prayers: even if they did not know what to say, there were those who stopped what they were doing to offer prayers of hope for my son, and comfort for my daughter and myself, that have sustained me from that day to this.

What I have decided, during this particular set of storms in my life (there are several really trying issues competing for my attention at this time) is that much like the song states, I Will Live.  I will not let my attitude, and by extension, my words,  reflect the negativity that is directed at me.  The only thing I can control in my life is myself and my reactions to the stimuli around me, and I have the responsibility to set the example for my daughter of how to deal with the storms of life.  Yes, I slipped, and I apologized to her for it, but I know that I also have to be more cognizant of how I deal with emotional conflict in the future.  And beware of the "Be the bigger person" mantra:  sometimes it works, but sometimes it is just a setup for accepting ongoing abuse.  Which is not healthy.  For anyone.

I Will Live.

My son goes to trial tomorrow.  No matter the outcome, there will be a great deal of fallout and blow back from this for quite awhile to come. We will likely be dealing with this for some time.

I Will Live.

I am no longer surprised by the fact that whenever I take positive steps to start getting my life together on some level, I end up in social and/or emotional waters that compete to keep me distracted from my actual goals.  I finally realized that it's not the distractions that are the real issue: it's my reactions to the distractions.  Think about that for a minute.

I Will Live.

Where I want to be, spiritually, is like the people that were there for me during my very long night: the helpers and healers that exude an aura of warmth, comfort, wisdom and most importantly, peace.  I will not be the person that speaks chaos into an already bad situation.  I will bring peace, and love, or I will bring nothing at all.

I Will Live.