As It Was

Over time, things change, whether we’re ready for it, whether we push for it, or it catches us unawares. How we deal with change helps shape what we get out of the experience. And in the end, what we feel we learned comes a whole lot from our mindset going in.

I’m coming to the close of a year of legal battles, forced changes in employment, chosen alternatives in my lifestyle, and a great deal of moving forward after feeling incredibly stuck for way too long. My children have found themselves again, or are finding who they are; I feel like I know who I am, for the first time in a while, and I like who that is. As difficult as parts of this time have been, I feel much more equipped to handle life, even with all its challenges, than I did even 14 months ago.

While many things in my life are at present up in the air, one thing I know for certain now is that when some things are never going back to how they were, rather than mourn how it was, we’re meant to fondly remember or learn from the past, and embrace going ahead into the new. I used to be so afraid of change that I would avoid it at all costs; but after realizing that this let me settle into a tedious drudgery of an existence, not allowing even good new things to come to me, I started trying, bit by bit, to learn when to adjust and adapt, or even to seek it out. This doesn’t mean I’ll leap recklessly from pursuit to pursuit, but I no longer panic that the entire world is going to implode when I have to get used to something different.

I’ve gone back to things I hadn’t done in years, finding I still enjoyed them. I’ve also gotten away from some habits that I realized weren’t really benefitting me. I’m not sure that I feel wiser, but I do feel more informed about what works and what doesn’t for myself and my kids, and I’ve found I really feel no need to apologize for that. I discovered it wasn’t just the time spent as a single adult, it was the fact I wasn’t around someone demanding to have every hour of my time accounted for, minimizing or invalidating every one of my actions or reactions, and questioning every decision I made, no matter how small or how big.

Despite not everything going how I hoped, all in all, there has been a tremendous amount of positive or beneficial or necessarily eye-opening things that happened to me or that I decided to make happen. The biggest takeaway for me at the end of this process has been that letting oneself get stuck — and then stay stuck — is far more damaging than taking a risk and not having the optimal result.

Not that there isn’t still work to be done on this situation; my marriage had completely collapsed, there is no “picking up where we left off.” Muffin has a number of behavioral and developmental concerns we’re still tackling. I’m going to be making a major career shift this fall. Absolutely nothing about my future is set in stone. But for the first time in I don’t even know how long, doing something out of the realm of the familiar isn’t intensely terrifying.

So I’ll go into the next stage with a lot less worry, and a bit more confidence. I’m not expecting perfection, but I’m not going to settle for less than what I deserve.