Without judgment. Without expectation. Without doubt.

It's January 2016.

I am a shaman.

I am a tarot professional. 

I spent two years busting my butt to build my own business.

I spent two years relentlessly working on myself.

Acknowledging my inner demons and cleansing

the dark corners left unattended for more than a decade.

While raising three children.

While holding down a part time job. 

While balancing depression, bipolar disorder, and anxiety.

While going to therapy. Religiously.

I spent last year falling in love, and re-breaking my heart a few times.

I spent less time mending it back together and more time picking

apart the lessons each heartache blessed me with. 

I let go, I went crawling back, and I let go again.

A few times.

(Hey, nobody's perfect...)

In 2015 I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

I stopped victimizing myself and my "situation".

"Situation", hah... 

I finally realized there was no "situation".

There was me surviving and thriving and making my way in this world.

Fearlessly embracing the unknown and 

embracing its beauty with a ferocity I never knew I 

possessed. 

I stopped replaying old scenarios that no longer served me. 

I stopped being bitter and resentful. 

Though, sometimes the bitterness took new forms, and I recognized

their shape-shifting quickly.

 I caught them and threw them back outside 

where they belonged.

I worked and re-worked old paradigms. 

I stopped being 

"Divorced, single mom of three, too many animals, 

no time for you. Get away from me. I don't need you."

I became

"This is me exactly as I am. 

Take me or leave me.

I love who I am and I won't change myself

to fit your insecurities. 

I won't ask you to change who you are either.

I wont guilt you if your free will leaves you 

wanting to walk away from me."

I became okay with the ever changing, impossible to predict

motions of life. I became okay with the fact

 sometimes I may be too strong for someone.

 Or not enough for others. Or just not the right time.

In 2015 I learned to take life as it approached me.

Without judgement.

Without expectation.

Without doubt.

I was exactly where I was meant to be, learning exactly what needed to be learned, 

experiencing whatever needed to be fed to me. 

I was living. 

In 2015 I was living authentically. 

Finally. 

Cheers to 2016 being just as beautiful and raw!

I Felt Some Feels Today

I had deleted his number months ago, but in that moment I prayed I had it magically stored in my phone.

I was sitting in my car, hands shaking, tears welling in my eyes. The music in the background as my daughter napped peacefully, did nothing but make things worse. 

I knew he was the wrong person to text, but in that moment I needed the only person who had ever seen pieces of me that I was disgusted by. Ashamed of. He was the only one who had seen my darkest moments. He would know what to say, and it would come in a way that would rip my heart to shreds but be the honesty that a friend would feel too bad to say. His number was still in my phone somehow. So I texted him. 

"I'm a fucking fraud, and everyone thinks i'm so strong and brave- but I'm not. I can't take it.'

The time ticked by painfully slow as I waited for some sort of response. He ignored most of my texts, but he always responded in my desperate times, and I knew he would now. 

 I braced myself for an onslaught of words confirming my exact fears. 

"I know you put on a front. I've always known when I got behind it, for small amounts of time."

"Don't tell anyone. I'm ashamed." 

He never told anyone anything, and I think that's why I had to turn to him. The most toxic person for me- the exact man who had shattered me a thousand times over, who fought with me a million times more- was the only one who held my secrets in the most sacred way. 

I waited for comfort. I waited for a bunch of flowery words to distract me from what I believed to be my truth. I waited for the deflecting jokes he always did when we got too deep. But instead he posed a question. 

"So whats your course of action?"

I was taken aback, he wasn't going to bypass this, he was going to force me to find my own answer. It was a good question- how was I going to proceed with these thoughts?

I answered quickly and truthfully... I guess right in that moment my subconscious took over and knew my course of action was one I didn't even have to think about. I had already been living it for a few years now.

"Take care of my kids. Take care of myself. My job is to help people and make them happy. And I'm good at that. I'll keep doing that."

 It was that easy. 

I was hit with the realization that I was turning my emotions into their own entities. I was letting them take over the bigger picture and not allowing myself to feel a basic human instinct. Sadness. Again I associated sadness with weakness and turned a simple moment of tears into my entire being a fraudulent personality. When I write my joys and gratitude down I mean them because I feel them in that moment. And those moments are far more present then the sad periods I go through.  I am not wearing some mask, preaching happiness and gratitude to people when I myself don't feel it. I am speaking openly and honestly about happiness and gratitude to everyone because I do feel this way. I want everyone to feel this way. However, I can't cover the world in rainbows and glitter. I have to be honest with myself and honest with everyone else so they know it's absolutely okay to feel the down times, to embrace them lovingly and treat them kindly. 

"I'm a fraud."

I had to get those words out to someone who would never tell a soul. I didn't want anyone to ever know just how deeply the rawness welled inside of me in that moment. 

 But as the day went on and I processed the feelings that swirled inside of me, the word fraud didn't feel right to me. It was sour and unnatural on the tip of my tongue. Worse to look at in text. Fraud was not a word I would use to describe myself. As the day went on and I calmed myself, I realized I didn't want him to hold this admission for me. I was ready to hold myself. I wanted to open my heart and share my shadow parts so that others who are like me, others who "Sad Shame" as I call it, understood that these feelings are just as crucial to growth and ascension as happiness and gratitude are. 

So there... That was my day today. I felt low. Very low. And then I took those emotions and quietly listened to them as they sat in my heart. As the day progressed they slowly dissipated into the most beautiful lesson.

The lesson that it's okay to feel. 

I felt some shit today and that's totally cool. 

New Plan. New Map. Same ship.

I just spent the last hour constructing the longest post filled with words like "failure", "doubt", and "not good enough".  

I wrote the entire thing with a chest filled of fear. 

And each day, for a fraction of a moment I truly feel those words fit me. 

However I deleted that post.

Space by space by space.

 I watched the letters disappear and told myself this was not the story I wanted for myself, or for the world to see. This is not the story I want to feel.

I have come too fucking far to directly aim these words like daggers in my direction.

I have come too far to know that there is never an "end" and despite a change in 

course-- I will forever be absolutely fine. 

Do you know how many times I have switched the direction of my sails? Each time has become so much easier. Each time my faith that that very precise moment, exact situation, exact feeling, was needed.

No matter how scary or painful or hard it had to be.

So for now, I need to feel exactly as I feel. And to be honest, this feeling doesn't feel good at all. 

However I refuse to berate myself for feeling poorly about a shift in course. There is nothing wrong with feeling low.

I have ceased to fear the darker times just because I can't see ahead of me for a brief moment in space. 

Here's whats changed-- that moment where I stand in the darkness, completely at a loss for which direction to turn because I was dead set on certain path- has gotten shorter. 

I instantly make a new plan. I sure as hell cry all over the new map as I draw out the steps I need to take.

But I set a plan. 

The world doesn't stop when someone leaves or something terrible happens. The world begins again-- this time differently. With doors that open and welcome you anxiously. Doors that weren't there on your last journey. How insanely magical is that!?

Thank God we have these doors or else we'd be stuck in a hallway of darkness with no exit plan forever.

Or at least until we dug our way out... and that isn't fun either. 

Hello doors.

I have such great ideas for when I step through your threshold.

Love,

         Kelly

Three Years.

I go over a year each time I write here now. I have drifted farther and farther from writing and I think it's time I go back to my roots for some grounding. Be gentle with me, I am cleaning the cobwebs of my mind and writing skills.

It's been three years since my separation and divorce, can you believe it? 

Truthfully it feels as if I was never married to begin with. You could call it survival instincts, pushing away hurtful memories, or just truly moving on past that chapter in my life. But it has been three years. 

Ya know, everyone tells you single parenting will be hard. They mention the lack of extra eyes you'll have to keep track of everyone running around. They'll mention how your workload will double. "You're mom and dad now." They'll mention the exhaustion of it all. But why didn't any one warn me about how lonely single parenting is?

Before I start this, I do want to preface by saying that I have it much easier than most struggling single mothers. The kids see their dad weekly and on most weekends the kids spend their time with their grandparents. This provides me the chance to work, and to have a few days to decompress from the week prior. I do have it easier than some, and for that I am eternally grateful. 

When I first moved into the home my kids and I share, I was terrified. I felt powerless in so many ways. Nothing was easy and I was almost resentful of the fact that Derek instantly had roommates after we parted ways. I felt bitter that I was "stuck" divorced and alone. Whenever I mentioned this to anyone they would always remark, "But you have your kids. How could you be alone?"

I am their caretaker, their mother. However, most would agree that  in order to give them the healthiest childhood possible, I could not turn to them to meet my intellectual adult needs.

So I was lonely, and I felt alone. 

I realized how lonely I was when I had a baby to care for at night, without any help. 

I realized how lonely it was when my trash bin filled to the brim and I couldn't lift it to the end of the driveway. Or when the snow covered everything and I had to shovel alone.

I realized how lonely I was when I went to sleep with the fire poker gripped tightly in my hands for fear I had no weapon to protect myself from intruders. I realized how lonely I was when I knew that if there ever was a bump in the night, it now had to be me who checked each room, one by one. 

It was lonely as I catered to three kids, needing three different things. 

It was lonely when I didn't have enough hands.

Or I wanted to cry.

It was loneliest when I did cry.

My bed felt empty even when I was married, but now it was truly was empty, and cold. 

I was lonely when I was cold. 

It was lonely when the sink was piled with dishes by the end of the night, and I was the only answer to change that fact.

It was lonely when the kids went to bed and my living room was strewn with toys and crumbs.

It was lonely folding mountains of tiny clothes. 

Overwhelming. All of it was overwhelming and emotionally depleting. 

I struggled to keep my head above water for three long years. But never once did I regret the choice I made to move forward alone. 

A funny thing happens when you spend all that time alone, wallowing in the pain of having to deal with your own choices. You accidentally find yourself. You have to, there is no other way. After all, you're alone day in and day out, and the only one you have for company is yourself. There is no way to escape you when all you have is you. I found myself. In doing so, the loneliness dissipated as my confidence in single parenting grew. I was no longer a victim, I was a survivor. All I needed was a new game plan- the old one didn't work anymore. Four hands were down to two and I had to find new ways to approach the situation. And I did. My cleaning routine changed. I let things slide, the dishes stayed in the sink a little longer than they used to. I slept with extra blankets. And I still cried, oh boy did I ever cry. But I was still happy, because at the end of the day there was no one there to make me feel bad about the messes on the floor, the laundry not done, the cleaning not as perfect as it could have been. I was proud because my kids were alive, and they laughed that day, and we read stories. I was proud because I found new ways to spread myself just thin enough to manage three children alone. And more still my confidence grew. 

Now I hardly remember the days where I had someone to call out and ask for help. And that's been a blessing I could never have imagined, because now when I do have the help, the spare hands to carry in the groceries or wash a dish, or hand someone a snack... I am grateful. A dozen roses couldn't make this girl happier than helping me feed my babies at dinner time or keeping me company while I cook. The tiniest bits of life are now the most special and beloved parts of my existence as a single mother. What an honor to be able to recognize and appreciate the small ways that people show they care for me. Without this journey I don't think I would have been able to say I even noticed these gestures. 

I get choked up just thinking about it. 

So, yes, I am lonely. Some days, after the kids are in bed and my housework is done, I stand in my hallway and feel complete pain that the house is so quiet and it's only me in the dark. 

But I know myself better now, I know that that day I did my best. I was my best version of a mother.

I was my best version of Kelly.

I know the pain will fade and one day I could be lucky enough to have an exhausted soul, weary from the days adventures, standing in the hallway next to me. We will hold each other up after a long day of joy and chaos, and relish in the silence of sleeping children.  

But for now, I am okay enjoying the silence by myself.