Skip to main content

The First Step

My Story (so far)
About a year ago, I started a journey. It wasn't a journey I had ever expected to take. It was the perilous path to single motherhood.
We all have our dreams and ideals of what our life is going to be. Like everyone else, I was trying to follow the road that would lead to that picture perfect life. Every step I took at that time was carefully chosen; but I was so busy watching my feet that I lost myself in the woods and found myself having to rely not on the world as I thought I knew it, but on my own intuition.
This journey is a journey about self-reliance. It's a journey about discovering what I was made of. It's a journey filled with doubt, fear, uncertainty, and powerlessness. But in the end, I hope to find a new sense of happiness and fulfillment.
This is the journey of a single mother.
I've started this blog as a kind of therapy. As a child, I would spend hours writing when I couldn't sleep, and sleeplessness has become a regular part of my new life. If it worked for the 11 year old me, I guess it can't hurt the 29 year old me. And in the interim, if it helps other women or men who are in similar situations (because God knows, no situation is ever exactly the same), then that's great, too.
I'll end this post with a quote that is very bittersweet to me. Maybe someday I'll get into why.
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Doing the Dishes

“Wash the plate not because it is dirty nor because you are told to wash it, but because you love the person who will use it next.” - Saint Teresa of Calcutta Every night after dinner, Niles does the dishes. Mostly, he stacks them in the dishwasher and runs it, but often he also hand washes the pots and pans, setting them in the drying rack and putting them away later when they've air-dried enough. He always clears the table and wipes it down, making sure everything is the way it was (sometimes cleaner than it was) before we sat down to eat.  At the beginning of our relationship, when he’d do this I felt somewhat at a loss. Doing the dishes had always been my responsibility, along with nearly every other household chore, and I wondered what to do with myself while this other person took care of  it. It was one of many mundane tasks that had always been on my already-full plate and freeing that space felt almost like cheating. A little breathing room felt suffocating in the con...
Post a Comment
Read more

Unanswered Prayers

My fiancé and I regularly get into arguments about Garth Brooks. The country singer with the bass twang was a staple of my childhood and I can’t think of a song he’s done that I didn’t absolutely love. Admittedly, most of my adoration now comes from the nostalgia factor; his music transports me back to wedding dances two-stepping with my uncles, road trips with my parents and older brother arguing about what the lyrics actually were (pre-Google life was like that), and romanticizing his adult wisdom about life and loss.  For Niles, who has no such fond illusions, he feels the quality of music is lacking (I don’t 100% disagree with that on an objective level). However, the real thing that turns his ambivalence into disgust is the song “Unanswered Prayers”. As an adult, I can appreciate that the story and lyrics are a little trite and simplistic. But the notion that God just lets our prayers sit unanswered because we don’t know enough to pray for the right things is the real matter o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Someday My Prince Will Come

How cliched, I know. When I was young, I was not fussy about relationships. I was low maintenance if there ever was such a thing, in part because of my fierce independent (read: stubborn) streak and a complete aversion to frivolity. I was never the girl who got highlights in her hair and spent hours on clothes and makeup each morning. I shopped at thrift stores and went to school with my hair wet 50% of the time. My requirements for "boyfriend" material were that they hold my hand sometimes and be smart enough to talk to for hours on end. I didn't seek out the best looking, I didn't expect gifts or showering, I understood not being top priority and I didn't need someone to  emotionally support me. I was a tough chick who could take care of herself, thank you very much. It should come as no surprise then, that I married a man who allowed me to take care of everything in our lives. My teenage self would have loved that, being responsible for the house, the bills,...
2 comments
Read more