The 2020 Top 10 List or Counting the Blessings

 Well I think we can all agree that 2020 was a shit show. But it wasn’t all bad. I found a few glimmers of clean counter space in this non-stop glitter bomb of a year. Here we go!

1.       This year my neighbor and I finally found time to go for that walk that we never had time for before. And since May, we have found time to walk together at least once a week. Beside the fresh air and Vitamin D, I developed an awesome new friendship that has added sparkle to this year.

2.       I read more than 50 books! My goal was to read 50 books this year and because things like that trip to Orlando and visiting my family in Ohio were canceled, I had plenty of time to read. Were they all intellectual? Oh no, not at all. But I still read over 50 books so…

3.       I started running consistently again! But this time because I want to. There was that period when gyms closed and I was driven outside to do something that I hate. But this time I liked it. And now my gym is open but I don’t go as much because I take my workout outside 2-3 times a week. I ran this morning and it was 18 degrees and I described the weather as “beautiful.” Maybe I’m losing my mind a bit…

4.       Moose is in culinary class this fall and it is fantastic. Every Friday he comes home with something new he made or makes the recipe for us later. He gets to make us chicken fried rice and pumpkin pancakes next week.

    5.       I made Thanksgiving dinner! It was a boneless turkey breast (because I need foods to not resemble animals as much as possible), mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and real gravy from scratch! Me! I did it! And it tasted good! We were all prepared to order a Casey’s pizza or puke our guts out due to food poisoning. But my meal was so good that the Squirrel said he hopes we have a pandemic next Thanksgiving so I make the meal again. Let’s not go crazy kid…

6.       I found courage I didn’t know I had. On top of a pandemic and a hurricane in Iowa, we started our year off with Moose’s broken leg and subsequent surgery and I had to put my dear sweet Dixie down in the fall. So. Hard. Those two moments about broke me, but you know what? They didn’t. I helped my 275-pound baby up and down the stairs on my own and I made the decision to put Dixie out of her misery. I still can’t believe I did either of those things, but I did. They were both good reminders that I can do hard things.

7.       I signed up for RYT 200 next year! I’ve been wanting to do this yoga training for a decade and I’m finally doing it. Granted, this training starts in 2021 but I started the process of looking at different programs, registering and paying for it in 2020 so it counts. Now to just read all those books…

8.       I started to volunteer for the local food pantry. I have more flexibility with my schedule since I’ve been working from home so I took a few volunteer hours at work and helped at the pantry. I loved it. Now I sign up for the Tuesday nights it’s open when the babies are at their dad’s – it is such a great way to spend my evening. I even signed up the boys to help during break so they can experience it too.

9.       And the dark horse of 2020? Discovering the Little Debbie Cherry Cordials. I bought them as a joke, planning on being completely disgusted because I hate cherry flavoring. But by golly I love these little treats. Now I fight off the boys for the 10^th one in the box. I’m going to start hiding them under my bed soon.

Is there a number 10? No but I have hope. If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s that you can’t rule anything out. If we can have a worldwide pandemic, murder hornets and a hurricane in Iowa all within 9 months, then anything is possible.

Anti-Inflammation Diet for the Heart and Soul or If Your Spirit Wants a Cookie, Eat a Cookie

There are days where I can’t walk. I don’t know why but sometimes I will simply stand up and my knees will start screaming and I can barely move. Is it the weather? I hope not because Iowa weather flips on a dime so my knees do not have the luxury of being finicky. Is it overuse? I don’t think so because somedays it happens after I’ve had several good cardio days in a row and somedays it happens after I’ve taken a day off – almost like my knees have to move just to be happy. All I know is that there is pain and inflammation. I’m guessing I probably have a lot of inflammation in my body – I rode it hard when I was younger and waking up with muscle aches and soreness was an everyday occurrence. I didn’t think twice about my body asking for a break and instead pushed it to do what I told it to, regardless if it was exhausted or injured. This is my delayed gift – crippling pain that requires me to grab my cane to simply make it up the stairs. Paybacks are a bitch.

I try to manage my inflammation with healthy doses of Vitamin I (ibuprofen) and resentful rest days. I wondered if there was more I could do – maybe changing my diet would help reduce the inflammation in my body. I googled an anti-inflammation diet. Here’s what I found:

1.     Eat fruits and vegetables. Piece of cake. I love these.

2.     Avoid process meats. Okay, well I don’t love meat so this one isn’t too bad.

3.     Avoid sugar. Um, huh? I’ll admit, I knew this dumb one would be on the list because it’s on every list. I want to find the diet that says eat more sugar. I’m on board for that one.

4.     Eat oily fish. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Fish is disgusting. End of story. I can’t. I’m gagging thinking about it. Nothing is worth eating fish.

5.     Eat legumes. Okay, I’m down with beans. Much better suggestion than the fish thing.

6.     Drink tea. They mean caffeinated tea right? The beverage I grab after I have had at least 2 large cups of coffee? Sure!

7.     Avoid white flours. Sweet Mother. No sugar and no white bread? Not shocking as these are the anti-nutrition twins but maybe knee pain isn’t so bad. A life without cupcakes is also crippling.

Lately I’ve been thinking of inflammation and realized that it isn’t just physical. The last several months (as in 24) have been challenging between a divorce, the Trump administration (I swing blue) and a pandemic. I’m at the two year anniversary of the morning my husband told me he wanted a divorce and while these past two years have been full of wins and adventure, I can’t say they haven’t been without their challenges either. And in my usual fashion, I pushed through because quitting wasn’t an option, even when my brain begged for a break. But now I find myself fatigued, irritable, uninspired and overwhelmed and I realize that maybe my mind and spirit are inflamed too. They have not had many rest days in the past two years. Now, am I overall much happier? 100%. But has it been easy? No. Broken hearts littered my house – we needed a broom to sweep up the shattered dreams and hearts. And now the constant tension of a pandemic hanging over our heads has gotten old. We are in full pandemic/life fatigue and it is showing. Our hearts and minds are inflamed and there isn’t enough Advil in the world to numb it out.

So what’s an anti-inflammation diet look like for the heart, soul and mind? Here’s my best guess after absolutely no research.

1.     No social media. No, I haven’t watched The Social Dilemma yet – it’s on my list! But you have to be hiding under a rock to not figure out that our social media accounts feed our anxiety and constant comparison to others. And one thing I know for sure is that comparison is the enemy of happiness. Social media is also a great platform for cruelty and hate. Now, I love cat videos and Calvin and Hobbes comics as much as the next person. But maybe it’s time to pass on Facebook for awhile. Instagram….well I really do love those cat videos.

2.     Journaling. Something about putting pen to paper (or keys to a white screen) opens up my heart and mind and I somehow work out all of the problems I have in the world. I don’t know why this works but sometimes I am amazed at how wise I am when I am writing to myself. It’s unfortunate that this wisdom doesn’t often go further than my journal, but hey, that’s why we have Brene Brown and my next item on the list…

3.     Therapy. Friends. Go to therapy. I can’t stress enough how important finding the right therapist is for your mental and emotional health. You take your car to the mechanic for an oil change. It’s the same idea. Take your mind and heart in for a tune up too. You’d be surprised how dirty the oil is that your brain has been sitting in. Flush it out. Or drain it? I don’t know. I’m no mechanic. Or therapist.

4.     Moving my body. My mind is healthier when I move my body. When I’ve had too many rest days, I am not in a good head space. Something about moving my body makes everything right in the world. And 96% of the time, if I’ve gone for a run in the morning, I will have a good day. I like to sweat out the stress. I do know that if I am very angry, I have to run more than 12 miles to get that out of my system (tested this one out once.) But thankfully “furious” doesn’t happen too much anymore. Most of my ugly can be worked out after 2-3 miles these days.

5.     Meditating. My mind is an epic disaster. It’s like a roundabout that only leads to more roundabouts and they are all two-way and the drivers are all blindfolded. But TRYING to calm my brain for 15 minutes a day is better than nothing. And very occasionally I achieve silence…then I get really excited and starting thinking about how great it is…and then my mind is back on the roundabout again. But for those few seconds, it’s worth it.

6.     Sleep. Oh I love sleep and yet hate “wasting time” laying in bed. I hate sleeping in. I wake up and feel so far behind in my day that I am instantly anxious. But I also recognize that sleep is when our minds, guts, and bodies in general heal. And that’s the whole point of this exercise. I have to start practicing sleep more.

So as we approach a new year and start thinking of detoxing and anti-inflammation diets, maybe it’s time we look beyond just the body and dive into the heart and soul too. I know I need it after 2020. And goodness knows, fasting from Facebook is way more fun than fasting from food. In fact, being hungry just fills me with rage and I know that I don’t have the ability to run that kind of anger off anymore. Maybe I won’t have as many cookies with my (ahem) tea but I’m going to be make sure I’m caring for my spirit as much as my body moving forward. And sometimes that spirit wants a cookie. And in that case, she gets a cookie. She's as important as my knees - I can't run without her.

I Am a Runner and Other Things I Forgot or Dreaming Big Again

“The doctor says you’ll never run again.” Those were the first words I remember my (ex)husband telling me when I gained consciousness from surgery four years ago. I woke up disoriented, as one does after being put under, looked down, and saw a monstrosity on my leg, the leg brace I lovingly called The Beast, which I would wear for 10 long weeks. This news took me mostly by disbelief – I had gone into surgery for the purpose of fixing my knee so that I could run again. As I processed this news, which was reiterated by my surgeon later that day, I didn’t realize the impact those words really had made on me. I spent my days rehabbing my leg, spending 2 hours a day in a cooling machine, 2 hours a day on a movement machine and 1 hour a day in PT, trying to just lift my leg an inch off the ground. I spent my nights dreaming about running and waking up in grief. I got a very soft clearance from my PT after months of work that I could try to jog for 5 second intervals. The most I could hope for was one 5k a year, but I was happy with that – it felt like a victory after my surgeon had said my knee was so bad it warranted a full replacement when I was a little older.

And while this should have felt like beating the odds, it had the opposite effect. I felt defeated by the limitation. I hadn’t realized how much I had identified as a runner, probably because I hate running. I hated running for as long as I can remember. I remember feeling like I wasn’t the type of kid who could be athletic. As anorexia took over my late teens, running became a way to punish my body for living. Later I used running as a way to hustle for approval and recognition from others – I beat my body up in the hopes that if I just ran long enough, someone would be proud of me, of who I was. And now all of this had been taken away from me. It was devastating. But what I learned was that while running had started as punishment, it had turned into something I identified with, something that made me feel alive and proud of myself.

Fast forward a few years from that surgery day and so much of my life had changed. I went from a wife to a single mom. I felt like damaged goods in my faith and by society. I attended the mandatory coparenting training where I got to hear about how my failure to keep my husband happy would lead to my children being at risk for drugs and depression. I felt defined by my divorce - my new identity. I felt constantly judged. Walking into my son’s game by myself for the first time took more courage than I knew I had – thank goodness I had friends that asked me to sit with them so I didn’t feel alone. Changing my last name felt like a leap because it would announce to everyone that I was single and my kids would have to acknowledge their parents had separated. The shame was so strong. But slowly, slowly I started to think about what my identity is now. I had lost myself for so many years – I went from a wife to a mom to a divorcee and lost a Jenny in the process. I honestly didn’t even remember what I liked to do.

It’s been hard to reclaim Jenny. I started dating and felt judgment that I would spend any time doing anything that wasn’t related to being a mom. In full disclosure, I sobbed after my first post-divorce kiss because I felt so much guilt that I was cheating on my family – I had taken Catholic vows to be faithful for life. Catholics don’t divorce. I’m burning in hell right now as we speak. (At least it’s warmer than Iowa in November.) But at the same time, I didn’t feel like pining away for my kids when they were at their dad’s was healthy – it only made me sad and reminded me of their absence. I got advice that I should save all of the housework and shopping for when the kids were gone – not only would it fill the time my kids were away but it would also allow me to focus on them when they were home. And I tried that but soon realized that all that did was teach my kids that women will do all the heavy lifting when they aren’t there to spare them the reality of running a house and it also took away from me too – I truly am more than a mom.

It’s funny how we forget who we are. Recently I started a list of 100 dreams. One of the casualties of divorce is it takes away the dreams you had for the future. It was time for me to start a new list of things I wanted to do. And as I brainstormed, I slowly started to remember Jenny. She likes to read, write, teach, move her body, help others, be outside, create and experience life to the fullest with her kids. I wrote down goals I’ve never considered before – visit every National Park, play the drums again, learn how to play the banjo, learn how to knit, write a book, get a PhD, learn how to decorate a cake. There are no dreams too big or too small for this list.

I dusted off one of those old dreams I thought was gone. Running. It was time to shake off those first post-surgery words that haunted me for so long. I forgot that I am a runner. Just simply remembering who I am was so empowering – it completely changed my mindset and I started running consistently again. It isn’t pretty and I have to give myself a lot of grace – and some days ice and Advil. But that’s okay. When I started running 20 years ago, it wasn’t pretty either and I took plenty of “Vitamin I” back then also. Sounds like I am right on track (is that a running pun?)

The days of allowing other people to define me and tell me who I am are over. What else had I forgotten about myself? It was time to stop letting the guilt and shame of divorce hold me back. I forgot that I am lovable and as soon as I remembered that fact, I fell in love again. What could I do if I stopped listening to the static? Who was I before I was a mom? It was time to live for that girl again.  

I am so excited to rediscover all of those other things I forgot about myself. I am an artist, a friend, a passionate person, a writer, a teacher. I am all of those things and more. It’s time my children learn more about Jenny and it’s time I remember her too. I can’t wait to be the person that I forgot I was. Truthfully, she never left. She has been waiting for me this whole time. I think my kids are going to like her. I know I do.

Dream big Friends and don't forget who you are. You are the only one who knows for sure.

Stop Fighting the "New Normal" or Think of the Stories We'll Have

 Aren’t we all tired? Aren’t we all exhausted? The pandemic, politics, murder hornets? It is too much and we are all over this “new normal.” I’m even tired of hearing the phrase “new normal.” No big parties, no homecoming, no graduation, the list could go on and on. You go to a restaurant and forget that there may not be seating. Who hasn’t walked into the grocery store only to promptly turn around because you forgot your mask? “Oh,” you think to yourself, “I forgot about the ‘new normal’.”

But what if it’s not the “new normal?” What if it’s just “normal?” Life is always changing and always shifting. And maybe for you, there haven’t been major earthquakes in your life, disrupting your “normal.” Over the last four years, I’ve dealt with nothing but earthquakes – I think I’ve had a “new normal” every year. Major surgery in 2016 completely changed how I move my body, even through today. In 2017 I received a Facebook message from an angry husband that completely changed everything I thought I knew about my marriage. In 2018, my husband filed for divorce and I had to think about how to be a single mom. In 2019, my divorce was finalized. By the time I hit 2020, I was already used to the rules changing on me so maybe that’s why the pandemic, quarantining and a run on toilet paper is just a continuation of what has already been a crazy couple of years. Heck, our family started 2020 off with a broken leg and subsequent surgery in our house – a pandemic just added sprinkles to our garbage sundae.

What I’m saying is maybe we just need to get over the fact that things didn’t turn out the way we wanted them to. Maybe instead of focusing on how it is so different from before, we just focus on what it is – just a different way of living. What I’ve learned is that dwelling on how things are different is a bit toxic when we could be using that energy to just move forward with the new world we live in. I couldn’t help the fact my husband wanted a divorce but I could focus on how to create a great world in my “new normal.” Can I run long distances anymore? No, but I have been challenged to accept my body the way it is.

After the divorce, the mantra in my house is that different isn’t bad, it’s just different. It’s our attitude about what happens around us that makes the difference. Have you ever caught yourself thinking, “I can’t believe this is happening to me!” I know I have and that thought pattern swiftly takes me down a rabbit hole of anxiety, fear and resentment. Now I know for myself, those three horsemen are not healthy emotions in my brain. They waste my energy by being completely unproductive. When I feel any of those emotions, I am too far into them to get myself to do what it takes to change my situation. Instead we are sitting down with coffees at Starbucks, bitching about our lives.

I try to practice meditation every day though. And normally my brain is like a child with ADHD, a box of sugar and 721 things to do, but that’s part of meditation – finding a way to quiet that constant noise. And when I filter through all of that noise and mental distraction and pinpoint that my thought processes are going through the “this is happening to me” film reel, I can take a moment and change it to just “this is happening.” And that makes all of the difference.

What if everything around us isn’t personal? What if our situations are simply just that - situations? Wearing a mask isn’t personal. The pandemic isn’t personal. Getting a divorce isn’t personal (friends that was a hard one to embrace.) But changing my mindset really makes a difference on how I manage change and challenge. Recognizing that things are not happening to me, they are just happening, takes the emotion out of it and allows me to use that energy in a better way – finding a way to live with my “new normal” instead of fighting against it. It allowed me to make a quick shift in thinking from “we are a broken house” to “we get to create a healthier and happier family.” When I couldn’t literally run away from my problems anymore, it forced me to face my disordered eating and negative body image.

I’m not saying I’m good at this. I’m not but that’s okay. I’m working on it every single day. That’s the beauty of being alive – if we were born perfect, we’d be boring. Find me the person who has been through 13 “new normals” and that person will be the most inspirational and interesting person in the room because they are a constant work of art – evolving to become their best self in that moment. As one of my best friends told me when I was going through my divorce, “So this isn’t Plan A anymore. Let’s see what Plan B is. Or Plan C, D or E. We were never always going to have Plan A.” Obviously she is wiser than I am.

So welcome to the land of just “normal.” If we are lucky, we are constantly challenged, forcing us to change into better versions of ourselves. I want to hear about your Plan B or your Plan W. And think of the stories we can tell our grandkids – about how we lived through the Pandemic of 2020, murder hornets and elections where ballots were counted by hand. Wear a mask. Be kind. Love even when it’s scary.

Navigating the River of Life or Rocks, Branches and Killer Fish

I booked a kayaking trip down the river for our family vacation this year. Small issue. I am completely afraid of rivers. Rivers will kill you. Currents will sweep you down to the inevitable dam that is always there and you will drown. You’ll get sucked into a whirlpool and drown. Your kayak will tip over and you will drown. You will be crushed on the rocks in the rapids and drown. Fish will attack you and eat you and you will drown. I know, completely rational reasons to avoid rivers, right? But for real, rivers scare me to death (if you couldn’t tell.) You can’t see what’s under the water (at least not in an Iowa river) – there are tree branches and rocks. There are scary fish – well, all fish are scary – but river ones are ugly and have teeth (they do!) So scheduling a kayaking trip down a river made perfect sense. But I knew my kids would like it and I like the IDEA of kayaking – other than the tipping over, not being able to steer, drowning and dying parts. Super glad I signed us up. Deep breaths…

I informed the main guide that I was deathly afraid of rivers but hey, it will be alright, right? Right?! I’m sure she was very excited to get to work with someone who was barely hanging on to her hysteria. Everyone was excited for this trip! It was the moment and I got into my kayak and pushed off from the edge and immediately started breathing fast – 4.5 miles of this? Can it be over now? And where are my kids? Oh my gosh I am leading them to their doom on our vacation!

I started paddling with a mission. I wanted to keep up with the guide but not go in front of her because I didn’t know where I was going. (Um, it’s a river – there was only one way…) I snapped at Moose when his kayak would accidently bump into me – didn’t he know how hard I was trying to have fun here and he was freaking me out! Thankfully he knows that when I am scared, I get a little irrational. In his helpful way, he pointed out a rock in the river to avoid. Huh? I don’t see a rock at all. It’s just brown water everywhere and the next thing I knew, I was stuck on this rock I never saw coming. Stuck. Everyone else was in front of me, going around a bend, and I knew, this was my time to die, on the Skunk River in Story County, Iowa. Kind of anticlimactic, but we can’t always choose how we go. I hoped my kids would remember me fondly, as I frantically worked my paddle to dislodge me from this damned rock. I almost tipped over and decided, no, I would just sit here in this kayak for the rest of my life and die a slow death of starvation (the water was maybe 2 feet deep here) versus being eaten alive by fish when I fell into the water. And then, I felt it. The water started to shift my kayak and I was glided off the rock naturally. Somehow I had survived this near death experience and despite my initial scream when I lodged onto the rock, I tried to nonchalantly catch up with the rest of the group, cool because, hey everyone knows how to get off rocks when they get stuck, right? No big deal. Where is my paper bag to breathe into?

Then our guide announces that there were “ripples” up ahead. Ripples?! Oh, like tiny mini rapids she says – like its no big deal. WHAT? I barely survived a rock in the water that I couldn’t see and now we were going through class 10-Z rapids? (I have no idea if rapids have ratings but 10-Z seems like it would be pretty serious.) I watch my Squirrel just shoot right through without issue. Great, I’ve got this – if he can do it, so can I. I survived the boulder attack in the water earlier, I can do this. And then the Moose gets stuck. Then my guides get stuck. And I’m in full out panic mode inside and because I can’t help it, I hit both my guides’ canoe and Moose’s kayak. I am helpless. I feel the water rushing around me and know that no, THIS is actually my time to die. I feel my kayak start to move and then it flips me around and I am now going down the ripples backwards. I am going to go to my death peacefully I thought so I just stopped paddling and let the river do its thing. Within a few seconds though, I was able to turn around and face the right way again, grinning. I had let go and just let nature take its course and I came through great. I was beyond proud of myself, ignoring the complete meltdown I had had on the inside seconds before – no one saw it so it doesn’t count.

After that I stopped paddling frantically to finish the river and instead just floated and took it all in. I love nature. I love seeing my kids in nature. We were surrounded by trees. The weather was amazing. I was thankful for this amazing moment. And it was so quiet, it was hard not to relate this experience to life.

Up until my husband filed for divorce, I could not imagine my life without him. Our marriage wasn’t good but I always thought it would get better. If I made more money. If I could afford for him to get a new truck. Once the kids moved out and we had more time together. If I could make him happy, he would be happy to be married to me. I worked so hard because life without him was unfathomable. Was I happy? No, I wasn’t but I clung to the hope that the season we were going through was just that – a season. I didn’t know that my marriage ended long before he filed papers. Immediately I was dropped into a river of sorts – a place I had tried to avoid with all my heart. I couldn’t see the hidden dangers under the surface – many had shown their faces in the past year and were terrible surprises. I couldn’t steer the direction my life was taking – I was going to be a single mom no matter what I wanted. I was scared to death and didn’t want to fall out of my kayak and drown as I navigated this new river of life I found myself in.

I didn’t know what else to do so I paddled. I paddled so hard. I did all of the homework my lawyer gave me. I found therapists for the kids. I shored up my finances as best I could. I continued doing my work in therapy. I cried to my friends. I worked to find my voice – just my voice as I was speaking for just me, not us, now. I had been an “us” for so long that I didn’t know how to even be a “me.” And just like the ripples, life pushed me through and now I was on the other side. Here I was at one year after the divorce, having this amazing vacation with my loves, and now it was time to just relax and float a little bit.

What I learned on the river kayaking and in the past year is that I’m not always going to know what is underneath the surface of the murky water. I’m going to get surprised, scared and stuck sometimes. But I learned that I can get myself off the rocks when I get stuck. I may end up going backwards for a bit and have no idea what I am doing, but I’ll figure it out. I can do scary things. I can navigate this life as a single mom and I can navigate a river that frightens me. And that makes me breathe a little easier, relax a little more and enjoy the ride as I float down this life with my loves.

That's Not the Plan or Stop Shuffling the Damned Playlist

You see, I had a plan. Get married, have a career, have kids, live happily ever after. Fool proof – all I had to do was keep my husband, boss and kids happy and everything would work out. But it didn’t and about 20 months ago my husband of 20 years filed for divorce. So I made a new plan. Make my house into a home, create a new family unit of 3, make the kids okay despite having a “broken home” and try to recover financially. I spent all of last summer making the house mine, establishing a new culture for our family and trying desperately to heal my boys. Next on the list – finances. I’m not sure if you know this but divorce is expensive and so is being a single mom. My brain was constantly moving with ideas of how to save money and make money so my kids would be protected and still get to do everything they had when we were a family of four.

And then, like so many times before, my life took a detour. I met a guy. He knew it was my first date since being divorced – my first “first” date in over 25 years. I informed him I wasn’t looking for anything – I was just fine on my own thank you and that was how I intended to live out the rest of my days (great start, right?) Besides, my focus was on fixing my family and making us financially secure and there could be no deviations from the plan. I had work to do and people to take care of. I had RESPONSIBILITIES. I had no time for play. Yet he kept hanging around. I got used to him being there. He patiently kept waiting for me to give him something I didn’t have available.

I think every season gives us challenges to overcome and opportunities to grow. You would think by now I would have learned that I don’t get to create the playlist for my life. Learning how to walk again and accepting my body’s limitations (*work in progress*) after major surgery – not on the playlist. Trying to save a marriage – not on the playlist. Divorce – definitely not on the playlist. Doing it on my own – not on the playlist. Who picked these shitty songs?

But after about 4 years of surprise twists, I thought I was finally in charge of the direction my life was going to take. I could move things anywhere I wanted in my house. My kids and I could make plans on our own. My house was safe from conflict and anger (sibling rivalry excluded.) When I checked my bank account, I knew where my money was going. I was in control. And then someone hit shuffle on the playlist and a love song came up and I didn’t know what to do with that.

I look at all of these people on Facebook and Instagram and they make falling in love look so easy. It looks like such a happy time for them – bliss, belonging, finding their person. I was so jealous. I, on the other hand, was like a bull in a china shop, bumping into the shelves, breaking expensive dishes, looking frantically for the exit so I could get the hell out. Love equals fear for me. Love means I have to do a bunch of healing work I didn’t know I had to do. It means confronting memories and challenging what I thought to be true. And there is no plan. There is no neat and tidy list of items for me to tackle one by one. These traumas pop up out of nowhere and I usually take one look at them and say, no thank you, I’ve had enough – let’s just tuck that feeling back inside and go for a run. (Please see paragraph 3 about major surgery – clearly I couldn’t outrun my feelings anymore.)

I questioned whether it was too soon. I told my therapist I just wasn’t capable of loving someone – other than my kids, friends and family of course. I was positive that I was broken and really, why inflict that on someone who is a good person. My therapist would counter with words of wisdom like, “how long do you plan to stay in that prison you’ve created,” and “so you’d like to keep getting the same results in life.” (My therapist is amazing and unfortunately she is not taking new clients.) And probably because she knows me so well, she knows I don’t back down from a challenge. Yes, it may take me some time to get there, but telling me that my choice is the easy way of status quo or the hard way that sucks but will give me a different kind of life, I’m going to choose the hard way. I will choose pain and discomfort over fear any day. And I was scared to death of love.

Love meant I’d have to confront the yuck that is stacked in my brain like a bunch of apples – when you take out one memory, the others tumble down too and now you have a bunch of bruised apples and an angry grocery store clerk. But I knew that I’d have to start sometime and whether it was now with a great guy or 10 years later, the hard work had to be done. I don’t step away from a challenge if the prize is worth it. And people seem to think love is worth it. Slowly I started to lean in. I challenged what I knew to be true and it turns out it wasn’t.

My goals this year were supposed to be financially and professionally driven – areas where I felt confident and in control – that was the plan. Instead I started the work of figuring out how to trust and love. So far it has proven to be harder than starting a new business but I’m hoping it will make me richer in the end. It has taken all of my extra mental energy that I have left over at the end of the day. I have put other goals on hold to work on this one that I never had on my radar. I have cried more than I ever expected I would as I rumbled through the mental scar tissue and created new truths. But one of my mantras is nothing worth doing is easy. I ask a lot of questions. I do a lot of thinking. I am rewriting the messaging. It is taking me some time. But people say love is worth it. I am trusting they are right.

Jenny’s Life Soundtrack Playlist
Fix You – Coldplay
Unstoppable – Sia
Titanium -  David Guetta and Sia
Dig In – Lenny Kravitz
Lose Yourself – Eminem
Run the World (Girls) – Beyonce
I Should Have Known It – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones
Beautiful – Christina Aguilera
Praying – Kesha
Glorious – Macklemore
Today – Smashing Pumpkins
Nobody But You – Blake Shelton featuring Gwen Stefani

Cautiously Grateful or Lessons for Normal

Friends, it’s been a year. A year of adjustments, balancing, finding a new normal and finding a new normal again. It’s been a year of finalizing my divorce and figuring out how to handle the quiet when my loves aren’t in my home. It’s been a year of discovering love and trust. And just when we got that figured out and the Squirrel and I stopped fighting about how terrible divorce is and we celebrated our first holidays as a family of three together, the Moose broke his leg. Oh my heavens that was a challenge. The physical pain, the emotional pain and the mental pain was a journey. My days went from worrying about being a mom and work to worrying about how I was going to get my 250 pound baby up the stairs by myself. I didn’t sleep for weeks. But we learned how to find the good in challenging situations. We did it.

And just when we started physical therapy and life started to get back to normal again, the pandemic hit. Now that we can actually go and do things with Moose, we can’t because of tiny little germs that we can’t see and that I have a difficult time convincing the Squirrel exist. And now we are in a new normal, one I could never have imagined in a million years. For the third time in 11 months our lives came to a screeching halt and took an immediate hard left into unknown territory. Fortunately  (or unfortunately depending on how you look at it), I am perpetually lost (please don’t watch me find my car in a parking lot) and I am comfortable with having no idea where I’m at or how I’m going to get home. Thank goodness these past few years have taught me that I have no real control over many of my circumstances and that I can find the lessons and get back on track if I just stop, look around and pause.

These past three weeks have been full of disappointment. Spring break was a drag. I’m not presenting at a conference in Florida anymore. We don’t get to go to soccer games or taekwondo testing or concerts. The family vacation to Florida that I worked so hard to take the kids on (with Grandma in tow!) is postponed indefinitely. Postponed indefinitely – oh my gosh how sick are we of that phrase? Can I just ask what the hell is going on with the toilet paper thing? My birthday and the one year anniversary of our new family won’t be celebrated at restaurants or at amusement parks. Heck, we don’t even know if we can go on our annual family vacation to Ohio. Working from home has been challenging as the boys are stir crazy with no outlets for their energy, social needs or (ahem) “creativity.”

This has been taxing. Just last week after getting tired of being the referee in the “who hit who first” game between two children who KNOW HITTING IS NEVER OKAY, I sent the kids to their rooms and told them to settle the argument themselves and to come downstairs when it was over. It worked in the Parent Trap when the camp director sent the twins to live in a disgusting cabin when they were fighting. Apparently movies aren’t real. You guys. Two hours they yelled at each other. And then they came downstairs and the three of us argued for another hour. A three hour standoff that ended with me threatening to use all of my vacation time to babysit them instead of taking us on an actual vacation…sometime. I don’t even know how it ended. I just know that in the end we finished the last few episodes Schitt’s Creek that night and I crawled into bed exhausted.

I was thinking about how I’m going to make adjustments to week four of quarantine so it is better than week three. Each week I make tweaks – work earlier before the kids get up so I can take more breaks during the day to interact with them, plan more organized activities, maybe start reading the emails from school, stop reading the tweets from school. This week we will have milk and cookie breaks every day and read Harry Potter. We will take one “play” break each day – nerf gun fight, ping pong, dance party, walks, family yoga (okay that one might be a pipe dream of mine.) We will keep working our way through the Marvel movies – we have watched 12 of them so far. How is that even possible? I started wondering when would we get back to Normal? May? June? The Squirrel already had his June camp canceled. Will we have our vacation to Cedar Point? Will things be Normal by July?

And then I remembered Normal. We don’t get daily ping pong or nerf gun fights in Normal. We don’t have milk and cookie breaks in the middle of a work day in Normal. Movies every night in Normal? No way. If we are lucky, we are all home one night a week in Normal. If it isn’t a sport or music activity then the Moose is at a party or the Squirrel is running off with friends. A family dinner during Normal is at 8 p.m. not at 6 p.m.

Maybe this isn’t SO bad. I’m not saying I like this staying in place thing. I don’t. I miss my gym, I miss my friends, I miss teaching yoga and seeing my students face-to-face. I’m mad I don’t get to do my plans because as much as I’ve learned how to adapt these past few years, I’m a planner and a doer. I am so glad I have a job and I’m trying desperately to find a balance between work, my babies and my sanity. I’m not there yet - I’m getting closer each week but it still sucks. My kids are still going to fight and we will all probably have weekly stand offs with each other. I’m tired of trying to be a fun yet productive mom and at the same time be 100% present at my job. But you know what? I’m going to miss this imposed family time too. When we get back to Normal and are running in three different directions each night, we are going to look back and remember when we were forced to slow down, hang out as a family because we weren’t allowed to see anyone else and go for walks because it was the only place for us to go. Maybe when we get back to Normal, we can try to take a few lessons with us from the Quarantine Months - family walks, helping our neighbors and washing our hands. We may just all come through this a little bit closer, more generous and cleaner (and with a full closet of toilet paper.) And that's not a bad thing.