I’ve decided that you can be two totally different people at the same time if you need to be.
There are no rules for this. There are no lines to be walked when you’re punching your way out of a life-eclipsing situation. You make the rules for your own survival.
It’s okay to be excited and be devastated all at once. That’s part of the grace that you get from growing through this. You go in as one person and you come out as another.
While you’re fighting through it, you’re going to be all kinds of different people. Once the bomb detonated, the old you was history anyway. You may as well be all the people and all the things you need to be while you’re plowing through.
Be the angriest you’ve ever been and then be elated when you come down. You’re growing. Be patient for a new beginning and be impatient for an end. It’s happening. Be weak and strong and right and wrong and needy and indifferent and all the things and none of the things you need to get yourself out.
There are no rules. The only thing you have to be all the time is a believer that it’s FOR A REASON. Be a devout parishoner in the church of BELIEVING YOU’RE ON YOUR WAY TO A BETTER PLACE. Go there every minute of the day. Live there. Let every moment be shrouded in respect for all of your selves. All the selves you are right now and all the selves you’re going to become.
This is the most pure love of the day. It’s not always pretty, but it’s beautiful. Waking up slowly in a little pile of smelly human love. My perfectly insane, small humans.
Permanent damage to my vertebrae is a small price to pay for waking up with these two midnight marauders. I go to sleep alone and wake up as the sugary goodness in an offspring Oreo.
Everyone’s breath is awful, someone’s always farting, and inevitably, there’s a short commentary about morning wood. We giggle and snuggle and talk about nonsense. It’s before the day’s frustrations have set in and we’re all still hazy with the soft happiness of sleep.
I never want to stop waking up with them. I never want these tiny moments of raw togetherness with them to end.
They are what tethers me to the planet most days and I don’t want them to grow another minute older.
I want to freeze the three of us in this stinky pile of love so the only thing that continues to move and grow is my perfectly content heart.
Back in August I went away for a 40th birthday weekend with my best friend and I put this dress on and went to dinner. We had a great night. I was 30 pounds heavier then. And I was happy. I felt a light inside.
I got home from that trip and I wrote a blog post about wearing this dress. That post went viral and opened the door to what I now consider to be my burgeoning career. And I didn’t look or feel the way I do in this same dress today.
August 14, 2017
In August, I was struggling to believe I was beautiful. I wanted to say that if I could wear the dress the way I felt in it, if I could believe I was beautiful, then anyone could. My message of positivity was shared by thousands of people. My light was shining.
Then, specifics aside, in October I learned that I was living in a lie and didn’t know it. For a long time. And things that no woman should ever have to hear were said to me, by someone I loved. So much.
I heard things that I’ll never be able to un-hear. Things that made me realize why I was struggling to believe I was beautiful in the first place. Things that made me realize why I was having a hard time loving myself. Things I’m left with now to rattle around inside my brain. But there’s still a brightness.
I look the way I do in the dress now because of a broken heart. And that’s okay. I mean, I choose to believe that it’s going to be okay. As hurt as I am, I still have happiness. My mind and body and heart are healing. And I’m thankful for that.
NOW I KNOW that it’s never been about my body anyway. I don’t think the first post was about my body and I don’t think that this post is about my body.
I think it’s all been about spirit. It’s all been about strength and self-love and the struggle to save myself. From myself and from others. From outside forces. To preserve that little flicker of light that I’ve never let go out. A constant promise that’s always lived in me to stay bright inside to survive. As bad as things have gotten in my life and as hard as things may get for me, I know that the dark is no place for me to live. And I will keep this light on to lead me out.
Today I realized that there’s something good about breaking. It creates cracks for the painful things to flow out. Things that have been poisoning you inside and you didn’t know it. And if you want to, you can choose to try to replace those things with joy. With things that were once healthy and happy and good. I hope.
This is me in a past life. Maybe 12 years ago. Before I was a mom. Dancing in the dark one night with my friends and a sweet, sweet beer buzz. I love this picture. There’s joy in me in this picture. Before I started to close myself in.
Now that I’m broken open, I’m going to try find that joy again. The joy that was inside this girl. Some days I don’t know if I can, but I know I’m going to try to make this breaking count for something good.
I’m going to try to replace this betrayal with a million tiny beautiful, brave things. I’m going to try to replace this heartbreak with hope. I’m going to try to replace this disbelief with dancing. And I’m going to try to stay so beautifully broken open that I never get closed in again.
All of the important messages of speaking out impacted me at last night’s Golden Globes, but there was a line in Oprah’s speech that resonated with me the most. And in a different way. Really, just a fragment of a line.
She said, “In 1982, Sidney (Poitier) received the Cecil B. DeMille award right here at the Golden Globes and it is not lost on me that at this moment, there are some little girls watching as I become the first black woman to be given this same award.”
Something there spoke to me unexpectedly in my new year of trying to be brave. I mean, I don’t think I’ll be winning any awards in the near future, but what I do know is that “at this moment, there are some little girls watching.” In my case, one little girl. My 10 year old daughter, Ollie.
This time, this divorce, as hard as it is on me, is having an effect on my kids. I can’t tell fully yet what it is, but I know it has to be. None of us can suddenly be thrust into this and be able to make sense of it, especially not my kids. Their dad moves out and their parents no longer speak. I think that’s enough for gravity to let go of all of us and let us float off into outerspace.
What I realized, though, is that she is looking at me and looking to me. Watching me, to see how I recoil from this. I’m her compass. She’s looking at me to show her the way. And she’ll follow. Every tear I shed affects her. Every time she catches me lingering in bed a little too long scares her. Every reaction I have everyday informs her on how to feel.
So I have to fight. Not even for me. For her. So that if, when she grows up, some man does this to her, she’ll have a map on how to get herself back. She won’t define herself by the love of a man or the pain that he can cause. She won’t allow her self-worth to be compromised by staying with someone who is indifferent to it. She’ll look back at this time and remember watching me fight my way back to earth and she’ll know to do the same.
Right now, the most important little girl is watching me. I’ll be composed on the outside and I’ll be clawing my way back on the inside because someday I want her to want to be like me. And that can’t happen if she watches me disappear.
If you’re struggling in a way that threatens your survival – put up a fight. I don’t mean struggling to make ends meet. I mean if you feel yourself spinning out to space. If you can see your whole self disappearing – fight like your life depends on it. Because there’s someone who needs you to come back. And they’re watching.
I had to be brave today. I didn’t believe I could do it. My mother looked at me and said, “You’re going to breathe through it and the message you’re going to send is that he can knock you down but he can’t keep you down.” I said to her, “He doesn’t care either way.” And she said, “But you do.” So I did it. I was brave.
At the end of my reiki session last week, the therapist asked me to write down an affirmation to take with me and told me to put it somewhere that I could see it all the time. She told me to write “I AM COMPLETE. I AM ENOUGH.” I cried. I couldn’t write it. Because I don’t believe it. YET.
2017 has been 100 years for me. I was stretching my tentacles for much of it. Reaching out to myself and out of myself. Embracing the experience of writing and making people laugh with 8 open arms. I was coming back from a dark place I’d put myself in and I was beginning to reclaim a little bit of my power. Until October 6th when I was shot down out of the sky by the person I loved the most and who I believed loved me the most. All three of my octopus hearts, broken.
Now, the thing I’m believing in the most is bravery. Hoping I can believe bravery into reality and back into my hearts. Bravery to face betrayal. Bravery to face the pain. Bravery to believe that I’ll get to the other side of this. Bravery to tell myself that the happiness ahead will be what I deserved all along. Bravery to allow myself to believe that one day soon, I WILL BE COMPLETE and I WILL BE ENOUGH.
Wishing you bravery so big it fills all three of your octopus hearts in 2018.
This is the face of a girl who has one dream dying and another dream coming true. How can this be possible? My marriage is over and my heart is broken, and yet somehow, my dream of being a working writer is suddenly sprawling itself out in front of me like a brand new lover in my bed.
I’m going to take it as the most glorious sign and be gracious and be thankful and be present and make love to it in every possible way.
I lived “happily” in such a state of SAMENESS for so long. Every day was the same. Every conversation was the same. Every person was the same. Now, I’m faced with newness in every single minute. In my brain, in my heart, in my experiences. Everything is the first time for my new normal, but now I have this little gift of self-worth that I’ve created. I have something new that’s bringing me this crazy joy of self-fulfillment, in one of my darkest times.
This little dream I suddenly started believing in again last October when I started my blog. Maybe I knew this storm was coming and I grew the blog from my heart like a little life preserver for me to cling to. Just in the nick of time. HOW LUCKY AM I FOR THAT?
Keep your eyes open and your heart open and be willing to hurt and feel and change and be scared and take chances and look at what can happen. Grow yourself new dreams so that if one dream dies, you’ll still have magical things to cling to.
This is my daughter Olivia brushing her friend Ellie’s hair. I took this photo when my family was visiting my best friend Nichole’s family last spring. Ellie is Nichole’s daughter. The girls didn’t know it at the time, and they still don’t, but it was the weekend they became best friends.
It was Saturday morning and I’d slept in the kids’ room with all 4 kids in case mine woke up during the night. The kids got up early and headed downstairs to play. I heard some husband voices down there, so I continued to doze, a little wine soaked from the night before. A while later I woke up to the sound of the girls chatting in Nichole’s large closet, attached to the kid’s bedroom. The door was cracked enough so I could see Olivia brushing Ellie’s hair. I quickly got out of bed and crept in to snap a few pictures before they could protest.
A little background. Nichole and I come from a long line of best friends. Our grandmothers were neighbors and close friends, so our fathers had always been close. When Nichole was born 6 months after me, our best friend destiny was sealed. That was 40 years ago.
Nichole and I in 1982.
Now, the 5-hour distance between my Long Island home and Nichole’s Syracuse home makes it difficult for us to get together as much as we’d like. We had a great weekend with them and our kids cried when it was time to say goodbye. On the car ride back to Long Island, going through the photos on my phone, I came across the hair brushing pictures. All bleary-eyed and probably recovering from the night before, I’d forgotten I took those.
An Instagram fan, I quickly added a few filters to it and posted it to my FB page. It wasn’t until a few hours later that I looked at the picture again and got chills, suddenly remembering the last time Nichole had brushed my hair. The morning after my brother died. The day she became my sister.
It was July 8, 1993. She and I were 16. My brother J.P. had died suddenly the day before from cardiac arrest following a bout of heatstroke. He was 19. Nichole slept in my bed with me and woke up next to me with the confirmation that the day before hadn’t been a nightmare like I hoped. That morning I went to the funeral home with my parents, somehow thinking they could use my support. I didn’t last long and I ended up on the front steps of the funeral home in the hot summer sun waiting for my aunt to pick me up.
Getting back to the house, Nichole was still there. I played Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd on repeat because my brother used to play it. I sat on the floor dazed and she sat behind me and brushed my long brown hair while the music blared. Because the days that followed were such a blur, I hadn’t thought of that moment in 24 years. What seemed like a small gesture at the time now reveals itself to me as the moment she stepped into her rightful role as my heart’s mender and still now, my heart’s protector.
Nichole & I in 2017.
I’m not writing this to rehash the feelings of that awful time. I’m writing this because when I looked back at the picture of Olivia brushing Ellie’s hair, it struck me that what Nichole and I share, our girls have begun to share. It was a strange and beautiful feeling. They’re 10 and 7. Their 3-year age difference was palpable until that weekend when I took this picture and they became inseparable.
I remembered Nichole’s grandmother telling me stories about my own grandmother. I wondered how many times they’d laughed together or consoled each other or stood together in front of a mirror while they prepared for a night out with our grandfathers. I wondered if they’d had any idea that something as simple as their friendship would become so much more for Nichole and I and now for our kids. I wonder how happy they’d be to see their granddaughters and their great granddaughters sharing the same bond they shared almost 80 years earlier.
This picture is the culmination of 40 years of laughter, tears, firsts, lasts, fights, failures and triumphs I shared with Nichole. I realized our daughters will have that together now. That’s the legacy we’ve passed on to them.
When I look back at the picture of Olivia brushing Ellie’s hair, I hope one day our girls will realize that they’re so much more than “fourth generation besties”. I hope they’ll understand that sometimes the best kind of family is the kind you find outside your bloodlines. It’s the family that somehow becomes your family through the opening and rending of your hearts and the experience of shared joy. It’s the family we make for ourselves.
This is me in a dress I have no business wearing. It’s not the first time I’ve worn it and it won’t be the last time. I know it’s not flattering but I don’t want you to say, “OMG, YOU LOOK GREAT!” I don’t want you to say, “GOOD FOR YOU!” I want you to know why I’m wearing a dress I have no business wearing.
I took this picture two days ago. I was one and a half proseccos deep during a girl’s weekend with my best friend and we were on our way to a nice dinner. Someone could say that I look a little pregnant in it, because of, you know, that part sticking out in the front. I do look a little pregnant. That’s fine. Once upon a time I grew two babies in that part sticking out in the front, but I assure you, now it’s just where I keep my cheeseburgers and sauvignon blanc.
I bought this dress for a trip my husband and I took in July. When I tried it on I knew the dress wasn’t made for my 5’2″ body, 160 lb. body, but I felt great in it. I don’t know why. I just did. I’m not known to wear form-fitting clothes. At all. But I wanted it, so I bought it. And I was proud of myself for it.
The truth is, I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, other than when I was pregnant. Another truth is that I’ve always struggled with my weight and if you’ve ever struggled with your weight, you know it’s not a physical struggle. It’s about how you see yourself and how you speak to yourself in your mind. After 40 years of telling myself I have no business wearing things I want to wear, I’ve decided to change the subject. I’ve decided to start being kind to myself.
I’m a work from home mom. I make my own schedule. I could spend 2 hours a day at the gym if I wanted to. I could run from here to Manhattan and back if I set my mind to it. The thing is, my mind is elsewhere. Right now I’m in the business of keeping my shit together. I’m in the business of raising loving children. I’m in the business of maintaining healthy friendships. I’m in the business of having a happy marriage.
For 40 years I’ve stood in the mirror and compared how I look to how I THINK I should look. And it’s exhausting. Now, in an ugly world where I have so many other, more important things to worry about, I’m hitting that red decline button when the self-doubt calls start pouring it. I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to be in the business of loving myself. It’s as simple as that.
I’m not saying I’m giving up. I’ll still try to get healthy, here and there. I’m just taking a break from beating myself up. I’m muting the negative things I say to myself, because as it turns out, I care way more about my own comments than anyone else’s.
So here’s the thing. If I can put on a dress I have no business wearing to go out with my husband or to go to a fancy dinner at a nice restaurant with my best friend because it makes me feel good, you can too. And if I’m putting this picture on my Facebook page for 15,000 people to see, well then you can certainly wear a dress you have no business wearing to a BBQ this weekend. If the hard part is talking yourself into it, tell yourself life’s too short to worry about things you have no business wearing.
When I was laid off from my publishing job in Manhattan in 2010, I was ready for a change. The soul-crushing daily 3 hour round trip commute from Long Island to the city, usually with a passed out fat guy’s elbow jammed into my boob, took up too much time away from my family. I was prepared to find a job closer to home but as the gods would have it, I didn’t go back to work outside of my house. Now, 6 and a half years later, I realize I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I started my career in magazine publishing before I finished college. I’d had a 6-credit internship at UsWeekly to close out my writing degree and 3 weeks into it, they hired me. I worked for Wenner Media, who also publishes Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal, for the better part of the next 11 years. I loved my job, but that commute was a killer, to say the least. The day I was laid off, I was shocked and elated.
About a year before my layoff, I’d started making custom photo mats for friends as wedding and baby shower gifts. Nine days after I was laid off I opened my Etsy shop, KJ Frames, and I’ve been home, alone, making frames in my basement office, ever since.
To be fair, she’s hilarious.
Before we get too far, I need to clarify that I AM NOT COMPLAINING. I’M EXPLAINING. This is MY experience. I’m not saying everyone’s experience is the same. In fact, well-adjusted individuals might find their experience to be the exact opposite of mine. I know many of you would switch places with me in a heartbeat and, while I have my struggles, I know how lucky I am.
NO ONE CARES HOW I LOOK
Yea, this is amazing. I don’t have to jump out of bed and into the shower. I don’t really have to look presentable at all. The moms at the bus stop don’t care how I look and I can tell you from experience that the employees at Michael’s, Staples and Stop & Shop sure as shit don’t GAF. I’m living la vida leggings. The problem here is that if you start to go too long without caring about your personal appearance, you basically revert back to being a college student in a dorm again. If I want to go to Taco Bell in my pajamas at 3 pm for a Meximelt, I’mma go. And is that really how adults behave? Is it, you guys?
Me in 6 more months.
THE REFRIGERATOR
I love her. We vibe. She’s always there for me. All day, everyday. Keeping my food cold and delicious, just as she promised when we brought her home from P.C. Richard. We spend A LOT of time together each day. This is great for someone who has healthy eating habits, but that’s not me. NOT. ME. All of my dirty little food secrets are safe with her. This means that in the past 6 years, because I can’t control myself, I’ve gained around 20 lbs. Could I do something about this? SURE. Do I want to? NOT LOOKING THAT WAY.
“GIVE ME THE GOD DAMN CINNAMON BUNS, BRENDA!”
THE DRINK
That’s right. Another vice. Lock me up. I like to imbibe. This was no problem when I was a respectable member of society, but now my life as a shut-in allows me to have a higher frequency of nights in with the ladies. Being my own boss means I make my own work schedule and since my only other real responsibilities involve getting my kids out the door in the morning, there will be wine. Oh yes. There will be wine. Add that to my eating issues, tack on about 10 more lbs. and order those leggings in the next size up.
“Yea, no. I’m good.”
I’M THE BOSS
Sure, I own my own business. It allows maximum flexibility and supplemental income, both of which are AMAZING. The problem is that I’m my own IT person, printer repairman and accountant now. I’m unqualified in all of these areas of expertise, which makes my job more interesting. Add to this the fact that I used to work in a bustling office with rock stars and celebrities waltzing through all the time while I got to enjoy being part of a team and my own personal success. Now I work alone in a tiny basement office wearing a Hannibal Lecter mask, dodging spiders and talking to myself. BIG DIFFERENCE.
CAN YOU HEAR THE LAMBS CRYING, YOU GUYS???
FROM RICHES TO RAGS
I went from being the breadwinner to feeling like a financial drain on our family. Yes my business brings in extra income, but I’m no Joy Mangano. There are no Miracle Mop patents being applied for here. Obviously, what’s my husband’s is OURS but it weighs on me that I’m not contributing like I used to. Not that we were ever rolling in it, but the occasional lunch time visit to Anthropologie for a bag or a sweater has been replaced by scouring the clearance rack at T.J. Maxx. (No offense T.J. Maxx. I love you super hard.)
Come back to me.
TIME IS ON MY SIDE
The number one thing I’ve gained, and really all that matters, is time. Time with my kids. Time with my husband. Time to create and decide what my next career will be. Time to be braless and eat peanut butter from the jar with Hershey’s syrup. Being able to make my kids their lunches and having time to get them on the bus every day. Being able to spend time in their classrooms. Having time to make dinner and shuttle kids to piano and soccer and lacrosse without roping other families in or having to pay a sitter to help. Knowing that time like this is not afforded to everyone, I do know its value even though I look like Zach Galifinakis waking up in the first Hangover movie each day.
Now that I’ve lived on both sides of the working mom/stay at home mom fence, I’ve learned that there’s a trade off either way. Your ability to be a good mom isn’t determined by your decision to work or your decision to stay home. The only thing that really matters is that your kids are safe and loved and your wine refrigerator is stocked.
The Mother Octopus 