Woes of a Single Mom

"Get up, Rebekah.  Silence doesn't always visit."

I looked at the clock.  5:18 a.m.

I wrapped myself in my Game of Thrones robe and grabbed my phone.  Once I safely padded to the kitchen without killing myself or waking my children in the dark, I looked at my phone.

4:19 a.m.

Big sigh.  Time change is not my friend.  I padded back to my bedroom, de-robed and crawled back into bed.

"Get up, Rebekah.  Silence doesn't always visit."

After wrestling with myself for a few minutes, Healthy Rebekah won.  She was surprised by this.  She doesn't win often.

Healthy and Disagreeable Rebekah padded back to the kitchen and turned the kettle on.  After the the two girls made their peace, I sat down to write.

I have been failing as a mother lately.  I spoke these same words to my son one night recently, except the insult was aimed at him.  I actually told my son that he kept failing.  He had missed a homework assignment and my anxiety would not stay silent.  I immediately held him on my lap and apologized.  "I'm so sorry, honey.  That was a terrible thing to say.  You are wonderful.  I'm the one who keeps failing."

The weight of my plight as a single mother had firmly sat on my shoulders and forced me to feel it.  After days of me being taut with stress, my brain was tired of the battle and laid down his armor.  I'm an expert at avoiding feelings.  I am an Enneagram Type 8, Self-Preserving Subtype.  I act, then think, then feel.  You would think with all the knowledge that I have about myself, I'd be more aware of my innate ability to ignore feelings.  But I'm just not.   I stuff those things right down and pick up a Swiffer.  Daily.   (Except for anger...I have that down pat.)

"Because it doesn't f***ing matter!  Nothing will change!"  My feelings decided to surface in a phone call with my friend in response to her asking why I didn't talk to her when she knew I wasn't OK.

Fear, Loneliness, Hopelessness, Worry, Anger (my old pal), Sadness...all feelings I unsuccessfully tried to mask in that phone call.

She got it.  She's a single mom.

I get tired of using that excuse.  I compare myself to my mom and other moms constantly.  Most of them, however, are still married to their baby daddy.

So let me just go ahead and use that excuse.  I'm a single mom.

It blankets every area of my life.  I have to be aware of every penny that I spend.  I have to have a large resource of energy.  I have to be physically and mentally sharp.  I cannot fail.  I work eight hours a day scrubbing toilets and dusting blinds.  My physical body cannot fail.  I make doctor's appointments, calls to teachers, calls to bill collectors, calls to clients on my earphones while I mop.  My life is a flurry of activity.  I use my going out money to buy school uniforms.  I use my savings to buy them shoes.  (Every. Three. Months. Homeboys will not stop growing.)  I have a special calendar for them, filled with due dates, test dates, appointments, and of course their visitation with dad.

Co-parenting with someone who is hostile towards you is not fun.  Sometimes I wish I had stayed in my marriage just to save me from this nightmare.  Please, Tiny Baby Jesus, help my head not to explode.

I have recently been doing the "Let it Be" meditation.  This requires no action on my part.  It isn't the "Letting Go" meditation, which is action oriented.  This is just leaving things as they are.

And for a doer...this is quite the challenge.

I have recently discovered, in my failed attempt yet again at romance, that a romantic companion does little to ease the angst of single motherhood.  If anything, it adds a layer of even more difficult things to balance...your time becomes a commodity.  Something that you have to bargain with and sacrifice.  Planning becomes essential.  I'm not a planner.  Rebekah the Planner is not my gig.  Those words don't even sound good together.  Emotions start peeking out from their hiding place.  It's altogether a precarious event.

Opening your heart just enough for someone to sneak a toe in is treacherous.  There are many pitfalls to this.  And if you miss a beat, you fall in the swamp.  With the alligators.  And snakes.  And insects that look strange.  It's quite the risk.

Failure is almost inevitable.

As is true for most of us, I carry a deep sadness in my soul.  One that has no sick or vacation days.  It's always at work.  Equipped and ready to ride along with me. Every. Damn. Day. 24/7.

The beauty of being an Enneagram 8 is that I typically believe emotions are a waste of time.  With the help of my Type 2 friends, however, I am trying to give them the air time they deserve.  They carry a secret to your soul that only they know.  And ignoring their wisdom just prolongs the pain.

So when they surfaced yesterday, I just let them have the day.  I didn't stop crying.  I took my son to the doctor with puffy eyes and carried on an adult conversation about his health.  I went to the grocery store and checked out while the cashier eyed me curiously.  I cleaned two houses and talked to clients in a professional manner while they were left to wonder if my eyes were always that red and they just never noticed.  I helped my son with his homework and cried.  I made dinner and cried.  I tucked them into bed and cried.   I put away laundry and cried.  I did the dishes and cried.  I made myself just FEEL all the feelings.  And hated every minute of it.

But my brain needed the information that only my emotions could unlock.  So I let those suckers run amuck.

And the secret they revealed was this...my fear of being weak has dominated my life.  As a result, I have closed more doors than I should have.

Disagreeable Rebekah has had the first part of my life.  It's time for Healthy Rebekah to take over.  But we'll see who wins that battle.

Sleeping at Last
Eight

https://youtu.be/K99i5GF65to

I remember the minute

It was like a switch was flipped

I was just a kid who grew up strong enough

To pick this armor up

And suddenly it fit

God, that was so long ago, long ago, long ago

I was little, I was weak, perfectly naive

And I grew up too quick

Now you won’t see all that I have to lose

And all I've lost in the fight to protect it

I won’t let you in, I swore never again

I can't afford, no, I refuse to be rejected

I want to break these bones 'til they're better

I want to break them right and feel alive

You were wrong, you were wrong, you were wrong

My healing needed more than time

When I see fragile things, helpless things, broken things

I see the familiar

I was little, I was weak, I was perfect too

Now I’m a broken mirror

But I can't let you see all that I have to lose

All I’ve lost in the fight to protect it

I can't let you in, I swore never again

I can't afford to let myself be blindsided

I'm standing guard, I'm falling apart

And all I want is to trust you

Show me how to lay my sword down

For long enough to let you through

Here I am, pry me open

What do you want to know?

I’m just a kid who grew up scared enough

To hold the door shut

And bury my innocence

But here's a map, here's a shovel

Here’s my Achilles' heel

I’m all in, palms out, I’m at your mercy now and I'm ready to begin

I am strong, I am strong, I am strong enough to let you in

I’ll shake the ground with all my might

I will pull my whole heart up to the surface

For the innocent, for the vulnerable

I'll show up on the front lines with a purpose

And I’ll give all I have, i'll give my blood, I'll give my sweat

An ocean of tears will spill for what is broken

I’m shattered porcelain, glued back together again

Invincible like I've never been

I am their Mother

I closed the door and allowed the tears to fall.  I hugged my son and went quickly to my bedroom so my emotions could be unbridled without fear of affect.

 "I'm a better mother to the boys than you ever have been."

Words of their now step-mother sitting heavily, encompassing all the free space in my brain. 

I know it's not true.  I know it was said in anger and frustration and from someone who feels threatened by me.  I know this.  But there is always that small part, the dark part, the contrary part that confirms the false.

I recently made a difficult decision concerning my youngest.  After multiple events of obvious stress, I removed my son from his school.  He will not be going back.

I have brought him to that school and watched him walk in, fear prickling my soul.  I have felt uneasy with his attendance there from the beginning.

I should have fought harder.

Graham has had enough to contend with in his short life.  He died but was given back to us.  He has undergone multiple therapies.  Multiple doctors.  Multiple tests and analysis.  He has been poked and prodded and put on display.  His brain has suffered the consequences of his stressful existence.  And school has added to his stress.  A place that should provide comfort and encouragement instead became just another obstacle in his recovery.

I have laid awake at night, mulling over this decision.  I have cried many tears and allowed myself to be vulnerable in situations I typically master.  I have let my boyfriend hold me as my body trembled with grief.  I wake up with anxiety and go to bed with anxiety.  My dreams are full of conflict and disturbances.

This level of despair calls for more than my earthly mind can handle.

So I prayed.

And in the midst of my wrestling with the Almighty, He whispered to me.

"It is time to fight for your son."

I have doubted myself as a mother since that fateful day when Graham fell into a bucket.  I was responsible.  I was blamed.  I was whispered about among mothers.  I was shamed.  And I have struggled with that doubt since.  As a result, I have allowed people who don't know my son as well as I do, to make decisions for him.  I have allowed others to have input into my decisions.  I have been swayed incorrectly at times.  I have ignored my gut.

God created us with an innate need for someone else.  We form an attachment as infants immediately out of the womb that cannot be reversed.  I am that someone for my boys.

The legal definition of primary caregiver is: the parent who has the greatest responsibility for the daily care and rearing of a child. It also refers to a person who has had the greatest responsibility for the daily care and rearing of a child. This person can be a non parent also.

Even if there are women out there who discredit my ability as their mother, the fact that I am their safe haven cannot be changed.

So the gloves are on and I am ready to fight for my child.

I am their mother.  Try taking that away from me.  I dare you.

Thanks to all my Exes

I keep a daily journal of things I'm thankful for, and my running list of ten goals.  Rachel Hollis said this is supposed to re-focus you and bring you closer to your goals everyday, so I obeyed and bought her $30 journal.  The interesting thing about journaling daily things that you're thankful for, is that eventually seemingly negative items end up on it.  I journaled the other day that I was thankful for ex-boyfriends.  I have learned a lot from my failed relationships.

I googled one of them out of curiosity and landed on his memorial page.  Bobby was 39 when he passed and left a wife and four kids behind.  He was one of the most amazing humans I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.  He loved people.  Intensely.  He loved them because he loved God.  He was kind and thoughtful.  He was comfortable in his own skin.  He never felt embarrassed by who he was...and sometimes who he was was embarrassing...to me, a 23 yr. old girl who was very UN-OK in her own skin.  He had this crazy red hair and a man bun.  He wore pants from Thailand that were baggy and tied around his waste.  He was always smiling this mischievous smile.  He was gentle and forgiving with me.  I was a complete disaster at that age, yet he loved me so well I felt almost whole.

As an 8 on the Enneagram, I act first when something happens.  So after discovering his death I immediately called my sister, who also knew Bobby.  We talked about it and I shared memories because my next response is to think.  My last response is always to feel.  It didn't hit me until hours later...the tears finally found their way down my cheeks.

Life happens in these small moments.  It was a very small act that I conducted..googling an ex... that triggered years of memories.  I thought about every boyfriend I had ever had.  Those that I loved and those that I didn't.  Those that were there for seasons and those that hung on through many seasons.  I thought about all the things I learned from them...the good, the bad, the confirmed ugly. 

When we learn to start paying attention to our body's responses to events, we learn to embrace the beauty and simplicity of life...and hopefully learn to be grateful.  My tears over Bobby's death meant something.  It wasn't as easy to label as grief because I hadn't known him for years.  So I walked myself through the feelings...a highly uncomfortable thing for this feeling repressed feeling woman to do.  And at the root of it was fear...the fear that I missed out on what could have been an incredible life.

Pause for dramatic effect.  Because my life is pretty incredible.

Our brains are amazingly subtle in their messages.  They have learned to protect us so well that they take cues from small fears and wreak havoc.  This one small fear could have gotten out of control.  It could have destroyed all that I was thankful for presently.  It could have eaten away the memories of other men, the beauty of the heartaches, the impossibility of knowing.  It could have taken away from me my gratitude.

And without gratitude, we are doomed to live a sub-par life.

So my girl Rach, thank you for the $30 journal.  I wonder what seemingly negative thing I will find to be thankful for today.

Self Care -- a Gross Transgression??

I waited for the familiar flip of my stomach, the increase in my heart rate, the reddening of my face.  I anticipated it.  It was an old friend whose company had long been accepted and adjusted to.  He had made himself at home at my dinner table more times than I could count when this thought arose, so I had already set his place.

But this time, homeboy stood me up.

For the first time since Kindergarten when my affections fell on the cutest boy in my class, the familiar physiological cues of anxiety surrounding a boy a.k.a. man did not make an appearance.

I was confused.  Surely I'm still the same little girl whose worth depends upon whether the flavor of the month likes her or not.  Surely, at 42, this hasn't changed.  Perhaps my body didn't get the cues right and is simply delayed in its response.

I waited five minutes and thought about the boy a.k.a. man again.  Still nothing, Jesus.

It settled on me with a heaviness mixed with relief and joy.  I had broken my body's response to what I used to categorize as fear.  I had said enough times in the midst of my unwelcome dinner guest things to combat his presence.

"You are enough."
"You are beautiful."
"You are kind."
"You are intelligent."
"You deserve more."
"You are honest."
"You are worthy."
"You are amazing."
"You are a catch."
"Any man would be lucky to have you."
"You are funny."
"You are successful."

My brain had been programmed for so long to believe the opposite.  When a thought about a man arose, my brain immediately went into protection mode.  My body cleared the way for anxiety to settle in with its physical responses to my negative thoughts.  They went something like this:

"You are not good enough for him."
"Of course he doesn't like you."
"You're too fat for him."
"You're not successful enough."
"You don't work out enough."
"You're not pretty enough."
"You're too much."
"You drink too much."
"You laugh too loudly."
"Your nose is too big."
"You're not clever enough."
"You're too clingy."
"You're not funny."
"He's too good for you."

and so on...

After my two week stint of anticipating news of cancer, I suppose my brain was finally done with the bullshit.  It finally got the clue that my time belonged only to me and to waste it would be foolish.  It finally flipped the script and joined the "We Love Rebekah" camp of positive thoughts.

I had successfully changed my brain.

Our responses to life are controlled by what we have taught our brain to believe.  If we believe that we are worthy, our brain will look for things to reinforce that belief.  If we believe the opposite, it will do the same.

But we are in control of this phenomenon.  We are the ones steering our thoughts.  We are the ones controlling our beliefs.  We, alone, hold the power to changing ourselves.

Along with this beautiful acceptance of myself came the desire to be alone.

I'm not afraid of spending time alone.  I never have been.  I am usually very happily singing to very loud music and cleaning.  I play the piano.  I paint.  I garden.  I cook.  I am not the girl who can't be alone.  But this sense of aloneness that I now crave is different.  I'm always aware of myself and the joy I find in being me.  I'm alone in crowds, just me and my thoughts having interesting conversations.  I'm alone when I work, though I work alongside a helper and the occasional client.

I'm the coolest person I know, so being alone now has this extra edge of beauty and mystery to it.

Growing up in a Southern Baptist environment, the theme was to die to yourself.  Anything about self-love was considered mystical and sinful.  I have first hand experience with this faulty thinking.   (This conversation requires Chopin...please hold while I play the Chopin Pandora station to get the creative juices turned on.)

But if we are to truly love others, we must love ourselves first.  We are incapable of wholly loving if we loathe who we are.  I'm no expert on the Bible anymore, but I vaguely remember a verse about loving others as we love ourselves.  This assumes that we do, in fact, love ourselves.

So where is the disconnect?  Why did the church assume that loving yourself was sinful and evil?  Why is self-care a "mystical" and "Eastern" idea to good, Baptist folk?

I clearly remember sitting in a Sunday School class as an adult when a woman began talking about how she meditates and does Yoga to help her with her anxiety.  The response from the teacher was less than tasteful...it was something like "those practices are not godly because they are self-centered."

John Calvin said, "Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God."

I agree heartily with this statement.

Our parents' generation has resisted loving themselves.  They have resisted self-care and self-awareness.  They have hidden from it, like it was a secret holocaust ready to implode.  I have been scoffed at many times for doing things to take care of myself as a mother.  The unspoken words were that they didn't do all of these things and were able to raise us just fine.  The subtle message is that they are stronger than we are because they didn't need such frivolities. 

But the truth was they were stressed out, unhappy mothers who were hanging on by a thread.

What a disservice they suffered...largely the fault of the church and its not-so-subtle message that self-care was wrong.  They must have stayed in high-anxiety mode because the solutions were not only considered selfish and wrong, but considered a gross transgression against God.  Their brains must have stayed stressed out.  They must have been tired.  They were definitely unappreciated.  They must have been alone and fearful.  When perhaps the solution to all their anxiety and stress and exhaustion was just a damn trip to Target by themselves with their favorite coffee.

I believe that we are so convoluted in our ideas of strength that we have shut off the tap that would otherwise freely flow God's love and care.  If strength was instead wholly loving yourself, which would be proven by your acts of self-care, then the world would be a lot less stressed out and much more loving.

If I had not been on a mission to love myself, my brain would have continued on its erroneous path of self-destructive messages.  These thoughts become actions.  And actions have consequences.

I can say without doubt that my actions are mostly the actions of a woman who wholly loves herself.  There are those moments when I eat too much ice cream or drink too much, but I'm in process, okay?????  And Blue Bell and vodka was made to be enjoyed.  I'm just a girl standing in front of a freezer asking it to feed me frozen, creamy goodness.

Thanks to my journey to love myself, my brain and I are now on a positive upswing (Bluebell and vodka are also present).  I no longer have anxiety responses to boys not liking me.  I could care less.  I have more than enough love for myself...men no longer hold the key to the delightful kingdom of Rebekah.

Naked Fear

I was sitting in the waiting room with my Ochsner robe on, flipping through a magazine.  It was drafty in there and I was wishing I had worn my wool-lined Uggs and boot socks to combat the chill...at least on the bottom half of my body.  The small thought that perhaps I would get bad news quickly flitted through my head then was quickly dismissed.  Nothing like that happens to me, I thought to myself.   My body and I are too tight...it wouldn't betray me.

The Radiologist squeezed the cold gel on my chest and started the invasion.  Right breast was quick and easy.  Left breast...he took longer.  Much longer.  The mood in the room went from light and chatty to unnervingly quiet.  He and the nurse fussed over me as they cleaned the gel off and helped me back into my robe.  He sat somberly in his chair and began the explanation of his findings.  He found a mass.  It was concerning.  The words biopsy and cancer hung in the air.  I stopped breathing at some point and fought back tears.  Surely this would not be the moment my life drastically changed.  Surely not in this tiny room with these strangers halfway dressed after being groped would the course of my life screech to a halt.  Surely...

I begged silently for their words to stop so I could escape to my car and release the sobs I was stifling.  The doctor gently shook my hand and left in silence.  The nurse told me to take a deep breath and directed me to the changing room.  Finally, I found myself in my car and the pending sobs collapsed as threatened.

When I was able to squeak out a "hello," I began calling my family.  Their words were expected and comforting:

"We don't know anything yet."
"This is standard procedure."
"It's a very treatable kind of cancer if they caught it early."
And my favorite, by my brother-in-law.... "Don't go to crazy-town, Rebekah."

I am two years past the due date for my mammogram.  I hate making time to go to the doctor.  I'm super healthy, so it seems like a waste of time...so I thought.  But when I had my annual last week, my doctor urged me to go see if there was a spot for a mammogram open that day.  Within minutes, I was waiting, topless, to get my breasts squeezed uncomfortably into a machine.  I was disgruntled and irritated at the seeming waste of time.  Even when I got the call stating there were abnormalities and an ultrasound was needed, I scoffed.  We'll see if I actually make this appointment, I thought to myself.  There is nothing wrong with me.

For two weeks, my family and close friends held their breath.  They called often.  They texted  more.  I walked through the following weeks with an intense amount of anxiety.  Food was not appealing.  I learned to go to sleep and wake with a huge pressure sitting on my chest.  I learned to manage living as a mom and business owner with almost paralyzing stress.

I am thankful the anxiety ended with good news.  The lump was benign.  Not everyone is this lucky.

I did not escape that experience unscathed.  It altered the course of my life.  It changed the chemistry in my brain as my body struggled to stay balanced.  It changed my relationships...it deepened some and gave me permission to release others.  It forced me to be exposed and vulnerable ... to be human.

I said one night to my dear friend during the height of my anxiety that if this experience has done anything for me, it has pushed me to live fearlessly.  Well, even more fearlessly.  (I'm not exactly the girl that hides from experiences out of fear.)

But what does scare me is continuing to evolve as a woman independent of a man.  My fear is that I will scare off any possibility of companionship by being fiercely autonomous.  As a result, I have hesitated in my growth.  I have tiptoed towards it with caution.  I have considered the consequences of my actions through the lens of companionship instead of my own evolution.

Having that word "cancer" uttered by a stranger in relation to my body was enough to release me from this tether.  I will no longer pause in my procession towards greatness.  Life is too short to be shackled.  It's too precious to be stifled.  And should I find myself once again in a drafty room with a robe on to cover my nakedness from sterile strangers, I will be able to rest in the knowledge that I lived fearlessly.

A Star Is Born

I went to see A Star is Born.

Heavy Sigh.

The premise of the movie is two people who immediately have a deep connection.  Their romance is fast and furious, full of emotion and passion, angst and tears.  Lots and lots of tears. 

As I watched it, with a man I've been dating beside me, I found myself incredibly uncomfortable.  I felt like I was supposed to buy into the idea that love looks like that.  I felt like I was suddenly daft and ignorant to how relationships work and what love is.  I felt exactly like the movie wanted me to feel....caught up in the fairy tale and folded into the story line...lost in their beauty and discontent with my own.

I left the theater thinking that I had missed the boat on great love because none of my relationships looked like that.

We walked out silently while I tried to hold it together.  My mind was full of my own failures at romance and the fear that it will never happen again for me.  I was deconstructing all my relationships and all the reasons we shouldn't have dated.  Mostly, it was because we couldn't sing, he doesn't make me cry, and he would never write me a love song. 

Firm eye roll.

I carried these emotions with me into the next day.  And the next day, which was the dreaded court date over custody of my boys.  I sat in that office while my lawyer made my case, across from my ex-husband, and felt overwhelmed with failure and fear.  The result was not in my favor.  I gathered up my large file of why their dad should get less time with them, picked up what dignity I had left, and exited the building where my life had just changed.  Again.

I spent the entire day crying.  Hard, ugly crying.  I had to wear sunglasses to pick my boys up so they, and the rest of the world, wouldn't see my pain.

My friends and family called, but I couldn't hear the disappointment in their voice.  I couldn't hear their "I told you so" tone (that was most likely just in my imagination).  I couldn't hear any encouragement or positivity.  Nothing was going to be received.  I avoided the phone calls.  The one thing I was able to do was Marco Polo (video app) one of my besties who lets me video journal my life.  I talked unhinged.  By the end of the day, my eyes were swollen and painful.

Through my unfiltered blubberings to my bestie, many things became apparent.
1.  I had bought into the lie that my life was harder than other people's.
2.  I was ill equipped to handle the difficulty.
3.  I would never find great love like Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.  (Insert a sarcastic, but gravely serious, chuckle.)
4.  I would never love and be loved again.

The beauty in surrounding yourself with people who know and love you...and are themselves incredible people, is that their truths combat your lies.

When I was ready to receive it, my dear friend spoke truth over me.

1.  My life is not unique in that it is filled with difficulty.  Join the freakin' club, sister.
2.  The same God who parted the Red Sea, who tore down the walls of Jericho and who raised Jesus from the dead is the One who is with you.  Nothing is too difficult for Him.
3.  I found great love like Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, despite the fact that neither one of us could sing.  He was also an alcoholic and it also ended.  (As it should have...but huge, freakin' sigh.)
4.  I may not find love again...but my life is full despite not having someone to share it with.  And for the first time in a long while I'm fine alone.  (Not happy alone...not content alone ... but fine.)

We're all just broken people trying to find our place in the world.  Our place may or may not be in a romantic relationship.   And it certainly doesn't include Bradley Cooper (another huge, freakin' sigh).  But this star, like Lady Gaga, was born out of brokenness.

Eat Up, Girl

I was stress eating last night, which is far better than stress drinking because you wake up without a hangover though you hate yourself a little more than if you had been drinking.  I ate Blue Bell, then I finished off a King Cake I had from the football party.  It was satisfyingly delicious and appeased my need for emotional eating.  I follow the Keto diet mostly, but I do have moments of cheating.  Sometimes these moments stretch into days.  But who's counting.

Every time I eat something I shouldn't, this chorus of voices starts singing loudly that I am weak.  I stuff their mouths with a sandwich and continue consuming my erroneous food choice.

The beauty about being mentally healthy...perhaps as mentally healthy as I will ever be ... is that I no longer allow the thought that I failed in my consumption of large amounts of calories to travel to my self-esteem where it used to make itself at home.  And fix another damn sandwich.  This time, the failure extends only so far as my stomach...that is protruding a little further than it should.  And homegirl moves on.  Because I burn at least 1500 calories a day cleaning houses for a living and I can afford to cheat a little.

I am smugly satisfied at the changes in my perception of myself and the world.  I love myself more.  I can recognize when others aren't loving me and am able to move the heck on.  I respect myself more and can recognize disrespect in others...and move the heck on.  I tolerate much less.  I allow few opinions to seep into my psyche.  I am focused and driven.  I accept that I will have bad days...and move the heck on.  (I would really like to say "move the the f#$% on", but I'm a Southern woman and that is not appropriate vocabulary.  But it is secretly one of my favorite words...forgive me, tiny baby Jesus.)

My dad said to me when I was having a wallow-kind-of-day and in a state of upset while on the phone with him, "honey, let's just move on."  I was a little miffed at his words.  I felt like a ten minute griping session was not even close to satisfying my need to gripe.  But I accepted his lament and moved the heck (or f!**) on.  Later that night, my son was having a total meltdown about not getting a toy at the toy store in the mall.  I found myself repeating my dad's words when I felt he had cried enough tears over the subject, though I said it not as nicely as my dad, "baby, you got to move on!"  (I may have said it shrilly and with much exasperation.  Homegirl is not as smugly satisfied about her patience with her children.)  My son did not obey as well as his mother did when told this by a parent, for the record.  I do act like an obedient adult on occasion and do as I'm told.  But that is more than likely restricted only to instructions by my father.

What is perhaps the most amazing thing about growth is that the healthier you become, the closer you become to the person you were CREATED to be.  God is amazing like that.  He is the epitome of goodness.  He is the epitome of mental health.  He knows that we are better people, more able to love and accept love, when we are the fullness of who we were meant to be.  He knows because He designed us that way.  He is not a champion of weakness or self-hate.  He is the defender of weakness and the abolisher of self-hate.  He is the protector of all things good.  He is the author of self-love and mental health.  None of this is new to Him.  None of this is surprising to Him.  Humans have always hated themselves.  Humans have always left on the table what they should have been consuming in large portions... self-love.  That is the one thing that won't make your stomach protrude or leave you hating yourself a little the next morning.  So eat up, girl.

Slightly Bitter, Single Woman

A few days ago I was scrolling through my favorite app...the Bumble app.  (For all of you who are ignorant about online dating, this is a dating app.)

Insert sarcastic chuckle.

I was having a particularly lonely day and this is the app where single people go when they are lonely.  It is hopeful with its yellow colors and cheerful bee allusions.  It seduces you into believing this is where you will find your hive...and become a Queen.

Its yellow mirage is sneaky.

My favorite profiles go something like this:

"You can find me in the gym or on my boat.  Love traveling, snowboarding, fishing, running, biking, and reading.  I have my s**t together and you should too.  No drama. Am very fit and healthy.  If you do not have your sh#t together, swipe left."

Swiping left = move on, Linda

What exactly does "I have my sh#t together" mean?  You own a house?  A car?  You're gainfully employed?  You invest?  You vote?   Go to church?  Have lots of friends?  Have a great credit score? You wear chinos and dress appropriately at all times?  You go to the gym daily? You floss daily?  Have a money clip?  Wear slippers around the house because you don't want to bring in dirt from the outside?  You properly groom yourself?

Fill a sister in.

In this post-divorce/40ish dating world, the bar is high.  It requires you to have hobbies, a rocking body, an above average IQ, a large bank account, a high credit score, an oversized house, an even temper, be eternally tan, nails always done, clothes always ironed, independent without the slightest need for a man, know how to fish, be ready to camp on a moment's notice, have time to invest in someone whose ego is supremely inflated, properly conduct yourself via text and Snapchat, be anxious to receive and send nude pictures, have little expectation for any kind of intentional dating, and be OK with "Netflix and chill"on a Friday night... AKA..."I'm not spending any money on getting to know you because I will not tolerate anything that requires me to put in any effort." It's a world of filters and fronts where narcissism runs rampant.

Their bar is high, but yours better not be.

Hi, my name is Rebekah and I'm a slightly bitter, single woman.

OK, maybe more than slightly.  I might have crossed that line and arrived fully with everything but a toe on the other side.  My pinky toe.  The most insignificant part of my body is still hanging on, determined to gain super human strength to maneuver my body back to the yellow, hopeful side.

(On a side note, I must give a shout out to the men that I KNOW do not fit in this category.  Keep fighting the good fight, fellas.)

I went to Trader Joe's yesterday and came home with two very inexpensive bottles of wine and a bouquet of lavender roses.  If there was ever a day that called for an indulgent flowers purchase, it was yesterday.  I was emotionally exhausted from legal stresses and needed a pick me up.  I spent $16 on the whole lot and left feeling like an Independent Woman BADASS.  It was money well spent.

Being hopeful as a single woman in her 40s is a dangerous business.  I have found the best approach to maintain your Independent Woman Badass status is Trader Joe's, wine,  and flowers.  And erasing all yellow, hopeful apps that seduce you into believing you will find your hive and be a Queen.