hope – The Journey of a Lioness

Take your moment…..

It is finally fall! Okay well close to it. But here in the heartland football season has started. For this girl it always brings back the best memories. Sitting in the stands and the excitement of school spirit. I was a band kid. We sat as a group and played, cheered, and for me I learned about football. I was lucky to have guy friends who would answer questions and teach me what football was. It grew this love of the game that I never imagined I would have. As an adult I still have that passion. I am so lucky to have four amazing kids. I have band kids, a cheerleader, and the last one, a football player. I know it is a simple time that quickly passes by, but I am so thankful for it. Last night, I learned something so inspiring that I have to share.

Last night we traveled to a town even smaller than our own to play 7 on 7 football. If you know anything about football, 7 on 7 isn’t real. Our school agreed with the other school to play this way. Why? Well because the other school only had seven players and this could be the only chance they get to play. I have no idea why our school agreed to do it. All I do know is that I am so glad they did. Or I would not have gotten the chance to learn two lessons.

Lesson One….Life is going to Crush you…Get BACK UP.

The game started out and I cringed looking at our size verses there. One young man on their team was so small. Number 10. I will never forget Number 10. He was maybe just five feet tall and all of about one hundred pounds! Yet there he was on that field being a part of that team. He was short and fast which is why he was playing a running back position. In one play they hand him the ball and he takes off. Only to be met by one of our biggest defenders. Who like he has been taught, wrapped this kid up in a text book tackle. He landed just right to knock the wind out of little Number 10. Let me tell you the fans quickly got very quiet. Hearts were pounding and there Number 10 laid on the ground fighting to catch his breath. Coaches ran over to him and talked him through sitting up and gaining that breath back. It was heart stopping to say the least. Finally they got him back on his feet and with a wave to signal that he was okay the crowd erupted into thunderous applause. Still a little rattled, Number 10 rejoined his team. Many patted him on the back and checked on him giving him words of encouragement. Some asking “you good?”. With a nod of his head play resumed.

This amazing small kid got knocked down but he wasn’t out. Our team had the bigger size and more experience on the field. Yet the other team was not going to give up. They were going to give it their all. By the start of the second quarter, our team was a head and the other had not scored. Yet again Number 10 comes into play. Our team was on offense, for those that don’t know, offense is when your team has the ball and is trying to score. Anyways our team has the ball and they run a passing play. The ball is hiked and our QB drops back for the pass, all this time Number 10 sees the intention of the play. This little guy comes out of no where and intercepts the ball! Their fans erupt into the biggest cheers of the night! While our team stopped him before they scored, that one play will be forever burned into the memory of Number 10 for the rest of his life. What an amazing feeling that must have been for him. Did it make a difference in how the game ended? No, but maybe it will make a huge difference in that kid’s life. He was knocked down, and crushed, but he got up. He got up and kept going determined to finish what he started. He persevered and just a short time later had an amazing moment of pride and elation, in that blink of an eye for just a short time, he was a hero.

If you know anything about me, it is that I am a widow. I know all about life’s ability to crush you when you least expect it. For the last five years I have done everything from running away from pain to diving into it. None of it fun, all of it hard, and the only thing that mattered was getting up. The only good thing about diving into the pain is eventually you will get to break through the surface and gasp in that sweet air. I have had a very tough month learning how to sit in grief, so that I can mourn and heal, only to hope one day I can again catch that full breath and fight for my moment of pride and elation. I am on my way to loving and finding myself again. My moment will come.

Lesson Two…….SHOW UP…..

The picture above is of my son and my daughters boyfriend, we call him Jer. Jer has been overseas for the past 19 months. This young man is incredible. He has stepped up and truly helped this family both emotionally and physically since we lost Ed. So him being gone had left a pretty big hole in our lives. Just this week he got to come home. It wasn’t easy for him. His first flight was delayed making him miss his connecting flight, which in a very crazy way had him having two MONDAYS in one week!! I know it sounds impossible but trust me because of where he started from and here at home, even though he had to spend a night somewhere he indeed, still got home on the same day just 12 hours later. Which really was the better deal. Anyways he is finally home.

My son so excited to finally have another man around, invited Jer and my daughter to his football game. As you can see they made it! Their week has been so full. After getting home late on Tuesday, he and my daughter spent two days test driving and buying her a brand new car! I am so proud of her for doing this, she has worked very hard for that goal. And even though they were both exhausted, they came to the game. They were late and only saw the last quarter that was played, they still showed up. If you look closely at my son you will see what that meant to him. As they were released from the coaches huddle, he made his way over to us and seeing Jer crashed into him, bursting into tears. Someone Showed Up for HIM. Yes mom shows up all the time, but Mick needs men in his life, men that will show up when they say they will. It may not seem like a hard thing to do, showing up. Yet, think about it, this man had been traveling for over 36 hours, he had jet lag, spent the previous two days helping my daughter buy a car, and even though it would have been easier on him to just come to the next game, still showed up. That is what matters.

As a parent I know that is the kind of sacrifice you make. You work 50 plus hours a week and you still make the sacrifice and show up for your kids. That is what makes good men, good women, good parents. Showing up matters.

Showing up matters in everything. If Number 10 didn’t show up after getting knocked down, he would have never had that amazing moment. If Jer and my daughter had decided not come, Mick would never have gotten the moment when he saw that he mattered to someone other than mom. If I don’t show up and face grief and let it get me stuck in life, then I would never have the moment I had last night. Where I am finally truly and amazingly feeling joy and happiness again.

These two simple lessons, getting up and showing up, all lead to one thing, getting your moment. Number 10 faced a giant and got a beautiful moment because he didn’t give up. My son got a moment because someone was going to put his need over their own. I am getting this moment because I chose to focus on myself and heal so that I can focus on my kids. All of them were there last night. His sisters all support him in such amazing ways. He knows he is loved, supported, that we are proud of him and we are proud of each other. We are family, we have been knocked down. But we got up, we fought the fight of grief and sorrow, and are beating it little by little. We were down but we are not out and each moment like last night, we will win.

-Dee

Sometimes It’s Just the Blues….

My daughter and I just got back from an incredible vacation. The trip was supposed to be just a quick four day weekend, but turned into a five day trip. Little did I know that I needed that fifth day. Why? Because it became a day to not rush, to be free to say, we have all the time we need. Our whole weekend was like that. No rushing around trying to arrive somewhere on time, no stress trying to keep each other entertained. Simply just enjoying ourselves. The further into the weekend we got the more I relaxed and just let myself recover from a very busy first half of the year. I meditated and thought about how my year was going.

My year started with getting my heart broke and realizing that I needed more out of the relationship that I was trying so hard to save. Yet the truth is when I finally let go, I got happier. But it was not right away, in fact I continued to fight for that person for way to long. I’m tired of chasing someone, of begging for their love and attention. I’m tired of working so hard to give someone everything I want hoping that they would somehow understand that it is those things I need in a relationship. I am going to say this, I was so wrong to think that someone would even come close to guessing that. How unfair of me to even hope or think that. No that is not the way a relationship works. It is time for me to realize that. I need to fix my relationship with myself first.

So I began a journey that I am loving. Learning about myself. Who am I? I am kind, loving, and while I’m not some knockout my internal beauty is empowering. I am magic, I’ve said it a million times. All I have to do is remember that power and and love and let it shine through. The vacation helped me to tap into that. I walked around with a ton of very different people and for the first time in my life soaked in the love and acceptance of everyone. It was as if for the the first time in my life I actually feel recharged. Happy and content.

The other thing that has truly helped me during this journey is the grief group that I have been going to. I have learned so much and have decided that I will be starting my own. This is what I know I am supposed to do. One step at a time but I will make this work. This weekend has just allowed me to be who I am and realize that I don’t have to just write one book but both and still be and do what I dream of. It never had to be one or the other, I can and will write both. This helps me just walk that journey and really welcome in what I have learned. It is time to not chase a man but chase my dreams. That is where everything I need is. Chasing those dreams and letting the world see who I am. No more hiding.

The vacation has also taught me that it isn’t always heartache and sadness, nope sometimes it is just the blues and the blues never last forever, as long as you call them out. As long as you are brave enough to simply sit and face the sadness and heartache, you will eventually have to start looking for the blues but you won’t find them. Because you did the work to get through them, the work is hard as hell. It’s not fun and yes there will be tears. But I have learned that each tear, has healed me, the scar of pain is still there along with the missing of the person. But tears are what heal and being brave to face that is what makes me “the strongest person I know.” Life will be full of things that give us scars. We can try to avoid those things but life just doesn’t work that way. The scars make us beautiful. I have watched so many different documentaries lately on monks and how to be happy like them and I realized something, the monks that I find so smart and amazing have spent many years alone to find peace. They tend to stay in solitude and speak on rare occasions. I always ask the same question at the end of the show. How? How can they actually know these things if they stay alone all the time? It’s like they know the answers, but they may not know or understand the questions fully if they have no experience of the life. I have no answer for those questions. Maybe they just are not talking about those experiences. Maybe they prefer to keep those wounds to themselves. I just don’t think that was why I am created. Not to hide and protect myself from those experiences but to fully have the experience of humanity. After all, what is the sense of being a well with water if no one knows you have water?

The Power of a Secret

During a recent session with my counselor we started to discuss something that has become very powerful for me. There was a time after my husband passed that I was seeing a much younger man. This was my first experience with toxic narcissism. The first time I truly fell for someone who controlled everything. I respected his request to keep our relationship secret believing that we were just keeping our names out of the small town rumor mill. This made sense to me in a way but after a while, I started to think, this man doesn’t want a relationship with me. He just wanted the sex. Not that two grown consenting adults couldn’t do that, I just wanted more. The more I tried to get closer to him the more he would push me away. I realized that this was not the kind of relationship I wanted. It killed me to be someone’s secret. It brought up the childhood trauma of never being good enough for someone. So I ended it, it killed me to do so, but it was truly the best decision I ever made. As much as it hurt. But I want to bring something to your attention, I want to tell you about how I felt in the beginning. I felt powerful, sexy and alive.

A Superhero’s Secret Identity

As my therapists and I discussed this very old and toxic relationship, I stumbled upon something. We were discussing how I felt at the beginning of that relationship. I felt powerful. I had this what I believed to be the most amazing young man in my life, and the sex was like it was in some of the most romantic movies you have ever seen. (if you watch those things) I felt special and wanted and down right like a goddess. This mindset was incredible. I dressed different, I walked different, I became this confident woman. I found myself walking by other women and would see them whisper to their girlfriends. It didn’t matter to me, because they didn’t know. No one did, (of course people knew! I live in a small town, even the local cop, who is a woman and a friend, would see my car parked at his house late at night. That just screams booty call!) or at least that is what I told myself. And honestly if people did know I didn’t care, I was a single woman and he was a single man and we were happy. I was still a mom, a widow, and yes an older woman. But at night when I was with him, I was this alter ego and I loved every single second of it.

I wonder if this feeling that I had, that I’ve never had again, is what married people have when they have affairs. Or the feeling someone who is a secret addict has. Holy hell no wonder people do those things. It made life exciting and it made me feel alive. I am not trying to defend why people do those things, I’m just saying that the powerful feeling that comes with those actions can make one feel like a whole new person. If you do not like who you are it is one way to reinvent yourself. Please believe me I am not saying this is the right thing to do. No in fact it is the very way to lose everything you have. What I am saying is it could very well be the power of that secret that changed you.

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Superhero or Villain?

As my therapist and I talked I began to wonder, can this superpower this amazing feeling be used for good? Or does it only feel good because you think you are getting away with something? Is that feeling one of a true Superhero or is it really a Villain that you are becoming? After all if the secret will eventually lead to someone getting hurt, then it is quite possible that you are indeed the Villain. Maybe not from your point of view, but to those around you, your spouse, children, and outside family members, you are indeed the villain. You don’t mean to hurt them, in fact you were probably the one hurting and just needed to feel good again. The reason doesn’t matter, villain is the title that gets handed to you.

As my therapist talked I began to wonder if there was a time when the feeling of being that Superhero and holding a secret didn’t involve hurting someone. Here is what I came up with. Fortunately there are times, you just have to be very aware of them and learn how to harness the power you get from those times. Let me list a few for you. Christmas, a surprise birthday, a surprise visit, a surprise anniversary party. Do you see the correlation? These things are still secrets. These secrets are fun to carry around to talk to others about that you can trust to keep that secret. They build suspense and excitement. The only difference with these secrets, is it is less likely to end up with someone getting hurt. We can create the same kind of feeling that I got from the toxic relationship, by focusing on good healthy things. Surprising someone you love does this. Let me explain.

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Putting the Theory to Practice

After the toxic relationship was over, I spent time alone. When I did date again months later I wanted to see if I could recreate that very romantic very wild very exciting life again. Well the man that I was with had no idea. I decided to take him camping something we both love to do. Be out in nature and soak in the energy from being disconnected from everyone. I didn’t tell him what we were doing, I just told him to pack a bag for a couple of nights and to make sure that he had something warm to sleep in. When I pulled up to pick him up he lit up like a kid. Which in turn lit me up, that excitement that I was chasing was right there. That same feeling of this was going to be amazing carried us through the weekend and even during the next week and months after we talk about that one weekend being just one of our favorite memories we share. No we didn’t work out and the relationship recently fell completely apart. But I know why, because there was no secrets to share. So you see it does work for good. You just have to decide who you want to be. A Superhero or a Villain.

From now on, though, I know what I need and want out of a relationship. I want that feeling. The feeling of the secret of knowing what’s in the box before it is opened on Christmas morning. I want to learn how to create that same kind of power from a good secret that I got from what eventually was a toxic one. The answer was simple it all came down to mindset. When that toxic relationship started the secret was powerful, but in the end the secret became crushing and hurt. But if my mindset was the same in a healthy relationship, I could indeed harness that same ego boosting feeling. It’s all about the perspective that we have. What I believed was good was toxic and what I felt had become boring and dull just needed a secret to make it feel exciting again. That is the power of a secret. It is up to you to decide how to create that power and mindset.

-Dee

On Days When the Sun Shines……..

This month is the most difficult month of the year for me. It is supposed to be the best month. You know the kids get out of school and summer is on the way. We are supposed to be looking forward to the long warm days and spending time outside. Yet a cloud hangs over us this month as the one year anniversary quickly rushes towards us. It is unlike anything that I know. All year I have wanted the days to just get over with. Yet now I am screaming to slam on the breaks. I’m not ready for this. Yet suddenly God shows up and once again and hope is on the horizon.

We must move forward in life. If we don’t then we miss out on things that God has planned for us. It wasn’t long after Ed passed when a friend I had met on line to help with my marathon training also lost her husband. He was much younger than Ed was and she is much younger than I am. I sat in stunned silence as I read about her loss. It killed me, but I knew what she was going through. I reached out to her and suddenly our bond over running became more. We were suddenly both part of a club that neither one of us wanted to be a part of. We have visited many times, both of us trying so hard to figure out what life is supposed to be now that it is no longer what we planned for it to be. It is nice to talk to someone who knows. I mean someone who woke up one day thinking life was perfect only to have our worlds come crashing to a halt.

Last night we talked about how we both miss being a wife. Yet what I am learning more and more is that while I miss being a wife, I am getting pretty dang good at being alone. We talked about staying busy to avoid the grief, but I told her that it doesn’t matter how busy you are the grief will catch up. Usually when you don’t want it to. So we might as well face it. People call us brave, and most of the time we don’t feel it. We are just trying to get down this path that was laid before us. We try to run down it, but it doesn’t help, it doesn’t lessen the pain it just makes us tired. The only thing that has helped with the pain is facing it. Letting it knock you down and you stand up and fight back and face it again. It is the only way.

Yet here it is almost summer and getting outside helps. It reminds us that life still moves forward and so should we. No matter how we want the clock to move, fast or slow, we must move with it. We have had some pretty cloudy mornings here, but the sun has shown by afternoon and warmed us up. That is like life, we will have times when it seems like the sun has disappeared and it will never shine again. Yet here we are, the sun is beginning to shine, because we have chosen to move forward.

I am reminded daily that I am not alone. I am loved by friends and family and on my worst nights there is always someone to talk to. So while the anniversary is barreling down the path, I am going to face it. It will come and it will go and I will make it out on the other side. Beaten, bruised, and maybe battered beyond recognition, but I will make it out on the other side. Twenty days to go.

Dee