Memorial Day weekend was the first time in six months that my partially empty nest was full again. My oldest came home to visit for the long weekend. I hadn’t seen him since he was last home in December. He lives in Wisconsin and we haven’t had a chance to go out there to visit him, nor has he had the opportunity to come home, until that weekend. We didn’t do anything exciting and that almost made it even more special. Just the normalcy of him being at home, along…
I had a meltdown yesterday. It was the release of a day’s worth of trying not to give in to anxiety and fears that had built up subconsciously. The tipping point came when I accidentally pinched my finger in the hinge of the closet doors. It closed so hard on my skin that it caused an instant blood blister. I saw stars in that first intense moment of pain as tears rolled down my cheeks. I sat down on the nearby toilet seat lid holding my finger tightly. At first…
When someone you love is hurting – your child, partner, friend – you feel the pain too. And you’ll stop at nothing to either make it go away or somehow figure out how to fix it. There is no greater urge than to protect our kids and loved ones. It takes root from love, but it grows far beyond and is an amazing thing. What’s also remarkable is how you forget about everything else when you’re on a mission to fix their hurt. I’m exhausted and coming down with something. Maybe…
I have a pesky little voice of negativity in the back of my mind talking smack to me. Do you too? I’d like to duct tape the mouth of that beeatch who resides in my head and spouts nasty, mean and hurtful negativity about me into my ear regularly. I can’t be alone here. I know there have to other women dealing with the inner voice of self-doubt and insecurity too. I wonder when she moved in? I don’t remember hearing that voice beat me down when I was nine…
I’m just being real. More and more. Just doing me. Are you like me and finding that midlife is making you feel less and less willing to fake being agreeable? It is an oversimplification (and also unfair) to chalk it up to hormones (or lack thereof). I promise you it’s not entirely menopause. I feel like there is a gravitational force yanking me in different directions. I can go the entire rotation from melancholy to gleeful, all in a day – sometimes all in an hour. And regardless of my…
If you still have a teen in the nest like I do, you will agree that life after fifty still entails nagging your teen. You are not alone. There is comfort in company and there are ways for you to look at these last few years of nagging your teen with a positive perspective. At the tail end of the blurry years of parenting, we’re in the home stretch! With a few tweaks to our perspective, we can survive it without giving up or jumping off the roof. My fifteen year…