Tag Archives: single mom

happiness

Honey and ginger

I would have thought the boy was mansick today, but since I’m also dragging today it must be the real thing.

Since it’s Sunday and there’s 40 feet of snow outside we took advantage of a quiet day. I actually got a lot of studying done and a little bit of organizing – it’s time to purge all the things I don’t need again.

The sick treat of the day was honey and ginger – my favorite home remedy for feeling under the weather. And a little On Guard just for good measure.

I had a fun text time with a cousin who shares the same view as us. We often text each other when the skies are beautiful or the moon is out so we can share the moment. Today our shared moment included immense gratitude for where we live. We are blessed.

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happiness

Another new normal

We had a family meal at the house tonight – moving into another new normal now that mom is gone. That house needs laughter and family in it, to me that is what our home is all about – a gathering place for our tribe. It was good to feel life in it again – good to have people who love us and love that old house together. We need to continue to build memories here, we need to continue coming together.

I spent some time this afternoon in gratitude for the tribe, for the family we have here. The kids and I are so blessed to be surrounded by these people who love us – whenever I feel like we are so alone all I have to do is look outside and see imprints of generations of our people, or I look at the walls of this family home, and I am almost overwhelmed with how lucky I feel that I have these roots.

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happiness

Stop for an owl

We are having a crazy amount of snow come down today, which seemed fitting since we had appointments all over the place to deal with mom’s estate.

I am so grateful I’ve got my sister to walk alongside me in this process. I don’t know what I’d do without her, it helps we can grieve together, we share a lifetime of memories.

On the way home at the end of the day, the kids and I got stuck behind a tractor. Fatal error because I’m impatient but there was too much snow for me to get around him. And since I was on the backroad, and we were probably related to him, I couldn’t even complain (too much).

But because we were going slowly, we noticed an owl sitting on the side of the road. I love owls and so do the kids. So we stopped and watched him for a while. It was beautiful and peaceful – exactly what I needed after an emotionally exhausting day. There is happiness everywhere

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happiness

Little girls on surly ponies

I had tea and shared stories with an old friend. I have known her since we were little girls on surly ponies. So, even though we hadn’t sat down and visited properly in years we know the core of who each other is and that makes picking up again so easy.

I love it because although we have each been on our own bumpy and winding paths, we have been on similar journeys to find ourselves and our soul purposes. And I love talking with people about their soul purpose, their dharma, the thing that makes them come alive, and how they’re going about making it come together in their lives. It helps me figure out what mine is.

I actually left our conversation with the beginnings of a few ideas rattling around in my head.

I am so grateful we are home as I am surrounded again by my tribe. I have such a deeper appreciation for these people now than I did before I left here for our gypsy years. I need the love and support, the laughter and tears, the knowledge that I am with people who know who I am because they’ve known me forever – but who also let me learn and grow.

I need more moments like that one. It helps balance my soul and realign my focus on what is important.

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happiness

Trust in me

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading the last few days about trust. It’s been a big one for me over the last few years – probably over most of my adult life. I don’t think that I went into my marriage having massive trust issues, but I certainly came out of it with more than my fair share.

What I realized as I was beginning to heal was that I no longer trusted myself. That crushed me – I felt like I had proven to myself over and over I was untrustworthy. After all, I had convinced myself to stay for years in a situation that wasn’t safe by telling my soul lie after lie about how things would change, or trying to convince myself that what he said was true and the reason he was so angry, deceitful, and absent was because of me. I have been working on changing that relationship with myself. Interestingly, it’s been at least as difficult a process as it would be to learn to trust and forgive someone else who had betrayed me. The good thing is I’ve been reading the perfect book Trust by Iyanla Vanzant – it’s giving me exactly what I need right now.

My exercise this morning in A Course In Miracles was to find the light inside of a person who had betrayed me. The only part of the exercise that was easy was deciding which person to pick. But you know what? He has a light inside too  – he may have covered it up with clouds of hate, anger, fear, rage, and whatever else – but there is a light in there, I’ve seen it before.

Here’s the thing. While I would like to think that he wouldn’t purposely leave his children without a way to have their needs met, that’s not true. No amount of wishing he is a different man than the one he shows me will change that – I know, I’ve spent years hoping he will change. And while I no longer go to bed at night scared he will make good on his threats to harm us, I still seem to hold out hope that he will turn into a decent person for the sake of my kids.

You know what that does? It messes with my ability to trust myself. I know he is trying to destroy me, I know he doesn’t care about the damage he does to the kids in the process. And yet I have spent sooooooo much energy trying to convince myself otherwise.

Here’s what I know for sure:

I have been depending on a man who has proven for years he’s not dependable

I have been trusting a man who has proven for years he’s not trustworthy

I have been wishing for him to change even though he’s proven he has no interest in being kind.

I know who he is and what he’s capable of and still I expect him to behave differntly

I expect him to do what I know he will not do and be who I know he is not

It is impossible for him to become trustworthy just because I want him to be

He has shown me who he really is and I have to believe him.

You know what telling myself all those lies has done? It has messed with my ability to trust myself. It’s affected the most important human relationship I have – the one with my own soul. It makes me betray my heart and my intuition to convince myself that I can trust him.

And he has very, very clearly shown that he has no limits to the pain he is willing to inflict not only on me but on the kids. My poor kids are devastated right now and it hurts me to the core of my soul.

So, I keep working on forgiveness, now for myself. I need to forgive myself for not trusting my inner voice, for not valuing the power of my intuition. Part of me knew as soon as mom died he was going to come after me again – and I was right, but I forced myself to ignore it. And now here we are.

With that, I feel like he’s had enough airtime in my life and on my blog. I am working on forgiveness, but I’m also standing up and saying that what he’s doing isn’t right. I’m doing it here, but I’m also working with the authorities to get them moving on forcing him to deal with the consequences of his actions. Part of me trusting myself means knowing that I’m not afraid to stand up for myself and for my kids. I’m not the same woman he used to beat down.

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happiness

Back on the ridge

It was finally decent enough I could get back out on the ridge with my Dotted Dog. I had forgotten how important it is for me to have that quiet time – it is when I connect to the Divine in a completely different way.

I actually feel much better now, I still have no idea how we will make things work, but I have faith that it will work out. I have been looked after every step of my journey and I can’t believe God will just stop now.

It felt good to get back out in the sunshine again – in the world and inside my soul.

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happiness

Areas communication competition

The kids were back at it again today with their speeches. The girl’s speech brought tears to my eyes – it’s an amazing speech anyway, so brave and powerful – but this time she was so much more confident and strong.

The boy gave a different version of his speech on communism and won!!! The way that kids talks with such confidence and clarity is amazing. Considering the introverted mom who is raising them, it’s impressive they can do this at all, forget the courageous way they can get up and talk.

I am so glad we are part of this club – in many ways it reminds me of how Pony Club used to be  when I was a kid before all the money and politics came into it. It’s because our club is small and full of really wonderful and supportive people. What a great place for my kids to grow and learn. Best of all the adults in our club are really cool, so I genuinely enjoy going to events and spending time with the club.

Who knew 4H was so much fun?

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It’s a small world

I had a parking lot goods exchange this morning that made me feel like I was doing a drug swap, but really I was just buying farm eggs from a lady I met on one of the Cochrane Facebook groups. After she contacted me to tell me she had some eggs I could purchase, I looked at her profile so I could recognize her and all of her photos included Mom’s Heather – the wonderful lady who looked after my mom for the last year and half. The “egg lady” is Heather’s best friend and we had no idea who each other was until I looked at her photos. There really is a small degree of separation between us all and I love it when the Universe randomly  brings us together like this. We chatted and laughed in the parking lot, and as I drove away I realized it had been a Happiness Moment, and that in fact I’ve been having Happiness Moments all along, I’ve just been too sad to see them.

Something awful happened to one of the members of my tribe earlier this week. Their poor family has literally been to hell and back over the last couple of years and the last thing they needed was another tragedy. I had a WTF moment with God wondering why they had to deal with yet more pain and I tried to figure out why it had happened to them. The best I could come up with was who knows, it was totally random. But, what I did realize was that I never once questioned whether or not they were being punished for something, or if God had forgotten them, or if He didn’t love them – I know this isn’t true – they are awesome people and live life being kind and honest.

And then I realized that if that was true about them, then it was likely true about me too. Sometimes I get really angry with God because I feel he’s forgotten me or is punishing me. But if I don’t feel that way about them – and the crap they’ve dealt with over the last few years is at least as bad as mine if not worse – then why should I feel that way about me and my kids?

And if you are dealing with a crappy situation in your own life the same thing is true – we can’t always understand the painful things that come our into our lives, but it in no way changes the value you have as a person.

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happiness

Ginger chews

The boy and I tackled the sad job of returning some of mom’s things today – I keep thinking I can’t take these things back she needs them – but then I remember she’s gone. I was grateful he came along with me so at least I wasn’t crying alone.

When we were done we went to the grocery store (because I have teens and they eat all the time) when I paid the cashier gave us each a ginger chew to try. We got to the car, opened them up, and popped them in our mouths. They were so good, but so chewy and they made the grossest mouth chewing noises imaginable. Both of us hate the sound of loud chewing anyway, so we took the opportunity to try and see who could be the most disgusting. I can’t imagine how we must have looked sitting in the car, mouths wide open, laughing so hard.

Thank God for that kid and his weird sense of humour. It feels good to laugh – it was an actual happiness moment. Thank goodness.

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happiness

Integrity and grievances

I’ve been slowly working away at the stack of things to do that have piled up over the last few months. I have absolutely no regrets about how I prioritized my time, but it doesn’t change the fact that I have a lot of catching up to do.

Something that kept playing in my mind as I was working this morning was how my dad used to talk about integrity. My dad lived with his heart on his sleeve, and it was important to him that people trusted him and that they understood that if he gave his word it was good as gold. He talked to me often about how you needed to live life with integrity – you had to be able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and be ok with the choices you made and the way you treated people.

And not only did he talk the talk, but he walked the walk. I learned from him not because of what he said, but because of how he lived his life. In fact, I was surprised after he died how many of my friends sent me messages telling me of times in the past when they had troubles and they’d called my dad to come help them out. Most of these I never even knew about. He was reliable, dependable, loving, and while not perfect – always did his best to show up for the people he loved.

Now that I am rebuilding my life I have the chance to figure out how I want to be in this life. I need to live with integrity as well. I have little people watching me and learning how they need to be in the world too. That’s a huge responsibility, but it’s an honour as well – that’s how our family values get passed down. They need to learn to love fiercely and unconditionally, and to be dependable and forgiving.

Forgiveness.

That’s something that keeps popping up in my life right now. The idea that I can’t be truly happy, truly at peace, truly free, while I’m holding onto past grievances. It was driven home last week when the boy informed me that he had decided he was going to hate his dad for as long as he lived. While I totally understand his sentiment, I don’t want him spending the rest of his life with that blackness in his heart.

Unfortunatly it seems the only way I’ll be able to teach them to forgive is to do it myself. I have a few issues with this. First off, it’s really difficult to forgive someone who isn’t sorry – who in fact seems to feed off our pain and suffering. There’s also a certain element of fear attached to the thought of forgiveness – in the past every time I have forgiven him he’s come back and hurt me 100 times worse. I’m still not totally sure how to forgive someone who continues to cause pain.

But, it’s necessary. It’s necessary for me, and it’s necessary for the kids. I need to learn how to do this so that they can as well. I figure how he treats us is his karma, but how we respond is ours. I can’t talk about making love based decisions when right I am living a fear based one.

I wish my dad was here. I miss talking with him. I miss him for my kids, I miss him for me.

On the way home, the girl took this photo – it’s like God’s hand holding light over our house

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