Reve' Revival

I wish someone would’ve told me how hard starting over would be. How I’d gratefully sleep on a mattress for months because the guilt of leaving my husband was too much to take anything in addition to taking his children. How I couldn’t afford anything else for some time because I didn’t have money of my own yet and how embarrassed and shameful I felt. How I’d cry on that old hardwood bedroom floor for hours, even then still trying to muffle myself after holding it back all day once the boys were finally asleep.

But then I think… no I wouldn’t have.

I wouldn’t have wanted to know about that part because then I would’ve missed the liberation, the bloom. The hope that traveled rainbow through my veins, a feeling I hadn’t felt since I was a child. A new life, a life of my own creation. At last, I picked up the pen and began writing my own truest, most beautiful and alive life I could imagine. And guess what? I was supported and held, completely. As the world that I knew began falling apart and beliefs I was certain were solid, evaporated into thin air, something more real and peaceful than I’d ever known, remained standing amongst the rubble of life as I had known it to be. A loving peaceful anchor that never budged or left my side, not for one single moment. I had simply forgotten, but it had never forgotten me. When falsities are stripped away, what’s real remains.

Life, as I’ve come to know, is hard either way. We can stay in what’s familiar long past it’s expiration date. We feel the squish and constriction, like a too tight shoe we refuse to donate, giving us blisters and making it hard to walk, but we know what to expect at least. It’s a discomfort we are accustomed to. And lucky for us, we live in a time where numbing out these feelings and knowings are not only encouraged, but readily available and happily served up on a platter for our consumption and disassociation. We quiet the aches of our soul and carry on, waiting for the weekend, waiting for the vacation, waiting for our turn, waiting … to come alive.

Following your heart, turning towards and listening to the ache isn’t easy. It’s much easier not to feel it all. It’s much easier to blame “them”. It’s hard to face truths you don’t want to know. Almost unbearable. It’s hard to walk places you’ve never been, machete in hand, carving your way as you go, not ever really knowing what’s beyond your next step. A clearing? An oasis? Or a rattlesnake? You must be willing to trust yourself, completely. Trust your steps to carry you forwards. Trust the way, even when you don’t know where or what that is, knowing you’re never alone. It’s hard defrosting. You know when your foot falls asleep and then the blood rushes back in to wake it up again? Yea, like that. Or the heart palpitations when you stand up in a room full of strangers to speak? The point is, it’s hard either way. And to quote Glennon Doyle, “you get to decide which hard you choose.” But I do believe with ever fiber of my being, that you deserve to come alive in a way that’s true for you and only you know what that means and what that looks like.

There is no promise of easy, but there is promise of a life lived fully alive while you get to. The pen is in your hands.