Next Chapter

“You will require a new level of integrity within your life, which will transpire into better boundaries and a more stable foundation” – Pivot Year

I’ve always been both an early & late bloomer. I was thrust into being an adult from the age of 8 when my father suddenly died and I felt I had to be responsible for helping keep my mother remain as sober as possible so she would be around for me and my sister. Of course, this wasn’t explicit and it’s hard to explain to those who haven’t experienced it – it’s just a survival instinct that you embody. As the eldest, I just did more and learned to fill in the spaces because one parent vanished and I instinctively knew another parent could as well so I worked to keep things as stable as possible and to be available for my mom. That being said, mom was emotionally absent, for the most part, and we survived by cobbling together cues on how to cook food, manage school, and navigate social interactions. If I ever was overwhelmed or sad my mother would tell me to sleep on it and I’d feel better in the morning – I learned to cope through avoidance and diminishing my feelings. 

We had an aunt who loved us fiercely, but after we moved from Texas to Colorado that lifeline was gone, save letters we would send back & forth. The Colorado move happened when I was 14 and my sister was 11. That’s when we really began being on our own for most intents and purposes. That fall I convinced my mom to let me travel to NYC on my own for a week. Her semi-boyfriend encouraged it, saying, “All flowers bloom in their own time.” I took that to heart and mom seemed glad to let me go. By the time I was 16 I’d begun periodically living on my own and had backpacked solo in Europe, twice. At 19, I had completed just shy of 2 years of college and enlisted in the Navy – letting my mother, who was off bicycling with a boyfriend, know via a phone call. My sister was finishing her junior year and maybe just off at summer camp, best I can recall. 

While I launched myself into the world as early as I could, I never took the time to look within or rather to claim what was within and follow my heart – there was no time for introspection in our home and I kept chasing my tail for decades. Even though my mom was emotionally vacant and I knew from a place in my gut that she’d never know how to support me emotionally, I so badly wanted to be seen by her. In the end, I waffled and wobbled through life until I found myself sitting, still unmoored at 50, unwrapping what I get to be in this next chapter, who I am now, and all that I’ve been. My longest role has been caregiver – first to my sister & my own mother. Later, as mother to my daughter. 

The role of mother – perhaps the most important yet least valued in our culture and I don’t mean that in some trad wife way, but that mothers are not honored for their sacrifice and diligence. It’s an expectation that the mother will simply Be There for their child and I made the expectation my identity. I did not demand that her father step up because it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t, until it was too late and I found myself resenting him for not being more engaged in her life. He had her half the time, but never actively engaged in ensuring all the details of life were covered. More precisely, I got there first. I took action- I wanted to be fully present for her while giving the best I could of life experiences. He was an available dad and, in truth, that’s solid.

When we were still married, he once told me, “If you want someone who is ambitious, we should just get a divorce now.” I replied that I’d be happy if he’d just finish projects around the house. But with thirteen years of reflection, he was correct. If I am to have a partner, I need one with ambition. That being said, my ambition was funneled into my daughter, which brings me to where I sit, 17 years later, wondering What Next?

There is no book on how to be a “Good Mother” and every single experience is different. We can only do what we feel is best, and no matter what our choices, our children will likely seek therapy. I watch my own daughter move through the world and I witness the success of my efforts. I feel validated for the sacrifices I made, the lack of career tributes are fully accepted when I watch the tribute that my daughter has become for the world, because let us not pretend she won’t be a tribute. All of her joys, successes, hardships, dreams, goals, and her soul itself will be chewed on by the world. It has already begun – that is what each of us is in truth- a tribute to the world we are part of in all ways. And the world, for me, has been focused on her for the last 17 years, but it is now time to begin a return to me.  

My focus, for the first time in my life, can be completely about the second half of my life and how I will begin to fall in love with life once more – not that my life hasn’t been good – but it’s been a buffet of taking care of others who I perceived as needing me and in that being “needed,” I failed to allow myself to be the main course. I am so excited to no longer be an option within my own life, but to be the Main Course in my decisions.