Over the last two years, I may have grown more than perhaps I have in the last 38 years of my life, although at times begrudgingly. I've filled my time with kickboxing, crying on the couch, lots of car singing, traveling to Seattle, Texas, Colorado, Montreal, Quebec City, Burlington and places closer to home, connecting with friends, being comfortable in my alone-ness and so. much. reading. I've read book upon book to understand myself and the how's and why's I've changed to help me get to who and where I want to be.
The first book I dove into was Mother Brain, which deeply endeavors to understand the changes that occur when a woman becomes pregnant, births a baby and slogs through the mental, emotional and physical changes that few have bothered to deeply dive into in the past. This was an eye-opening read for me because when one is told much of what happened is their fault, one tends to believe it. I am certainly not blameless in past actions, but as time passed both in the book and on the calendar, I came to comprehend that I was under the spell of "maternal gatekeeping" (a phrase I had never heard of but makes SO much sense). Loosely put, this is the practice of overstepping when the other parent is taking care of the child. Turns out, there are ways to remedy this issue that doesn't lead to divorce. Who knew?
Who knows what could have been different had Covid/Trump/postpartum anxiety made worse by aforementioned other two but over the next two years, I lost myself to not only taking care of the baby but also (in this order) my partner, my job, my cat, my dog, my house and somewhere near the bottom of the Mariana Trench, myself. One point that stuck out as particularly memorable in Mother Brain was the idea that at no other time in a woman's life do they undergo such drastic emotional, physcial and mental changes as during pregnancy, seconded only to puberty. Remember back to when you were 10 or 12 or 14 or whenever puberty hit you and just how much you develeoped into the person you grew up to be. Now add a baby to take care of while trying to understand yourself and your place in not only your marriage but the world around you but you can't because until this book came out last summer-ish, I couldn't find any science or logic to comprehend why I acted the ways I did. Talk about light bulb moment after moment.
A second book was called Conscious Uncoupling. This was a glorious book to read as it's an intense guidebook of how to comprehend the shift from being with the person you thought was going to be "it" forever to just the opposite. One tag line for the book is "create your happy even after life." OK, I'm divorced. Now what? I was 34 when my daughter was born and 36 when my divorce was finalized. The next year, my dad gave me one of the most useful perspectives I have yet to receive in my life with a simple birthday card. It read something to the effect of "37! That's younger than I was when you were born. You have so much life left ahead of you!" My dad was just shy of 39 years old when I was born. He and my mom divorced when he was about 45 years old. He was single for many years, and then married a partner that made him happy when when he was about 57 years old. My mom was in the same boat, remarried a wonderful partner when she was about 66 years old. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is possible and healthy to think you will be happily ever after with someone only to one day wake up to the startling realization that that dream is dead and you have to, as another perspective savior said to me, "burn it all down in order to rebuild again." I can do this.
One book I've just finished that was of abundant use was Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve. I underlined the shit out of this one. I saw myself, I saw my co-parent, I saw who I used to be and most importantly, I saw who I want to be. I can't recommend it enough. I learned that one can separate the hate of actions one took or words they said without hating the person themselves. We deprive ourselves of the potential for happiness within ourselves as well as with a future partner if we let our hate/grief/anger/resentment win. "Love always wins" is applicable in so many circumstances. I love myself enough to work on myself. No one deserves to be hurt but it's how we deal with that hurt and move forward that defines our outlook.
Lastly, I've moved on to Calling in "The One." When I have it out on the counter as I write at a coffee shop, I feel borderline desperate but there are some hard-hitting truths that one must face in order to be ready and available to potential re-partnership and this book pulls no punches. I'll outline from the book in bold one such nugget below:
In order to attain the "much-desired "solid sense of self", one must have:
1. The capacity to experience a wide variety of feelings, as well as an ability to sooth painful feelings in a positive way;
2. The ability to express your thoughts and feelings authentically to another person without too much fear of either being engulfed or abandoned;
3. The capacity to tolerate your own aloneness;
4. A healthy sense of entitlement that life holds good things for you and that you deserve them;
5. The ability to assert your individuality and authenticity in the world; and
6. A stability of self, meaning that you are always aware that you are the same person regardless of who you are with, what you are doing, or the current circumstances (both good and bad) of your life.
Simply put...solid relationships require solid selves.
My answers to these ideas are as follows:
1. To quote that random woman in Mean Girls "I just have a lot of feelings." Positive ways to sooth painful feelings include: kickboxing, drinking, slamming a medicine ball down in repeatedly in bootcamp class today/anytime, walking, drinking again, reading, writing, etc. I still have negative feelings about what happened but it's how one deals with the darkness that makes all the difference. It's a new day and chance to be a better self every time I wake up.
2. At this point, I can show up for myself and speak my mind, even if it means telling myself to shut up at times or being disappointed in reactions here and there. But does the feeling that I'm just going to be let down, abandoned and shunned creep in now and then? Unfortunately yes. But not letting that feeling overcome my brain and my life is key.
3. Check. Early on, I would move constantly; work out, travel, go out, anything to not be alone at home without my daughter or c0-parent. This was one of the easiest to work through. At this point, alone time is "helping myself rediscover who I used to be and who I want to be" time.
4. Check. This morning, I wrote "Katrina, you are worthy of true partnership" on my mirror. I've burned it all down and I'm ready but not rushed to rebuild something truly beautiful for myself and hopefully someday, with someone else, should I be lucky enough.
5. Check. I occasionally have roadblocks to being my strong and confident self but roadblocks are temporary and meant to be moved to the side to allow passage.
6. This is possibly the one I will work the hardest on moving forward. Remaining true to yourself while partnering with someone new is difficult, no? Just look at the space between the last blog piece I wrote before these more current three. March 2017 to August 2022 to December 2023. I lost myself in my marriage and I don't intend to let that happen ever again. Easier said than done?
These women and men who have poured their past and soul into these self-help books which are my stepping stones to a new and more fulfilling future, I couldn't be more grateful for both their writing and my drive to ever-improve. Happy New Year, happy new me. Happy new you.
The first book I dove into was Mother Brain, which deeply endeavors to understand the changes that occur when a woman becomes pregnant, births a baby and slogs through the mental, emotional and physical changes that few have bothered to deeply dive into in the past. This was an eye-opening read for me because when one is told much of what happened is their fault, one tends to believe it. I am certainly not blameless in past actions, but as time passed both in the book and on the calendar, I came to comprehend that I was under the spell of "maternal gatekeeping" (a phrase I had never heard of but makes SO much sense). Loosely put, this is the practice of overstepping when the other parent is taking care of the child. Turns out, there are ways to remedy this issue that doesn't lead to divorce. Who knew?
Who knows what could have been different had Covid/Trump/postpartum anxiety made worse by aforementioned other two but over the next two years, I lost myself to not only taking care of the baby but also (in this order) my partner, my job, my cat, my dog, my house and somewhere near the bottom of the Mariana Trench, myself. One point that stuck out as particularly memorable in Mother Brain was the idea that at no other time in a woman's life do they undergo such drastic emotional, physcial and mental changes as during pregnancy, seconded only to puberty. Remember back to when you were 10 or 12 or 14 or whenever puberty hit you and just how much you develeoped into the person you grew up to be. Now add a baby to take care of while trying to understand yourself and your place in not only your marriage but the world around you but you can't because until this book came out last summer-ish, I couldn't find any science or logic to comprehend why I acted the ways I did. Talk about light bulb moment after moment.
A second book was called Conscious Uncoupling. This was a glorious book to read as it's an intense guidebook of how to comprehend the shift from being with the person you thought was going to be "it" forever to just the opposite. One tag line for the book is "create your happy even after life." OK, I'm divorced. Now what? I was 34 when my daughter was born and 36 when my divorce was finalized. The next year, my dad gave me one of the most useful perspectives I have yet to receive in my life with a simple birthday card. It read something to the effect of "37! That's younger than I was when you were born. You have so much life left ahead of you!" My dad was just shy of 39 years old when I was born. He and my mom divorced when he was about 45 years old. He was single for many years, and then married a partner that made him happy when when he was about 57 years old. My mom was in the same boat, remarried a wonderful partner when she was about 66 years old. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is possible and healthy to think you will be happily ever after with someone only to one day wake up to the startling realization that that dream is dead and you have to, as another perspective savior said to me, "burn it all down in order to rebuild again." I can do this.
One book I've just finished that was of abundant use was Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don't Deserve. I underlined the shit out of this one. I saw myself, I saw my co-parent, I saw who I used to be and most importantly, I saw who I want to be. I can't recommend it enough. I learned that one can separate the hate of actions one took or words they said without hating the person themselves. We deprive ourselves of the potential for happiness within ourselves as well as with a future partner if we let our hate/grief/anger/resentment win. "Love always wins" is applicable in so many circumstances. I love myself enough to work on myself. No one deserves to be hurt but it's how we deal with that hurt and move forward that defines our outlook.
Lastly, I've moved on to Calling in "The One." When I have it out on the counter as I write at a coffee shop, I feel borderline desperate but there are some hard-hitting truths that one must face in order to be ready and available to potential re-partnership and this book pulls no punches. I'll outline from the book in bold one such nugget below:
In order to attain the "much-desired "solid sense of self", one must have:
1. The capacity to experience a wide variety of feelings, as well as an ability to sooth painful feelings in a positive way;
2. The ability to express your thoughts and feelings authentically to another person without too much fear of either being engulfed or abandoned;
3. The capacity to tolerate your own aloneness;
4. A healthy sense of entitlement that life holds good things for you and that you deserve them;
5. The ability to assert your individuality and authenticity in the world; and
6. A stability of self, meaning that you are always aware that you are the same person regardless of who you are with, what you are doing, or the current circumstances (both good and bad) of your life.
Simply put...solid relationships require solid selves.
My answers to these ideas are as follows:
1. To quote that random woman in Mean Girls "I just have a lot of feelings." Positive ways to sooth painful feelings include: kickboxing, drinking, slamming a medicine ball down in repeatedly in bootcamp class today/anytime, walking, drinking again, reading, writing, etc. I still have negative feelings about what happened but it's how one deals with the darkness that makes all the difference. It's a new day and chance to be a better self every time I wake up.
2. At this point, I can show up for myself and speak my mind, even if it means telling myself to shut up at times or being disappointed in reactions here and there. But does the feeling that I'm just going to be let down, abandoned and shunned creep in now and then? Unfortunately yes. But not letting that feeling overcome my brain and my life is key.
3. Check. Early on, I would move constantly; work out, travel, go out, anything to not be alone at home without my daughter or c0-parent. This was one of the easiest to work through. At this point, alone time is "helping myself rediscover who I used to be and who I want to be" time.
4. Check. This morning, I wrote "Katrina, you are worthy of true partnership" on my mirror. I've burned it all down and I'm ready but not rushed to rebuild something truly beautiful for myself and hopefully someday, with someone else, should I be lucky enough.
5. Check. I occasionally have roadblocks to being my strong and confident self but roadblocks are temporary and meant to be moved to the side to allow passage.
6. This is possibly the one I will work the hardest on moving forward. Remaining true to yourself while partnering with someone new is difficult, no? Just look at the space between the last blog piece I wrote before these more current three. March 2017 to August 2022 to December 2023. I lost myself in my marriage and I don't intend to let that happen ever again. Easier said than done?
These women and men who have poured their past and soul into these self-help books which are my stepping stones to a new and more fulfilling future, I couldn't be more grateful for both their writing and my drive to ever-improve. Happy New Year, happy new me. Happy new you.