Not Perfectly Choreographed, Edited and Filtered...Yet

I'm ready to make another focus shift in my writing....

This blog began in 2011 as a chronicle of my happenstance home educating my children...and country life in rural Vermont.  I posted things we cooked, places we went.

I find it interesting that I began it when my marriage began to be really strained in 2011. It was a creative outlet for me to  share with someone...anyone out there... fun and interesting things in my life with some humor.  I felt less lonely as isolated as I was on a farm with chickens and a sled team of Siberian huskies.  It was a way for me to feel like I had adult social connections.

Writing became really useful and therapeutic to later chronicle about the hard things.  It was reflective of my deep processing of massive change in my life and how it impacted day to day activity for me.

Adjusting during transition....well..there is no adjusting...it's more like...surviving... writing and publishing became something I clung on to.  I had a lot of feedback during this time that my willingness to be vulnerable and raw was refreshing to people -- in an online world of carefully choreographed, edited and filtered lifestyles that make many wonder why they can't be edited, filtered, choreographed and fabulous like so many bloggers appear.

For those who are just peeking in now... my marriage fell apart...my children and I moved from rural Vermont to suburban/urban Utah... and my Mother acquired a terminal illness during this time and passed away ~ all in the last two years.

In a nutshell, my coping mechanisms were...

Year 1:
I committed to monthly random acts of Service, monthly visits to the temple and perfect tithing.  I posted a chart of Ben Franklin's 13 virtues  on the inside of my pantry door and checked off the virtues I embodied each week and marked the ones I botched.  I did these things and logged them every month.  I wish I had blogged more about the service things I did and my struggles and successes with Ben Franklin, but if I published them, that would kind of negate the random and often anonymous acts I performed.  And truthfully, I probably faltered more than thrived with Ben and wasn't up for sharing the details of that.  But I got good at stocking up on tinfoil pans and always had ingredients of  lasagna ready to go and drop at someone's door at a moments notice from church that a need was there.  I left small gifts on front porches.  I shoveled the elderly lady's driveway next-door or took out her trash.  I was trying to build new habits that transcended myself and my own situation.

The idea behind these things was to get the focus off of myself during some deep grief periods.  But I also walked and unloaded frequently with girlfriends.  I would visit and cry and laugh and vent with them.  They were kind to hold space for me during this time and offer a empathetic ears as my life changed.  I had that one friend, though, who masters the art of calling me on the carpet with my own behavior.  Everyone needs just one person in their life like this.  It's transformative.  She's the one that still stands as close friends and confidants come and go.  That, is deep friendship and love. If you don't have one of these in your arsenal of friends or family, I recommend finding one. This peculiar and very valuable relationship deserves an entry of its own.

I took a ten week workshop on Brene Brown's Shame and Vulnerability.  I knew I needed help when I felt my heart closing, hardening up.... and felt shame as I looked longingly at the wedding bands on women I passed in the store...feeling like something must be wrong with me that I couldn't hang on to my husband and 15 year marriage.  I had to sit in that shame puddle and really feel it fully before I could stand back up and brush myself off.  It was hard work.

I also experimented with a ton of chaste dating. I had to throw that word "chaste" in there, because in modern dating culture, "lots of dating" garners eye brow raises and implies...well...physical intimacy.  No, no.  I went on lots of first and a small handful of second or third dates but was absolutely not ready for any thing more committed than that.  One lovely man flitted in and out for about five months  - around the time a relationship is evaluated for the next level of commitment.  Wasn't ready.

Year 2

Following my mother's illness and death, I ceased rapid fire dating, trimmed in my social circle, and really circled the wagons around my children.  The Littles and I returned to home schooling after a one year positive experiment with public school.  The eldest two children really spread their wings with their athletics and took off.  With intention I've been working to make space for a relationship in my life.  Glimpses of that has been healing and fun.  I really just want some fun.  I head to Maui in a week!  I think that's going to be fun.

I also ruthlessly abandoned serving others during this time and turned the focus more on myself.  I wanted to build more confidence, stand taller, and be comfortable in my own skin.  I hired a personal trainer and have been hitting the gym 3-4 times a week for nine months, I weaned my toddler, got him his own bed, I got regular pedicures, Invisalign, skin care and started washing my face at night - I inherited great skin from my mother and neither of us ever bothered to take our makeup off at the end of the day - this had to change.  The last two years had aged me a bit.  This all worked well.  I feel better.  Next time I drop a lasagna off.. I can do it with a brighter smile and glowing skin.

So what's next?

Year 3 will be about financial independence.  Every ounce of my energy will likely go into actions that make me more financially independent, secure and have the ability to save.  I've been doing midwifery and birth work for other midwives - most recently the Birthwise group - but I have always maintained my own boutique midwifery practice.  I plan to expand this.  I'm contemplating a fun investment project with some new friends.  My future writing will likely be discussing some of these new things.

We just had our first professional session of family photos done.  I bartered with a friend who is talented behind the camera but hasn't launched her own photog shop yet  - I helped her at the birth of her second child and she took some incredible photos of us.  I actually love how choreographed, edited and maybe filtered it looks.  Expect more like this!

Follow me on Instagram @shabbyski or my midwife page @segolilymidwife for daily glimpses into our lives.

Ciao!

We are One Year Pioneers In Utah

Candlelight & Wisteria has crossed 20,000 views! Might be time for a new platform. Thank you!

I sit on my porch in a faded sage green wicker sofa, which adorns this cute light brown brick 1940s brick cottage.  I hear birds chirping and landscaping on the golf course nearby, I hear the far away sound of I-80 which is oddly busy for an important Utah holiday.  The sky is this exotic blue grey, but starkly blue and so typical of the desert sunrise.   My little son thinks I-80 sounds like a waterfall, and I close my eyes and think he's right - maybe Niagara Falls - its drone is like white noise.   I contrast the difference between desert city life and small, quaint, quintessential Vermont life with rolling green hills and white church spires that I left behind a year ago.

I fell asleep on my front patio last night, drifting off to the sound of my wind chime in the light breeze and the quaking of the young aspen overhead.  And of course the distant I-80 waterfall.  I felt content.  I might have stayed outside all night - the temperature was perfect - but I don't yet have a masculine entity to watch over me in my home - so as I startled at the sound of a critter in the rustling bush nearby, I was reminded of that fact and sulked to bed, anticipating the day I might feel safe to stay outside.

I think I am the first one up in the neighborhood and I'm back out on my beloved tattered second-hand outdoor wicker.  Today is Pioneer day in Utah and I rose at dawn to place American Flags in front of seven homes on my corner - a boy scout / church tradition that lines a handful of Salt Lake neighborhoods on certain national holidays and Pioneer Day.

Pioneer day is a celebration of the Mormon pioneers who settled the valley around 1847.  It's a day where everything stops for parades and fireworks, pool time and barbecues.  It also represents the approximate anniversary my children and I arrived in Utah.  We arrived on July 19th, 2014.  We remember it was a Saturday evening because we rose early Sunday morning, and in hasty chaos inside the U-Haul trailer parked in the street out front, located semi-wrinkly Sunday clothes to make it to church.  It was the day we met the people that would become our closest friends and take us under wing.

Unlike most of the people we are friends with here, I do not have pioneer heritage in my lineage.  I am from the northeast and with the exception of one family in the 1800s who traveled to Missouri, then Illinois and back to New York, I can't find anyone who made it to the far west.  I realize my children and I are now the pioneers in my family -  how fitting that we rolled into Utah just in time to experience Pioneer Day.  

I am grateful for the 1840s pioneers who tarried across the Great Plains, suffering hunger, death of loved ones, blistered feet and hands for walking the way pulling handcarts, illness, stillborns yet they came together as brothers and sisters and carried each other's burdens to make it all the way.  My dear friends are likely descendants of these brave souls who left everything behind, and I feel enormous gratitude to their heritage.

Ciao.