by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Here you are, locked in your room. Trying not to remember that he was supposed to share this room with you, that he promised to have and hold until death parted. Trying not to think about that one you loved, who never came home. Trying not to acknowledge that your kids are in the next room, that they will have to be told, that you will then have to carry on in the face of their anger and questions and silent blame.
Welcome to divorce.
You started your marriage all those years ago, just kids, both of you, dancing around the waxed floor to that song, that song, that song you’ll never, ever, ever be able to hear again.
The worst part is, you believed him. You, who didn’t believe any of the boys before him, because you knew what happens when a man finds another woman he likes better—you lived that life as a kid—and stays gone. You believed that he would love you forever. Humiliating.
What is forever to a man who doesn’t stay home? Nothing but words.
So much for happily ever after. So much for real-life fairy tales. It’s just real-life nightmares, that’s all. At least that’s how it looks from here.
Welcome to divorce.
So now you’re it. You’re the only one. You don’t know how you’ll possibly make it. All you really want to do, right now, is lay your head on your pillow and pretend the world is over, because it is for you. You have lost the man you loved. You have lost the father of your children. You have lost.
But the kids will be wanting dinner soon, and life goes on. You have to stay strong for them, because you know this is just the beginning. It’s not easy, the staying strong, but you are a survivor. You have endured all these years of working by yourself to put food on the table for those three. What are a few more?
So you keep on keeping on. Tonight it just looks like shaking out some fish sticks onto a cookie sheet and sticking it in the oven so they can help themselves. Tomorrow it will look like working your fingers to their very bones, sacrificing sleep to be both mom and dad to your kids, sitting in the audience of every performance, every volleyball game, every graduation because there’s a missing person haunting an empty seat that carves a hole of missing in their hearts.
Welcome to divorce.
You worry that your kids will be damaged irreparably by the way things ended, because now there’s a dad who didn’t look back. And it’s true that they’ll walk with scars. That’s not your fault. And they will make it through, because of the example you live every single day. They will remember the nights you got home late, and you were so tired, and yet still you listened to that song they wanted to share on the clarinet, because they thought it was just beautiful (and you do, too). They’ll remember the days when you took off work, even though it meant lost wages, so you could watch them scratch on purpose in the 300-meter hurdles their coach made them run, purposely jumping the gun because they didn’t want to jump the hurdles. They’ll remember the nights you sat up stroking hair because a friend had been mean or a boyfriend broke up or a grade wasn’t what was expected.
It may not be today, but one day your kids will look back at what you’ve done and call you a hero. They will know the truth of your struggle, not because they live it, thank God, but because our eyes open wider to reality as we live our years. They will remember. They will be glad for your surviving. They will be glad for what it taught them about their own survival.
You will make it, single mom. It doesn’t feel like you will in this place of betrayal and heartbreak and despair, but you will. You have what’s needed deep inside. It’s in the hardest times that we most see what we’re made of. So show yourself what’s inside. Surprise yourself. Carry on.
Love those children. Be their cheerleaders, work your job, be the best mom you know how to be, but remember you won’t be able to do it all. Remember you’ll need help. Put that community in place so that you’ll have the help for the days you just can’t go on a single minute more, and they’ll help you carry on. This is the purpose of community. You’ll never make it if you go it alone.
Keep dreaming with that broken heart. Let it heal, and then learn to love again. Because maybe there’s another one coming, or maybe not, but you are strong enough either way. You are strong enough to love, and you are strong enough to stand with no one else by your side but kids who are shorter than you now but will soon tower over you.
Be careful how you talk about your ex. Your children are always listening. Make it honoring and forgiving, not bitter and ugly. He’s still their dad, as much as you hate it. They still love him, as much as you hate that. They still wait on his calls and long to tell them their exciting news and want to see him, so do everything you can to make that relationship civil at least. They’ll remember who talked bad about whom.
And when they threaten, after you’ve laid down the law and set out the boundaries, that they’ll just go live with their dad, sure, it will claw at your heart, but you should know down in your deepest places that they’re just saying words. Because you’re the one who’s always been there, for everything. You were the one sitting in the audience for the seventh grade National Honor’s Society induction, when she shook through lighting a candle. You were there to snap pictures of him the night of his first prom. You were there to hear her sixth grade band concert, when someone tripped over the time signature in “Silent Night.”
They’ll know who deserves their hearts and their presence. They’ll come around.
Thank you for your sacrifice. Thank you for nurturing your children and rocking them to sleep on your own and putting that food on the table, every single day, no exceptions.
Thank you for being a hero.
by Rachel Toalson | The Midnight Hour
Photo by Abigail Keenan.
When the story finally let go, Emi looked up. She could not take her eyes off that room. She had never seen anything like it. A reading room like a music shop, records in crates, the player on a table.
by Rachel Toalson | The Midnight Hour
Photo by Hieu Le.
Sixty-seven days before
The first time Reid met Emi, she was lost in a book, waiting in a pleather chair outside his office, the next in line for an interview. He stared at her, but the story held tight.
That’s how he knew.
by Rachel Toalson | The Midnight Hour
Photo by The Anchor.
They occupied a booth at Casey’s Root Cellar that evening. She always loved that he would slide in beside her, even though there was another chair, even though it was business. They sat close, touching, talking about the book pitches that had come through and which ones were maybes, with a little work, and which ones were sure things. He couldn’t be bothered with the ones that didn’t even make the cut, so she deleted those emails without his ever seeing or knowing.
Somewhere in the course of dinner, his hand crept to her leg, and she felt it burn beneath his fingers. And then, too soon, they were back at the office and finishing up their work, and then it was time to part ways, like it always was, when he would say he’d see her tomorrow and she would lift her face, hoping for a kiss like the one he’d done in an alley on the walk back from Casey’s. His mouth had tasted like a roast beef sandwich with a hint of a rich cabernet sauvignon, but those were only the things she would remember later.
Never in a million years would she have guessed it was the last time. For anything.
by bentoalson | On My Shelf
On my shelf is something I used to do on my website where every week I would share some books I was reading. Now On My Shelf is going to be a weekly video show where I not only talk about the books that are inspiring me, but also music, movies, tv shows, things I’m learning and projects I’m working on. Subscribe to keep up with me!
by Rachel Toalson | Stuff Crash Test Kids say
CD: What kind of animal should you not play cards with?
…
CD: A cheetah!
5-year-old: Yeah! Because he would eat us!
Me: …
Husband: You now have an extra chore, because you got down from the table without permission.
8-year-old: Oooohhhh. Looks like you lost your audience. I’m going to tell all the kids at school that your podcast is so stupid even I don’t want to listen to it.”
Me: …
8-year-old: It’s not fair. You have so much money. We have nothing.
Me: …
8-year-old: …
Me: …
8-year-old: You should give me some of your money.
Me: Why did you pull out one of my hairs?
8-year-old: Sorry. I’m going to go put it on my desk.
Me: Why?
8-year-old: Because I might want to study it.
3-year-old: Mama, my poop is orange!
Me: …
3-year-old: Mama, my poop is orange!
Me: …
3-year-old: Mama, my poop is orange!
Me: I HEARD YOU!
3-year-old: …
Me: …
3-year-old: Come look.
5-year-old: I had a really bad dream last night. I came downstairs and everything was pink. It was the most horriblest dream. It was really scary.
Me: …
5-year-old (bouncing off the walls): My teacher gave me skittles today!
Me: Why did your teacher give you skittles?
5-year-old: Because I worked really hard on my work.
Husband: Know what’s an even better reward for hard work?
6-year-old: Chocolate!
Me: …
8-year-old goes to wash off his plate, heads toward the refrigerator.
Husband: Why is the water still on?
Me: Turn off the water, son.
8-year-old (looking back at the sink): What? I was wondering what that noise was.
Me: …
Me: You guys definitely need a bath tonight.
8-year-old: Yeah. Smell this. (comes at me with his armpit exposed)
Me: NOOOOOOO!
Because boys.
by Rachel Toalson | This Writer Life
This is a really difficult season in my life. I have six kids 8 and younger (exact ages; 8, 6, 5, 3 (times two) and 7 months). That means a large portion of my time just goes toward the daily needs of my children—pouring milk, helping pack lunches, reminding them to pick up their clothes and pick out their next days’ clothes so we’re not late for school tomorrow, fixing meals, keeping the house in order, doing eight loads of laundry every week.
The list goes on and on and on.
So much of my time is spent on home and kids and husband that sometimes I grieve all that time I don’t get to spend writing (even though there’s plenty of it. Really.). I don’t get to live much in my head to work out plots or characterization or the best way to end an essay, because the time I have is writing time.
But something I have to keep reminding myself is that no season lasts forever. It will not always be this crazy, because there will be a day when all the boys will do their homework without a parent standing over them, making sure they focus. There will come a day when they will pack their own lunches without suggestions from their mama and daddy. They will take their own baths and clip their own fingernails and fold and put away their own clothes. They will solve their own problems.
Sometimes I think of that time, and I wish it here faster. Most days, though, I think of that time and I hope it stays far, far away, because there is something so special about my boys being little and knowing that I get to have them for this brief moment in time, this moment when they want to kiss me and hug me and talk to me, and I don’t ever want it to end.
So there is a rejoicing and a grieving that happens with every season’s change. We grieve that time will never turn back and yet we rejoice that time will never turn back.
Recently my 8-year-old decided to start taking showers in the mornings. He used to bathe at night, and I would sit in the bathroom with him and read a story, most recently R.L. Stine’s Goosbumps books. I grieved that I was losing that special time with him, and yet because he now does it all on his own, I have an extra 15 minutes every evening to help my other boys pick out their clothes for the next day and sign all the necessary school papers and ensure that everyone will be ready for school in the morning.
It’s not easy to remember, during the hardest seasons of our lives, that this season will not last forever. There are some seasons that don’t afford us much time for writing, and sometimes they can clamp our hearts and steal our joy, because we’re not able to live a dream in the way we think it should look, and it just feels like it will never end, all the demands and all the responsibilities and all the worry and frustration and work. It feels like that kind of season can last forever, because it’s not a fun place. But it will not last forever. No season ever does.
I got a great picture of this when I broke my foot (I fell down our stairs carrying laundry and broke my foot. It could have been much worse, the way I fell.). Sometimes, when the body is traumatized like that, it goes into a sort of depression. I fell into it hard, thinking that I would never be able to move around like I should be able to, that I would never be able to concentrate on my writing like I needed to because of the pain, that this funk would last forever.
Eight weeks later, I could walk without a foot cast. I could exercise again (with limits). I could sleep (mostly) without pain. And every week after it got better.
This season you’re in will not last forever. It’s important to remember for both the good and the bad seasons. They are seasons, and something different is already on its way.
What can make rough seasons less rough:
1. Focus only on what you can do.
When we start looking around at others’ circumstances and how they have this much time to produce that many words in a week, we are in danger of wondering why we can’t do that, too. We are different people. We have different circumstances. Some of us can produce 30,000 words in a week. Some of us are hard-pressed to crank out 5,000 words in a week. We’re all working, and that’s what matters.
Make your own schedule, for this season right now, and know that it will remain flexible, because tomorrow or next month or next year could be completely different. We must remain flexible as parent writers, always flowing with the seasons.
2. Figure out where you might be able to delegate some tasks.
We’re not made to do everything. That’s not a life in balance. If we are putting too much on our plates, we will never be able to do any of it well. That means that if I don’t have room on my plate to clean my house, I should either delegate it to someone else (a housekeeper) or be okay with letting it slide for a time. If I don’t have time to be a room mom at my kids’ elementary classroom, then I don’t have to volunteer to do it. We have to be willing to give ourselves the freedom to say no to things that may sound good on the surface but are really just crowding our plate more. We must learn the art of saying “no” or “not now.”
In the words of Jen Hatmaker: “We need to quit trying to be awesome and instead be wise.”
3. Take the pressure off this season.
The world can make us feel like we’re not doing enough, ever, but we just need to take that pressure off. Sometimes we can think we need to do just as much today as we might possibly be able to do in five years, when all the kids are in middle school. But the truth is, this time when they’re in elementary school or not in school at all, requires all hands on deck, and that means time is always short, but it doesn’t mean time will always be short forever (unless your kids play every sport imaginable). I have to let go of the pressure to produce in manic volumes that might be more possible when kids are older and I have more time to work.
Oftentimes seasons can come with their own pressure, but if we can take that pressure off, we open ourselves to the freedom of living in that particular season. We open ourselves to the joy of the season, no matter how difficult it may be. We open ourselves to flexibility and hope. We open ourselves to living with no regrets.
by Rachel Toalson | General Blog
Not too long ago, one of our neighbors was selling his house. We saw the sign but didn’t think much of it. It didn’t involve us. At least that’s what we thought.
And then one night, when we were out running wild in the cul-de-sac with our children, he followed his daughter out the door, presumably to watch her play. Except he headed straight for Husband and said, “Hey man, we need to do something about your bush.”
No preamble, no how are you, no small talk. Just straight to the point. I guess I kind of like that. I’m not much for small talk, either.
Husband and I both knew what bush he was talking about.
This bush is not really a bush at all. It’s just a plant. Every spring it blooms with beautiful orange flowers that brighten up the yard, and it keeps growing and growing and growing until it dies off in winter. Then it leaves its dried-out stems (that, by this time, look like trunks) in our little flower garden unless someone makes the effort to trim them. Every spring it grows back with a vengeance, offering its green and orange around all the dead parts that someone still hasn’t trimmed.
The problem isn’t that all those dead parts make this beautiful plant look ugly. It’s that when the neighbors’ trash blows out of their over-filled trash cans when they’re sitting out for trash pickup, this massive plant likes to eat it. And whoever is supposed to be trimming the dead stems also isn’t picking out of its clutches all the nasty pieces of other people’s trash.
Oh, wait. That’s supposed to be me.
There are some things you just give up on when you have as many kids as we do (Okay, many things. Lots of things. A whole life of things.). Like the yard. And a clean house. And spontaneously eating out for dinner. But that’s beside the point.
At any rate, this neighbor needed us to do something about that plant, because he was selling his house, and this plant was making his home value plummet.
I totally understand. I know we can’t control who our neighbors are, and our poor neighbors just happened to move next to the family with six boys and two parents who are drowning doing just fine.
We planted this flower garden back when we only had one child and one more on the way and life seemed so easy. We thought (such innocent kids we were) that we’d be able to manage. We’d be able to keep up with weeding and trimming back and watering. We would keep our yard pretty.
Turns out six kids 8 years and younger keep you really, really, really busy, and one of the things that falls from the idealistic we-can-handle-this list is, unfortunately, yard work.
It isn’t even because we’re lazy. It’s mostly because boys make it impossible to have a nice yard.
Case in point: The other day, my 5-year-old came to me with a digging spade. “I’m just going to dig a hole in the front yard so I can bury something,” he said, already walking out the door.
I caught his arm. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re what?”
“I’m going to dig a hole and bury something,” he said, as if this was the perfectly natural thing to do.
“What are you going to bury?” I said, because I wasn’t at all surprised by the first part.
“Nothing,” he said, but I saw what was in his hands. His brother’s favorite Hot Wheels car.
And then, when I was helping Husband save the grass from the gasoline my 3-year-olds dumped all over the backyard, my 8-year-old came out to the back deck and said, “I just planted some cucumbers and carrots out front. So we’ll have a vegetable garden.”
Um.
I now have renegade plants that are clearly not flowers growing in the flower garden I haven’t weeded in two years.
Another part of the problem is that every time we plan on having a yard work day, something else comes up. Something else like two 3-year-olds deciding they’re going to pull down all the clothes in their closet, even though they’d have to be Spider-Man to reach them now with all the creative safeguards we’ve put in their room (I don’t even know.). Something else like the 6-year-old deciding he’s going to get into the art cabinet during Quiet Time to cut up some tiny little squares of paper he’ll later put in a container and dump out on someone’s head in the front yard because he thinks it’s funny (So not). Something else like the 8-year-old deciding he wants to find out if a pumpkin will grow in the old tree graveyard beside the house.
This is how we got to be the terrible neighbors whose house looks like an orphanage. (“How many kids live there?” I imagine the people who walk their dogs in our cul-de-sac say. “We’re not really sure,” their walking partner answers.) Scooters crop up in the clearly dying grass; the herb garden off to the side is courting a weed tree, because I cannot even; and the boys ask to go gather wildflowers in our yard because it’s a whole wildflower field (“I brought some flowers for you, Mama,” the 3-year-olds say. “Thank you for weeding the yard,” I say.).
I know what you’re thinking. Why not just hire a lawn crew and take care of it the easy way? Well, my question to you is, have you ever tried to feed six boys who are always, always hungry? There’s your answer.
Also, one of these days we’re going to have a yard-working force, with six boys weeding and mowing and tidying up and trimming bushes and gathering herbs, and then our yard is going to be the envy of the block. But for now it most definitely looks like six children live here. Maybe more (because twins).
The thing is, when you’re a parent, some things have to slide until you can get your head above water (which is probably never. We’re all just lying to ourselves.). Our head hasn’t been above water for quite a while now, because there are six of them and only two of us, and they’re still young. That’s okay. It’s what we signed up for. I’m not complaining. I don’t really care about our yard, truth be told.
If you accidentally bought a house next to us, I’m just warning you now, even though it’s too late, that we’re not going to be winning “best block in the neighborhood” anytime soon, and it’s mostly our fault. Sorry if we’re ruining hopes and dreams by being the weakest link. We just have better things to do. Like setting our kids free out front on a summer evening and playing with them an epic game of chase on scooters and roller blades, which your kids will want to join (you’re welcome).
Chances are, next time you stop by my door, you’ll have to step over a scooter obstacle course just to make it to the doorbell, because boys are really bad about putting them away where they belong. So just watch your step (and maybe take a couple to teach them a lesson in natural consequences).
We’re really awesome people once you get past the trash cans that are perpetually left between our vehicle and our garage (lifting the garage door is just too much work when you’ve been wrestling six kids into bed) and the grass that’s always just a little bit (or maybe a lot) higher than the two inches it’s supposed to be and the bushes that look like bears might live inside.
If you’re judging us by the state of our front yard, you’ll never get to know that.
Thanks for cutting us some slack. You’ll be glad you did.
by Rachel Toalson | Messy Mondays
Dear Mr. President,
I totally get it. I know that full-time workers deserve a break. We work really hard, week after week, month after month, year after year, helping our great country stand tall with the other countries of the world. It’s really nice to have Labor Day to remind us that we’re appreciated and honored. I love getting a day off just as much as the next person.
The problem is that Labor Day isn’t also Parent Labor Day.
We just started the school year, and I just packed these boys off to school, and now you’re sending them back home to me on my holiday? That’s not a holiday. Can I please go to work instead?
I miss my kids when they’re in school. I really do. But not enough to spend a holiday with them just eight days after school started in the first place. Not enough to deal with the mess they can make in 30 seconds of being awake. (See Exhibit A, below.)
This is my dining room table. We don’t eat here, because kids and hands don’t mix with a glass-top table (I know. We bought it before we had kids.). But still. This is the first thing you see when you walk through the doors of our home. This happened because my school boys get Labor Day as a holiday, too.
Does this look like a good Labor Day holiday? Maybe for them. Not for me.
You’re probably thinking that maybe I should have just taken them out of the house for the holiday, and you’re probably right. The problem is, everything’s closed. Go to the closest national park (or any park), because they’re always open? It’s still a thousand degrees here in Texas, and we all turn into red-faced monsters when we’re outside sweating just from sitting. Take them shopping? No thanks. I’d rather do a hundred burpees. Plan fun activities with them? Well, the 8-year-old thought he’d take care of that himself, and now we have backyard dirt, unidentified hair and some kind of dead bug on the kitchen table because he wants to look at them under the microscope. I’d say that’s enough fun for one day.
So. Labor Day holiday? I beg to differ. My living room looks like a Pattern Play and puzzle explosion, the dining room table makes me want to cry, and let’s not even mention the kitchen table. *Shudder* On top of all that, the refrigerator is hanging on by a vine of grapes, because the kids are home and it’s never, ever closed when kids are home. (They’re going to regret it when they go back to school tomorrow and there’s nothing to eat in their lunches.)
So I’d like to propose that next Labor Day we make it a Parent Labor Day, too. Parents get to spend the whole holiday without their kids. We’re never off the clock when we’re a parent, so a holiday would be nice. We’re raising the future laborers, after all. We deserve a holiday from the work.
I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
A very tired parent whose Labor Day really was a labor day, except way, way, waaaaaaaaay harder than work.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
So the letter came.
You put it on the bureau for your mom, but you just had a feeling it was something bad. Something tragic. Something you might never survive. Hands know when they hold a thing like that.
So it was not entirely surprise that met you when your mom knocked on your bedroom door and beckoned you and your sister out into the kitchen, where your brother was already waiting, lured from the walls of his room still shaking with the angry chant-singing of Korn’s Jonathan Davis. It was not entirely unexpected when she looked at the three of you, swallowed hard and announced that your dad wouldn’t be coming back. It was not entirely new news that he had a new family now.
There was, after all, that year in a place where he promised to live with you all, when he only came home enough nights to count on one hand.
And yet is something like this ever entirely expected?
You try to stay strong and brave and hopeful, but if one were to look deep down inside, they would see how everything is breaking all apart, smashing against the mountains of divorce and betrayal and abandonment that would take a miracle to move. You take it calmly, of course, but you are anything but calm inside. You try to let it roll right off, but it’s really rolling you flat.
There are no words for pain like this.
So you go back to the room you share with your little sister, the room with dirt that won’t come off the windows no matter how hard you scrub because they’re a thousand years old, the room with rust-colored carpet that smells like ancient days, the room with walls so thin you can hear your mom crying in the next room when everyone else is asleep.
You lie there, listening, thinking, trying to figure out how to breathe in a black tunnel like this one. You think about the three moves in three years, making new friends in places you never wanted to be, and at least you’re done with that. You think about the year you spent up north, in your dad’s home place, where promises came and went like they were nothing more than flakes of snow falling from a southern sky in summer.
You think about that new family.
What do they have that you don’t? Why do they get to keep him? What about you, specifically, made him leave?
This is the way your 11-year-old mind works out all the knots. It twists more intricate knots. But this is the truth for you, that your presence has been replaced by those whose presence is better.
One day you will know that there are many factors that go into a complicated divorce like this one, but all you know right now, lying in a daybed beside the trundle your sister never pushes in when she’s finished sleeping, is your own truth: You were not good enough to make him stay.
You will let that sink all the way down deep. You will let it burn your joy to ashes. You will cry and rage and wonder. And then?
You will carry on, because this is who you are.
But you will carry on with a bleeding wound that will crust and dry and weep at the most inconvenient of times. Like the first time you meet your dad’s new family. Like when the girl from school says you have a pointy nose. Like when that boyfriend who is not The One comes calling in another five years.
A heart that feels unwanted is a heart that turns hard. Yours was not meant to turn hard, but here it is bending. Breaking. Freezing solid.
So lean in close, and let me whisper your freedom: He did not leave because of you.
He did not leave because of you, sweet child. He didn’t. HE DID NOT LEAVE BECAUSE OF YOU.
(He did not leave because of you.)
It wasn’t your fault, child. You did nothing to make a marriage end like this. You did nothing to make him stay away. You did nothing to make him leave.
You are a good enough daughter.
You will spend too many years trying to prove this to every significant and insignificant person who comes sweeping into your life, and you will never really believe it yourself. I know how the wondering can worm its way inside, and I know how you can spend decades of your life trying to fight your way into something that looks like letting go. Something that looks like forgiveness. Something that looks like joy.
Tomorrow, when you return to school, you will see all those friends with their seemingly perfect lives, and you will wonder why some get to have parents who love each other forever and others, like you, live their lives with missing dads. You will be tempted to wish you could be them, wish you could be better, wish none of this had ever happened in the first place. This wishing will launch you into a black hole, and it will take strength you don’t think you have to climb back out.
That black hole will hold things like worry that your mom won’t make it as a single mom, even though she’s done fine the last few years with everything but the papers sealing divorce. It will hold things like a twister of self-hate every time he doesn’t call on your birthday (and he won’t). It will hold things like a day when you will have to choose who walks you down the aisle—the man who gave you your eyelashes or the man who raised you.
There is something else I know, now that I stand on the other side of it. It’s not easy to see from your vantage point, but one day far removed from this one, you will be glad for what this experience has taught you—things like resilience and love and forgiveness and mercy and hope. Mostly you will be glad for the person it shaped you to become.
You see, even in the black hole that is divorce, there is still light. There is still hope. Hold on to the light, and hold on to the hope. Keep it ever before you, as you walk through your hallways with peers who seem to have their perfect lives (but probably don’t) while yours is falling clean apart. Hold its warmth in the dead of night, when you wake up wondering what he’s doing right now, whether he loves his new daughter more, how you might possibly prove he made a mistake in his choosing.
Forget proving yourself altogether. You are already worthy of a father’s love, and you don’t have to do anything in the world to prove it. And there is a new dad coming, one who will love you just to love you, not because he gave you the color of your hair and the length of your legs. Let him love you. This is healing, too.
Sometimes we don’t recognize the light until we’re walking in the dark. And one day, when the dark comes to meet you again, when you’ve lost a beloved grandmother or your baby girl dies or you just wonder how you can possibly keep on keeping on, you will remember this first time the lights went out. How it made you stronger. How you changed. How you walked yourself out.
So hold on, child. Remember to breathe. Beat those voices back into gone, and cling to the truth:
You are a survivor.
