Author: salty_mommy1970

It was Christmas Day, 2021.  My children were with their father and his family.  I was sitting in the hospital beside my dying father.  It is a different kind of loneliness when you realize that you are the only one showing up to say goodbye to someone who is already gone.  Physically, my father was shriveled up in his hospital bed –strapped down so that he would not fall out.  The nurse said he kept trying to get up to leave because he had to be at my house (about two hours away).  He did not know where he was or why.  The dementia had gotten so severe that the nursing staff could not reason with him.  That was the first day he had arrived, but by the time I arrived on the second day…his eyes were closed and they never opened again.  He would cry out in pain as his body continued to shutdown.  I talked to him.  I held his hand.  I told him it was okay to let go.  We watched the nature channel.  I played 50’s music for him.  I knew he would never open his eyes.  I knew he was letting go, but I stayed anyway.  No one should have to die alone.  I realized that.  I also realized that in many ways, he had lived the last year relatively alone.  Even with people around him, he was alone.  And that may be the last lesson my father was to share with me.   He used to say that his health problems were the result of too many birthdays, but at the end…no one was there to “celebrate” all those years…to celebrate a life well-lived.  I left the hospital with emotions that I could not explain and with no one that I could possibly share those feelings.  I realized that I do not want to die alone, but even more than that, I do not want to live my life alone.

At some point, you will wake up–really wake up.

And you will feel a great relief as you let go of all the weight that has held you down–all the hesitation that dug in and held you back….

The air will seem lighter, and the sunlight will shine down brighter with more intensity and warmth.

And there will be a burning in your heart that starts to drive you toward all those ambitious goals you once considered lost dreams.

Drink it in. Let the revival happen.

Embrace your newly found strength and courage. You are waking up to a rebirth of soul.

Grow.

Bloom.

Shine.

This break of day brushes away all darkness.

This is the dawning of you.

 

 

When I look at Salty Mommy, I am a little sad and regretful and yet hopeful as well.  I started writing the blog after getting divorced.  It was helpful to have a place to share the hurt and confusion without letting anger creep into the posts.  It was a way to reflect and realize all that had happened–not just in my failed marriage but in my failed first attempts at love.  It was healing, but like so many other avenues of self-care, I stopped writing and just threw myself into working multiple jobs.  The posts that I did have on here were mostly lost when I transferred everything over to Word Press.  Although I could just re-upload or re-type the entries again, I think I am just going to move forward.  I will turn 50 in just a few weeks, and I am personally starting over in multiple areas of life so Salty Mommy is going to start over with me.

Isn’t it a blessing to be able to recreate ourselves?

Some say the past should be left in the past, but I have found a lot of strength in reflecting on my past.  Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to spend some time in meditation.  With my eyes closed and my mantra silently repeating over and over again in my mind, I tend to drift back.  And I realize that it is because I am telling myself “I am capable” that I drift back to see all that I have overcome.  I see faces and hear voices that sometimes bring me to tears.   Today, like so many days, I remembered Mic.  I find it difficult to write about Mic because I am afraid someone will read this and think I am crazy. But since I write for myself (and might be a little crazy), here goes.

I smile as I remember walking past you for the first time, seeing that big cheesy smile, and feeling that I had known you all my life.  I had never felt anything like it before, nor have I since.  We were meant to meet.  We were meant to fall in love.  And we were meant to drift apart.  It is hard to say that, but it is true.  You will always be the one who got away.  You will always be the one I let get away.  We were young and everything was exciting.  I was immature and trying to be more adult than I ever will be.  You were my ideal soulmate.  I think I may have loved you more…I know I needed you more…

You showed me what I was capable of feeling.  You showed me how love could be fun and spontaneous and impossible to maintain without effort on both sides.  When I was down on myself, you were the one who would bring me back to reality.  You made me feel that I could do whatever I put my mind to doing.  You took a broken child…and gave a young woman the strength to walk away.  That is what happened.  I was so stubborn and so sure that there were aspects of life that I needed to conquer that I walked away from the opportunity of a life together and eventually ended up living a life alone.

But I can’t regret it.  I will never regret loving you or of taking the chance of being vulnerable with you.  I will never regret the years spent talking across miles or sending the most bizarre care packages back and forth.  I will never forget our love of music, of poetry, of each other.  And your words will stay with me always—telling me that I can do this…whatever this happens to be at the moment.  I wish we could have seen each other again or spoken to each other again.  I wish I could have told you how important you are to me.  I will never have that chance, and for that I will grieve forever.  The world is not a better place without you in it, but my heart will hold you always; and I am most certainly a better person because I loved you.

It is okay to have a past.  It is okay because I also have a future.  Drifting back in time, I started remembering first loves–first loves of varying degrees.  Sigh.

I had the awkward vision of The One. The One I chased and finally caught or got caught up in. That night…I saw him just as I did more than 30 years ago.  Snapshots in my mind. The jaw line. The skin…slightly freckled. And then the overwhelming awkwardness.  A teenager sitting on our couch, half-undressed. I saw the curly mop of hair nearly covering his eyes. I saw the tighty whitey underwear and suddenly I was nearly knocked out of the memory by embarrassment and shame…shame of my youth and uncertainty.  And then I stopped myself.  No!  It is okay!  It is okay to have this memory and to have felt those feelings. And it is okay and a blessing that my mind took in so many details that more than three decades later I can close my eyes and see–almost feel–the presence of someone now so long gone.

I am no longer a teenager–far from it.  And I didn’t make the best choices, but they were my choices.  It is okay that I allowed myself to feel what I did both then and now.

I was capable of knowing first love…many different types of first loves. This memory.  This was tumultuous, difficult…somewhat destructive first love.  And I am glad I experienced it.  This memory.  That night.  The years that followed.  I’m glad I experienced it all.  Acknowledging now how I was responsible for much of the struggle and heartache that followed allows me to take accountability and grow in my personal journey.  I am capable. I am capable of making mistakes.  I’m sorry, Albert (not his real name but an inside joke).  I’m sorry that I helped create the monster that you became and the one that eventually overcame you.

I remember sitting in the back of a pickup, noticing the icy blue look of your eyes.  I remember telling you I wanted to know what was behind them.  I thought I was going to “fix” you.  You were a sad, lonely, abandoned, hurt little boy trapped inside an angry teenager.  I was a fool.  In this life, we don’t “fix” people.  We simply need to love them.

I am a salty mommy.  I am the mother of three beautiful children.  I am the cook, the maid, the taxi driver, the fan club…you get it.  I am just like most women today.  I am trying to balance it all: the family, the home, the job…the unexpected.  I am trying to balance it all, and I am doing it alone. I am just like most women today.

I never thought I would be divorced, but I am.  And that is just the way that it is. This page is not to bash my ex-husband or men in general.  What I discovered after my marriage ended was that so many marriages suffer the same fate.  And as I met more and more women struggling to overcome all the hurt and struggling to get their lives back, I realized something else.  There aren’t many Christian resources by women for women.   So I have decided to try to share what has helped me through my blog: SALT.  I am no expert by any means, but I do have a lot of experience in the ways of the brokenhearted.

More than anything, this website is meant to praise and support women.  I believe that this is something I am supposed to do.