I just recently moved into an apartment and am on my own after almost twenty years of marriage. This isn’t such a big deal really knowing that there are scores of women who have made this transition and are out there on their own, been doing their thing as a single woman for years. But it’s a very big deal to me. Because I’m doing this right now, where I am in life – with no underage children nor the compelling incentive to establish a secure living situation for them driving the momentum. With that element missing, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by the enormity of doing this alone and just for me. Now mind you, I talk a good game publicly and keeping face is something I excel at superlatively, but inside when I’m face to face with me, where there’s no room for subterfuge I’m frantic and even a bit scared. Scared of screwing this up, of failing and not just failing in general, but that I will fail myself and the goals I have set out to achieve that are important to me.
It’s interesting the fortitude I can muster to do what needs to be done when someone else’s well being is at stake. What about when it’s my own that’s at stake, for my own sense of well being? Will I find I have the strength and the backbone to do it well just for me? There are many women who aren’t good to themselves, who sacrifice to the point that they lose sight of their own significance. I’ve been guilty of having done that – been there, done that, got the t-shirt as the saying goes. However now there are no distractions to hinder nor keep me from creating my world in a way that comforts, nurtures, replenishes, enhances and compliments me. But will I actually make that happen or will I fall back on making do as is my natural inclination?
I grew up poor, was on my own at age sixteen and much of my life was about surviving from one month to the next, one paycheck to the next. However over the years of my marriage I learned how to live minus the constant fear of not having enough to make it. I learned how to thrive and I owe my ex tremendous gratitude for those lessons. But those years weren’t long enough to wipe away that underlying fear that resides in me. It’s those fears that are dogging me at the moment providing the rationales for asking these kinds of questions of myself. Also, the reason why I’m expressing so much self doubt. Whereas in the past fears propelled me, today they seem to be having an opposite effect. One area of growth and maturity is that I realize I am not an island and am overcoming my fear of asking for help when I need it which is something that in the past my pride would not allow me to do – I’d just suffer through until I could do better.
The feelings I’m experiencing now are not unlike those I experienced much younger in life when leaving home for the first time – heading off to college, the difference being that I was naive, bright eyed and bushy tailed with the world laid out before me. Well, the world is once again laid out before me but at almost 48 years old I’m no longer that innocent lamb. Instead, I’m a bit worn out and a lot more cynical knowing the world isn’t as kind a place as I once thought it would be and that it can be extremely cruel to those unprepared to meet its demands. I’ve been telling myself that I can handle it. I’m a big girl, I even own a couple pairs of “Big Girl Panties”. Further, I know how to make it on my own because I’ve done it before with far less experience and abilities. Yet, I’m still quaking inside as I look into the unknown, worried that I don’t have what it takes to slay the dragons that inevitably will be encountered along the way.
Until recently I was fully absorbed, perhaps it might be accurate to say consumed by my husband and son. For the previous twenty five years, their needs and desires were what drove me, gave me purpose and direction. I knew my role, where I fit and how to do my job. I knew what was expected of me. I was safe, well provided for and reasonably comfortable within my little protected, insulated cocoon world. But then my son grew up, left home and established a life of his own life which is as it should be – that’s what we’d prepared him to do. But of course, I struggled with empty nest syndrome for a time until returning to work full time after years of being a stay at home mom and professional volunteer. But that was a short lived expedition into chaos – a position that I had vied for for almost as long as I was employed and ended long before I anticipated it would. So there I was wondering where to go, what to do next because by then I was also going through a divorce as well and life became very unsure for me….and still is in numerous ways.
But in the midst of it, I have this new web venture and a couple other potential entrepreneurial projects that are promising. In the process of making them realities I’m learning how to press, to be vigilant in ways I’ve never had to be before when I was secure in my marriage or in a long term position working for someone else. It’s a new way of life, a new way of thinking, a new way of being, a new way of doing. So there are days like today when it all seems a bit too unstructured and insecure, when I feel as though I’m hanging from a limb that could break at any moment. But then there’s always tomorrow when something happens to completely dwarf the fears of yesterday. And that came by the way of a phone call providing evidence that things are indeed moving forward and two of the ventures I’m developing are taking shape that will soon bear fruit and a financial outcome.
There are those who will think I’m cutting it way too close for comfort and they would be right. But then there are those times when you have to take that leap of faith because to do otherwise is to remain in your comfort zone and that means staying stuck where you don’t want to be instead of moving forward toward a new life and the things what you do want to be for you, and for others. So you keep putting one foot in front of the other not allowing the pitfalls along the way to trip you up or to hinder your progress toward your goals and the final desired destination.
Change is drastic and has even been defined as being violent by nature. So as I traverse the path called change, I’m learning there are depths to my character that I didn’t know ran so deep as well as my ability to be creative and find new ways to tackle and overcome obstacles. One of those ways, is to humble myself to ask for help from my friends and family when I need it. That’s growth indeed, because I’m learning how to be vulnerable enough to allow others see my weaknesses creating opportunities for them to participate, assist in creating my success. In every successful person’s story is the tale of those who helped them along the way to achieving that success. I find that very reassuring.
Babeland