A Visit From My Long-Time Companion

 I feel it days before, at first it is just random thoughts, but as the days pass those thoughts become more intense; then comes the tightening of the chest and the feeling I cannot get a full breath. I feel frozen. Frozen from living my life and doing normal activities. Chores pile up and everyday household tasks seem insurmountable. Days pass and my chest tightens some more and regular breathing, at times, seems like it has to be a conscious activity because if it is not - it won't happen on its own. 

This is what a visit from my longtime companion, anxiety, feels like.

Gatherings of people of any kind - family, friends, strangers create an environment where she takes center stage. She loves creating havoc in my life in the days preceding such an event. I know that I have the ability to live a life without her, but her roots seem so imbedded in my psyche that I do not yet have the tools to permanently separate her from my truest self. She has led me to believe that we are one being, and although after months and months of seeking out professional help and doing some hard solo work I know that this is not the case, I still have not managed to get rid of her - only how to manage anxiety when she appears in my everyday life. Because gatherings are not a part of my everyday life, she still has a pretty good hold on me when those situations appear. 

I know that someday I will be able to live my life without her, but until then I have to just deal with her the best I can. Some days are easier than others. Some days are just downright hard. 

Elizabeth’s Fall Soccer Season 2023

Two years ago, Elizabeth started playing soccer for the most wonderful coach. This man was able to turn Elizabeth into a solid defender all without screaming and yelling like so many coaches do at the high school level. Her coach had a way with all of his high school girls that allowed them to flourish. Elizabeth improved so much that she was able to try out (and make) a club team which begins in the fall of 2024. (Girls public school soccer is played in the spring here in North Carolina.) 

I think she would have considered just staying on this current recreational team if her coach was going to continue doing so, but his daughter graduated a year ago, and he chose to stay on and coach these girls for an additional season because he was so in demand. This was so kind of him to do as, unlike club soccer, his position was strictly voluntary with no salary of any kind. 

Bobby and I (particularly Bobby as he took Elizabeth to her practices since he was an assistant coach) are thankful that she is no longer playing for this organization as it was 50+ minutes away depending on traffic. Driving an hour and a half - minimum - for an hour practice each week (and weekend games) got tiring. Her new team practices 4-6 minutes down the road. 

While I am thankful for this team and its ability to give Elizabeth some of the confidence back that she lost while playing on her Indiana team, I am looking forward to what lies ahead of her with this new team. 

 

A Trip To Maine

Last October, Bobby and I had the privilege of attending my cousin's wedding.  It was - by far - the best wedding I have ever attended. It was unpretentious, but elegant. All of the unusual wedding details were perfect for my cousin and his new wife. The wedding was welcoming and small, but with a lively group of guests who made the entire experience unforgettable. My brother and sister-in-law joined us, and we made a long weekend out of the experience by visiting Portland, ME before heading down to Kittery, ME, which is where the wedding was held. 

There is something comforting about New England to me. Maybe it was because I was born there and still have family there. I'm not really sure what it is, or why I feel so content whenever I am in this part of the country, but it definitely has a unique and distinct vibe that I completely jive with.

Our foursome (me, Bobby, my brother, and sister-in-law) started off our adventure by driving from Boston, MA to Portland, ME. We spent the night there exploring some of the nightlife. We were hoping to hangout a bit the next day, but because it was rainy, we decided to head down to Kittery instead of spending the day in Portland. We did visit a lighthouse in Portland before heading out. There was a huge cruise ship (are they anything other than different versions of huge?) in port near the lighthouse we were viewing. To be honest, this lighthouse was kind of meh. I don't know what I was expecting, but this one wasn't it. 

After arriving in Kittery, we decided to find a place to visit that allowed us the ability to spend some time on the water. New England handles their coast much different than the Carolinas or Oregan in that in New England the entire beach/water access is not entirely public. People who have a home on the ocean "own" the beach access in front of their homes. To me, it is the dumbest thing in the world. How can you actually own part of a beach? (Although, I guess it is all relative, as the Indigenous peoples of North America didn't understand the concept of land ownership and were just as flabbergasted by the idea as I am of a private entity owning the beach/ocean access.) All of this was to say that we had a bit of a hard time finding someplace that we could access the beach ourselves. We finally found a place after a bit of trial and error. I did not realize that ME has such rocky shorelines. It is completely different from Oregon and its rocks. To me, the Oregon coastline is welcoming and visually stunning. The Maine shoreline seemed uninviting and, I hate to say it, a bit ugly. The rocks along the shoreline were such that it was hard to walk on them without constantly thinking about where your next step was going to be as I was always trying not to fall on my butt or twist an ankle which took away from the experience of being on the water. (For me at least.) 

After walking on the shoreline, we found another lighthouse that was exactly what I imagined a Maine lighthouse to look like. It had the keepers house on the property along with the lighthouse. The property was surrounded by flowering bushes and sat above the water on a small cliff. It was clean and crisp and just perfect. 

Finally, we spent part of the day walking on the public beach. It was nice to be by the water in traditional sand and to have the waves wash up on shore in a gentle manner rather than crash into cragged rocks splashing up spray. I didn't find any shells on this beach though and found its smallness to be a bit of a turnoff. (I think of the ocean as a wild and free entity. When I go to a beach I want to be able to explore for miles and miles without being interrupted by seemingly man-made cut off points.) The view was neat though as this part of the beach was surrounded on two sides by quintessential New England houses and businesses. 

One of the things I love about small New England towns so much (and Kittery definitely fits that bill) is that there aren't really any chain stores/restaurants anywhere. Almost everything is a mom-and-pop owned business, and all are unique and cool. We didn't spend any time shopping though as we had other things we wanted to spend our short time there doing. 

Our accommodations for both Portland and Kittery were really cool. Our Portland housing was an apartment in what was once a large single-family home. It had that vintage old wood and unique details. It was spacious, but comfortable. We were right in the thick of things, so you got to experience some city vibes. Our Kittery accommodations were completely the opposite, but also very cool. The apartment was the upstairs portion of a large garage. It was nestled in the woods about a 5-10 minute drive from the ocean. The street we stayed on was quiet and secluded. The building was quite new, so you everything was nice and shiny. I really enjoyed staying at both locations because it briefly gave me opposing living situations. 

Overall, I had a wonderful time. The company was great. I got to visit the only New England state I had not yet been to, and I got to celebrate two amazing people as they began their lives as husband and wife. 

A quaint New England town.

The 'meh' lighthouse. 

A sailing school lesson?

A cruise ship docked in Portland, ME

Another lighthouse in ME. (The cool one.)

Finally! A public access point to the beach!

Not very welcoming, eh?

This is one of the types of rocky areas we walked on. 

I do love little tide pools as you never know what you are going to find in them. 

I cannot say I have ever found what appears to be an entire skeleton of a dead animal before. I am thinking this was some type of bird?

 

Solitude

 The house is quiet as I sit in my bed with my comfiest clothes on. The blankets drawn up around me, the windows open, and the sky outside a deep gray. There is no rain in the forecast, but by the way these clouds are hovering over the area I would not be surprised if there was some sort of precipitation here today. 

 In the meantime, the birds oblivious to the coming weather, or perhaps very much aware of it, are singing sweetly getting ready to welcome back spring. While we are fortunate enough to hear their peeps and chirps year-round, it seems their numbers are increasing, creating a small symphony of sounds all of which are welcoming to take in. 

My Velcro puppy (Miles) is next to me while my protector (Max) is laying on his dog bed not ten feet from where I sit. Moose is snuggled up on Sarah's pillow in her room; he has no need for me right now, so I won't be seeing him for a while. And that is it. Just me and my four-legged companions for the next three and three-quarter days. Bobby is on his way to Boston for business, Andy is in Ohio working, Joshua is at Belmont, Sarah and Elizabeth are at UNCG. They are all off doing their own things which allows me the gift of spending the next few days in solitude. 

If given the choice to go on a trip by myself or to stay home by myself, I would pick the latter every single time. There is something so refreshing to me to be able to stay in my home all alone. I love having the freedom to spend all of my hours exactly as I want without having to worry about anyone else. I can either work on projects around the house - or not. I can read a book - or not. I can make my own food  - or not. I can do whatever I want for as long (or as little) as I want to, and I don't have to explain my decisions to anyone. I am accountable to no one but myself these next few days - and the thought of that is g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s. 

Don't get me wrong - I love my family, deeply. And I love serving them as a homemaker and homeschooling mama, but that doesn't mean that I don't need to recharge. Because I absolutely do, and my favorite way to do so is to have some time at my house all alone. This is luxury that I do not take for granted and is such a treat for me. I look forward to these times so much. 

I haven't decided what I would like to this week in terms of goals or accomplishments. I have decided to play that all by ear. What I did decide, though, is that I will not be using the television or social media while everyone is gone. I find that those two mediums of entertainment waste my life when I use them in large doses. If I allowed myself, I could easily spend days watching junk shows or endlessly immerse myself in the land of Instagram. I find that I am much happier when I either abstain from both of those things or limit them severely. 

So, I'll spend my days doing other things that fill me up in a positive way. And I will enjoy every single minute of it. 

Learning To Find Peace

The chaos in my mind reached its crescendo last August making life feel unbearably hard. I knew that this cacophony of noise was unsustainable for a healthy life. I have lived with this tornado of thoughts, feelings, and emotions for as long as I can remember, and while there was nothing out of the ordinary that I can think of to cause it to get out of hand, it just did. If I am being completely honest, my headspace has gotten out of hand in the past, but I have always been able to temporarily fix things so that I could go on living the life of a homeschooling, homemaking mama and wife. 

Maybe everything came to a head because I was tired of fighting the warring thoughts in my head daily, hourly, minute by minute. I have been doing so for so long that I think my aging body and mind just said ENOUGH. And as hard as this process has been to begin to deconstruct all that I think I am and all that I think I believe, both about myself and the larger world around me, I know in the deepest parts of myself that this process is vital to finding peace within. 

I have often read that the mind/body connection is real and runs deep. While I could conceptualize that connection for others and maybe even myself, I truly did not understand this depth until my physical body raised some fire alarms almost two years ago. These external issues were the direct result of untreated internal issues, and I did what I have always done when a fire breaks out - I put the fire out but did not address what caused the fire in the first place. 

I knew last August, when a three-alarm fire started within, and I did not have enough water to put it out on my own that I had to find the root causes of these fires because they were only getting worse, and my ability to put them out was becoming more and more ineffective. I didn't want to burn anymore. I didn't want to feel the rising heat from the friction my warring insides were causing. A phoenix can only rise so many times from its own ashes before the strength needed to pull itself together - even just one more time - becomes an obstacle it cannot overcome. I did not/could not just exist as a shell of a human being because my insides were scorched. I wanted to heal. I wanted to grow beautiful things within, so that I could finally learn how to live and love the whole of me - mind, body, and soul. 

And so, last September, after burning out of control all August, I began the process of putting in the work to stop the fires and to start nurturing and nourishing the spaces in my head, so that it could help to heal my heart. I have a long journey ahead of me. What I thought would be a simple solution for the first few months of treatment, I can see now that this process is anything but simple. It is hard and complex. It makes me cry and rage and feel sorrow, but it is also healing me. I am just beginning to see some of the first sprouts of life within as 
I learn different techniques to understand my fires and why they happen. And this is good. 

I do not have blissful days every day...yet. The civil war inside has been going on for so long that it won't just stop with a trick or an easy strategy, and it might still rage for a long time before it subsides, but I do know that I will get there. One day the warring words and thought patterns will subside and there will be only peace within. That thought propels me through my hard days and encourages me to keep on putting in the work. 

Because I deserve peace. 

 

When They Go

In the early morning hours, I said good-bye to my eldest son, Andy, as he left for Ohio where he will be staying for the next couple of months working for his cousin's landscaping business. It is always hard for me to say good-bye to my kiddos. The dual feelings of sadness (for me) and happiness (for them) is sometimes hard for me to reconcile. I know that life is meant to be this way. We raise our children for them to go off into the world to find their own paths, but it is still hard for me, as I suppose it is for almost all mothers. 

I know that this time will be especially good for Andy who is having trouble finding his footing on his life's journey. He has been struggling these last few years finding his way forward, and it has caused him some immense anguish, which (in his mind) is only exacerbated by his siblings growing and moving beyond him in certain areas of life. I have often tried to tell him that life is a long-distance race (hopefully) and that it doesn't matter if his timeline looks like others - that we are each meant to have our own unique journeys, but I know that he feels society's pressures of what a successful life is supposed to look like, and it creates an emotional internal turmoil in him that is hard to walk him through. 

Going away, being on his own, doing his own thing is a very good thing for him as it allows him the freedom and space to feel like a productive human being. (Which he is.) He is one of the hardest workers I know (and always has been), so I have no doubt that what he accomplishes these next couple (or even few if he stays on longer working for his cousin) will help to fill his emotional bucket - something he sorely needs. 

There has been some discussion of him starting a technical school this summer when he gets back from Ohio. He has also applied to a school that will earn him a commercial pilot's license as being a pilot has always been a dream of his. The steps to getting into the school are rigorous, and he will complete the first one on May 15th when he has a 'Class A' FAA medical exam (or something like that). He has had some physical setbacks (two blown lungs to name one) that may prevent him from passing the medical exam which is why I am so happy for him to have the technical school (which we toured a couple of weeks ago together) to fall back on if the piloting school doesn't pan out for him. (I would L-O-V-E to see this opportunity pan out for him though.) I think he has given up on the college degree route which Bobby and I fully support and have been suggesting that he do so for a while now. College just wasn't his jam, but he felt compelled to keep trying to get a square peg in a round hole for reasons both known and unknown to me. 

Joshua will be graduating from college next spring and has informed me that he has no intention of staying in North Carolina (which from what he told me has one of the lowest starting teacher salaries in the nation) and will be applying for a job in Texas, New Mexico, or Arizona where there is plenty of sunshine. I know that there is a lot of time for things to change between now and then, but I feel pretty confident that at one point or another he will end up in the Southwest as this is not the first time he has told me of his desire to live in that part of the country. 

I try not to dwell too hard on that the fact that my intuition of my children being scattered all over this nation when they reached adulthood was true - because the truth is that I would love for us to all be within comfortable weekly Sunday dinner drives from each other, but that isn't the message we have given them over the years. We have always told them (and shown them with the way we have lived our own lives) to not be afraid to seek out their own happiness wherever that may lead them. (Some of the kids have even talked about moving out of the country which I would fully support as much as it would make my mama heart ache.  

The future has yet to determine where Sarah and Elizabeth will end up. I wouldn't be surprised if Elizabeth followed Sarah wherever Sarah went. They are just so, so close that I do not see them living far apart from one another. Only time will tell. 

FC Charlotte: Season 3 Home Opener

On Saturday, February 24, 2024, Bobby, Andy, Elizabeth and I attended the home opener of Charlotte FC. (Sarah unexpectedly came home that weekend, so we didn't have a ticket for her. She stayed home with the dogs.) This is Charlotte FC's third season, and we have been fortunate enough to have been at all of their home openers since their inception. 

This was the team's first win on a home opener. They won 1-0 after scoring in the first half. The team played strongly in the first half but seemed to falter during the second half. We were relieved to see the team come away with the win because there were moments during the game when we were not sure it would happen. 

Josh ended up getting tickets to the game with his buddies, and because one of them is currently doing an internship with Charlotte FC, they were able to get luxury box seats (which he said was pretty awesome). 

Charlotte FC has the best, best, best opener of any sports team I have ever seen. The light show, the fireworks, the introductory video, the national anthem, the fighter jets, all of it is so awesome. It definitely gets the crowd going every time. 

I think we are all looking forward to the next game we go to. We had a lot of fun. 

Pregame warm-ups.