I have touched on this before some in different ways and I think it is really important......especially for single folks......The realization of so much has touched down for me the last month or so.....I have for sure been on a section of deep self reflection and work related to so many things and healing this last month, lots popping up.....and I think what has struck me so deeply is all I have endured in the last 5 years......it has been a lot....and the truth is, my life has been A LOT for decades......I think back to having my 20s knock me down.....dealing with severe panic and anxiety....finding out my first fiancé was unfaithful....and losing my sister......and just battling out the things we all do in our 20s...financial strife all of it......and then my 30s came and I was married, and I thought yea it will be easier.....and then we had Gabe and the NICU, and all of his challenges....then my ex got diagnosed with cancer....then I had my own scare, and losing my aunt that I adored so deeply, and having my own mom fight breast cancer.....then my 40s....and they were tough too.....pandemic, my ex's affair....and getting divorced.....and here I am......and I say none of this to make it a pity party list, because I truly don't feel that way, not EVER about my life.....I am a blessed human every single day no matter the places I have traveled.....I mean that with every part of my being.......but I share that part, to lay background and let the reader know I am not a stranger to adversity and to convey the heaviness I felt the past few weeks in realizing what I have endured, more intensely, and recently the last 5 years....and as a single person I think sometimes that stuff becomes more clear at times, when you spend a lot of time self soothing.....that is a term I have always associated with babies....learning to do all of that, but if you start to look it up a little, which I did in preparation for this blog, it is a thing for adults.....a real thing.......and it needs to be.....In January it will be 3 years since my marriage ended, and 3 years since I have had any physical contact or comfort in a real sense with another human......and that is a long time......a super long time....and actually if I think of it I navigated much of the time of his affair alone, relying on me too......and having no soft place to land, in my places of distress, and it was and is tough......and I think what made it bubble up was the other night when Mads was so so upset, and it was so hard to bear.....and then she fell asleep, and I then laid there in all the pain of it without anybody comforting me.....and as a single parent that happens endlessly.........and that is what I find is my truth.....learning to comfort me in so many places....and I mean in the beginning it was endless.....so much wracking pain.....and loneliness to bear it all....nobody to hold me and let me break......not at all......and as humans we need that.....we need human connection and touch.....well beyond sex.....or intimacy.....which is also important too, but it is so much deeper than that, that is what I have come to learn on this Odyssey I am on......we need it in our day to day......and it perhaps is the most challenging part of this for me....beyond the heartache of my children......the absence of any touch or comfort in my life, beyond hugging my kids, my friends, my family......you get the idea....so I guess I share this because it came up....and I want you to not take any of that for granted in your own life......please know that you would miss these things if they were gone, and maybe I urge you to appreciate it more:) or acknowledge the gift it is to your life.....or just be conscious to hug your single friend more lol:) I don't know......I just felt it was important, and I was talking to a friend yesterday, a single one about it, and she experiences it all too.....so it seemed like a good thing to explore. It is easy to take things in our lives for granted and the absence shows us these things so clearly.....it is a shame but true....and it is a learning process to realize all those things and try and stay conscious of our needs, and ways to meet them .....and I am learning.....I have many tools in my toolbox to self soothe....I am pretty good at it:) and I look forward to the day when I can have somebody soothe me a little too.....but forever knowing that no matter what happens now in my life, I can do that for myself too, that is powerful despite it making me a little sad sometimes....so much of this journey is like that.....triumph and grief on repeat.......Go hug somebody today, appreciate the comfort you get too, and have a great day:)
jperuso
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