“BFSC” (Big-Fucking-Scary Changes)
Hello, my friends. I am sitting here, drinking my yummy coffee, and yawning. Apparently, the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet.
This morning instead of my usual bike routine, I practiced for my upcoming triathlon race as I made my way to town. I swam 20 minutes at my gym pool, biked 10.5 miles, then ran 3 miles, all with the help of my amazing partner Jennifer. She helped transport me to my transition areas and provided my gear along the way. She’s fucking awesome. Oh. AND…today she is 50! Beautiful, wise, funny, caring, loving and one of my favorite people on the planet is this woman. I still can’t believe I get to call her “mine”!
I was nervous about my ability to do a triathlon. I’ve been lucky to get some incredible coaching these 5 weeks building up to the race and it is really helping me. Doing the practice run-through today really boosted my courage. I might get hooked on this new way of exercising. It’s definitely a full-body workout!
This past month I have been having a lot of dreams about my beloved horse Shiloh, who passed away about a year and a half ago. I don’t really know why, but recently she keeps showing up in my dreams. It’s always the younger version of her, someone else owns her, and I am watching from a distance, nervous about how the other owners may be handling her. It makes me wake up sad, really missing Shiloh. For a couple of days, I just felt like a total wreck inside and I was frustrated because I couldn’t figure out why. Finally, I walked down to the memorial we built for Shiloh’s grave, sat down, and allowed myself to feel. It wasn’t long before the tears were rushing down my face and low sobs escaped my lips. I no longer tried to push it away. I didn’t try to analyze myself. I felt the pain and loss and gave myself permission to grieve. I began talking out loud to Shiloh. I told her about all the big changes happening in my life, how scary they were, and how much I wished she was still here to be my steady rock. After a while, the tears subsided and I lay down in the sunshine, beside my beloved friend who was buried deep below. I closed my eyes and for a few minutes fell into a peaceful sleep. Then I woke and slowly walked home feeling more grounded.
The next day, I reached out to my mentor Rayna Granger to tell her about it. In her ever-intuitive, wise way, she suggested that maybe my dreams are my mind's way of struggling with the upcoming big change of my son moving to college, and me having to watch from a distance and not being able to be by his side to protect him anymore. Boom. Hit the spot. Although I know it’s time and I want Jaden to be able to go build his own life, there is definitely a part of me that is already grieving the loss. Tears rush to my eyes as I type this. He is my firstborn and it’s the first time I have ever had to let one of my kids fly free from the nest. Dammit. More tears.
I have been through some incredibly hard things in my life. But Shiloh has always been by my side. She has been the one thing that never changed. With this huge change coming up, it’s shit hard not having her here to go cry to.
Another huge change is that my girls will be attending public school this fall. They are excited, and a part of me is excited for them too, but then the other parts of me are sad, terrified, and already missing them. Good grief. Why so many big changes at once? I don’t know. It seems to be how I do life. Go big or go home.
The hardest part of change is the unknown. That’s what makes it so fucking scary. I can’t know how it’s all gonna turn out and it kinda feels like I am just throwing my kids to the wolves. Now I know that part of that is just because I have been told my whole life that public school is evil and ruins kids, so I have to remember that some of my fears come from the brainwashing I experienced growing up in the cult. The rest of my fears are probably pretty normal when you’re a mom who loves her kids to death and wants the best for them.
It’s so hard, and it’s different for everyone. In our case, my girls want to experience public school and are hoping to make some good friends in the process. And it’s not like I’m just going to be sitting home with nothing to do. Now that I realize I have choices, I really don’t want to homeschool my kids anymore. I want to pursue my dreams. When I feel guilty for this, I remind myself that I never want my girls to grow up feeling shamed for building the life they want. So I press on, and do my best to be an example of living a life of freedom.
Truly living life is just plain, fucking risky. There are no guarantees. There is a hell of a lot of unknowns. We are doomed to make a buttload of mistakes and as we age we will look back and talk about our regrets. But we will also talk about what we learned along the way of living.
I don’t want to live my life terrified of screwing things up. I want to run forward, arms outstretched, willing to embrace the learning opportunities that life sends me. Of course, this is easier typed than done. ;) But life isn’t always sunshine and running with your arms outstretched. Some days it’s laying down at my best friend's grave and crying out all my feelings. The mountains and valleys of life are both of equal importance.
We all experience big and scary changes throughout our life. If you are going through some right now, I got ya. I know it’s so scary. Please give yourself permission to feel. Your feelings are important and beautiful.
Time for me to go. I have a date to celebrate my gorgeous woman!
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