It's been a long, long, long time...

At least ten times a day my brain screams out,

"No! Life wasn't supposed to look like this! This is not what I want or how I ever saw myself or my family or my story... No!"

And immediately after a calm washes over me and I realize that this just is not true. The catch to never visualizing a clear and concise picture of your future is never being able to say that things ended up wrong. And then I remember that nothing has ended. I am still going and building and shaping.

So I end up conflicted and confused somewhere between shame and regret and the vital truth that I am just where I should be.

It was time. I woke up and looked around and knew, KNEW, that the putting to rest, the breaking of old bonds and allowing the new growth to take over needed to happen- I just didn't know how. So I jumped. I made choices and slashed and burned and tended and nurtured and it hurt. It was ugly and messy and beautiful and awful.

It took time.

It took me more than two years to accept that this is the work that will never be done. It took more than two years to be ready to talk again.

These things take time.

I am ready to share again, ready to acknowledge that telling the story is important to me. That I am better when I write it in a place that it can be found.

I am ready now.