11.1.24
“Come on, baby. Baby! Mommy isn’t going to stand here all day. Baby? Baby? Come on! Go potty for Mommy…”
It’s Friday, and I’m taking a “vacation day”—not the kind for travel or luxury, but one where I can hide from meetings, skip the day’s chaos, and stay in a bubble of my own making. I can stop the madness of constant Teams messages, emails and 30 minute meetings on 8 topics. I can actually DO WORK. With “vacation” time. But such is Corporate life I suppose.
I’ve been feeling blocked, creatively shut down, and a day of solitude sounded like the antidote. I would like to talk to exactly zero people outside of my loved ones today.
“Baby, come on! Come on!”
As I watch this woman with her dog, I can feel the anger simmering, like a storm I’ve seen before. She carries this fog of resentment around with her, like a heavy cloak. This angry Jane and her Yells-A-Lot Joe, live across the street. Their fights occur daily.
Now…the only “husband-wife” model I saw growing up was my grandparents. They were not as shouty as this neighbor Joe and Jane, but there was always an unspoken tension. A heaviness. As a child, that was my model of a relationship—strained, embattled, built on silent resentment. It was all I knew, and it shaped the relationship choices I’d make, even before I truly knew myself.
I see now that I was searching for identity. Unfortunately my identity wasn’t really the “socially acceptable” kind. So my search is muddled up with societal expectations and absurd norms.
What did I want, really? I wanted to spend days reading, writing, and caring for animals, reading to kid, feet planted firmly in the grass. But none of that fit the “society-Jane” mold. So, I adapted, found a career, checked the right boxes, married a Joe. I don’t regret it—I got the two best gifts in my children. And all of the experiences were a crucial part of my growth. But there’s a twinge of resentment, too, for all the time I spent believing happiness was hidden somewhere in those roles I built for myself. Like if I just kept being better at nailing these roles I would find this elusive happy place.
The elusive happy place? Inside all along. And it’s simple things. The freedom I found, doing life out here alone; for the first time ever? That is beyond description. My house? A total mess, and that’s just fine. It’s a space that’s mine, where I create the vibe based on my own values.
Without experiencing that freedom and spending time on knowing myself and defining what I wanted in life…I wouldn’t have been able to co-create the beautiful relationship I’m in now. I have found, in my guy, a man who would never raise his voice and whose energy balances mine. I know now that this balance, this calm, is essential. Neighbor Shouty Jane? She makes me feel sad. Because I know where she is, or can understand it.
Freedom, I realize, is bigger than laws or rules. True freedom is the freedom to live authentically. For a lot of us, that means letting go of the cycle, recognizing our own voices, and knowing that there’s a world beyond the one we’ve created. It’s not easy, but I wish she could see it.
Reflecting on those years on autopilot, I see now that it took almost losing my life to finally start living it. There were signs all along, like that “20% authentic me” who was so stubborn, who held her ground when I wanted to disappear into the roles I thought I needed to play. But back then, I put my focus on everything outside myself—my kids, my work, volunteering, even mentoring others—anything that kept me from turning inward and seeing the mess I needed to confront. Divorce was a leap into that unknown; it opened a door, and the life that followed—a house bought on impulse, a relationship that both healed and tested me, parenting separately, on our terms—all of that showed me just how much freedom I’d been missing.
This journey, though painful, shifted my entire self-view. For the first time, I stopped expecting myself to be someone I wasn’t. I started seeing value in my true self, and now, I’m beginning to lead with my strengths. There’s intelligence, empathy, and a spirit that doesn’t need to be dimmed. There’s this messy, passionate me who loves deeply and wants others to find their own way, too. My kids now get to see that, a mother who owns her flaws and wants them to feel the freedom to be real. To know that their intrinsic value as a human is something no one can take away. They are valued and they are loved.
Thinking back, I can almost picture my younger self, the kid who wore neon pink tights with fresh peonies in her hair (ants and all!) walking to the Dairy Queen for girl time. She felt like a flower that day. And she was excited to see what the day would hold.
She’d be glad to know that now I’m unapologetically on her side, that I’m here, living and learning. Maybe it’s time for a new pair of those tights…