A few years ago, I wrote a post on failing.  It’s so gut wrenching to go back and read, I don’t even want to link back to it.  What you don’t know while reading that post is the turmoil that was my life.  A marriage that was crumbling like a sand castle being hit by a wave, causing an environment within our house that no one wanted to be a part of, including the then 7-year-old.

Friendships were also failing, and I was figuring out what to do about my career, taking the hopes and dreams of what another person thought I should be and trying to turn them into reality.  Guess, what? That doesn’t end well.

I was so hard on myself at that time, I honestly could have found fault with the way I was breathing. I was hard on myself because I was taught to be.  Messages I had received my whole life, from lots of different sources, about not being good enough, I now had to go back and reprogram the taught behaviors and thought patterns I had created to protect myself.  Hence the spiritual journey, which has actually been amazing.  I mean, if that’s what you want to call a complete life disruption.  Sometimes disruption is good.

Churchill has a lot of great quotes about failing and courage, and not giving up.  Keep fighting the good fight.  This is one of my favorites, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

Here are some of the insights I’ve gained over the last four years:

On Friendships– It is true that some of my long-term friendships were failing at the time I wrote the other piece, it is also true that I was in a spat with the person I was closest to at the time because of a misunderstanding.

I realized sometimes these friendships change in ways I’m not ready for, but those people will always be special to me and I will always be there for them, and I know they will always be there for me.  The misunderstanding was cleared up and that friendship is still intact.  I also realized I was putting a lot of pressure on her to compensate for what was missing in other relationships.  Figure out what it is within yourself causing the issues, and you’ll stop taking things so personally.

On Relationships– I don’t talk a lot about my marriage on here, because I like to focus more on post-divorce life.  My marriage was hard, it was never easy, even from the beginning. I fell into a pattern in the relationship that didn’t mesh with who I was or who I wanted to be.  For that, I’m sorry.

As for my first post-divorce “relationship,” it was easy to blame him for a lot of things, but believe me, I had my own failures in that relationship, and there were quite a few. I know what they were.  I was involved with someone who couldn’t give me what I wanted, and it bacame something that was not meshing with who I was, or who I wanted to be.  For that, I’m sorry.

Thank u, next.

On Motherhood – My daughter.  The casualty in all of this failure.  The light in all of this courage.  I still yell from time to time, because motherlover I have to tell her to do her chores every day.  And she has the same chores.  Every day. They’ve been the same for six years. It’s a constant battle.

Her teachers love her and tell me what an amazing kid she is and how happy they are that she’s in their classes.  Right now, I deal with middle school angst on a daily basis.  Maybe one day she’ll realize what I did for her and she’ll appreciate it.

 On Work– My career survived.  I also started writing again because I knew I needed to put my energy into something productive, which turned out great because my writing is probably better than it’s ever been.

I’ve soul searched about what it is I really want to do, and I have sought advice from people, and I’m figuring it out.  That job I was beating myself up about in the previous post on failure, I don’t really think about anymore besides the people I met while I worked there.  Some of the people were pretty cool.

On Failure– Failure is not fatal.  Relationships ending are not fatal.  Friendships that smolder are not fatal.  What’s fatal is how you treat yourself when these things happen.  Don’t beat yourself up.  Just love yourself and treat yo self, and if you have to buy purses and shoes to fill the gaping hole in your soul, just do it.

But don’t try and figure out how much you’ve spent on shoes since the gaping hole appeared…

We get so wrapped up in our lives and our patterns, and sometimes our sadness, that maybe we forget to look at the simple things that bring us joy.  I mean, Churchill smoked a buttload of cigars and drank scotch every day starting at breakfast and look what he was able to accomplish.