brand new day

My husband and I are separated and it is brutal on my kids.  For the past 10 days our wounded souls have been battling it out over what is best for the kids and what is best for each of us individually, all the while trying to find the ever elusive solution that suits everyones needs.  Impossible.  And fight we did.  Our pain and sadness spilled out in every direction disguised as anger and frustration, inflexibility and selfishness.  And maybe that needs to happen - they're all real, all those emotions - in all their rawness and ferocity - and they have every right to be expressed.  But I carried with me the burden of knowing the worst in me had won out in the end.  Arrogance trumped confidence, and stubbornness won out over reason. But tonight, a moment of grace.  My husband came over to talk again about the weekend arrangements and for a short half of an hour, the best parts of ourselves met up and had a conversation ruled by restraint and humility with the beautiful result of

My kids go to their Dad's today, taking with them all their chatter, busyness and energy and leaving a silence in their wake.  Admittedly, sometimes the peace and quiet is refreshing... but as Friday stretches into Saturday and Saturday into Sunday, that silence becomes a heavy stillness.  I haven't found a way to transform those kidless weekends into quiet moments for myself, I'm working on it. Thankfully I work all weekend, 12 hour midnight shifts nonetheless, so the days pass pretty quickly.  But in those waking hours when the stillness pervades, their absence is so palpable.  It makes our time together a little more precious.  I find myself looking at those trying childhood moments with softer eyes, with a new appreciation for all the trips and trials of growing up and a little less annoyance. At the risk of sounding like one of those old biddies looking through the rose colored glasses of nostalgia, everything is underscored with a new perspective of how limited ou

I got a tattoo.  A huge tattoo.  It was about as impulsive as I get, which means - I let it percolate in the back of my mind for about a year, then researched it for about a month, then made an appointment with the tattoo guy - and impulsively (ahhh, that's where it works itself in!) got the outline done on Design Day as opposed to 2 weeks later when I had actually scheduled Tattoo Day... that's me living on the edge. I got a phoenix on my back.  I told Mr. Tattoo Man that I wanted a phoenix with its head up, wings out, ready to fly.  I wanted it to look strong, but beautiful - and it does, just like me.  Up from the ashes, ready to fly. Part of me loves the fact that looking at me, and even knowing me, one would never think I would have this gigantic bird on my back - make no mistake, it's freaking huge.  Part of me loves the fact that I was able to lay on a tattoo chair and have a stranger look at my bare back without being filled with shame and self-doubt.  Part of m