Growing

Sometimes I feel alone even when I know that I am not.  Countless people have told me over the last years that I isolate myself and am silent.  I've learned to embrace this flaw in myself, if you want to call it that.  I wish I could help people to understand to not take it so personally.  It is what I choose because sometimes, I can't take one more thing on, emotionally or mentally.  I have even pushed my own self away - not connecting because I don't want to see what might be underneath.

My life has been my children.  I have never allowed myself to think on or about the time without them.  When they would be all on their own, living their own lives.  It was to painful for me to look at.  People call it being an empty nester, I call it an empty me.  There was a time I would look at it everyday but that ended up being one of the things that threw me into depression.  Loosing sight of what was really important, the beautiful faces in my everyday.   

Now before everyone starts with, oh you are enough, you get this time to yourself, its a new chapter, a time for you and your hubby.  I so get that!  However, I have needed to reinvent myself in a way to give myself permission to take care of me.  No worrying about family, my kids and even my Grands.  Focusing on me.  I am not going to apologize to anyone for starting to take this time for me.

For the first time in such a long time I am content.  I don't feel a sadness when I think of my children.  I can look at my life as a mother and rejoice in the lives I have raised.  While being gone from this world, is still something I can't look at completely without some anxiety, it is getting better.  Which means I am growing, that is all I have ever wanted for myself.