New Musing

HELLO I’M STEPHANIE!

(this would be the sticker on my left boob if I met you at a convention)

As I was browsing an image for this post, finally selecting this beautiful flower layout with some cracked concrete steps, and a few weeds here and there, it hit me how perfectly it illustrates being in my forties. Why a blog now? Because I finally have a little to to create this space where I can focus on *me. My life, issues I feel are important in this world, and everything in between. Also, I am unemployed. Fun fact, I was recently laid off from my corporate job, and applying to new positions is a real hoot. I am thinking about what makes me a WINNER amongst a pool of 20-somethings who were born AI savvy and don’t carry the baggage of decades of imposter syndrome, professional and personal failures alongside a struggle of wanting to climb up or down that corporate ladder. I have literal children in their 20’s.

I have planted some gorgeous flowers in my life. 7 of them come to mind, my kids aged 22-9, expressed by vibrant sunflowers to demure roses, each with their own struggles to maintain a good sun/water level on their own, growing each year into a perennial display that takes my breath away every time I see them. I have a reliable shrub in the back, his name is Phil, after 24 years of marriage and 27 together as my best friend, he doesn’t ask for much and quietly supports the growth and soil dynamics to make sure the garden stays healthy. Friends along the way might be the annual Zinnias poking out their heads, or the climbing Clematis that has been there for years. I wish I could spend more time with those climbing vines, but both they and I know that the needs of other flowers are my priority right now.

Those concrete steps were newly poured at one point. Smooth, textured, a perfect path laid out with clear steps on how to get to point A to point B. As time has marched on, they have cracked, misaligned and aren’t quite as clear where they end. Professional successes (a 15 year business that I started, grew, and then closed), to professional failures (being laid off from a corporate job I really, really liked, until I didn’t), have changed what my path looks like. Is it odd that the older I get, the more unclear I am as to where I am meant to go?

Oh, the never ending weeds. Bermuda grass of anxiety trying to challenge the new seeds I am trying to plant, despite the weed killer of Lexapro I put on it daily, it is always there. I know it exists, I work on it, maybe sometimes I even let it grow a bit because I think it is better than having a bare spot there. Always and over again, I end up having to rip it up by the roots, plunging into the dirt to clean it out again, and washing my hands of the dirt under my fingernails. Oh wait, there is the dandelion of doubt in the middle of the concrete. One glance shows it is there to help grow a beautiful flower, the bees will feed on it as I work to overcome pulling out the challenge it presents in my path. Some love those dandelions, they can be edible in teas to soothe the occasional boredom in life, finding the challenge of overcoming your own fears as an adrenaline rush. I am somewhere in between, my doubts can weigh heavily on me, interrupt my sleep and lead to guilt-trip rabbit holes. Sometimes though I can find beauty in them, along the lines of the questionably toxic “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger..”. One thing I can count on, they are regularly there, without fail. And sometimes, if I leave them long enough, someone comes along to pluck them out and blow them away for me.

Did I mention I love gardening? A new-found hobby this year, possibly more healing then years of therapy ever were. Definitely a topic for the future-

Also in my garden are the ghosts of my pregnancy failures. Quietly floating in and amongst the flowers that got to see the sunshine, I don’t think about them as often as years ago, but I can identify each date they came and went, and the names I gave them along the way. An ugly moss stain off to the side reminds me of my postpartum anxiety & depression battle I almost lost after the birth of my youngest, a reminder of how close I came to losing everything. On cloudy days, I am reminded of the darkness of a lifelong battle to reclaim happiness after a childhood full of abuse and anger. Two people who raised me, that I have been estranged from for over 10 years, who don’t even know all of my children because of their ability to impart harm to impressionable hearts. I have tried for years to give them the benefit of the doubt, but being a mother for over 22 years now myself, I cannot ever make sense of how a mother and father could do what they did. Luckily, most days aren’t overcast, but the ones that are stay a little quieter sometimes.

Thank you for joining me on this blog! I have a million topics to chat about (did I mention I found a half sister on 23&me during covid?) covering my experiences and the world around us. I DO heavily censor hateful comments, I do not tolerate toxic ideologies, my children have been raised with the goal to make this world a better place, and in my own space I will make sure that standard is set.

Let me know in the comments any thoughts or questions you have, and what you hope this space brings ❤