I’m in snow induced lockdown with four kids right now, again and I finally farted around enough to get myself to sit down and write….Ok, I’ll admit, I have been struggling to find the perfect mom-kid-parenting blog topic, when an idea suddenly occurred to me. Why don’t I google it? I pretty much google everything else. Sometimes just for fun or to win (or lose) an argument or mostly, just to know. So I did. Of course I was overwhelmed with information. This is the one I chose:

“Eat, Pray, Love is the story of a woman who pursues the things she thinks will bring her happiness. If you could find it in yourself, that bit of bravery to leave the comforts of your everyday life behind and pursue your own happiness, where would you go and what would you pursue? “

Whoa. Right? That’s big and bad and brave, vibrating right on the page there staring at me. Yikes. I feel a little bit scared and reticent, but will persevere, just don’t judge me for it. Or if you do, keep it to yourself. I’m procrastinating. So in a lot of ways I have done this but it hasn’t quite taken on the outside appearance of happiness or success, yet I never, even in my darkest moments, quite rolled that way.

Let’s see….I have ended 2 marriages along the way, given up custody of one kid, maintain physical custody of four kids, 3 with some degree of significant medical involvement, moved probably 9 times since my first marriage, gotten into a pickle, or became a pickle with alcohol and addiction issues, came into recovery for such addictions, and I guess my biggest spin on all this is I’ve learned, for me, the key to happiness is knowing what happiness means to me and living a day at a time. But also, I pretty much don’t know what I’m doing most days.

It’s taken me until well into my 40s to understand what true happiness is for me and it’s not like the super high happy, it’s in learning and knowing it’s all illusion, pick your metaphor and watch yourself. I try to sit back and watch it all run off, all my seriously calculated moves, determinism and free will in action all at once. Thanks Ram Dass for raising my consciousness. Thing is, I always come home and there’s a huge mess in the kitchen, dishes in the sink, my dishwasher is still broken, there’s piles of laundry and the kids want to show me stuff and tell me stuff and I just want to sit on my ass and update my facebook with pictures of myself observing myself and it just all falls apart into the reality that is mine.

Leaving the comforts of my every day life hasn’t been easy. Some days I wake up in my bedroom and wonder how the hell I got here? I remember every bedroom I’ve lived in with a man and all the times I woke up and wondered how I’d get out of there and how miserable I was at the time. It’s sad to think of, and a lot of it was really me and my own misery, but I did get out and sometimes it is still scary.

I have no retirement plan, maybe the wind blowing a shitload of cash in my window, like winning the lottery or such. I have to live in the now and who am I kidding? I have people there to help me when needed, friends!!! I love my friends. And my Mom. I have to ask for help sometimes, so I don’t fall through the cracks and my kids get fed and clothed and go to school and I have a little job so everything flows right now. Prayer. Always, all the time, like , “hey God, please help? I’m tossing all my problems up to you now, please handle and thanks and grateful for every minute even though I’m really pissed off right now because my daughter says she hates me and I’m the worst mother ever. Thanks for being there. God. “, and that’s how that goes. Faith is a big part prayer mixed with weird bravery. I have faith that God, aka the universe, will provide as long as I go with the flow, not against the flow. It has proven true thus far.

Love. It’s all love, but to dip into it more specifically, I’m in a new-ish relationship which has taught me so much about love. I’m not used to listening to my inner voice and making tough choices in regards to relationships. It has scared me. It has almost scared me out of this relationship, but finally, I broke, he broke and it’s come together in a better deeper, pinch myself, is this really happening??? way. That’s all I can say about that, and Mr. X. Oh yeah, thanks too.

Love for my kids and their future do loom over me as several of them are not typical and many days I cannot choose my own seeming happiness but must find a way to guide them to theirs, which is ultimately a big part of my happiness. I could never leave them behind and knowing they need me and love me has often kept me clean and sober whenever a thought of using or picking up occurred to me. I realize, how quickly I’d lose everything. Starting with my kids and working my way down to my soul. I just got my lovely soul back, which is your soul, our soul, thee soul and I like to get all abstract like that and deep but life calls and I’ve got one more aspect of the blog prompt to address.

Eat. Another miracle, that I am not all wrapped up in eating and weight and that. Well, I am but I’ve found a system that works for me. I refuse to ever, ever weigh myself, as that would, like the first drink, or pill, jump start the addiction. Even at the doctor. I have them weigh me backwards, so I don’t know. I used to weigh myself every single day, multiple times and it was horrid. Fantastically horrid. I also run a lot. I used to feel guilty taking all that time, but I use that time to listen. Listen to all different perspectives on life and being via podcast. So now my running has more of a purpose than fulfilling my need to control my weight. It is that, but it is also very therapeutic on every level. The food and weight obsessions were my first addictions and led me down the road to all the other ones. Anorexia and bulimia, separately and together.

I think most women struggle on some level. Our perception of the outer more important than the inner being is pervasive. I buy into it despite all my professing of constant higher consciousness. This is the hook that will pull my soul back into another incarnation. I gotta work on this shit. I have and and I do, and I’ve found a system that works for me so I can EAT! I enjoy it and I don’t fear it and that is true mercy and grace.

So kind of sideways and backwards, more like pray, love eat and happiness running through like the hot fudge in a really yummy sundae. I want to qualify all this by saying I am so far from perfect, so much so that I need to tell you, because there’s obviously some unresolved guilt driving me a bit. So what that I’m not perfect? Shut up you crazy brain! I like to lay in bed late into the night and binge watch Netflix. I like to sit and my computer and zone out on the internet, I take naps. I am horrible with money. This is the first time I’ve admitted that out loud. In public. And now I will stop because I am tired and I need to edit this, post it and go take a nap. Despite this meandering diatribe, thanks, so very much, for listening dear readers. I hope we all can step it up a notch in this lifetime so maybe, just maybe, we can shave a life or two off our evolution to pure being. Grin. The End.