It Will Be Hard Sometimes

For 21 years I swallowed the rage, the pain, the dismissal, the “I wanted to be what you needed…I just didn’t.”

I lived on poverty, secondhand clothes and ramen, dreaming of a better life and a better way for my children and I.

I watched Mother’s Days and birthdays go by with barely a nod while I died inside, wishing someone—anyone—would really see me.

I was raised the daughter of a wealthy businessman who loudly objected to my marriage. I was surprised when he showed up at the wedding.

He wasn’t right; it was my lesson to learn. But it cost me so much…and eventually gained me even more.

After I had my last child, I had major medical issues. I didn’t think I would survive. If not for my children, I think I might’ve chosen not to. It was torture, and the cure cost me my health for the rest of my life.

He went back to work, commuting three hours a day for a paycheck that was just never enough.

I was alone raising 4 children while simply trying not to die.

No parents or friends to check in while I drowned in silence.

One day, we had a visitor, family, who commented on the weight I’d gained while I convalesced. My barometer for success during that time was that I’d managed to feed the kids and stay alive. It was all I could do.

He replied to her, chuckling:

I just keep feeding her and she just keeps eating.

Silently, falling apart in body and heart, I went to my room, closed the door and sobbed. Quietly, so they didn’t know how deep the wound.

He will never understand what loving him cost me, again and again and again.

I didn’t even; I internalized it all as something wrong with me.

Until I healed.

Until I built.

And finally, I grew strong enough to break free.

From the ashes of the dreams I once had, I clawed my way out of that poverty and built a 7-figure business while homeschooling four children, homesteading and trying to maintain a sense of me in the mix, as chronic pain and health issues threatened to wash away any progress I managed to eke out.

Doing penance for sins I couldn’t even name, I continued pouring myself out for everyone around me: my kids, my husband, my community and my business, until at last, my body and my nervous system finally screamed, “NO MORE!”

In November, I reached the certainty I’d been seeking: this marriage was irredeemable.

After a solo trip to the coast, I came back in February and told him.

It’s now September, and I have spent the time carefully preparing and I am acutely aware that even in this, I am pouring myself out to ensure everyone else is safe.

I am giving him the home I inherited so I can be sure the two children staying with him are safe.

I have given him a role in my business and I am terrified it will cost me more.

And I’m sitting here, escaped to my office on a Saturday afternoon, because the pain of staying in the home I have outgrown is too much to bear today.

Just 20 more days until I can breathe.

20 more days until I embark the journey of the next part of my life, in a home I bought, a beautiful home I could only have dreamed of affording a few years ago, a home I earned, through the sacred tears of heartbreak, struggle and the sheer determination that I could not spend the rest of my life settling for less than I was capable of.

It’s so hard right now.

I have no one to turn to, no one to talk to about how absolutely terrified I am.

And so I turn to the keyboard, to alchemize this struggle into something that will help someone else know that it’s okay to have hard days, to be nearly paralyzed by fear but still press on.

Starting over is hard. It’s messy, and indisputably the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.

But when the heart knows it’s time to go, staying still is even worse.