The question of the day… Why the new blog? This is going to be a tough post for me. Please, tread lightly.

In our youth, we spend time imagining what it will be like when we are older. We picture in our heads what we are going to wear on the first day of high school. We see ourselves being asked to Prom. We anticipate throwing our caps up in the air on our graduation day. We look through magazines picking out the man of our dreams. We script our perfect proposal. We have our wedding picked out to its very last detail by the time we are 13. We have the names of all 5 of our children shortly there after. We know that we are going to spend the rest of our lives living happily every after with our perfect man, with our perfectly groomed and dressed 5 children standing on the perfectly green lawn in front of our perfect two story cape cod style house that dons a white picked fence and a golden retriever. Ahhh. Wasn’t that refreshing.

What we don’t expect is the curve balls that life throws our direction. It doesn’t occur to us that we won’t be invited to Sr. Prom. Maybe it never entered our mind that we wouldn’t get into the college of our choice. We don’t expect the chance that we may never find Mr. Perfect. We don’t anticipate problem pregnancies, miscarriages. We can’t imagine that the doctor will tell us that we won’t be able to have that fifth child because of medical problems. We don’t ever suppose that one of our children will be born with ADD, Autism, anxiety, disabilities or learning problems. It never enters our minds that we will someday be signing papers divorcing the person that we loved so desperately only a few years earlier. We don’t fathom illness, heartbreak or loss. However, that part of life is just as real as the fairy tale.

It is during those times in our lives that we are “invited” to “join the club.” We have all joined many clubs in the course of our lives. They aren’t by choice, but it is a sense of comfort that we are not the only ones in that club. We aren’t the first and we certainly won’t be the last. It helps to know when we join these clubs that others have survived and thrived.

Two of my favorite quotes of all time are by Viktor Frankl,

” Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”

If there is anything that I have learned over the past year, (I am actually still trying to learn from this. It is a work in progress) is that I can not always chose what happens to me. I can however completely chose how I react to it. Some days are better than others, but I am a work in progress.

So, here is the new me:

I am a newly single mom of three adorable children whom I love with all of my heart. I have been separated for a year and am halfway through a divorce. It has been a challenge to me that has absolutely ripped me apart. I have kept this information out of the blog for a very long time wanting to keep things low key and calm. However, this is now part of who I am. Although I will not be dwelling on this while writing in this blog, I did feel a great need to get it out so that people might have a little more insight into my posts.

It is a hard situation to be in and every day is a little different than the previous one. I am trying to stay positive and happy. The kiddos are happy. Life is going to be good. I am choosing to be the best that I can be regardless of what I am handed. At least that is my goal.