...accounting for re-counting and re-consideration...

August did NOT run according to plan...nor to direction.

In fact, August ran contrary to every hope I had naively imbued it with in the final hours of July.

There were so many, many unforeseen hiccups and hurdles...and so many, many emergent diversions from the track I thought I had set my feet to.

And such is life.

So here I am...closing out the book of August and sending the calendar pages to the rubbish bin, and realizing how very, very full our August really was.  I tore those pages out of my planner earlier today and glanced at all the messy scribblings and thought to myself, "Well done. Look at all you did." Lovely thought, which lasted the whole five minutes until I went to pull our August Mood Board and August Bucket List off the fridge...and saw the empty boxes.

We're so often forced to reframe our hopes and expectations in the face of unexpected upsets.

Perhaps the appropriate reframing is:

Here was NOT my August Bucket List.

~rather~

Here WAS my August WISH List.

With that little rewrite, I can let go of the failure-feeling that focused solely on the unchecked boxes, and instead delight in the boxes that were checked...as I remind myself of ALL THE THINGS we saw and did and accomplished and overcame that didn't show up in prophecy or print.

And as to those unchecked boxes?  Well, who's to say I can't just roll them over as ongoing goals?

After all, September is but a day away, and full of empty spaces to fill and flourish.

 

...why empty pages should stay that way...

It's a 'sit with the empty page' kind of an afternoon here.

~~~
With September just round the corner, I've dragged out everyone's planners to make sure we're all on the same page and spent the last hour or so synching up all the appointments and activities.
I've always found that while having a planner app on my phone is certainly useful on the go, I feel far more organized when I've a paper planner in front of me.

~~~

Having enforced a 'break' from homeschool/home-based therapy for July and August, I've got to get things back in order around here. We needed the break, for sure.  It just so happened to coincide with possibly the most overwhelming and stressful period in life, lately.  So, what I'd first framed as a 'break'...a 'summer vacation'...turned into just a significant reduction in practice as my energy was drained elsewhere.  Now, as I look up at the bins and boxes holding all my lesson plans and supplies, I'm forcefully tamping down feelings of mom-guilt and trying to psyche myself back up for the challenge of 'being all the things'.

~~~

All my healthy practices have run to seed.
I'm exhausted, and drained, and running on caffeine fumes.

No.

I'm running on cortisol.

And it shows.

~~~

I need to learn how to disengage.

I need to learn how to say no. 

I need to disembark from the 'stop drop and roll' routine I've been riding, of managing everyone else's crises while ignoring my own.

~~~

Empty pages.

Because making plans seems...brash...tempting of fate.

Because I can't handle anymore disappointment.

Empty pages because I need to rest.

Empty pages.

Because words untapped might rush out too quickly, too meaningfully, too truthfully...

Because I might write the anger onto the page.

Because I'd make a target of myself to turn the oncoming storm away from one who calls me sister.

~~~

My queue is full of half-formed posts.

Abandoned fits and starts, left to molder.

The problem is, one thing leads to another. One string pulls on a tangle.  One post opens up a floodgate of things I don't know how to write about...things I don't know how to feel about...things I haven't recovered from, or grown past, or healed.

~~~

I want to be selfish.

I want to set aside everyone else's need, and just curl up into a cozy tangle and sleep until I'm rested. 

...16 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
19.August.2018
 "A very merry un-anniversary to me!"
14 years ago, I came through the fire...I was scorched and scarred and broken into a thousand pieces. But I was free...and so was my son. On this day, all those years ago, a beautifully thoughtful person gave me the one best piece of advice I have ever received. She told me to take the day off...to pick my son up and reclaim the day for us....for our family that wouldn't be here had I not willingly walked into that line of fire.
18 years ago, there was a dress...and an aisle...family and friends, and hope~faith~trust.

18 years later, there's today: Wellerding Family Day. There's a boy who made my life worth the living of it....there's a family-beautifully broken and down to just two but so imperfectly perfect...there's the hope we have for OUR future, the faith we have in each other to get through anything, and the trust that comes from knowing there is no moment so bad that we can't rise above it if we support one another wholeheartedly.
There are likely those of you who don't understand...who never will...why my son is such a miracle to me...why I speak so passionately about him: He might not have been. I almost lost him. His life was almost nothing, when my husband pushed me down the stairs.
Abuse leaves wounds beyond the visible ones. I walk through this life missing pieces of myself. I always will. That pretty girl in her pretty dress with stars in her eyes haunts me still...

But there is something important: I won! I got out...and away...and I saved the two of us. And I get every damn day of the rest of my life to celebrate THAT. To live this life with this son...this family.
And that girl...in that dress...she's the reason we get today. She took those steps down that aisle and created a marriage that created a family.
So every year, we see my wedding anniversary on the calendar and in bright bold ink we write "Family Day".
Go ahead...congratulate us! Wish us well!

...15 (in days gone by)...

 In Days Gone By:
17.August.2018

In the light of morning, and the comfort that the fresh start of a new day promises, I choose this:

“Brokenness is just like beauty; it's something we wear and carry, and if we let it define us, it will. But we are not our beauty or our brokenness, because souls are not made of beauty or brokenness. Souls are made of something permanent. Souls are made of truth.”

Your choices broke me...the fractures and missing pieces so visible when I look at the landscape of my life. You stole choice from me, violently and purposefully and sadistically, leaving me to navigate life as a series of reactions instead of decisions. I lost myself in the definition of your actions...in the endless stream of could have-would have-should have...

And it was nothing to you....not even a ripple. No memory keeping you awake in fear...no echo of words when you looked in the mirror.

Those hurts...those fears...those anguishes that you inflicted; I bore alone.

And that's fine...they purified me...they polished all my sharp edges and made me into someone who could roll with every punch.

But today, I choose something else. Your words last night cleared the pathway for me...all that rubble you left in your wake is suddenly nothing but dust. My self-worth was never tied up in you after all...your inability to see it didn't actually negate it.

~~~

And, ps- his success has NOTHING to do with you! 

...August : The List...

But a month to go, as summer wanes...
Little has gone to plan this summer...and so many plans have been back-burnered in the moment.
It's funny how the day to day can get so in the way of the wishes and wants.

Here's to August arriving, and all of the thriving...Cheers to the days ahead!

...august plans...