Month: August 2022

On this day…

by Ashley filed under Divorce, Life

Today would have been my 13th wedding anniversary. Instead I went on a first date last night that went okay. It’d be a happier ending to say it went fantastic as if it’s a new beginning. But it’s probably not and that’s okay, too.

I have a flame ignited in me today that makes me realize just how dead I was inside during my marriage. Like a complete flatline. If you would have taken me to the hospital, there would have been no life saving measures; no paddles, no urgency, no electrodes. I may have even presented as nothing more than a pile of dust.

What’s worse is that I normalized that feeling – “this must be what marriage is like” – was a repetitive soundtrack that played in my head.

It really killed my creativity; I stopped imagining our marriage could be anything different. It felt like a box I had to settle into but no matter what corner I found myself in, I couldn’t get comfortable. I felt like I came with a garden and left with a cemetery. Morbid, I know.

I look at love so differently now and while I’m less interested in dissecting what was missing from my marriage and why, I will say that the experience as a whole – complete with the exploration that’s come post-divorce – has taught me the following:

I want a partner who reminds me of my power; not a partner who wants me to exist under a label and fit into a box. I want a partner who sees my wild femininity and allows it, embraces it, and is seduced by it. I want a partner who recognizes my individuality; a partner who can truly see ME beyond what I bring to them or how I make them feel about themselves. And I want radical honesty, where feelings – even when they bring conflict – are always welcome and always seen as an invitation for connection. I want freedom to be, the freedom to have been, and the freedom to become.

The day we got married there were fires raging in what felt like all directions. It was triple digit heat and horrible air quality. I think now about all the times the universe knew before I did and the patience the universe grants us to figure it out on our own. What a blessing.

Some things are meant to go up in flames.

A Road Trip, 2020

by Ashley filed under Travel

It’s funny looking back on this season of life and motherhood; in the throws of Covid, one year post divorce, one year before losing my dad.

Sometimes motherhood can feel so permanent, like the phase you’re in is never going to end. Some phases are rough and you’re practically willing them along and others are sweet and you long for them to linger longer than they do.

I could never have seen Covid as the blessing then that I know it to be now. Not, of course, on a global scale, but instead in terms of the forced closeness — navigating school from the dining room table, then school on the road, and – mostly – learning what to do with a whole lot of nothing to do.

We had hit the road just weeks prior to this and visited Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. We came home only to escape again, this time visiting Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and Utah.

The seasons are changing and I feel the sand sliding through my fingers. I welcome it in a sense — getting to watch them grow and become more independent is a true honor. Looking back on these memories, before their wings seemed so vast, carries a new appreciation. A greater value. Doing this all on my own is the hardest and the most fulfilling; a true testament to how so many things in life coexist. An integration of opposites, not a separation of parts.

Cities visited: Lake Tahoe, Briggs, Yellowstone, Livingston, The Grand Tetons, and Salt Lake City.

Imaginationships

by Ashley filed under Relationships

I want to share more of my dating life because the opportunity for self-expansion (and just pure entertainment) is vast. Also because I think relationships are the best mirrors and therefore wonderful opportunities for observation, which can lead to acceptance and then to growth, if we let it.

I read about the concept of an “imaginationship” in Becoming the One by by Sheleana Aiyana and it’s stuck in my mind ever since. In a lot of ways, I think this is the crux of one of my issues in relationships. Imaginationships are just that, relationships that are imagined; potential paired with projected hopes onto a being that may or may not be any of the things I want them to be. It’s essentially me pushing my will onto someone else. There’s a lot of ways I’ve looked back and have come to terms with ways I’ve bent, shifted, and shaped to make myself a good fit for someone else. But the flipside is also true; there’s a lot of ways I’ve ignored, denied, and/or dismissed parts of another to sell myself on them being a good fit for me.

As life happens and circumstances present themselves and this other person doesn’t act in accordance with the role I’ve assigned to them, I often feel anxious. The root of my anxiety is the discrepancy between the reality I’ve created and the reality of what actually is. In the past, I would react to this anxiety which usually presented itself in me trying to control other people, places, or things in subtle ways.

The more layers I peel back, the more I come to realize that the answers are all within each of us and so the work is getting more in touch with oneself. Today, I can label the anxiety as anxiety. I don’t react to it. Instead, I invite it and acknowledge it as my body sending me a message. When I fall into an imaginationship, for example, my anxiety serves as a reminder that I may be fooling myself. It’s an opportunity to ask myself if I am ignoring what’s before me in an effort to hold onto an image of another that I’ve created. When I can make this differentiation, I’m provided this wonderful freedom to choose: do I want to see this person for who they are or who I want them to be?

I came across these three rules: 1. When people show you who they are, believe them the first time, 2. Don’t talk yourself into unseeing what they showed you, and 3. What we allow is what will continue.

I try to live by these. When I know better, I do better.