Feeling & Swaying & Settling In

What a weird and fabulous day. Just feeling and settling into my skin. My dear friend Mary sent this to me today on Facebook. Then I heard the song "Wild Child" on the drive up to get my kids. 

I want to embody this gypsy freedom following the wind and sun where it takes me. 

For my entire life I have believed that I had to stand still to have love, to be loved. 

Stand still, keep everything on the down low and under the wire of acceptable.

I don't want to have to figure out how to take everyone just so I get to go. I don't want to have to stay to be loved. 

I just want to wake up everyday and be me and do all of the little things that makes me feel happy and brings me joy.

Coffee with sweet creamer, watching my kids be themselves, singing with my kids while I drive, talking with my girlfriends & sharing secrets, hugs & hearty laughs shared over a glass of wine, eating tasty food, walking & zoning out and hot baths perfumed with essential oils.

How absolutely freeing it is to wake up & realize that I have wanted to create a family for myself since I was a young girl. That family represented safety, consistency, unconditional love, and a place where I could relax and just be myself. I kept trying to fit all of this in a husband/wife, own your house, retirement plan, one vacation a year, type of cookie cutter. 

I am settling into the fact that I have never liked that path of having a husband. That relationship didn't fill the gaping holes in my soul. 

I wanted the 2 children and a dog, and tons of mini-vacations and get together's with friends and reading groups and wine tastings and nights snuggled up in my kids blankets reading books and watching History Channel.  

The most wonderful part of the whole equation is I have the kids. I am a mom. It was never a family I wanted, I just wanted to be a mom. I wanted to open my heart to my children. I wanted to live and laugh and love with my babies! I wanted to teach my children and fill their heads with books and movies and history and music. I have been doing that for 14.5 years, interlaced with ENDLESS grown-up boy drama as I tried to be a wife or girlfriend. 

I have limited my life up to this point, trying to figure out how to keep a partner in my life while living the life I dream of. 

I am stepping back and letting that part of my life fall into place, or not. 

The boy has never been a major part of the equation, just a nice bonus, when they weren't creating havoc and chaos and distracting me. 

This is the thought that I haven't been able give birth to, until today. I couldn't nail down what I wanted. I have been asked that question for decades by the men in my life. 

What do you want?  
What will make you happy?  
What do you want from me? 

I just want to be me, Melissa, unrestrained and unapologetic.