I used to be terrified of being alone.  Now I’m intentionally single.

Not because I stopped wanting love, but because I stopped being willing to lose myself trying to keep it.

Hello Beautiful Ladies!

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Or if you’re single, happy Galentine’s Day, happy Pet Mom Day, or happy Single Ladies Day.  For me personally, it’s happy “my cats and I are eating pizza and judging rom coms on the couch” Day.

Valentine’s Day hits differently when you’re 40, divorced, heartbroken, healing, and extremely single.  Trust me, I know!

And when I say extremely single, I mean no boyfriend, no situationship, no “it’s complicated”, no almost, no maybe, no potential.  It’s just me, my six furballs, and a gym crush who doesn’t know I exist (yet! LOL).

Last year I would have hated admitting that, but this year I’m choosing it.  Not because I don’t want love.  Not because I’ve given up.  Not because I’m pretending I’m fulfilled.  But because I finally learned that peace is way better than potential.

Somewhere along the way I realized being single isn’t the worst thing that can happen to me.  I NEVER would have thought I’d be ok with being single.  It was never what I wanted and frankly, I couldn’t imagine anything more horrifying.

And I actually think Mr. Situationship helped teach me that, even if I didn’t want the lesson at the time (being on the receiving end of it is a lot of more painful).  He is so bent on NEVER having a relationship that it forced me to look at the other side of things.  It opened my eyes to the “dark side” and helped me realize maybe being single isn’t so bad after all.

For years I was terrified of being alone.  I tried to make things work for way too long. I forced things.  I held on out of fear and anxiety and because I didn’t want to start over again.

I was scared to sit in this house by myself.  Scared to be the only adult responsible for everything.  The bills.  The decisions.  The pets.  The what-ifs.  I was scared I wouldn’t make it financially.  Scared that if I let go, I wouldn’t be able to rebuild.

But here’s what I didn’t know then:  God was already building this life for me.

I didn’t become independent because I felt brave.  I became independent because I had no other choice.  And somehow, with His help, I figured it out.  The house stayed.  The pets stayed.  I stayed.  I learned how to carry it all.

And now that I’ve built this life, I’m not risking it for something uncertain.  I’m not willing to risk it for anything.

When I started dating after my divorce, I was afraid, and really I still am sometimes, that nobody would want me.  I’m a little overweight.  I’m getting older.  I have a grown child and a small zoo of pets.  I come with baggage.

So I kept asking the wrong questions.  Could this possibly work even though it’s not perfect?  Could this become something? Could I make this fit?  How can I be better or do better so he’ll like me more?

But now I ask a different question:  Is this aligned?

Does he want what I want?  Are our lifestyles aligned?  Our beliefs?  Does he give me the ick (haha)?

And if the important things aren’t aligned, I let it go.  Protecting my peace is better than settling just because I’m lonely.

This didn’t happen overnight.  I told someone a couple months ago that I didn’t want a relationship unless I knew it was right.  Truthfully, I had been feeling that long before that.  I was tired of twisting myself smaller just to keep something going.

Mr. Situationship didn’t create that realization, but he definitely helped me solidify it.

He taught me something I didn’t want to learn.  You can care about someone deeply and still not be aligned for the life you want.  And forcing something because you’re scared to be alone will cost you your peace every time.

So here I am.  Fully undeniably single.

Not technically single.  Not emotionally attached but pretending I’m not.  Not loyal even though he isn’t loyal to me.  Not reserving space in my heart for someone who isn’t reserving space for me.

Just single.  And yes, it’s lonely sometimes.

I don’t have little kids at home.  I don’t have a husband.  I don’t have a huge community.  Some nights it’s so quiet in a way that feels heavy.

And then I think about my daughter’s best friend who just passed away.  She was surrounded by so much love and community and I still can’t make sense of it.  Why am I still here alone when she had so much life around her?  I don’t have the answers.

But I do have peace.  And that peace is new.

Peace became the proof that I’m exactly where God wants me right now.  If you had told me two years ago that I’d be this single on Valentine’s Day and not spiraling, I definitely wouldn’t have believed you.

I’m not single because no one wants me, even though sometimes it feels that way.  I’m single because I finally want the right love more than I want good enough.

I’m learning I don’t need validation, settling, or someone in my life just for the sake of having someone.

I still want marriage one day.  I want a man who puts God first.  Someone strong and steady.  Someone who can balance faith, fitness, work, fun, and purpose.  Someone who wants partnership, loyalty, intentionality, and safety.  Not messy and not chaos.

But until that man exists and God confirms it, I’m not committing to anyone.

I won’t move out of this house into a marriage house unless I’m completely sure.  I’m not giving up what God so carefully and generously put in place for me just to say I’m married.  I cannot afford to hand over my stability to something that isn’t solid   I’ve worked too hard to get here.

This home.  This independence.  This stability.  It didn’t come easy.  It came through heartbreak and fear and learning how to stand on my own two feet when I didn’t want to.

I’m protecting what God gave me.  Not out of fear, but out of wisdom because I cannot survive another shattering.  I won’t gamble my peace, my pets, my home, or my security for almost or maybe.

When I choose again, it will be for something certain.

For now I’ll date.  I’ll learn.  I’ll practice being social without attaching myself to Mr. Right Now instead of Mr. Right.  No casual that turns into confusion.  No rescuing broken men who need therapy more than a girlfriend.  No more letting someone control everything without giving me safety, clarity, and mutual respect.

From here on out I’m praying for discernment.   I need the ability to filter out what isn’t for me and the wisdom to recognize the man God has intended for me when he shows up.

In the meantime I’ll keep healing, growing in my faith, lifting weights, building businesses, and creating my community.

I’m flawed.  I’m divorced.  A little messy. Maybe hard to love.  But I’m trying really hard and I’m finally not terrified of being alone.

So this Valentine’s Day, I’m not posting a couples photo.  I’m not pretending I’m unbothered either.  But I’m also not settling just so I don’t have to sit with the quiet.

I’m intentionally single.  I guess.  At least for now.

And strangely, that feels strong.

Love you!

More From This Category:

I Was Chosen Even Though I Was Left.

When someone walks away and it rewrites how you see yourself, faith has to hold strong when it feels too personal.

Hey Ladies,

There is a specific kind of pain that comes when someone walks away from you.

It doesn’t just break your heart, but it rewrites how you see yourself.  It makes you feel insignificant.  Replaceable.  Forgettable.  Like no one is choosing you and maybe never has.

I just experienced loss in many forms, but the one that’s hitting the hardest right now is the one who chose to leave.  He said it wasn’t me.  He said all the right things.  We parted amicably.  But I still feel like I’m not good enough because he didn’t choose me.

He cares about me, but not enough to stay.  Not enough to value me or what we had.  Not enough to make more memories and plans for things we’d do in the future.  It’s over and the hole is huge.  Will I really never see him again?  I can’t bear that thought.  Especially while I’m feeling like if I had done better, tried harder, did something different, or was good enough, maybe he would have stayed.

I don’t have a large community or a long list of people to call.  So when someone leaves my life, romantically or otherwise, it creates a noticeable absence.  A gap that feels louder because there isn’t much noise around it to soften the blow.  And it’s even more unbearable when the person I lost was the one who I’d turned to for the best and most loving hugs when I’m sad.  The one person who could make it all better no matter what it was.  And now he’s gone.

Loss, for me, has rarely been abstract.  It has felt personal.  Repeated.  Patterned.  Historically nobody has chosen me for the long road.  I’m divorced.  I’m single.  I have nobody.

And that pattern is what hurts the most.

It’s not just that one person didn’t choose me (although that one person is huge and deeply impactful and current).  It’s that it feels like no one ever does.  Not for the long road.  Not permanently.  Not when it gets hard.  I keep being loved in moments or for only certain things and situations, but not in long-lasting decisions.  I’m wanted in pieces, but not chosen in full.  There’s no permanent seat for me at anyone’s table.

And when that keeps happening, it stops feeling like coincidence and starts feeling like a verdict about who I am and what I’m worth.

Even when I know in my head that a relationship might not have been right, my heart still aches with the same questions:  Why does it always end with them leaving?  What did I do wrong?  Why am I never good enough?  Why does nobody choose me?

And those questions don’t stay confined to relationships.  When I’m grieving, they also start to creep into my faith.  As a believer, I know in my head the “right” answer.  I know Jesus died for my sins.  I know God loves me.  I know I am valued.  But in the sad times, my mind twists that truth into something that seems to make more sense in my heart at that moment.

He didn’t choose ME.  He chose everyone.  It was a blanket salvation for all of us.  Nothing was personal.  Nothing was special just for me.

And then I feel guilty for even wanting it to be personal.  Desiring to be uniquely chosen by God or by a person makes me selfish and faithless.  But that’s not true.  Wanting to be chosen doesn’t mean I doubt God.  It means I’m human and suffering.  And the truth is, Jesus may have died for everyone, but He still saw individuals.  Here’s what I’m slowly learning, even through the tears and this unbearable heartbreak I never asked for:

He still stopped for the one woman at the well.

He still wept for that one friend.

He still left the ninety-nine for the one.

He still chose ME.

Even when my worldly person didn’t.

Love lost by a significant person does not cancel personal worth.  Being left by people does not mean you are unchosen by God.  And maybe the real work of grief isn’t convincing ourselves that we aren’t good enough, but learning how to hold our worth steady even when others choose to walk away.  Grief is inevitable in this life.  But we can’t let it steal our self worth or our joy and maybe that’s the point of grief and the lesson we’re supposed to work on.

I don’t have this figured out.  I’m writing this with a broken heart, not a healed one.  The pain I’m in today is new and raw and real.  But I’m trying in these first few days when I feel disposable and unloved and not good enough, to remember that my worth isn’t proven by who stays.  It isn’t erased by who leaves by choice.

And maybe being chosen by God doesn’t always look like being spared from loss.  He never promised that.  Maybe it looks like being carried through the heartache, like a subtle hug that’s so very needed, and like someone’s weeping with me even though nobody is physically present.  Even when you don’t feel strong, faithful, or special at all, He’s still there.  Despite the person who chose to leave no longer being there.

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are broken. Psalms 34:18

To the person I lost, I miss you already.  More than a little.  I don’t know how to have a life that doesn’t include you.  You’ve always existed and now you left.  I just wish I was enough for you.  I wish you chose me.  But even though you didn’t, God did.  I’m suffering, but He’s with me and he chose me.

More From This Category:

There are losses that happen to you and and there are losses that are chosen.

Both can break your heart, but they do it in very different ways.  Especially when you didn’t do the choosing.

Hi Friends,

Grief after death carries a weight that is undeniable and sacred.

When someone dies, there’s shock, devastation, disbelief, and a kind of finality that steals your breath.  You may feel anger toward God, confusion about timing, or heartbreak over words left unsaid.  Death doesn’t ask permission.  It just takes.  And I would never, ever suggest that this kind of loss is anything less than horrific, confusing, or unbearable.

But there is another kind of grief that doesn’t get talked about as honestly:  the grief that comes when someone chooses to leave your life.

This kind of loss is quieter, but it cuts deeper in a different way.

Because instead of asking “why did this happen?”, you find yourself asking “why wasn’t I enough?”.

When someone dies, the love doesn’t feel like rejection.  When someone leaves, it’s personal.  They chose to leave YOU.

I want to be clear about something that matters deeply to me.  I would never wish anything bad on anyone who chose to leave my life.  I am so grateful that my ex-husband and others I’ve loved are alive, healthy, and able to build the lives that make them happy, even if it wasn’t me that was part of that happiness.  Death is not the alternative.  This isn’t a comparison of which pain is “worse.”  It’s an acknowledgment that the shape of the pain is different.

Loss by choice leaves room for hope and that’s what makes it so brutal.  Because they’re still out there.  Alive.  Existing.  Making decisions every day that don’t include you, on purpose.  You wonder if they think about you, miss you, or might change their mind.  The door could open again, but when it doesn’t, the disappointment resets all over.

Since 2020, loss has piled up in my life in ways I never anticipated.  It’s been nonstop.  I’ve lost 3 dogs I loved deeply.  I’ve lost family members to illness.  I’ve lost my marriage and with it, an entire in-law family I thought I would always be included in.  I’ve lost relationships that felt like home.  I’ve lost the hope in a relationship I thought might happen where the person turned out to be nothing like I thought.  My spirit has continually been broken time and time again.

Even earlier than that, in 2019, my daughter graduated high school and left to build her own life.  She now lives several hours away.  That loss was necessary and good and something I’m so endlessly proud of, but it still marked the beginning of a season where everything familiar kept changing.  Everything has been steadily unraveling.

Just yesterday we laid my daughter’s best friend to rest.  There aren’t even words to describe how sad that is and how much I feel for my daughter’s loss (and of course her family’s loss).  She lost the person she ran to about everything.  The one person who knew and loved everything about her with no conditions.  It’s a heartbreak that isn’t comparable.  But the one thing my daughter can focus on is it wasn’t personal.  Her best friend didn’t choose to leave her and the reunion in Heaven is going to be nothing short of AMAZING.

However, today, I’ve also lost my best friend.  But in a very different way.  It was by choice.

Last summer I shared that I had a situationship that ended.  However, because of how much he’s meant to me and for how long, I let him back in.  And he let me back in.  Over and over again.  Almost another year has passed now and this time it’s really final.  It’s over between us for good.  After knowing him for the better part of 20 years and being “together” off and on for the last almost 2 years, it’s over and I’m devastated.

My favorite human, my safe place with no judgement, my person.  I can’t remember a time he wasn’t in my life and in my thoughts.  He’s just always been there.  Like a circle, there was no beginning and I never thought there’d be an ending.  But now, I have to somehow find a way to move forward without him.  And it feels impossible.

I can’t remember the first time I saw him, met him, or our first hug so very long ago.  He just slipped in like he’s always been.  But now we’ve experienced our last of everything and I know I’ll never forget it.  I have to let go of all the plans we had, the shows and movies we started and never finished, the football games we’ll never get to go to, that restaurant we never got to try, another New Year’s Eve I won’t spend with him, and the fact that we’ll no longer make new memories.  Never again, forever.

Some people come into your life and feel like your people.  And when those people leave, it doesn’t just hurt.  It rearranges you.  It shatters you.

I know in my head that not every love is meant to last forever.  I know compatibility and timing matter.  I know feelings don’t always mean forever.  But my heart didn’t get that memo.  I’m broken over this.

Grief doesn’t follow logic and love doesn’t disappear just because it didn’t work out.  Maybe the hardest truth about grief of any kind is that it doesn’t invalidate what came before it.  Death doesn’t mean the love was wasted.  Being left by choice doesn’t mean there weren’t amazing memories made or that you’re unlovable, even though it feels that way.

Sometimes grief is simply the cost of having loved someone so deeply and genuinely in a world where nothing is guaranteed to stay and people change at different times.

But if I’m being honest (which I ALWAYS try to be), I would still choose love all over again, even knowing how much it hurts in the end, whether through death or choice.  Because the alternative is a life untouched.  A life where he was never a part of it.  And that feels like a different kind of loss altogether.  I guess what they say is true:  maybe it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.  At least I have the memories of “that one time when…”.

I will always love you and you will always be my person in every way.  Always.  Your shoes are just too big too fill.

Te amo, mi amor.  And that orange thing too.

Always,

More From This Category: