Rediscovering Me

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For years, meeting new people came with a little (a lot) of anxiety. The conversations usually started out simple enough. "How many kids do you have?" "How old are they?" But with a bunch of kids, autism, Down syndrome, therapies, and a life that looked different from most families, my answers were rarely simple.

On the drive home, I would replay every word. Did I say too much? Did I scare them away? Did they wish they hadn't asked?

I don't think I even realized how much energy I spent trying to make my story easier for other people to understand.

Recently, I found myself sitting around a table laughing with a group of women I hadn't known three years ago. At some point during the conversation, something caught me by surprise. I wasn't trying to figure out how to fit in. 

Looking around at these women, I noticed I wasn't spending the evening worrying about what to say next. I wasn't wondering whether I was talking too much or too little. I wasn't rehearsing my words before they left my mouth. 

My life didn't get quieter. My soul simply had room to breathe again.


Somewhere along the way, I think I started believing being a good mom meant always putting myself last. And for a long time, my family really did need almost everything I had to give. But God, in His kindness, slowly started reminding me that loving them didn't mean losing me.

After my mom died in May of 2024, I think I mostly existed for a while. I was grieving, still caring for my family, and trying to find my place in a state I had only moved to because of her. I didn't have some big plan to rediscover myself. I just started saying yes to little things I probably would have said no to before. 

It started with sitting down to pray the rosary with a few women at church I barely knew. Then signing up for women's groups, helping during Lent at Friday fish fries, going on a retreat, picking up a tennis racket after thirty-seven years, and training for the Baby Camino walking with women who slowly became friends. And if I'm being completely honest, I initially brought Dasha with me to help at those fish fries as my unofficial support person. I also thought I was helping her find her place, but maybe God was using her to help me find mine, too. 

Around the same time, I started personal training. Not because I suddenly decided it was time to focus on myself, but because I was struggling to lift Lily's wheelchair in and out of my vehicle. I hadn't realized how much strength I had lost until I needed it. 

Somewhere in all of those little yeses, God was opening doors I didn't even realize I had closed.

I thought I was rediscovering my love of writing. But maybe writing was simply the last piece to come back. God had already been restoring my joy through all of those little invitations to say yes. One day I opened my laptop, and the words were there. Not because I had finally found something to write about, but because, little by little, I had begun to find myself again. 

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