We Are In This Together

Hello again. Mz Leigh here.

Today is one of those historic days in my lifelong story. It is February 14, 2021, and no, today is not special because it’s a corporate holiday – especially not because of that. As a female, this day caused stress from the time I was a child having to beg my mom to spend the little money we had on pieces of paper and candy to hand out to all of my classmates, just for them to be thrown away, mind you.

Gosh, I remember the stress of analyzing the words on the cards and comparing them with who gave them to me. Every. Single. Year. (Am I the only child that did that?) And then as I got older, it became the anxiety of having someone by your side – and not just anyone – the one. God forbid you were alone. And to top it all off – presents, affection, and perfection were expected from (if you had one) your partner. There are so many parts to this “holiday” and others (dare I say Christmas) that have turned me into a realist, sometimes to my family’s dismay.

One of the biggest issues I have with corporate holidays is the fact that it’s the corporations that actually celebrate. They’re taking our hard-earned money in exchange for waste that is ruining our environment and making them rich AND powerful. Not to mention they also make us believe that we welcome every bit of it. And wait, let me throw in the fact that we then LIE to the people closest to us for a MARKETING CAMPAIGN?! For example, you know that older guy in a red suit, white beard, rosy cheeks, that sneaks into your house once a year to go through your home while everyone is sleeping? That was a marketing campaign for Coke. That was seriously a figment of someone’s imagination to sell more Coke before the end-of-year reporting. He was such a great character that he changed the entire Christmas season. As a marketer myself, one side of me says, “well done,” but the enlightened human side of me says, “how’d we let this happen?”

So it’s safe to say that I don’t celebrate certain holidays willingly. Santa went away as soon as my kids asked me if he was REALLY real. I had to stop lying, which meant our entire Xmas became about creating adventures instead of expensive gifts so that suit and ties would meet their bottom lines. We made it about creating memories and not debt and lies. It certainly hasn’t been an easy transition for some of my family members…it all depended on their age and how far into the societal manipulation that they were in. My mom, for example, probably thinks I’m a pessimist – and I know my 15 and 12 year old think I’m just mean. My 20 year old, though, she’s had time to process it and agrees… to a degree. That being said, I’ve had to bring back some of my holiday spirit to coexist peacefully and lovingly with my brood – just not a ton, nor where it truly counts.

I seemed to have gone on a bit of a tangent, but it’s good stuff!! Let me get back to my original reason for writing on this special day.

At this very moment, my partner is helping my two youngest children’s father get a rental truck all situated so he can go pick up all of his earthly belongings, his wife, and child and move from all they’ve known so that we can start building our future TOGETHER. Did you get that? I still find myself in awe of our situation and the fact that it is REALLY happening! Five, 10 years ago, I promise you that none of us thought that this would be our story.

I’ve always wanted to tell our story, from my point of view of course, but there was always too much hatred and pain in my heart – and that is not who I ever wanted to show. We all have those opportunities where we can allow the anger to become who we are or we can live it, feel it, and then heal from it. There’s no timetable for this process and there’s definitely no guidebook that fits perfectly for each of our situations because each one is unique, but there are habits to grasp on to that will bring you to a place of peace if you allow yourself to go through it. It has taken me decades to process certain situations, and that’s okay!

So how’d we get here to this very day (without starting out from February 22, 1980)? Let’s begin some time in the spring of 2003 or was it 2004…..Let’s go with 2004. I was a 24 year old single mother to a rambunctious 3.5 year old daughter. She was (is) the light of my life and I wanted to spend every waking moment with her. I’d say I had an unhealthy attachment to her, for sure. I was young, an only child, a girl desperate for love and devotion. She gave it all to me. It didn’t help my emotional well-being that on the first night of being a mother, she was taken from my side in the hospital [to go to the nursery] and given to another mother a few hours later. Yes, I received a different child, too. There’s much more to this story that I’m sure to get into, but for now, the important thing to know is that I was the one that figured out that my child was gone. I was the one that had to tell the nurses. I was the one that had to convince my husband that it wasn’t our child. I was the one that thought my beloved new baby was gone. That sheer terror changed me forever.

A few years later, I still suffered from that terror but had to get a job to provide a home for the two of us. Since leaving her in daycare was out of the equation (how could anyone expect me to leave her with strangers ever again?), I had to choose a job where she would be looked after by the only person I trusted on planet earth, my mother. Basically, I forced her into a situation where she worked all day and then took care of my baby girl at night. I see how selfish that was now, but at the time, I was still battling my own demons.

So what career path did I choose? A bartender, of course. I would work all night and bring home good money. Win-win? I’m not so sure, but it was my path and now it’s my story.

Back to the Spring of 2004. I had just accepted a position in a downtown San Diego restaurant where I was introduced to a nightlife I had only seen in movies. We’d work all night, drink till the wee hours of the morning, and somehow (ashamed of this part) I drove 40 miles to pick up my sleeping daughter and bring her back to our home. She’d wake me up an hour or so after we got back to play and spend time with me, but I was in no condition.

It’s then that I met a fellow bartender and we gravitated to each other for one reason or another and I became pregnant with my second daughter. We went through the OMG phase and questioned whether we were going to make this happen or not. I can’t and won’t speak for him (maybe he’ll jump in here one of these days and share his point of view), but we made the decision together and I was so pleased to give my daughter a sibling…a family. It wasn’t about it being the right timing or with the right person…it was happening and I fell so in love with the idea of my new family.

I remember a moment soon after Samm was born that her dad looked at me while holding her and said, “now I know we made the right decision.” Oh my goodness, she was our little angel and nothing could be wrong about her. It was that little push of encouragement that kept my hopes alive for our crew or four.

A couple of years later we got married and had a son. Why’d we get married? Because we were supposed to? Because it was expected of us? Probably. But we did have good moments to grasp on to for awhile. There was something deep down that both of us “adults” needed that we gave each other.

The relationship ended between their father and I a year or so after my son was born. Our situation was far from ideal and it ended in that very way. But I truly believe, all of these years later, that it had to end poorly because we were unhealthy people with unhealthy hearts and minds. I am speaking for myself here, but I know that he was struggling, too. Poor guy. If only we were as wise as we are now….but then there’d be no story to tell.

When he introduced his (now) wife to the crew it wasn’t a happy time for me. It’s not that I wanted him back, it was that I’d lost control of every aspect of my life and couldn’t find my footing. I felt pressured to heal or get over the loss on their time table and on their terms. It also didn’t help that I could feel hatred coming from their side of the “table”. It made me hate myself, which made me hate them.

I became bitter and angry and it took over my life. I couldn’t sleep more than 20 minutes at a time for YEARS. My nights would be filled with conversations with those two where I’d just want them to acknowledge my feelings. Ok, sometimes I’d be yelling and screaming at them in my head. Here’s the thing, I wasn’t mad at them for being together nor taking such good care of my babies. I was hurt that my babies weren’t with me all of the time. I was crushed that I missed out on memories. I was crushed that I was being replaced – when the only single thing that was desired was to be their mom.

I know that it takes a village to raise kids, but when the village is at war that doesn’t work.

Let me tell you, I am no angel in this story. I felt hatred. I felt humiliation. I felt worthless. And I acted as such. But not to him, not to my kids – only to his wife. She was the outsider that took control over my life (or so I projected). I’d have decent conversations with my ex but wouldn’t acknowledge her existence in person. At the time, I couldn’t. My body would become overwhelmed with a negative reaction as soon as her energy would be in the same vicinity. It’s highly probable that she felt the same.

As I dive deeper into the spiritual realm and as soon as I acknowledged that I am an Empath, it became clear that her hatred for me (her reasons are her own) had a free pass to take over my energy because I didn’t know how to block it. I didn’t know that it wasn’t my monkey and not my circus. She became this powerful “demon” who turned me into a nobody.

I hope you can see that this was coming from someone that hadn’t known how to work through trauma at the time (still a work in progress).

This shituation went on for many years, but as life went on and our love for the children became our glue, we found a way to turn the page in that chapter and we keep turning and burning those pages. One of the first things that I told my partner when I met him was that I planned to heal my family and do whatever it took to create a loving and inclusive environment for my kids and clan – all of them. The very next day I introduced him to my kid’s father to show them both how serious I was about creating a life together. This was early fall of 2019.

From then on, we all headed out to find the same path but had no idea how to get there.. Well, the only way to get anywhere is by going, so I quit my cushy corporate job that wouldn’t allow me to work from home or in a different office, and my partner and I moved 300 miles away to start getting life situated until the end of the school year. And then BAM! Covid became a “thing” and the world changed all around us. It was then that we all realized how much we need each other and there was absolutely no time left for us to waste.

I must note that up until this point, we hadn’t all been in the same room…ever. But the world was freaking ending, and it was time to end all of the nonsense. Since the country had shut down and my ex, further to be referenced as Chris, wasn’t working, it gave us all the perfect opportunity to come together and become one. My partner and I invited them to stay with us and they took us up on it. To be very honest, I was nervous leading up to that first greeting, but those were just feelings from the past trying to claw their way into my soul. There was no way I was going to let that happen. We both welcomed them with open arms, hearts, and minds and now we are on our way to the next big chapter of our story.

After months of Chris looking for a job he landed one that he excels at. He stayed with us for many weeks while working to save money to rent a truck to get the rest of the clan out here with us. And today, it’s finally happening. He’s currently on his way, nervous to drive a big old diesel I’m told, but he’s actually brave enough to take this chance. And his partner is right along with him.

I think of it like this….I jumped off a cliff with my partner right behind. Chris had the opportunity to laugh at us as we jumped, but he took the leap of faith with Whit right behind him. She jumped too! How could I ever feel anything but love for someone that would take that chance with us?

Even though there are many times when I still find myself thinking I’m in this alone, I have to check myself. I’m not in this alone because we all jumped.

Happy February 14th!

For more shorts go to: mzladyleigh.com