Oh, There You Are: Coming home to the woman I thought I'd lost

I am alone. In my lifestyle, belief system, so many things. I’ve realized I don’t do well feeling this way. I long for connection and being part of the team. I didn’t mean to travel to this place, this island. I am hurting my family and I can’t stop it. I have become a different person, no longer who they once loved - well they still love that person - it’s just the new me they do not know or relate to. TBH, I don’t know myself very well, either. Who the hell am I?!? Some crazy person? I feel this way. Crazy, Kendi. All her ideas are so out there!

A body and a spirit that is not in alignment. At this stage I had already started to question.

I wrote this in 2020, several years after leaving the high-demand religion I had been raised in and the one I had raised my family in, too. Those days were pretty dark for me and so very, very lonesome.

I remember when I began to seriously contemplate divorcing my now ex-husband. The unknowns in what potentially could go wrong was often terrifying - paralyzing me into the space of not knowing what to do. The internal wrestling matches I had with myself left me bruised and battered. I spent years quietly weighing whether divorce was right for me. I wondered how I would take care of myself as I had been a stay at home mom my entire adult life. 

Looking back now, I celebrate my bravery as I somehow found the courage to step into the pitch black darkness of the unknown.

Those steps changed my life forever. 

The first several years after I left my marriage were precarious. Like an animal that had been caged all of its life, my being on my own brought out a side of me that scared most who knew me best. For a season I reverted back to living as if I did not have a care in the world, spending money like it grew on trees and indulging in habits that were hurting me physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally. 

Where once I had been a responsible adult, I was living with a man who was like a child, and he brought the child out in me. In the span of two years with this manchild, I found myself trying to make up for all of the missed opportunities of partying, drinking, and experimenting that I had never allowed myself. I was forty-five years old, but I was living like I was fifteen.

I repeatedly put myself in situations that were unsafe and completely out of alignment with the woman I wanted to be. I remember one weekend in particular when, after days of drinking and getting high, we had a three-hour drive home. While on the interstate in the city where I lived, this man was swerving in and out of traffic, laughing about how terrified I was. My heart still remembers the terror I felt in that moment. Not only was I in a life-or-death situation, but so were the people driving alongside us.

I was living in a nightmare, and it was becoming increasingly more frightening.

Thankfully I was working with a skilled counselor who helped to bring me into the space of awareness with my reality and I began waking up from this nightmare I was living in. 

At the beginning of 2023 I wrote a letter to myself. I was nearing the point when I would make the decision to flee the nightmare. Here is a portion of what I wrote:

“My life has been in a state of chaos and there is something happening within myself that is waking to that situation. I am trying to learn how to be an adult that is not Mormon and with that I have rebelled in so many ways because I felt that I have missed out in so many ways. All I can say to myself right now is DO NOT LOSE WHO YOU TRULY ARE IN TRYING TO MAKE OTHERS HAPPY. I do not want to repeat the mistakes I felt that I made at a young age!! Part of the process for me is to be smart about the decisions that I am making so that I can create the life that I desire.

High as a kite on pot. Taken at the time I wrote this last entry.

To be truly sorry, and to show that lessons have been learned, my course must be different than what it has been. It is okay that I am figuring that out right now but I need to pay better attention to how I am living my life.” 

When leaving my marriage and feeling the excitement over finally being free, I did not realize that while I was an adult that had done well when told exactly how to live, learning to live with this newfound freedom required life lessons that would point me towards what I did and did not want in my life.

Leaving that manchild was a critical step towards finding my way back to myself. I put myself in a position to start excavating my inner basement to discover who I really am. More darkness would be faced as I spent time uncovering what I had buried for most of my life but the more I worked to understand my life, the more the light began to enter into my space. I began to breathe with expansive breaths as I started to rebuild my life. I began to see that I had the power to create the life I had always dreamt about.

Maybe you know something about this kind of rebuilding.

Maybe you're standing in the middle of your own rubble, looking around at a life that no longer looks the way you thought it would. Maybe you're wondering what comes next, or even wondering what you want next. When so much of what once defined us falls away, it can feel dark and deeply unsettled.

On the healing journey that has changed the trajectory of my life forever.

But there is something I have come to understand: sometimes the rubble gives us the opportunity to build from the ground up.

If you are standing there now, I want to invite you to ask yourself: What have I always wanted to create? What do I want my life to look like? What does coming home look like for me?

Can I suggest something that has helped me in rewriting my own story?

There is power in the words we speak and write. You hear what you are saying, and you begin to believe it. With this awareness, be intentional. Take out a paper and pencil and actually write down the things that come to your memory from the little girl's dreams of your past.

I suggest having a special journal to write down the dreams you have held inside for your life. No matter how wild or crazy they may seem, write them down. What you write is not set in stone, but it gives you a few bricks to consider for your new foundation.

Maybe it feels a bit too late for some dreams, even so, write them down. Some of the greatest legends in history have been late bloomers. 

Women possess an inherent capacity to create, imagine, choose, rebuild, and bring something new into the world. If the energy to create has been dormant for a season, or many seasons, realize that you hold the power to waken what is now asleep.

A more recent picture of me. Healthy, content, starting to thrive in multiple aspects of my life.

Imagine the paradigm shift that happens when a woman realizes she has the power to create her own life. One day she wakes up and instead of saying, “Who the hell am I?” she says, “Oh, there you are! Welcome home, my dear. I have been waiting for your return.”