10/28/2020
Happy 19th Anniversary to my beloved hubs! We’ve known each other for almost 21 years, got engaged almost 20 years ago, and here we are together in the bizarre chrysalis of 2020.✨
✨
Relationships are hard. Partnerships are hard. Intimacy is hard. Sharing space, time, decisions, and life with another adult (not to mention, two little humans) is hard. And yet, there is also nothing quite like allowing another person to go on a deep dive with you on the journey of life. I’m not going to lie that this year has been challenging. I know I’m not alone in that. I have clients struggling, family members struggling, friends struggling. And it also feels important to name that I’m in a parallel process with everyone else. And just like it’s been hard on so many of my clients and loved ones’ relationships, it’s been hard on my marriage.✨
✨
The stress of navigating the pandemic as a parent to two young children has been incredibly intense at times. We are not meant to do this parenting thing without community, and yet we have lost so much community and connection and support with the isolation that has resulted from these times. And my husband and I are privileged to have the resources (including both of us still having our jobs) to navigate these times with more support than so many who are marginalized in our society and are marginalized even more by this pandemic.✨
✨
And even with this privilege, 2020 has brought us to our knees, stripped us down, and laid bare so many of the wounds of our relationship dynamic, our childhood experiences, the scars of religious and cultural whitewashing, all of it. This is a year or reckoning for all of us. It’s a year where we are being invited to come face to face with ourselves, our deepest insecurities and most tender woundings, the places where we’ve deeply hurt ourselves and each other, the skeletons in the closets of our own psyches, the skeletons in the closets of our collective psyches as a nation.✨
✨
So needless to say, it was a massive gift on Sunday to have our kiddos watched by some dear family friends we are currently “podded” with. Rick and I got to have our first date in 8 months, and it was glorious. Takeout brunch and a gorgeous autumn hike where we only ran across a handful of other people (as locals we know how to find spots the leaf lookers may not know about). 😉 It was an exhale for the soul, a time to truly look at each other and really listen for a bit. To reflect on the past. To dream about the future. To feel gratitude, melancholy, and glimmers of hope. And the quiet. Oh, the quiet. Our nervous systems felt the settling, the grounding, the shifting. I will never again take for granted the community support that we had through grandparents, teachers, babysitters, etc. that was severely disrupted because of the pandemic. Like so many others, we didn’t realize what we had until it was gone.✨
✨
I’m grateful for this man who has traveled with me for two decades, through thick and thin, through so many transformations in each other and in our relationship. And even when things in the world and our lives feel wild, unpredictable, and downright bizarre, there’s a steadiness in knowing that my best friend is with me. Sometimes, especially in the stress of a year like this one, we forget that the other is not the enemy. We show each other some of the most vulnerable (and sometimes most “unpresentable”) parts to each other—parts that we would much rather hide from the world and even from ourselves at times. But I’ve found these past 20 years that this thing called partnership and intimacy is a refining cauldron that calls us (if we let it) deeper into honesty (with ourselves and others), curiosity, stretching, surrender, unlearning, rebuilding, authentic connection, tenderness, tenacity, independence, healthy interdependence, and so much forgiveness for ourselves and each other. I’m so deeply thankful for you, my love. For us.✨
✨
