Y’all. I’m Back.

August. Brown is starting to dot my garden, and we’ve arrived at the bittersweet juncture of greenhouse clearances and fastly approaching chill. My birthday is in two weeks. A couple of years ago, I set a resolution that at 35 I would be healthier than my subsequent 30s. I had high hopes of entering this decade’s halfway point to 40 looking thin, trim, and somehow less saggy.

My husband and I celebrated our 12-year anniversary this summer. At dinner, he offered me the following consolation: “No one looks as good as they did when they first got married.” Thanks, Honey. He’s lived a dozen years with me and still knows exactly what to say to a woman.

I haven’t met all my goals. No one has walked past me on the street, dropped to one knee, and begged me to sign their modeling contract. But as I was thinking about health, I realized I have made vast improvements.

Last year at this time, I was a prisoner of my own mind. The kids left just a couple of months prior. I constantly vacillated between thinking they could come back and trying to pick up the pieces of my broken family if they didn’t. We had never, ever been a family with just the four of us: my husband, myself, and our two biological sons. We had to rebuild a new way of living and existing, and I remember so many aspects of that changing dynamic catching me as if I had the wind knocked out of me. There was suddenly this huge age gap between my children that felt like a chasm of space between my biological sons. The house was lonely. It was quiet. There was a vacuum of appointments and activities for our foster children. The connection to their friends vanished, and those relationships slid into oblivion. Those weekly visits with the kids’ special education aid that had grown into a cherished friendship abruptly ended. We were no longer in the same circles with families from their early childhood classes, swimming lessons, or church groups. I felt like I lost so much and found new loss and upheaval around every corner.

By this point, we’d seen the kids for visits and respite. The searing images of those first couple goodbyes after the big, capital “G” Goodbye haunted me: betrayal and anguish on their faces, small bodies folding and crumpling to the floor as we left to go home without them. I can still hear the ringing of “Mama” at my back, and I can still see the blur of my sandals as tears crowded my vision.

It does something to you. Grief affects the brain, the body, there’s nothing it leaves untouched. Strangely, I knew I was grieving the loss of the kids, but I never truly dealt with the grief head-on. After coming back from vacation, it felt like I had reached the max amount of time allowed for a foster parent to mourn their entire world changing. We know what we’re signing up for and that this was always a possibility. Believing I wasn’t entitled to my feelings and didn’t have a right to grieve for as long as I needed to grieve absolutely negatively affected my life for several months before and after the kids left.

My life was in shatters. There was chaos in my home and an exhausting war within myself in the months of whiplash between permanency and goodbye preceding the big, capital “G” Goodbye. There was deep sadness, fear of rejection and loss, and aversion to change following the kids leaving. I was fully aware I couldn’t deal with change, but for whatever reason, I wasn’t able to identify that it stemmed from years of back and forth with the kids. I just assumed I had a glaring character flaw that reflected the innate foulness of who I truly was.

I believed every negative thing said about me, apologized profusely (not because I knew I was guilty but because I couldn’t stand more rejection and loss), and bent over backward to earn forgiveness for other people’s opinions. Surely the darkness and pain inside of me isn’t simply the grief I’m enduring but my true, wretched self. I deeply internalized conflict. I remember lying in bed after hours of crying, wondering why I physically could not cope. What was wrong with me? Why were conflicts and misunderstandings affecting me THIS greatly? I was having trouble engaging in life. My life was in shatters. I felt worthless.

The turnaround moment came fairly recently. I watched a short, inspirational video talking about how our feelings create events for those around us. This whole time I thought I was fine because I was deliberate in what I said to my boys and somewhat deliberate with my thoughts. And yet, my emotions were still a mess of grief, hurt, and a sprinkling of self-deprecation. Were my boys picking up on that? Even if I wasn’t saying it, did they feel the world’s burdens and condemnation emanating from me?

One day I was playing Monopoly with my oldest when he started talking about how he knew he would be bad at golf without ever having played it. For the first time, I started to wonder if my negative feedback loops helped cause that defeatist attitude in him. At that moment, I knew I needed to heal- for myself and for my kids.

I discovered I really had started to change this week when someone I barely knew and had a small conflict with a year ago gave me a compliment. I was bending over backward to repair that relationship with an acquaintance through a year of prayer and energy spent replaying what a horrible person I must be. Yet, as she was saying it, I realized I didn’t need the validation anymore. I was free.

It was a small thing, but it meant something deeper. I’m moving past the grief. I’m unstuck, and I’m starting to understand my worth. I know I’m not her first impression of me. I know my heart is clean, and I have a lot to offer my family, my friends, and any kids coming into my home. If that’s not seen by someone else, I don’t feel personally responsible for that anymore. I can move forward with peace, and I can finally let go.

Y’all. I’m back.