(Originally published on February 23, 2023)

I’ve been asked several times, “What does my ideal life look like?”

Or

“What is my goal or dream for my life?”

And the honest truth is that I have no clue.

With men, it’s called a midlife crisis. You know the stereotype, they realize one day that their life is half over and they’re unfulfilled, so they divorce their wife and go out and get a 25-year-old new wife and a red sports car, and everyone just sort of shakes their head at them.

I believe that with women, midlife is much less of a crisis and more of an awakening. It’s the point in our lives where we finally shed all the societal expectations of what we should do and should be, and we step into the selves that we buried deep inside and arguably should have allowed ourselves to be the whole time.

So I’m at this crossroads, but it’s worth stating that it’s not a crisis for me. I’m quite comfortable here.

I have things currently going on in my life that I’m very focused on getting through in the best way possible and leading my family through them.

I can look down the road, I see some bends and several possible paths. And there are good and bad with each path, which there always are. But there are good and bad with each choice that I could make. And it’s not an easy choice for me because there is so much good possible in each one.

But maybe more interestingly…. there’s so much bad behind me that the future doesn’t scare me. It’s almost like I’ve realized it’s all outside my control, so whatever happens, is what’s meant to happen.

“Oh, ok, Universe, so this is what we’re doing now.”

It’s funny because I’m the same person that had a college picked out for myself by 7th grade and by 9th grade I had already laid out all of my college classes and where I would be living and everything.

I grew up to become someone who creates strategies and plans for a living, but no longer for my life.

I had one version of a dream that I worked hard on for 10 years, I gave that my everything, and that dream didn’t work out, and I was left alone with the aftermath and picking up and rebuilding. Not only for myself but for my children.

And then, I had another version of a dream for my life that had that I worked on for many years and managed to create a really great life for myself and my children until a few people worked hard to pull it down around me. And I will own the decisions that led to that point, but they were tiny compared to outside troublemakers.

So I rebuilt. Again.

Then the next dream became taking care of my older kids and making sure that they launched into adulthood as well-prepared and self-sufficient humans, And then after they were grown and gone, I would have the opportunity to spend the rest of my life prioritizing myself.

It’s important to consider that I became a step-parent when I was 20, and then a parent at 21.

My entire adult life has been for my children.

And I was looking forward to spending midlife and longer doing the things I’ve always wanted to do that I put on the back burner. When most people my age were staying all night in the bars and learning how to adult, I was potty training, running to soccer practices or art lessons or dealing with whatever middle school drama was cropping up or any number of things that required me to not only already be an adult, but to be teaching the next generation how to do it as well.

That resulted in many years where I was not as important as I should have been. I kind of got lost there for a long time; maybe I never really got going, to begin with.

I was looking forward to getting them grown and gone and launched and then becoming some sort of writing gypsy and going across the country and staying in Airbnbs or maybe a tent on the beach and finding where home is, for Makayla.

I gave up that dream to return to my first dream, which was the family and raising children with another parent who cared and was involved.

I was willing to give up my dream of traveling and mattering for the chance to return to that original one that I never got to experience, but that didn’t pan out either.

And I got left in a mess to rebuild. Again.

And now I am faced with this insurmountable task of figuring out what my life will look like from this point on.

Let’s start with what we know…

I know that I don’t want to be in New Mexico. I’ve never wanted to be in New Mexico. My mother would tell you that whenever I was seven years old, she knew that I didn’t belong here and wanted to leave, and that has never changed.

I get this from my grandparents, who had a nomadic existence well into their 30s. Oh, the stories to tell.

So the agreement I made with my older kids in moving here was to stay here until the youngest graduated high school. That’s coming just around the bend. So I’m trying to figure out where home might be, so the first question to answer regarding creating an ideal life is, where would that happen?

The second question to deal with is what that would look like.

Well, there’s always room for my children. Obviously, the baby will be with me. So that’s a big piece to consider.

I’ve had the weird experience of already raising two kids when I started over. So of course, there are things that I feel I did great with, and then there are also things that I could have done differently or better.

Or if I had done thing A, maybe thing B wouldn’t have been a problem. It’s curious for me to think about how I would do things differently.

One meaningful thing to me is that I would not spend much time with my nose to the grindstone and find a lot more time for silly, frivolous fun.

I am responsible for giving them the best life possible, but I also feel like a large part of that life should be great experiences and fond memories and maybe a little bit less TV and a little bit more books and a little bit less cleaning and more puzzles and games.

So that would be something that I would change moving forward. Less living for tomorrow and more enjoying today. Here’s a shocker – are you ready?

I don’t have the desire to have a partner in that life. I’ve tried that more times than I really want to admit to but suffice it to say I’ve tried, and it has always ended up as more of a burden than a blessing.

And I can address the reasons why in another piece later, but there’s just no desire to have that anymore. I have a good friend who always asks whether the juice is worth the squeeze? And for me, it just never has been.

And the truth is, my life is juicier without it.

So now I have no desire to try to squeeze out a partnership again. A defining part of my ideal life is just not having to be responsible for anyone who didn’t literally come from my body into the world.

Now for what I do want…

I would like to spend more time writing; that brings me joy and lights me up.

I want to continue to grow this marketing collective because a part of me just really enjoys sharing what I know with people trying to figure it out.

And

I want to find home – wherever that is, and I want to share it with the people who mean the most to me, my family.

And I guess…. That’s my ideal life.

Home, family, creativity, and passion. Sprinkle in some fun and laughter and enjoy.

Rinse, Repeat.