Soft Life, Hard Lessons: The Luxury of Letting Go
“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. You look ten years younger.”
That’s what a man told me recently, and I had to smile. He didn’t know he was looking at a woman who had survived a tsunami. He didn’t know that just as I had finished a hard, honest conversation with myself about the state of my marriage, a hidden betrayal hit me with a force that nearly annihilated me. I had no time to brace for the impact; I just had to decide if I was going to swim or float away aimlessly.
Soft Life, Hard Lessons: Orbiting, Audacity, and Trusting Your Gut
Welcome back to the laboratory. This week, the research is clear: the “Great Fade-Out" has been replaced by the "Great Orbit," and frankly, I’m running out of space in my atmosphere for all this funk.
Soft Life, Hard Lessons: Swipe Left on My Spirit
Let me bring you into my soft-life laboratory, because post-divorce dating has a sense of humor I did not sign up for. I told myself I’d try something new. Stretch my faith. Dip a toe into modern romance.
So I downloaded Bumble and Hinge.
Yes. Me.
A grown woman with three children, all my edges, rooted faith, and a therapist who said, “We ain’t taking this ish into 2026.”
Soft Life, Hard Lessons: The Art of Healing Out Loud
There are seasons when life gets so loud, whispering stops working. You stop tiptoeing and walking on eggshells around your own truth. You stop shrinking to make other people comfortable. You stop pretending you're “fine” when your soul is over there banging pots, trying to be heard and have that hurt validated. At some point, you match the volume. That’s where I’ve been — healing OUT LOUD. Not in a reckless way, not in a messy way, but in a “my heart said testify” kind of way.
Soft Life, Hard Lessons: The Price of Peace
So here I am: rebuilding, relearning, re-everything. Washington State, bless its procedural little heart, makes you wait a full 90 days before you can even finalize a divorce. Raggedy. I could’ve been free by now, had my soon-to-be-ex not spent nine rounds avoiding the process server like it was tag at recess. So yes, I’m irritated.
I winced when my therapist—a doctor, mind you—named him a narcissist who love-bombed me at the beginning. You could’ve held my hand for that, sis.
