If you’re expecting this post to be lovey dovey, you’ve come to the wrong blog. Maybe in some ways it will be but more importantly, I want this post to be a reality check and a great big virtual bear hug for anyone going through a similar situation.

My life is presently and for the foreseeable future will be in a state of transition. I feel as though it’s been that way for almost three years. As soon as stability visits and seems like it’s going to stay a while, it sneaks out the back door and chaos crashes the party.

Here’s the reality check part mentioned above – it’s hard. Adapting to the ever changing normality is exhausting. Going through a divorce is gut-wrenching. Single parenting is challenging. Break ups break you. Being away from a child is an incomprehensible and debilitating pain that consistently wrecks havoc on the heart. Living alone is quiet and isolating. Maintaining a healthy mental frame of mind is a daily process that requires faith in God, awareness and self care. Some days are easier than others but they are always hard.

The triggers are on standby. Take a scroll through Instagram or the grocery store aisle and you’ll inevitably see a happy family with a two-parent household. Watch a Netflix documentary or the church pew in front of you and a couple will be holding hands. You’re rarely going to see someone curled up in bed alone, with the curtains drawn, and getting up only to retrieve the food delivery she’s ordered that doesn’t really fit within her newly imposed budget. But for some of us – on those harder days – that’s reality.

It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to have sad, low, hard to function days. It’s okay to feel depleted, regretful and depressed. Sit in it. Throw a one-person pity party. Roll around in it as you roll back and forth in the sheets. Just know that while physically you may be – you are not alone. Somewhere, someone else has just felt the aftershock of their own trigger and they’re entering into battle with their feelings. If that’s you, my arms are wide open and I’m sending you the biggest and most empathetic hug imaginable. And as my dad always says, “Tomorrow is a new day.”