I am tired from a lack of sleep that only a mama knows. I am fueled with coffee and thinking of more coffee. I am tired. It’s been an amazing growth week for both of my children. And myself really. My therapist asked me this week what flourishing looks like. I was frank with her and said ‘flourish’ is a trigger word for so many insecurities and failures. I have been asked so many times what flourishing looks like when I was part of a group from my past. Flourishing always looked like what we were told it should look like within that culture. Some words come to mind when I think of the answers, “obedience, dealing with your struggles (or at the very least admitting you had struggles though we were never given a real healthy way of dealing with those struggles), doing ALL the things (again, you never said you were doing all the things and you could never say it was too much), and a whole host of other unspoken man-made rules that were constantly changing and shifting so that I could never truly feel like I was flourishing.

Exhausting. I wanted to flourish. I wanted to be all that I know I was created to be.

So when my therapist asked me what flourishing is? I have to stop and set aside what I have been taught, trained, and drilled into thinking flourishing is. Today I am also tired because I AM flourishing. I can list hundreds of things my kids are doing how relaxed and happy my husband has been, and many other things (because again I was trained to set myself aside and not really look at how I am doing. ESPECIALLY not how I might be doing things well). I knew what she was asking. I had just talked her ear off for 45 minutes about all the crazy fearless things I had done in the last month in regard to healing wounds deeply embedded in my heart and soul. I bravely took drives through streets that remind me of a million memories filled with fear and failures and not being enough. I talked to people who I haven’t spoken to in over 18 years, asked for forgiveness, extended forgiveness, and wished for more. All of this while trying in the craziness of my days to build the infrastructure of my dream business one word, one photo, one post, one moment at a time.

I am moving forward. Flourishing right now looks like is moving forward, slowly. (even the snail made it to Noah’s Ark right?). It’s not perfect. I don’t accomplish all I would like to do. However, I have hope for the coming days to watch my sweet 8-month-old push herself to crawl while she deals with the pain of four teeth coming in at once. I have hope when I see my sweet autistic two almost three-year-old constantly meeting and even surpassing her goals. Hearing her sweet voice ask me questions that I had wondered if I would ever hear. I have hope when my husband comes home and he is excited to walk through the doors to sit with his ladies and ask how our day was and he KNOWS that even in our hardest days now, we’re still happy and hopeful and glad to be where we are.

I have joy again. Flourishing. I have things I am looking forward to doing again. Flourishing. I have dreams that are more than just surviving. Flourishing. I am dancing again. Flourishing. I’m reading again. Flourishing. I’m laughing again (sometimes uncontrollably). Flourishing. I am writing and putting my thoughts out there for others to see. Flourishing.

Today is a crummy weather day. I hope you can spend time reflecting on how you are flourishing instead of all the ways you want it to be different. And if you can’t please find someone who will help you see what you can’t or help you be able to flourish. I fought to get to this place of flourishing. I fought and I fight for you if you need someone to fight for your flourishing.

If you read this far, thank you.

Until my next monologue.