I went solo to a friends wedding tonight. I knew absolutely no one besides the bride. For someone who prides herself on knowing a lot people and inevitably running into people she knows....this was a very odd experience. Thankfully I found a couple in a similar situation and they adopted me for the evening.

At one point my new friends commented, 'could you imagine if you knew everything that would be ahead of you on your wedding day? It's such a crazy journey' We smiled knowingly at each other and I responded, 'I'd still do it all over again.'

I watched these couples, young and old, hold each other on the dance floor and, sometimes expertly sometimes off beat, enjoy their closeness and their tenderness. 

My husband and I dance like that at home sometimes. Not in public. Our wedding was the last time we danced like that in public. For a few brief songs we jumped up and down, held each other close, and then slipped off the dance floor quietly. I suddenly realized, watching these dancers, that I not only missed my husband tonight, I was grieving a part of life that wasn't ours.

You see, my husband has PTSD and severe anxiety. It manifests itself differently as the years go by but one thing remains true: the older he gets, the harder it has gotten. He's also gotten more help recently which has made a big difference in his day to day, and thus in ours. But looking around the room tonight I saw a mass of triggers that would have made my other half's attendance impossible: A dark large room filled with people, incredibly loud music, conversations that were hard to hear and overlapped with others all around you resulting in a noisy din where you just smiled and nodded while catching every other word, silverware dropping suddenly, multiple doorways but only one actual exit far across the room. After seven years of practice I can tell when a room will be bad news. I can pick out these and other triggers ahead of time. But there are always ones I don't catch, or new ones that come out of nowhere, or ones that he gets control of that are no longer on the list to look out for. And I know if it's tiring for me to stay on top of, it's exhausting for him.

So dancing in a room filled with people at a party? That isn't in the cards for us. And I want so badly to be able to hold onto him and show the whole world, or at least the whole room, how much I love this man; how we fit together so perfectly. I am content to settle for our living room, and I would swoon at a quiet street side dance. But I am grieving the way I thought we would be. I am grieving a life I pictured on our wedding day, one that didn't include chronic illness, health problems, daily management of symptoms and stress. Because while you enter into life together knowing all of those are possibilities and you are there for it, on that beautiful first day those realities seem so unlikely as you are wrapped in your own personal fairy tale. But on our wedding day, I married someone I would rather spend a thousand of our realities with than one single fairy tale without.

I had every intention of writing about my 10 year dream life today to start my Rachel Hollis Start Today journal. But I can't. I can't because I just today saw that my blog had a comment. Color me surprised because I have never seen that notification before and guess what? The comment was from March of 2017. I want to be furious but I'm just so damn sad because it was a comment on my post about Olivia. The post about my beautiful adorable little girl and the hell we went through when I was pregnant with her. This poor momma found my post as she was googling about the child she was carrying: a little boy who had the same short curved femurs that our little girl had. No other symptoms, no other traits, just that. She was going through all the same fear we were and I wasn't there for her. I am so happy my post found her and was able to give her some hope and some sense of "you're not in this alone" but I am horribly sad that I wasn't able to reach back out to her and show her life on the other side. I sent her an email today and I'm praying she sees it, that her child is healthy, and that that she has found her other side as well.

​Olivia is perfect in every way imaginable; and she does have some medical issues that we have been struggling with this past year. She has pushed through so many obstacles but there are more ahead. We have learned that she has osteopenia. While we don't have a definite answer of why, we have some clues. We continue to see genetics, orthopedics, and endocrinology, and this child knows more about having blood drawn that any 4 year old ever should. We are letting her live her life with as little bubble wrap around her as possible and taking a breather from all the appointments while we decide our next steps and second opinions. It is not fatal, she is not in danger, but it is something that will need to be managed throughout her life. I don't know if it is related to the trouble she had in utero. I don't know if we will ever know the answer to that. But she is here. She is healthy. She is incredibly smart. She is a powerhouse and will move mountains. She is mine. And I thank G-d everyday for the chance to raise her.

Edited to add: I heard from the momma! She sent me a video of her and her adorable son and updated me on their lives. Her son was diagnosed in utero with OI - osteogenesis imperfecta - and she has become an advocate and voice in the OI community. She writes about it here.

I love goals.
I love new and fresh starts.
and I LOVE new years eve for this very reason.

Last year I broke my goal planning down into several categories:

Financial - be more aware
Health - achieve greatness
Professional - elevate my role
Personal - find my bliss
As a Mom - find peace
As a Wife - be his biggest fan

Under each category I had smaller goals I wanted to achieve quarterly. Each month I would take some time to review those goals and where I was at and then plan out SMART goals for the month to get to where I wanted to be by the end of the quarter, and ultimately by the end of the year. I'm a big believer that goals can be fluid. Sometimes we set out to do something and two months later, that goal doesn't make sense for our life anymore. For example: I wanted to put together a plan by the 3rd quarter focused on developing content and landing some more speaking engagements. As luck would have it, I landed my first one in April and then got a promotion at work and spending time on that goal was no longer feasible. But I'm so glad I was able to get one under my belt as I am still very interested in this!

So....how did my 2019 goals go?

Well let's see:

Financial: my husband and I wanted a more accurate way to track our budget. I opted for YNAB.com and I'm so glad I did. I love the idea of every dollar having a job and knowing exactly how much we have to spend on what. We also had a big audacious savings goal for 2019 and we crushed it thanks to YNAB. 

Health: I had A LOT I wanted to do here.
#1 - stay sober - DONE!
#2 - get 5 kipping pull ups and 5 kipping chin ups - DONE
#3 - complete an unassisted Murph - DONE
#4 - run the bridge run - NOPE didn't happen because we went out of town BUT I did another 10K in October without stopping!
#5 - HSPU to 2 mats - DONE
#6 Box Jump to 24"
#7 Full Pistols - NOPE
#8 - Finish the 104 mile Ring of Kerry virtual race - YEP just barely but I did it!
#9 - 5k under 28 minutes - HA I must have been high when I wrote this. I did PR this year but I'm still very far away from the 28 minute mark
#10 - Box Jump 30" - DONE
#11 - 10 strict pull ups and chin ups - NEGATIVE

Professional: I got my first speaking gig, successfully implemented my plans for geographies I'm not very active in for work, brought in 3 new relationships, and ALMOST got to 250 Insta Followers. SO CLOSE!!! Wanna help? Follow me @janetrbates :) 

Personal: I wanted to read 25 books this year and I read 27! (reading post to come) I am taking construction management classes and I wanted to finish by the end of the year. I'm 3 weeks out from finishing so I just need to power through! I took a few voice lessons which was a goal of mine...wanted to get my voice working again after many years off. I was also on a non profit board when the year began. I have since stepped off that board and decided not to search out another opportunity because NAWIC Palmetto is my priority. (see? goals change)

As a Mom: here I wanted to do things like date nights with the kids, family game nights, and seasonal fun lists to help us improve our weekends. The seasonal fun lists I love and our weekends rapidly improved by adding 1-2 things we could all look forward to each day. It also helped us get out of the house more. Date nights were easy peasy with my little one but SO MUCH HARDER with my teenager. I succeeded once and took him to a movie. I also spent time reading books that would help me with this teenager craziness so we'll see if that makes any difference going forward.

As a Wife: I SUCK at filling his bucket when it comes to his love language of gifts and presents. So I tried harder at that but honestly, I'm better at planning date nights so I did that instead! We went out about 1x each quarter. It doesn't seem like much but my husband has a side career as a comedian so he's often out at nights and 1x a quarter works for me! I also went to some of his comedy events when we could find a sitter and we had a quick weekend getaway in April that was super nice and needed.

Looking back, I know I needed that level of detail and planning last year. But in 2020 I'm trying something new. I'm taking my cue from Gretchen Rubin and trying a 20 for 2020 list. I'm still writing it but hope to have it done tomorrow! Your 20 for 2020 list is simply that, a list of 20 things you want to accomplish this year. They can be big or small, difficult to achieve or simple. I like this approach and am looking forward to checking in with my 20 throughout the year and planning my next steps to achieving them!

When you lose weight, make lifestyle changes, change your mentality so you're conquering the world (or at least the perception is that you're doing so), you will hear some stuff....A LOT:

You look so amazing now! 
You are really succeeding now!
Things are happening now huh?
now
now
now
now

UGH

I mean, yes....I AM Amazing. But when I keep hearing over and over how great I am NOW, the only thing I can think is...well hell, what was I before?
Yes, some of my shiny self was covered up by my own crap. And I've stopped taking my own crap so I certainly don't take anyone else's. 
I've risen up to this challenge called life and taken the reigns. (Can I use some more metaphors here to make it any clearer that YES my life is awesome and I have many more good days than bad which I couldn't say absolutely 18 months ago?)

I AM awesome and I DO look amazing now.
But was I not awesome and amazing before? 

During "before"...I got my masters, I started my career, I met and married a man I love deeply, I became a mom overnight and started raised a sweet boy and then got pregnant and became a mom again to my darling girl. My husband described me then, and does now, as a person who never stops; a person with such ambition that I was (and am) constantly looking to improve, setting goals and going for it like a crazy person.
When I think of "before" I see all of that, and I also feel my unhappiness, my restlessness, my dullness. I don't see a whole lot of amazing. Even though I know it is there. 

I got so wrapped up in this question of....what on earth was I before....that I went and asked my husband: was I awful then? Was I not awesome? Or even...just a little awesome?

He got really quiet (we were on the phone, I wish I could have seen his face). And then he said: I fell in love with you before. And I married you before. And we started our family before. Of course you were amazing before. I wouldn't have fallen like I did if you weren't.

Thank G-d for this man. And I do...I thank G-d for putting him in my path and for keeping his eyes and his heart so open that he saw all my shiny even when I couldn't.

So please, keep telling people who have made huge life changes that they are awesome and bad ass and incredible. Tell them they look amazing! But please stop using the word "now". Please consider how your comment may make them question who or what they were to you during their "before". (while we're at it let's also get rid of: you're wasting away, and you're so skinny - topic for another time)

​I've moved on from my "before" and I don't need one more comparison of my now and then to know how far I've come. What I do need, is to remember to love the person I was before, because without her, I wouldn't be here.

I wrote earlier today about my six day hiatus from the gym. I have every excuse in the book for why I didn't get there: I went to bed to late and thus slept through my alarm, I had to leave for work SUPER early a few times, my husband started rehearsals for the show he is directing so evenings were out, I had lunch meetings a lot. In fact, when I listed all of my excuses in great detail to my coworker, he looked me dead in the eye and said "so you have a lot of excuses and no workouts". Yep. That is true. I have a ton of reasons, valid and otherwise, why I didn't get to the gym. But ultimately, I didn't plan well. I didn't take time to look at my schedule and my family's schedule to figure out when I could make it work. And I didn't ask for enough help from my husband when it was obvious my lack of plan was going to mess up my chances of getting my hands on a barbell or my feet in my sneakers each day. 
I do best when I workout first thing in the morning. I get up between 5 and 530 and get it done. And when I don't....it very rarely happens. 

But I'm giving myself grace here. Our entire schedule has changed for the next ten weeks. School is back in session, I'm travelling a TON, and my husband is in rehearsals. We will rarely be home together the same nights of the week, so our ability to support each other in the evenings just went way down to zero. I missed the big picture last week and didn't see how all of this would affect our day to day.

So I missed six days in a row. And that's okay. Just like one meal off my nutrition plan isn't going to kill my progress, one workout missed won't either.

um....Janet? You missed six. 

Yep - and I'm self aware enough to see that if I don't break this cycle I'll end up with a bad habit so today is non negotiable. I've already asked for help from my husband to make sure it happens (yay me!), and I've planned my Sunday to fit in my workout, what we want to do, and what we need to get done.

We all have off days, off weeks, off months. It's getting back on the horse that matters. My planner is out, my workouts are scheduled, and I'm ready to make it happen. And still choose grace when it doesn't.

It has been six days since I've worked out. SIX DAYS. I haven't gone six days without a workout in almost two years. Normally by day three I would be chewing out my husband for some tiny manufactured slight. I would be completely unable to communicate productively with my middle schooler, deciding instead that he must have done something wrong and hunting obsessively until I find it. I would save all my patience for my four year old and then tap out and run to the gym to prevent a complete household meltdown. 

That may sound dramatic, but working out keeps me sane. It gives me time to either work through problems or shut out the rest of the world and just have some quiet time (in my head....the gym is loud - barbells and music and grunting and all). 

So six days should equal the complete and total collapse of the Bates household!

I'm happy to report that we are all still functioning and the house hasn't burned down. I'm impressed that while I will DEFINITELY be getting to the gym today so I can break this vicious cycle before it becomes a habit, my mental state was not significantly impacted with my lack of physical exercise. I've had people make joking remarks about how they could never quit drinking and raise kids at the same time, and I would always respond that instead, I worked out. But working out is no longer my substitute for a drink. There are days, few and far between, when a drink sounds really good. But really what I need is a healthy way to release emotions that are building up. Working out was always what I turned to but it turns out....I had found other ways of processing when I didn't even realize it: namely talking through them before they get too big, listening to music, snuggling with my daughter, and knitting. Yes, knitting (it's super calming).   

I read a lot about accepting and processing emotions in terms of raising kids and helping them find healthy ways to release and express their emotions so they don't get bottled up. Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was created on the premise that children needed to learn how to process emotions in a healthy manner and I'm not above using lessons for children on myself!

So the house didn't blow up and my mental health and relationships are all still in tact! Yay for growth.

I had a day today. It was a day filled with so much relief, sadness, hope, and frustration that by the time I got home all I could do was sit quietly on my bed staring into space. 

I wanted a drink.

I started to think I needed a drink.

That would make this better. My emotions would feel a bit smoother with a drink. I might relax a bit if I drink.

I haven't felt that way in a long time. 

So I grabbed my phone and sent a dear friend a message about my day, ending it with "I sometimes wish I hadn't quit drinking. A drink sounds good right now."

She wrote back that sometimes life puts us between a rock and another fucking rock. And she reminded me of my strength.

And I told my husband the truth: I wanted a drink. And he told me that we were in this together, and he reminded me of my strength.

And here's the thing. I wasn't looking for a drink. I was looking for a release from everything that was welling up inside of me that felt out of control and needed calming. (Let's be honest...what I needed was a Daniel Tiger song....Daniel's parents really did have it all figured out.)

Our strength ebbs and flows. It is not always apparent or visible. We do not always feel like Wonder Woman. And there are times when damn it, I don't want to be strong anymore. When everything feels out of control and I just want it to all go away.

But there our strength lies, not in the herculean feats, but in the quiet moments, the moments where we don't think we can get up one more time, the times when we fall apart and ask for help, the times when we accept help. Our strength lies in our ability to see those moments, not as failures, but as hurdles. Hurdles that sometimes force us to pause and breathe before attempting to clear them....hurdles that are trying hard to convince us we're done, we've reached the end, there is no strength left.
​
But we get up, and get over, and keep moving.

I got up. And I put on my running shoes. And I found my release...running down the street pulling my out of shape dog behind me. I found the quiet my head needed, and the emotions subsided. ​And I reminded myself of my strength. 

I've spent a lot of time over the last year thinking about control; who or what has it, how do we lose it, why it's important. I knew for a few years that alcohol had too much control over my life. I wouldn't have described it that way in the thick of it of course, but that's what it was. In order to take back control, I would go to great lengths to plan when I would drink and what I would drink. I would do Dry January and the Whole 30 to have a reason to be alcohol free. I never won though. Until the day I let alcohol go. 

I love the way Brick in Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" explains his drinking. He needs enough to get where the click in his head happens. Once he gets that "click", he's at peace and he can stop. Over time, it takes more and more to get to that moment. That is the clearest explanation I have ever read of what alcohol was for me. I just needed to get to the moment where my brain would click, when it would stop bouncing around, when the noise would stop bothering me, when all my worries (old and new, real and imaginary) would melt away. I recently read Rachel Hollis' "Girl Wash Your Face" and she mentioned that same line from Williams' play when describing her "need" for a drink vs a "want". 

Is that not the most perfect way to describe losing control? You're trying to get control over your mind and your emotions, so you give control to a substance that can eventually make you stop caring. That isn't control. That is the absence of control.

Maybe you're reading this and saying, "Well that's great for you, but I don't drink like that!" Awesome! Here's the thing: over the last year I have learned that many of us have something in our lives we have given control to. It could be food, alcohol, drugs, sex, or maybe it's not as evident: perhaps we allow our thoughts about our value to control us, others opinions, our fear, or as my dear friend and mentor LB Adams has described, our script....the script that has been written for us based on what others have said and have determined about us along the way. These are all things we give our control to. And the act of grabbing it back can take courage. In my case it was less courage and more dumb luck. I simply wanted control back. I wanted to feel and believe that I was as valuable and as strong and as amazing as I was pretending to be. I've always been told I had great confidence. I wanted to be a woman with confidence for REAL. And while dumb luck got me to the point where my control landed back in my hands, it took courage to hold on to it and own in. Because now I can't blame anything or anyone but myself. I get to own my life fully and completely, the good, bad, ugly, and fabulously amazing. And that is worth everything.

At this exact time, one year ago, I was on my third martini of the night. I was sitting at a quiet hotel bar reading a book after an equally quiet dinner on my own. Martini’s weren’t my normal drink but they went well with the oysters I ate earlier. I then went up to my room and fell asleep. It wasn’t a wild night. I didn’t have a hangover the next morning. In fact, I got up on time, got dressed and headed out to two work events and a team lunch before getting on the road and driving home. It was a productive day, and one that I have pictures of. I’m smiling with my coworkers, hard hat firmly in place, enthusiasm for the days events painted on my face. It was a good day.

I explain all of this because it wasn’t a dramatic turn of events that caused me to make one decision that would change my life. It wasn’t a rock bottom moment or a stark realization of failure or guilt or misery. It was just a regular day. I was on the road headed home to my husband and my two children, a fur baby who was no doubt digging up my latest efforts to correct his assault of our backyard, and an evening of dinner, bath time, stories, and bed.

Except, as I rounded a wide sweeping corner and the highway took me further south and closer to home, I looked out at the trees I was passing and breathed in the idea that I wouldn’t have a drink that night. I could do that. Just one breath, one decision, a small one.

I couldn’t have known that I would keep making that small decision everyday until a month later when I looked at my husband and told him I was done with drinking for good. I couldn’t have known that I would discover just how much control I had given up over the years. I had let not only alcohol, but other people and most especially, false and limiting beliefs about myself, take control. I couldn’t have known that when I made that decision, what I was doing was grabbing on ever so slightly to the threads of my life that had become unraveled and frayed, and I started pulling them back together.
Over the next year, I found my voice. I stopped apologizing for who I was, who I had always been. I stopped shrinking myself in the hopes that it would be pleasing to others and I started standing in my truth.

That day on the highway, I breathed in the idea that I had control. I breathed in the idea that I was worth fighting for. I breathed in the idea that I was powerful, strong, fierce, and worthy.
That was the day I decided to be a badass.