Somewhere between what was, what is and what comes next
There is a particular kind of grief that comes from mourning a life that never actually happened.
Not a person. Not a place. Not even a single moment you can point to and say, there, that’s where I lost it.
It’s the life you were certain was waiting for you.
I thought by 39 I would feel settled. I thought I’d know what home was. I thought love would feel permanent. I thought motherhood would exist alongside a version of me I still recognized and I thought somewhere along the way I’d stop wondering whether I was doing any of this right.
Instead, I find myself here.
Somewhere between what was and whatever comes next.
And maybe that’s the most honest place I could begin.
For much of my life, I have been healing and rebuilding from one loss after another. I’ve lost both of my parents. I’ve lost places that once meant home. My marriage abruptly ended, and with it, a reality I had lived inside of for most of my adult life. Some losses happen all at once. Others dismantle things slowly, taking not only what you had, but what you believed your future would look like.
Each time, life has required me to adjust and to grow around the empty spaces.
To figure out who I am when something I used to define myself by is suddenly gone.
If I had armour, resilience is probably what it’s made of. But I don’t want resilience to be confused with hardness. Because somehow, despite the path behind me, I still dream.I still hope and I still make ridiculously detailed plans for futures that don’t exist yet.
The plans change. God knows they change. Sometimes dramatically. Sometimes because life makes the decision for me, and sometimes because I finally become brave enough to admit that what I once wanted doesn’t fit me anymore.
But I keep imagining what could come next.
Somewhere in the middle of all this becoming, I’m also raising two humans. My son, C, is 14. My daughter, E, is 12 going on 18.
They test my patience, my confidence, my grocery budget and occasionally my understanding of the English language. They are also two of the richest threads woven through the fabric of my life.
People love to say that it takes a village to raise children. They’re right. What we don’t talk about quite as often is what happens when you look around and realize your village is much smaller than you thought it would be.
Sometimes there is no sprawling network waiting to catch you. Sometimes you’re the only one remembering the appointments, building the traditions, driving to the practices, making the decisions, worrying about whether you’re getting it right and figuring out dinner at 9:30 at night.
You learn very quickly that if there isn’t a village surrounding the house, the foundation underneath it needs to be strong.
I’m still building ours.
Not perfectly. Not according to a parenting manual. And definitely not without occasionally hiding somewhere quiet for five minutes. But with intention.
I want my children to know that home isn’t defined solely by an address or by having a picture-perfect family inside of it. Home can be the traditions we keep, the way we show up for each other, the laughter around a table and the certainty that, when everything outside changes, there is somewhere you belong.
And Then There’s Love
Apparently rebuilding your life also comes with unexpected plot twists.
Mine currently includes falling in love with someone eleven years younger than me.
Because evidently navigating motherhood, grief, divorce and rebuilding wasn’t providing quite enough character development.
I had to throw in different cultures, different religions, different generations and two people who did not exactly arrive at the relationship with matching instruction manuals, and things have been…educational.
There have been differences to navigate and assumptions to challenge, both his and mine.
But the biggest surprise is what I’ve learned about myself.
For a long time, I think I suppressed parts of myself without even realizing I was doing it. The desire to feel deeply connected to someone. To be wanted. To experience intimacy as something emotional as well as physical. To feel feminine, vulnerable, affectionate and completely present with another person.
I had convinced myself some of those things simply weren’t that important to me.
Turns out they were.
Very.
Nothing like an unexpected relationship to have you simultaneously questioning every decision you’ve ever made and discovering parts of yourself you didn’t know were missing.
I don’t know exactly where every road I’m currently walking leads.
That’s part of the point. I’m still learning as I go.
I’m taking risks. I’m following my heart. I’m occasionally following my heart directly into situations where my brain is standing somewhere behind me yelling, Are we seriously doing this?
Yes, we are.
Because after enough loss, you can become very good at protecting yourself from pain.
But I’ve started to wonder whether protecting ourselves from pain can also protect us from experiencing some of the best parts of being alive. And I don’t want to build the rest of my life entirely around what I’m afraid to lose.
So, Why Ash & Morrow?
Because this isn’t a story about having overcome everything.
I haven’t.
This isn’t a place where I’m going to stand on the other side of life and tell you the five easy steps I used to figure it all out.
I absolutely have not figured it all out.
I’m writing from the middle.
From the rebuilding.
From motherhood and relationships and grief and houses that never quite stay clean. From changing bodies and changing dreams. From recipes and renovations and mistakes and beautiful ordinary Tuesdays.
From the strange experience of realizing you can simultaneously grieve what was and be excited about what might still be coming.
Maybe becoming isn’t something we finish.
Maybe there will always be some part of us standing among the ashes of an old life, deciding what deserves to come with us and what can finally be left behind.
This is where I’m going to write about that.
The homes we make. The people we love. The bodies we live in. The things we lose. The things we create. The meals around the table. Motherhood. Starting over. And all the ordinary days in between.
I’m Tina.
I’m still learning.
I’m still becoming.
And I’m happy you’re here.
Cheers to the life that’s still becoming.