Where the Heart Learns to Bloom

Sometimes it is interesting to look back on life and notice how memories are often brought to light by dates, holidays, and significant moments.

This weekend, I find myself thinking back to Memorial Day weekend four years ago. My life actually felt pretty wonderful then — but also quietly heartbreaking at the same time. I was single and happily doing so many things I enjoyed: going to plays, operas, ballets, movies, live music, orchestras, and the symphony. I was spending time with friends, but also truly learning to enjoy time alone.

But beneath all of that beauty, I was also walking through one of the most painful seasons of my life. At that point, I had been estranged from my children for just over a month. I rarely talk openly about that chapter, perhaps because even now it still feels tender.

So I stayed busy. I kept moving. I kept living. I trusted that my children would come back to me when they were ready, and I refused to force anything before their hearts were there too.

It was that same Memorial Day weekend four years ago that I met someone I would go on to date for a couple of years. Looking back, I will never fully understand what I saw in him, but when I replay the events of those years, I have to believe he was part of the plan — perhaps a placeholder, a distraction, and a teacher.

And if I am being honest with myself, I am sure he saw how vulnerable I was at that time. Perhaps that vulnerability is part of why I allowed myself to fall so hard for the wrong person. But still, I cannot look at that relationship with bitterness, because I learned so much from it all — and strangely, beautifully, I love that.

He taught me some of life’s most valuable lessons, lessons I had failed to learn over the years but am now deeply grateful to carry with me. Because while I thought that relationship was teaching me what I wanted in a partner and in love, what it actually taught me was what I do not want — and what I would run from in a man and a relationship.

I have also sometimes wondered whether choosing that relationship as a distraction delayed the healing between my children and me. Whether, had I stayed fully present with my grief instead of pouring energy into someone else, perhaps those lost months with my children may have been fewer.

But even with that thought, I have learned to give grace to the woman I was then. She was hurting. She was scared. She was searching for comfort and connection while quietly carrying more pain than most people knew. And while I cannot rewrite those months, I can honor what they taught me: that the relationships most worthy of protecting are the ones rooted in real love, depth, forgiveness, and home.

But even more significantly, I now realize that Memorial Day weekend four years ago, though I did not know it at the time, would also be my last Memorial Day with a pancreas. My last Memorial Day living without insulin-dependent diabetes.

And now, I flash forward to this Memorial Day weekend and realize I spent a couple of years believing I had lost so much. Then slowly — almost poetically and silently — sometime late last summer, this magical realization washed over me:

The things I thought were losses were actually gifts.

I didn’t lose love. You cannot lose something that was never truly yours to have.

I didn’t lose my pancreas. I gained a healthy future.

I didn’t lose parts of myself. I was given another chance at life.

And how many people can truly say they have received that gift? Even more, how many recognize it for the gift that it is?

So this Memorial Day, I think back to that weekend four years ago. I see the red flags clearly now, but I would not change a thing. None of my choices were mistakes. They were simply the choices I needed to make at that time to become who I am today.

And who I am today is a woman who embraces life. A woman who travels solo. A woman preparing for Barcelona. A woman who gets to spend beautiful time with her granddaughter — a granddaughter I could not have even imagined four years ago. And even if I had imagined her, I could never have imagined her as wonderful as she truly is.

Which is much like my life.

It is more beautiful now than I could have ever envisioned or dreamed up.

Soft enough to love deeply. Strong enough to walk away. 😘

🍯 Honey