Can you really reinvent yourself?

So, I have always raised my daughter to be confident, strong, independent, and above all else to believe in herself and her truth as she believes. Some might say “what the eff does that mean?” – well, it’s whatever she wants to believe, how she wants to believe it at 17. If I have taught her anything I have also taught her to always learn, gather in those things about life that we often overlook – you know those things called “life lessons” – and from those lessons we evolve, we learn, we understand better who we are as a person. This is called reinventing oneself.

When I left my marriage, I did so for many different reasons. Some of which could have been fixed and others probably not so much. The problems we faced were not just him, not just me, but us as a couple, as a unit. It was hard in the beginning but it was best for me, best for him, and best for us as a couple. The most important life lesson we taught our daughter is that despite everything her parents could maintain, even cultivate, the thing that brought them together in the first place – friendship. We have a friendship that is so deep and supportive of one another that people have asked then why get a divorce. It is because we divorced that we both were able to reach inside and reinvent who we are and who we wanted to be. We learned from our life lesson and, in turn, teach that lesson to our daughter every day.

Here lately I have come to the realization that as my daughter gets closer to graduating high school, she is on the precipice of reinventing herself – who will she become? what will she do? where will her life take her? These are all questions every parent wants to know….we think we know and we know where WE want their destiny to go…but remember it is their life to learn and to live. When you become that so called “empty-nester” you are, in fact, reinventing yourself. Ask yourself, who will you become? what will you do? where will your life take you? When you ask these questions of yourself, it only seems fitting that you may just find a path different from the one you thought you were supposed to be on. Grasp the life lesson and embrace what happens next and don’t be afraid to make a mistake. Instead of kissing away that booboo on your child’s knee, now kiss your own booboo and move forward.

That’s not to say I am not afraid of this next chapter, I am very afraid. But, I embrace that fear and I challenge it! Bring it! I do not wallow in the past (ok, ok, maybe I do wallow in some things of the past….but that’s ’cause the water is warm there and it’s what I’m used to…it’s mine to get over on my time!) Take your time to reinvent how you see fit. But don’t take your time in making the choice to reinvent because life is short and you never know when it will end. Teach your children to learn, to believe, and to LIVE.

Now, stop reading this and go make a list! Make a list of all those things about yourself that you love, that you hate, that you wish you had done, or have done….be proud of yourself as you venture forth with your reinvention! What am I doing? What have I done? I’ve gone back to school, moved to another country, taken on a job that I had no knowledge of but now I got it in the bag!! What am I doing? I’m taking a vacation all by myself to another foreign country and discovering even more about myself….namely, I am discovering to like my own company! What are YOU doing?

You got this!! I got this!!