The Superwoman Complex

Then surely I am merely 21 with 18 years of experience right? I am having a hard time believing that in 3 days I will have a six year old, and in 5 short days I will be 40.....WHAT?! How in the actual hell did this happen?!  The good news is that I MOSTLY don't feel 40.  I do what I can to stay healthy, and I am sure that running after that lil ball of energy doesn't hurt anything.  What do you do to stay young? I will have 2 announcements the day after my birthday, so you will want to stay tuned, but for today I want to talk to you about something I am trying to learn right now, and that is setting personal boundaries. I am the queen of "I can do it". Doesn't matter what it is, I am confident that I can do it, and I can do it ALL BY MYSELF.....do I sound like my 6 year old, or what?! I say yes far more than I should, and I offer help, when in all  honesty, I have no business helping.  I want to be available to those I love, but I am learning that there is onl

You readers who have been with me awhile have read about my epic emotional breakdowns, my "hilarious to everyone but me" calamities and my downright ugly crying failures. I am not good with failure and life transitions, I don't know many who are. And.....So.......again..... I'm entering another transition in life, the true single parent transition complete with the relinquishing of bedtime stories two weeks of the month.  I also coupled this with the failure to submit a suitable proposal to continue the dissertation process. So I did what any rational girl would do....I had a full on cry it out, lose myself in emotion, over analyze to the point of exhaustion breakdown. I wouldn't say it was the worst breakdown I've ever had, but it was a decent one.  There were a couple of individuals that made this one an easier pill to swallow.  One offered some straight talk that I needed to hear, some advice that I didn't take and most importantly a new perspective.

To say this phD journey has been an adventure is an understatement.  It has been more of a comedy of errors and I have had my share of being at both the end and the beginning of the joke.  There have been many frustrations, many times I wanted to give up, and many times I almost let go of my dream because it just seemed to far from my reach, many sleepless and tearful nights. There have been lots of times I thought "who does this, and why, I must be insane"! I am of course, but not just because I am trying to accomplish the barely possible. Then 2 weeks ago, after a very hard period of insomnia (12 days of little to no sleep) and writers block, my chair reached out and gave me some simple advice.  That advice and guidance flipped a switch and I felt empowered.  I was able to give alignment to my proposal, but more than that I seem to gain alignment with my life.  The next day I listened to a podcast from Jen Hatmaker with Dr. Brene Brown, which by the way, could you put my

As I end week 5 of my third dissertation class, I am beginning to panic! I had a major week of personal....just personal. I haven't slept in 8 days and as I went to finish my elevator speech and go to record it I......just.....could......not. I will be a day late on this  assignment and will record it in all my exhausted glory, with my baggy eyes, still fresh from tears and exhaustion.  This is particularly frustrating for me as I finish a micro learning course on public speaking. I started the process of going through edits and while I am hopeful that I will have this proposal "mostly" ready for submittal, I worry that I will be soooo close, just not close enough.  Sadly, I am pouring out of a cup that is experiencing serious drought, and I am just so discouraged with myself.  I want to write every day, I want to be diligent and fight the good fight, but I am exhausted. The business of kid going back to school, divorce,  trying to be it all, the murder of a friend and

It has been a couple of weeks.  There have been all these things.  Little things........big things.........things. I am feeling that all of my people are also feeling the things. My friends are dealing with family things, money things, changing gender things, marriage things, woman things, man things and all the things in between. there are all of this things.....am I right? I've been dealing with a few specific things the last couple of weeks, and in the spirit of transparency, I'd like to share them with you 10 readers. 1st thing: the never ending dissertation. OMG! as I get further along with what seems like zero progress, I am so discouraged by this thing.  I am finding the never ending not good enough has become this life sucking tax that I feel I will never fully pay. I have lost the motivation to continue, the motivation to finish, and the motivation to write. I can think of 1001 things I would rather do than re-write the thing I've re-written 100 times. Holy soul

We have a serious problem facing our society and it almost destroyed me personally.  We have become fixated with creating our highlight reels and not facing our life messes.  Social media has made it convenient to post our lives in the best light, and by doing so we mask our vulnerability and our need for real connection.  We display beautiful smiling faces and check into amazing vacation spots, and post our angelic children behaving well.  What we don't realize is that we are displaying a false image of our lives and someone else is judging themselves based on our posts.  Because we know the dirty secrets about our lives, we in turn, look at other highlight reels of friends and family and feel that we are less than.  We know in our heart of hearts that they do not air their dirt online either, and yes we still feel compelled to feel like our lives suck so hard compared to our friends. We put ourselves down for not posting "sweat pictures" (ladies I applaud you for doin