Looking for Hearts. Finding Hearts. ❤

  Life is a funny thing. When you're a little girl growing up, watching the days fold into years, looking into the future... thinking about what your life might look like... there are certain parts of life that you just expect to come as a "given". The things that are just part of the natural sequence of the story of life.

You get married, buy a house, have children, develop traditions that become engrained into the fabric of your story and the story of the family that you created. But as it turns out, those things don't happen for all of us.

My 41st birthday came and went just a few days ago and my life has turned year over year without having acquired any of those things. The wedding that I dreamed of in my twenties never happened. My twenties and my thirties came and went along with the hope that one day I would meet someone, fall in love, get married, have a baby and build a life with someone that I loved and who loved me too. It's a different kind of grief; grieving the life that never happened. The children you never got to have. Grieving that life of motherhood and family traditions or simply building a life with a spouse is a grief that comes in waves. Rolls in and out like the tide. Sometimes its a lot heavier than others and its harder to feel like you can tread the water... or that you even really want to. 

But you do... you just keep treading water. Hoping that life will get a little easier. A little brighter. A little less alone. And you do your best to find the bright side. Find the hearts. Everywhere I go, I'm always looking for hearts in nature. Usually in the sidewalk. Or in the bottom of my mug. They're everywhere and they are little signs. Gifts of hope that love is in the air. That maybe there's more to come. 

💓💓💓