A pilot light of hope.

An orange ember of love.

A twitching flame, waiting to catch wind. 

You are not burnt out. You might feel exhausted, confused, and like you have no more to give, but there is still a steadfast, forever burning light inside you, even if it's currently dim.

A friend asked if I missed my boys on the weekends they are with their dad. Co-parenting is both exhausting and freeing. Sharing your kids means they are yours and only yours for a period of time, and then all of a sudden, you are alone. The house is silent. Too silent. I miss them.

I find things to do. I usually stack my alone weekends full of all the tasks and activities I didn't get to while my focus was all on them. In the beginning it wasn't this way. A few months into letting the kids go to their dad's every other weekend, the house felt huge. My heart felt gaping. My breath clamped down inside my chest, as my body sensed an oncoming panic attack.

To go from consumed mother, to me again, and then back to mother, is a wave. And over the years, I've gotten better at riding it.

So to answer my friend's question, yes, I miss my boys terribly when they are gone. I still have trouble settling into the silence within the walls, the bed with no little feet kicking at me, and the opportunity to hear my own thoughts.

We didn't get here overnight. The ending of a marriage and the rearranging of a family, along with all our beliefs, took years of unmanageability in order to end in divorce. At its peak, that wave was one of the hardest I had to overcome. My new and unknown future weighed me down like wet sand. I really didn't think I had it in me to emerge. 

And if I did emerge, what would I look like?

Our bottoms take us into darkness and give us the illusion that we are lost or broken.

We always believe this current, catastrophic event will be the one that shatters us to the point of no return. But dark times and circumstances do not mean you are also dark. Your light exists whether you feel it or not. Your light burns whether you are happy or sad. Your light flutters in anticipation of a fire with every courageous step forward. 

The waves of life will continue to swell, crest, and wash steadily into shore. The ocean after a storm can be calm and reflective as glass, and I wonder how it was ever so churned up and angry. Because the light was always there. The sea's ability to mirror a glowing sunrise, and grant us a glimpse of the divine, is always there - and the heavenly sunrise over calm waters always returns, no matter how furiously the waves crashed the night before.

I end a lot of mantras this way, but it's worth the reminder - you are stronger than you think.