Here’s the real version of my journey so far. I got on a plane a week ago, recovering from the emotional landslide of dropping my son off at college and preparing to say bye to everyone I loved for a month.

I did a lot of crying — the night before I left, on the drive to the airport, on and off until I boarded, and then for the first couple hours of the flight until I finally fell asleep.

I’ve been a little run down since I landed. I brought a sinus infection with me that I couldn’t shake before leaving, and it’s been keeping my energy low. Between that, the jet lag, and the emotional dumping…this first week has been more acclimation than anything.

I’ve still managed to fight through the sinus pressure and energy levels to have some fun nights catching up with friends I’ve made here over the years. A sunset beach night. A gorgeous day in the picturesque village of Fornalutx and plenty of time with Paula and her family.

But I’m looking forward to getting into the groove of things and really settling in for the next few weeks. Get down to the crux of why I made this leap over to Spain.

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One of the things I’ve noticed since being here is just how much so many women I care about are going through in their own lives — women I spoke with leading up to this trip, and women I’ve talked to since landing. Friends of friends and the list seems to go on since arriving.

There’s something in the air, and I think everyone is feeling the weight of it.

Maybe it’s eclipse season, maybe it’s that I’m talking to so many women around my age dealing with a lot of the same emotions. I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but I’m definitely feeling it.

Which got me thinking back to what started this journey for me in the first place — the weight of being strong all the time. Feeling alone in what I was going through internally while putting on a happy face.

Here’s the thing, we can handle it. We always do. But why should we have to?

The exhaustion. The struggles. The doubt. The grief. The heartbreak. Just because we’re functioning doesn’t mean we’re okay. It doesn’t mean we’re fine, or that we don’t need help.

So at what point is our strength our potential downfall?

Strength looks like a lot of things, and people carry it differently. I carried mine by never asking for help. I made it seem like I was fine and got really good at keeping everyone else together — while numbing everything I didn’t know how to process. It was a survival technique.

Being able to function through a crisis, a trauma, a life event, and make it all look fine on the outside — that’s a skill you develop along the way.

There were so many times I just wanted someone to take it from me. To hold me through it. I didn’t want to make one more decision, or add one more thing to my plate, or carry the constant worry and overwhelm.

It was debilitating.

I really wanted someone to just read my mind, because I couldn’t put into words what I was feeling, or even what I needed — and explaining it felt like one more thing to carry. So it’s easier to just not say anything. To hope someone sees you and takes care of you, when you don’t know what else to do.

That’s the double-edged sword of functioning through whatever it is you’re going through. It’s a mask, and it confuses people into thinking you’ve got it — that you can handle it — when really you’re spiraling and just want the weight lifted, and you don’t know how to ask.

These were things I noticed in myself, things I wanted to learn how to step away from. I wasn’t doing myself any favors by showing up this way, carrying so much. It was making everything else in my life harder.

Funny enough, as soon as I decided to show up for myself — to start letting go of what didn’t serve me — things began to shift. Not because I did some huge amount of internal work on it but because I decided to let stuff go. Things out of my control. Things that left deep scars. Coping mechanisms. All the pain I let control me for so long.

I’m not letting go so I forget, though. I’m letting go so I can move forward.

Remembering is the lesson — it’s the reminder of things I went through and eventually will move through. But I’m done letting it stick to my ribs like some fucked-up badge of honor.

So instead, I’m going to accept what I’ve been through. Sit in the emotions one more time. Feel all of it. And then let it go, and do my best not to end up back in the same place that got me here.

I’m learning to love myself. After 45 complete rotations around the sun, I’m finally learning how to show up for myself. And being who I am, that’s going to allow me love everyone else in my life better as well. I just have to do the me-time part first.

To the other women I know and love, carrying your own traumas and disappointments and heartbreak and fear and aloneness and overwhelm…

I see you. I feel you.

There’s so much happening to so many of us right now. If you have the capacity — love the other women in your life who look strong and resilient and put-together. They need it. Offer the help they don’t ask for.

Sometimes having someone carry the weight long enough to let us get back up, is the help we need. To be loved without having to ask for it. Carried through the fire. Given softness in the moments we say we’re fine.

But in the same breath, you can’t expect someone to come and save you every time. Having somebody else to do the heavy lifting makes life easier to manage, sure — but it’s ultimately up to you to look within, and know that you’re the only one who’s fully aware of how you can move through the hard stuff.

I knew I needed to get away and do things for myself I’d never done before. I didn’t ask permission. I did it — because deep down I knew I’d find a different kind of strength at the end of this. One that doesn’t have to be built out of crisis. One I’m sure I’ve always had, that gives me the power to step into who I’m meant to be in this next stage of life.

A strength that gives me better tools to tackle life’s challenges, not just endure them. One that gives me the confidence to ask for help when I need it. One that navigates me through things, instead of sitting in the middle of the storm waiting for someone to rescue me.

I think acknowledging my insecurities, my deficiencies, and the areas I need to strengthen or change altogether — that’s the first step in feeling some of the weight lifted, and some of life’s muck cleared out of my head. Now if I can just get this sinus pressure to clear out, I’ll be doing a lot better.

Well, with that — I’m off to take a drive down the coast and check out some areas I haven’t explored yet.

Adios from Spain!

X ~ Shelby

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There’s no way to completely prepare your heart for saying goodbye to your children. Not goodbye forever goodbye, but the goodbye to the only life we’ve known for the past eighteen years.

The goodbye to his room the way it was.

The goodbye to his presence filling up your home.

The goodbye to knowing where he is and who he’s with.

The goodbye to the innocence you’ve always seen as he enters this earliest stage of adulthood.

There’s so many goodbyes that are happening all at once when he closes his dorm room to me and I walk to my car and drive home. Home. Home without him. And I’m not fully prepared yet for that.

I write this on the eve of all these goodbyes. Tomorrow, my best friend and I are taking my son to college and dropping him off for his Freshman year. Thank God I’ll have my emotional support human with me, because she’s going to be pivotal in my recovery.

My husband and oldest son are out of town during this emotionally traumatic event — so they are off the hook in being the ones to hold me upright. Thus, best friend to the rescue.

This is the first and only time I’ve had to do this type of goodbye. My oldest son decided college wasn’t for him, so my youngest is now going to experience just how strong or not so much, mom can be. He came out of his room this morning and I just started sobbing — so I’m off to a great start.

We locked eyes and he came right over to me and we hugged. We were holding each other and comforting each other on the inevitable, goodbye. I buried my head into his shoulder until I could look him in the eyes and see him clearly. He knows it’s hard on me and I know it’s equally hard on him. We complete each other in ways that only your youngest child can.

He’s done his farewell tour with all his friends that are scattering the country to their own respective colleges. So it’s just him and me now, closing out the final night. I’ll treat him to dinner, just us, and try to keep it together in public. Or maybe I shouldn’t. It would be a nice little warning for other mothers and what they have to look forward to.

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I can’t help but think back to how it all got here so fast. Everyone warns you, but in the moment, it’s difficult to comprehend just how quickly this day approaches. One of my long time friends, just the other day texted me a photo of when we were pregnant together with another friend of ours. We were all a month apart, and I can remember that day and taking that picture so well. How the hell was that nineteen years ago? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

The memories have flooded back this week. Watching old videos of his adorable laugh and humor at such a young age caught in the perfect moments. Photos from toddler days to childhood and then his Senior pictures that make him look like he could be on the cover of a magazine. It’s a whirlwind of emotions.

The things that I am going to miss the most about him being in our home every day is just how fucking hilarious the kid is. He makes me laugh like no other. Smart humor — intelligent. The best kind. The words that fly out of his mouth when he is poking fun or responding to his dad’s antics will leave a space no one else can fill.

He is fiercely protective, an empath, loyal to his core, determined, honest and always looking out. Also his kindness and just how complete he makes my soul. But his hugs…my God those hugs are going to have to last me a while. He is something special and that’s what keeps me going — the knowing he’s going to be ok and that we did a great job as parents.

I mean my kids really are amazing. I know every parent says that so, yeah yeah…but still.

Maybe there are plenty of parents out there that look forward to the time when they get their house back. When things are more orderly, less messy, less chaotic. And yeah, of course that’s going to be a nice perk — but it’s the silence that’s going to get me. The space that’s no longer filled with the amazing humans we created.

Empty nesting is not for the weak of heart. Not for mine anyway. I love having my kids around and being a part of their lives because they want me to be, not because I have to be. My kids love being home and spending time with us. We’ve included them in almost every aspect of our adult lives as parents.

When they were little, we brought them everywhere. We had them adapt to our lives and not so much the other way around. Of course we made adjustments, but what I love, is that we included them with us. We were a package deal.

What this in turn has now created for me, is a void that I’ll inevitably feel when they aren’t around. They will be out creating their own lives and living in their own way. So this amazing thing we curated with them, is seemingly going to come back and bite me in the ass.

Of course I’ll adapt and be over the moon excited for all the new things my adult children will do with their lives — but it doesn’t make the void any less empty. At least I don’t think.

I know we did our jobs as parents, but maybe I should have prepared myself a little more for how this great thing we did for them would feel for me, when we wouldn’t have it anymore.

Whether or not I’ll be ok is the real test.

Currently as it stands…in this moment, I’ve been a fucking wreck most of the day. Writing these words have made me contemplate all my life choices, however, I know it’s part of parenting. I know it’s all going to be just fine. And I know that eventually, I will be ok.

For now though, I’m going to sit in this moment, savor these last hours with my baby boy and hope that I can make it through this weekend a whole person. Because as one of my friends so gently put it after she dropped her daughter off this past weekend at college - “My heart left my body.”

And now I’m bracing myself for impact.

Because four days after I close that dorm room, I’m getting on a plane to Spain for a month. I don’t have the bandwidth yet to tell you what that means or how I will feel when I sit on the plane alone — I just know I’ll drop off one version of my life tomorrow. Four days later, I’ll drop off another.

X- Shelby

P.S. Wish me luck. This tender hearted Leo is going to need it.

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We sipped on Cava and absorbed the views around us. Completely indescribable and any adjective attempting to explain this, would feel far too inadequate.

But it was beautiful and mesmerizing all the same. And the ride home, as the sun kissed the horizon — made me understand why my friend has lived here for over twenty years.

She let us into her world on this week long visit to her island. Mallorca has been her home her entire adult life. She’s raised a family there, curated a network of friends and become a part of the local community in a way that would make you think she’s the mayor.

We found our own rhythm on this trip. It was our first time to Spain and I was beginning to feel a pull, to feel the energy of this place. And I didn’t want to leave.

That was five years ago.

Not much has changed, except that we’ve now been back every year since. With mostly regular days — driving kids to play dates, picking through market stalls for whatever we planned to fix for dinner that night. Spending time with her mom that lives down the street and having lunch with friends that have become our friends.

We live like the locals — and somehow we still get to mix it in with the extraordinary. And it has become a home away from home for my family. It’s a part of us now.

It started, of all places, at a ten-year reunion…

Paula went to middle school with my husband. They were good friends, but as it lots of times happens, they lost touch after graduation. She went off to college, got married, moved to Spain.

And back then you didn’t see most people until the ten year mark came around. So when my husband and I went to his reunion, we knew very little about what everyone had been up to.

I met so many people, but none left quite the imprint that Paula did. She flew in from Spain to be there. Her energy radiated throughout the room as she made her rounds reminding everyone what they had missed for the past ten years.

Post reunion, Paula and I kept in touch once Facebook became a thing and that eventually turned into chatting a lot more often on WhatsApp. We built our own friendship on our own terms, long distance, for well over a decade.

We talked for hours each week. Sent voice notes back and forth almost daily. It takes dedication to maintain a friendship like that, across time zones, and it’s still the same to this day — except multiplied.

After years of talking about it, we finally planned our first trip to Spain for June of 2020 — well, we all know how that turned out. So, we tried again for summer of 2021 and it was well worth the wait for that boat trip and like I said, it kept us coming back each year.

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Four years later, we were headed back once more. Since Mallorca had become the place I couldn’t shut up about to all our friends, it seemed only obvious that it was where I’d throw my husband’s birthday party this past summer.

Of course with Paula’s help — we pulled off a three day adventure for all our closest friends that flew out to celebrate with us. From L.A. to Texas, from Canada, Barcelona and Norway — a lot of miles were travelled, and it was the most meaningful gift we could have received.

Beach days, late nights, a restaurant in the middle of the ocean and enough fun and Aperol Spritz’s to fill everyone’s soul that are sure to last for years to come.

But it was when our friends met Paula, that it came full circle for me. Everyone has that one friend that exists mostly in stories. And when they could finally put a face with the name, it all clicked. Everyone found their own beat with her, their own version of a friendship that would outlast that one trip. I watched it happen and felt something settle in me — she wasn’t just mine to love anymore, and that made it complete.

Everyone departed at their own pace, but my husband and our boys stayed for another week before our plans took us on to Madrid.

It was during this week that a festival was taking place I had always wanted to experience, but it never seemed to work out.

Each summer, the Sant Joan Festival lights up the beach towns of Spain — and it happens to fall on my husband’s actual birthday.

Sant Joan marks the summer solstice, and tradition has the locals dressed as dimonis (devils) dancing through the streets with torches, drums and giant sparklers.

The crowds dance and run alongside the devils throughout the night, in what I can only describe as the most adrenaline-fueled, exhilarating party under a moonlit summer night.

This is followed by a midnight swim in the ocean — a purification ritual, meant to wash away bad energy and all that you’re carrying. Then you invite good health and set intentions for the season ahead.

Fireworks light up the skies at 12:01am followed by a single candlelit lantern that floats out into the night.

It all felt like a dream.

There’s one part of that night I keep coming back to — one that was mine to hold on to. In a crowded square beneath the Cathedral, devils running loose, and sparklers lighting up the air above and raining down to the ground — I ran out into the middle of it, alone, and danced. No plan or discussion — impulse. I just did it.

My husband, Paula and others we were with, watched and cheered. My husband captured it on video and I still look at it sometimes to remember the feeling.

For those few minutes I wasn’t thinking about anything — not who was watching, not what came next, not any of the weight I’d been carrying without a name for it yet. Just my own heart beating to the drums and feet moving fast enough not to catch fire. It was the closest I’ve felt to not being me and completely myself at the same time.

And that’s the thing that keeps me coming back — about Spain, about Paula, about nights like that. It wasn’t the postcard version of falling in love with a country. It was being let into a real life — hers — all these years, long enough to feel something shift in my own.

I think that's why going back for a month makes sense. Not for the easy version of Spain, but the one I need right now — a chance to take a cue from that ocean ritual, and actually leave behind whatever I've been carrying. And, maybe I'll have my own moment in the water, knowing exactly what it represents to me. I’m going for the version I already know exists, waiting, because I never really left.

Everyone has a version of that — a person or a place that cracked something open in them. Most people can name theirs immediately if you ask. Once it's cracked open, it doesn't really close again. You just carry it with you after that.

X - Shelby

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It was my birthday last week and I’m not loving the number…ehm, 46. That used to be an age associated with an entirely different decade of life than the one I’m actually living. We used to look at people this age and think they were old and out of touch. Harder to relate to, and even harder for them to relate to us.

I don’t feel like any of that. My kids come to me with any and every topic under the sun, and we can actually talk — no judgment, no advice unless they ask, just lead with love. It’s a kind of open dialogue I never had with my own parents. It turns out, the forties are a very different decade than they used to be.

Looking younger and relating better doesn’t mean nothing’s happening, though. As for the “midlife crisis”, it seems to hit everyone eventually. Whether it shows up at 40 or 60. But for women, there’s a plot twist. It tends to land right on top of peri/menopause. So you get the double feature.

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Life is already compounding into crisis mode, and now you get to do it while your hormones stage a full revolt — the rage that comes out of nowhere, the identity shifts, the sudden and total lack of fucks, the brain fog that has you Googling early-onset dementia, the night sweats and the fact that your house now has to be an igloo just for you to get decent night’s sleep. It’s a giant shitstorm of WTFs, and that’s before you add in the regular chaos of life. It’s enough to send anyone into a spiral.

I was in fight-or-flight for so long I didn’t even recognize it as anything unusual. It just felt like the norm. I didn’t clock what was happening — I just powered through.

It wasn’t any one thing, it hardly ever is, it was all the bullshit life can throw at you — the pile up. But if I’m honest, there was a moment that cracked it wide open.

This past fall, my father-in-law passed away, and grief moved into our house and took up more space than either my husband or I expected. His grief looked like anger and identity shifts — and for a while, I was too close to it, trying to help him through the grief. He was losing his father. I was losing a version of him I knew how to reach. We were both right, and we were both drowning, just in different oceans.

I couldn’t fix his grief, and I couldn’t keep absorbing it either. So I stopped trying to do both.

He channeled his grief into art, and picked up something he hadn’t touched since his twenties, and started making work that genuinely blows my mind.

I really had to turn inward. I leaned harder into meditation, trying to empty my mind enough to hear myself again instead of everyone else’s needs. And somewhere inside, things shifted — like a clearing of ego, an awareness. I started to see what needed to go, what needed work, and who was forming underneath all of it.

Different griefs, different outlets, same underlying thing happening to both of us at once.

What actually changed for me was smaller and more practical at first than “awakening” makes it sound. Not that it isn’t one — it’s just not the whole of it. I started setting boundaries. I let go of things I’d held too tight of a grip on. I stopped managing everyone else’s emotions and started managing my own. I found the need to get creative myself and lean back into passions that were lost to me. Just stripping away the pieces of myself I no longer needed to carry.

It’s not linear, though. I still catch myself slipping back into old patterns and the familiar — the over-managing, the white-knuckling, the reaching to fix things that aren’t mine to fix. I notice it faster now, and the noticing is the whole difference. I’m not fixed. I’m just quicker to catch myself and course-correct.

I heard a term recently that can be applied to times like this—not only times like this—but it’s fitting nonetheless. Psychologists call it post-traumatic growth. It’s the well-documented phenomenon where people who go through something that rocks their world, come out the other side not just intact, but changed for the better. Stronger relationships, a clearer sense of self, a deeper appreciation for their own life. It’s different from resilience, which is just bouncing back to where you started. This is the opposite of bouncing back. It’s not returning to who I was — it’s becoming someone I like better.

So here’s my problem with “midlife crisis”. Crisis is something that happens to you and what I’m describing isn’t that. It’s more like an audit of yourself, where you’re finally checking the receipts and holding yourself accountable.

And maybe the fire is unavoidable — maybe you don’t get the growth without it. But these are the years when you finally stop performing your life and start living it. A time to be celebrating, not surviving.

I don’t have it all worked out, and I’m literally right in the middle of it. But I can already see the shape of who’s coming into focus, and I like her. It’s a becoming and an unbecoming, both at once. Becoming the version of myself that’s more confident, more comfortable in her own skin, and unbecoming everything that stopped serving her along the way. For this, I’m grateful.

It’s a wild ride, this “midlife-crisis” - peri/menopause - empty nest - becoming/unbecoming - identity shifting thing that we go through as women. It’s confusing as hell. And with Google, self-help books, articles, blogs, and endless scrolling all promising an answer — I got insanely overwhelmed. So I stopped listening to everyone else and tried to listen to myself instead. No one knows better than you what will make this stretch of life a little less bumpy.

That’s part of why I’m about to spend a month in Spain, doing some “me” work. No book told me to leave my life behind for a month — I just hit a point where everything around me was too jumbled to figure myself out from inside it. Having a friend who lives in Spain and is letting me squat in her house, is the kind of bonus not everyone has. But some version of “you” time is usually within reach, even if it’s a weekend. I think it’s worth doing the work wherever you can find the space for it.

I’m not here to advise you — I’m the opposite of an expert. I’m just a normal woman figuring out what works for me, sharing it along the way. Take what’s useful, or just find some humor in my bumpy road and go the opposite direction.

“Midlife crisis”, it isn’t. It’s The Grown-Up Recalibration. Adulting: Part Deux if you’re fancy. Or we can go with the scientific term just as endearing - Post-Traumatic Growth. They all sound nice to me.

X, Shelby

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I grew up a latchkey kid, taking care of myself more often than not. Then taking care of my younger sister once she hit school age. I was the oldest, the responsible one, and I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. I took to it naturally, but it also came with bossy big sister energy that I’m sure she didn’t appreciate.

Somewhere between my nature and my circumstances, it developed a deep need to nurture that has defined almost every relationship I’ve had since.

Being a nurturing soul comes with its own burdens. You put yourself on the back burner. You absorb other people’s weight as your own. You do this in your marriage, as a mother, as a daughter, as a friend — until the doing of it becomes so second nature you stop noticing it’s happening. Until one day you look up and realize you’ve been running on empty for years, and the people you were taking care of didn’t even know.

What Made Surrender Impossible

I’ve had my fair share of trauma in this life — most of it at the bedside of someone I couldn’t bear losing. My oldest son, twice. My husband, twice. My mother, once. My father, four times. Disease, accidents, emergencies that arrived without warning and required everything I had to navigate.

In June of 2019, my oldest son was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at fourteen. That was the first real test. Surrender wasn’t an option, so control became my best friend out of necessity. When we left the hospital, the fear and sadness for my son was enormous.

I spent months learning everything there was to know about T1D and his body’s reaction to food and insulin. I became his nurse, scientist, meal-prepper, administrator, teacher and oh yeah, a helicopter mom.

I controlled everything for him and taught him along the way so that he could take care of himself just as well. And it gave him the life he has now. I couldn’t take this disease away from him, but I could give him the tools to have an amazing life in spite of it.

I learned that my control, my vigilance, my refusal to back down actually mattered. How do you surrender after learning that?

Then in 2022, my husband and oldest son were in a terrible car accident. I won’t go much detail of it all here, I’m not sure I ever will discuss it at length—what I will say is that I spent a week going back and forth between ICU and the Trauma wing at each of their bedside. Navigating doctors, surgeons, decisions, a husband in a medically induced coma, surgery after surgery for them both.

My son was released after a week, but my husband would remain for a month. And If it wasn’t for my ability to function in worst-case scenarios, I know for a fact that the people I loved most would not be here today.

It’s a debilitating thing — fear. I wasn’t the same person after these events occurred. The wife, the mother, the daughter, the friend I was before my son’s diagnosis, I lost her.

She was a lot of fun. She was confident, funny, genuinely didn’t care what anyone thought. She was a lot of great things. Those all got muted. Not gone, just silenced most of the time. I had other things to think about, to worry about.

Then the accident. That day ended me.

I was no longer on mute. I was completely turned off. No emotions, no feelings. Complete and total survival. Protective. Terrified. Every day, for years.

My face changed. My smile was limited. My eyes dulled. And the person who had taken up residence in my body — I didn’t like her, to be honest. She was kind of a bitch and she took everything from me. My sense of security, my humor, my trust, my patience. If I didn’t give a shit what people thought before the accident — now I had something to say about it, and it wasn’t always gentle. Rage became a close companion.

I isolated myself, cut people off that showed me who they were and only made space for who I could trust with the long road of healing my family had to commit to. Our circle became very tight and it was necessary and intentional.

Physically it took years and it lingers to this day. Mentally, I took the longest to recover and I’m close to closing that chapter. Which is why I won’t dwell on this event that shook us and likely not discus it further.

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The Slow Climb Back

It’s been over four years since the accident. I’ve softened. The hardest four years of my life, but I had no choice but to try to understand who I’d become and why I needed to do the work to come back. As much as I wanted to blame who I’d become on anyone but myself — it was on me. All of it.

Early in 2025, the real work began. Deep spiritual soul work that started lifting the veil, slowly. Difficult conversations with a variety of spiritual guides, teachers and mentors. Control kept surfacing as the thing I had to address. It was killing me, and I was starting to feel it. I had to let go.

Surrendering is beautiful, albeit a very hard thing to do. It has opened my heart and soul in ways I didn’t know were possible. I can see things more clearly. I can feel things I used to be shut off to. I can trust — mostly — that everything is going to be okay. And I know I’m equipped to handle anything that goes sideways. But I am no longer operating from a place of fear.

Control Is The Illusion We Tell Ourselves

The woman who became a helicopter mom (and wife, let’s be honest) out of necessity, out of lived experience that taught her that bad things happen when you stop watching — is learning to let them go.

The what-ifs have eaten me alive for more than five years. The slow progression into their adulthood has helped me release the fear one small moment at a time. One car ride without me. One night away. One text that says they made it. Each one, a tiny proof that I can breathe.

Call it attachment issues, trauma bonding, whatever you’d like — I have it. And I’m working on it. What I know is that my boys are extraordinary. Forgiving of my fears, understanding of where they come from, checking in often enough to slowly ease my nervous system back toward something that resembles calm. I couldn’t be more grateful for that.

I also can’t play this tiny violin for too long. I mean, they’re both only going to be 45 minutes away. Home on weekends, probably for laundry and their favorite meals. But still. The house will be different. We will be different. It’s a shift I’m simultaneously dreading and relieved by, and I’m not entirely sure what to do with both of those things existing at the same time.

What I do know is that I wouldn’t have been able to make the decision to spend a month in Spain without the work I’ve done on surrender. I wouldn’t have been able to let go of the control long enough to even imagine it. This trip is the proof that something has shifted and that I’m finding my way back to the woman who existed before fear moved in and rearranged everything.

Surrender isn’t weakness. It takes an enormous amount of strength you weren’t sure you had — to release the weight nobody could see you carrying, to trust something larger than your own white-knuckled grip on the outcome. It’s freedom. It’s peace. It’s the most terrifying and most necessary thing I’ve ever chosen to do.

Life is messy and really fucking hard sometimes. But just on the other side of that, there’s so much color when you allow the shift from the black and white. It’s beautiful in here. Surrender to me is when life begins to get pretty great.

~ X, Shelby

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I was a bit of a tomboy as a kid. Played in the Arizona desert almost daily. Caught Gila monsters and desert tortoises to keep as pets. Climbed trees, jumped off roofs into pools. Smoked cigarettes from the butts in ashtrays, and got in trouble with the neighborhood boys.

The girls that were friends of mine as a child were more like me — tomboyish. Other girls usually found reasons to make fun of me, since I didn’t like a lot of the things they liked. But I ignored as much as I could and spent my time playing kickball or four square at recess.

Honestly though, it was such a great childhood. What I would give to experience that again through my eyes now. It was the late 80’s - early 90’s so it doesn’t get much better.

My family moved states a few times throughout my school years, so I got used to starting over. Finding solid girl friends was never the easiest, but I ended up with a pretty good friend group in high school. It didn’t erase mean girl energy. I still found myself being judged or having rumors spread about me on occasion. Mostly I rose above it, not because I didn’t care, but because I was used to it. It was noise that hurt, but there’s not a lot you can do. So you move on when you can and cry it out when you can’t.

Those early experiences leave their mark and teach you a few things. I learned to read people early — really accurately to be honest. I can feel someone’s energy. I can spot the fake, the catty, the calculated, from the minute I meet someone. But of course, I also see the best in people. All the genuine, loving nurturing, pure, loyal people.

One of the things I didn’t learn, was how to have a good poker face. I’ve never been able to quite hide how I’m feeling, so my face says exactly what the internal dialog in my head is having at all times. Which means, people get the version of me they deserve.

I say that without apology. Not to be callous or cold, but because I no longer give my heart so freely. I guard it and protect it. If you deserve the best version of me — you get it, unequivocally. And if you show me who you really are, you don’t get access. I’m always kind, even when it’s hard or I just won’t say a word to you because that’s the best I got. But kind and open are two different things.

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If you’ll excuse me while I gush a bit…

It wasn’t until the last twelve years or so, that I really understood what a truly great female friendship looked like. Before that, I had many types of friends — great friends, really good friends, long time and geographically distant friends.

There were the friendships that taught me the lessons. The ones that showed me how important I was in their lives by how little they showed up in mine, (and upon reflection, I’m positive that I’ve been that friend to some as well). There are some that are always going to be a simple friend. And others that just fade away for no real reason at all.

You learn along the way what you want in your close friendships and more importantly what you no longer are willing to compromise on.

What’s left after all of that sorting — the ones still standing — they are the women worth writing a love letter to. Friends that have stood the test of time and others newer to this middle part of life that show up exactly when they are meant to.

I know what true friendship looks like, and these women mean the world to me. They are my kind of women.

• The kind that allows you to be your absolutely most unhinged version of yourself and matches your energy without flinching.

• The kind that doesn’t make you feel the need to water yourself down in order to fit well together.

• The kind that knows every beautiful, ugly, mystical, deeply vulnerable thing about you and loves you even more for all of it.

• The kind that will pick you up off the floor at 2:00am after you’ve sobbed and unloaded for hours.

• The kind that makes you take sips of a smoothie when you haven’t eaten in days because your entire world collapsed around you.

• The kind that will be your caretaker when you can no longer handle the weight of one more thing on your own.

• The kind that talks you off the ledge with love and support and guidance, more times than you can count.

• The kind that flies halfway around the world to come to a party.

• The kind that shows up on repeat without hesitation, Prosecco in hand.

• The kind that you mother together, wife together, life together.

• The kind that deep dives spirituality, aliens and the meaning of it all right alongside you.

• The kind that you moon ceremony with.

• The kind that makes killing cockroaches a sport.

• The kind where your husbands love you together almost as much as you love each other

• The kind that still includes sleepovers and talking and laughing until 3:00am.

• The kind that you can un-f *ck this middle part of life with and everything that goes with it. Can I get an AMEN!

• The kind where you just know you’re safe.

These are who my friends actually are — at different levels and in different seasons of this life. I could keep adding of course, but collectively, this list looks like family. Like sisters. Like soulmates in friendship form.

Not every woman in my life is a 2:00am phone call. Some of them are the ones who quietly organized your life and brought cooked meals when it mattered most. Some of them show up at exactly at the right moment. Some are the friends I see once a year or only talk to through a screen. And some are newer, yet still just as meaningful — you just know you meant something to each other in another life.

Friendship isn’t one size — it’s an entire ecosystem, and every level of it matters.

You know who your people really are when life gets hard enough to show you. And I’ve been lucky enough to find out.

Women that complete you in ways that no one else quite can. Who give you permission to love yourself through the painful times. Hold your hand through the confusing, the disorienting, the scary, the heartbreaking — and show up just as loud for the best of life too. The ones you want beside you for every amazing thing, because it just wouldn’t be the same without them.

Having your friends be a foundation and grounding force in your life is priceless. And I am deeply grateful to every woman in mine — the women that have been, and continue to be all of these things to me.

I know as we get older and our circles shrink, the one constant is knowing how meaningful and important your relationships with other women truly are. What they bring to your life that makes it better. The value of having friends without confines is precious and rare, don’t let them go.

These somewhere in the middle years are proof more than ever, that having women going through the same crazy shit you are, makes it all a little more bearable.

If you are a woman in my life — my friend — it’s because you embody the most beautiful qualities of a true friend in the purest sense of the word and I hope you see this as the love letter it is.

And if you are a woman that I haven’t had the pleasure to meet yet, and we are supposed to be in each other’s lives…just know that I can’t wait. I’ll know you once I see you.

Thank you — all of you. I love you!

So yeah, I’d say I was right not to categorize myself as a girls girl.

I am not a girls girl. I am a woman’s woman.

~ X, Shelby

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Share The Grown-Up Recalibration

The main character is a woman in her mid-forties who decides to take a time-out from her life, get on a plane, and go figure out who she is — alone, in Spain. By the way, I know this is giving Eat, Pray, Love vibes — but trust me, this character arc and story line were headed an entirely different direction.

She’s fictional. I made her up. Or maybe I didn’t, because she’s loosely based on me. Write what you know, right? She was doing the things I would never have thought I had the courage to do. I was living through a fictionalized version of myself.

Turns out, I had become jealous of her.

How I got here

The past five years have been a lot, to say the very least. Highs I’d Groundhog Day and live on repeat if I could. I mean the epic kind. Moments that heal you just by being in them and allow you to forget all the noise outside. And lows that kept compounding, each one settling on top of the last, each one carrying the weight of everything that came before it.

It wasn’t one bad year that woke me up. It was five years of slow accumulation finally getting loud enough that I couldn’t tune it out anymore.

This past year is when it all came to a head. When the lows got heavy enough that pushing through wasn’t working the way it used to. It was too much for one person to hold alone. It was like being on a roller coaster if one of the straps broke free — still held up, but barely and now very aware of how far there is to fall.

I’d allowed myself to feel deeply alone through so much of it. Bandaging myself up and moving on, the way I always had. But this time, something about it wouldn’t settle back down.

I started taking meditating more seriously last fall, hoping to bring something, anything of contrast into my life. It’s not something I ever did with intention before. I never could manage to quiet my mind long enough. But this time was a little different. I needed peace more than anything, a way to regulate my nervous system.

What started as a way to quiet things down became something else entirely. I started receiving what I’ll describe to you as messages. Some of them were clear immediately. Some didn’t make sense until months later.

I started bringing my journal into my meditation sessions so I wouldn’t lose anything. And something shifted when I did that. The combination of stillness and writing opened something up in me. Things came through that I almost didn’t feel in control of. When I looked back at what I’d written, I started seeing things I’d been too closed off to before.

Talking about what I was experiencing with my closest friends, and having sessions with spiritual teachers along the way, helped me turn the mirror around to face myself for once. Their guidance — the courage, the love, the accountability — gave me permission to start doing the real work. The deep, uncomfortable, necessary kind.

I started to see it plainly for the first time — the cycles and patterns, the ways I’d been holding myself back. I had some real shit to work out.

I was slowly unravelling the truth of what I had created within myself.

Someone who didn’t know her place in this world without the life she was taking care of. Someone who wasn’t sure what excited her anymore.

A product of her own creation. A product of circumstances that she kept inviting because that was all she ever knew.

I was repeating all these cycles. Allowing things that were keeping me small and from any kind of meaningful growth.

The mom who sacrificed so much so her kids could thrive. The wife who took on everything so her husband could thrive. The daughter who showed up for her parents so they could get back to thriving. The friend who’d do anything to see the people she loved thrive.

See the pattern?

I take care of the people I love the most in this world. Not out of obligation. Out of love, out of habit. It became so second nature over the course of my life that I stopped noticing I’d disappeared somewhere inside of it. I got lost. And I didn’t realize how lost until I got quiet enough to look.

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The lunch that changed things

A few weeks ago I had lunch with my husband. Somewhere towards the end of it and during a break from a World Cup game, I commented on a commercial — that I missed being on a horse. That I missed the feeling of it.

I spoke about it nostalgically. Without expectation.

What came back wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t unkind, exactly, but it landed unkind. Something about why hadn’t I done anything about it, if it mattered that much.

He had direct advice. Solutions. Judgement. All over my commercial break commentary.

I went quiet. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I did. I mean sure, there’s a few practical reasons as to why I haven’t been on a horse in so long. But, the metaphor of it all wasn’t entirely wrong.

I hadn’t done anything about it because somewhere along the way I’d stopped treating the things I loved as things worth making space for. I’d become an expert at fitting myself around everyone else’s needs that I didn’t even notice I was doing it anymore.

Of course I didn’t come to this conclusion immediately. It takes a minute for me to gather my thoughts. And even longer to admit when he’s right.

What came next…

I called my friend in Spain and talked to her for a couple of hours that day after lunch.

(I’ll tell you more about her another time — she deserves her own introduction and I want to do it properly.)

She talked me through it and helped me clear the bullshit and hurt feelings. Validating my emotions while still holding space for the truth. She gets me, knows how I operate.

She half-jokingly suggested I come stay with her for a couple of weeks and just work myself out. We talked about how great it would be.

Yoga on the beach. A painting class. Learning how to cook paella.

Writing. Reading. Life-ing on my own terms.

But mostly how some solitude and distance from my home life, could be exactly what I needed.

To find myself. To shed myself. To forgive the narrative I’ve convinced myself of.

To choose the outcome I want, instead of accepting things the way it currently is.

Of course, I thought about all the reasons this wasn’t practical. Nothing is practical about what I was contemplating.

As I was playing the fun game in my head about whether I should take this seriously or not — my phone buzzed. I swiped up and a photo appeared as a memory. A picture of my friend and I in Spain, from a few years ago that day.

It was a very clear nudge from somewhere I’ve learned not to ignore.

I booked the trip the next day.

Not for two weeks. But for a month. Long enough to actually do something. Long enough to remember who I am and shed everything that needs to go.

I’ve held myself back long enough and I can’t make the changes I need to make when I’m surrounded by the life that created me.

And here’s the part I still can’t quite get over — my friend had no idea I’d been writing that book (she still doesn’t). I hadn’t told anyone. She didn’t know that I’d already been sending a fictional version of myself to Spain for months. Working out on the page what I was too scared to do in real life.

She suggested I come without knowing any of it. She just knew I needed something, and said the thing that turned out to be exactly right.

(I should also mention, I didn’t actually connect these dots until a little over a week ago. I’d stopped adding to that book a while back when I got distracted by an entirely different story idea. Pretty typical of me — great unfinished ideas until the next one comes along that you have to start right away. It wasn’t until I was proofing my launch post that I realized the fictional version of myself had become the real one.)

I’ve never believed in coincidences. Nothing is by accident, and this was no exception. It was just confirmation of something I already knew was coming.

This realization didn’t arrive all at once. It was a slow unraveling. Five years of accumulation, meditation, journal entries, hard conversations and one fictional woman in Spain who turned out to be me.

It was messy and ugly and beautiful all at once. But it was how I got here.

Your story and experiences are yours to hold. And if I could suggest anything — find something, just one thing that gives you peace. Do the work, whatever that looks like for you. The answers are in there. They always were. You just have to get quiet enough to hear them. And brave enough to take action.

~ X, Shelby

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Share The Grown-Up Recalibration

Let me introduce myself…

Hi, I’m Shelby! I’m a 45-year-old wife and mom of two new adults.

As I mentioned, my youngest son is headed off to college in August, which currently has my head spinning — and my oldest still lives at home, but he’ll soon be out on his own to begin living his life. I’ve prepared them…or so I hope. And oof, it’s scary!

This past year has brought a lot of changes — ones I thought I was bracing myself for, but I had no idea what was actually coming.

It turns out, the preparations I was making to be a successful mom sending her kids into the world, slowly unraveled parts of myself I wasn’t expecting to find. Parts that were missing. Parts that had been quietly angry for a long time. Parts asking questions I didn’t have answers to yet.

Back in February, after months of meditation, deep conversations with my best friends, and losing both a family member and a dear friend within a short stretch of time — I woke up in the middle of the night to write. It was different from my usual brain-dump journal entries. Something had been weighing on me that I couldn’t quite name. I knew I had things to work out within myself — things I’d pushed so far down I hadn’t realized how much they’d quietly become who I was.

I want to be clear: I’m not here to trauma dump. And I’m definitely not a guru, a life coach, or anyone with professional letters after my name. Everyone has their own version of hard, and mine is mine to carry — that’s not what this is about. Those things shaped me, yes, but they also held me back.

I’m a woman trying to figure this part out, whatever this middle part is — and just like a lot of women out there, I’m entering this with a lot of unknowns. Being someone that doesn’t do much in a public way, this is far outside of my comfort zone. But, I feel as though something is pushing me to do this. So, I decided to try it out loud for once.

I’m letting go of what I can, and rebuilding from the ground up. And honestly, I could use all the help I can get. But I’m taking this particular journey mostly alone — which feels more terrifying than liberating at the moment…but check back in on that one.

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The Grown-Up Recalibration

Which brings me to August.

This August, I’m recalibrating. Not as an experiment, but a real-life, real-time grown-up recalibration. Big girl shit, or so I’ve been telling myself.

After my husband and I drive away from the university we’re entrusting with our youngest child, I’m spending a month at a close friend’s home in Spain. She has lived there for over twenty years and is few steps ahead of me on this same road. I’m not going for a vacation. We’re going to talk — far too much, definitely over wine — and I’m going to write and document everything. Explore what makes me, well…me. To try and figure out, out loud and mid-renovation, what this whole stretch of life is actually supposed to be.

I’m going to spend time away from the life that built me, in a place that challenges me. Much of it I’ll do alone, without my friend by my side. I don’t have a plan, and that’s the point. I’ll be doing the things I’d normally want a partner beside me for. But for this, I’ll be sitting in the discomfort instead of avoiding it.

I’m not writing from the other side of this with a list of carefully thought-out answers. I’m writing from directly inside of it: often confused and completely unaware of what I’ll find — which is kind of the exciting part.

So this is a lot, and it reeks a little bit of “main character energy,” but it’s me, on my own terms. For the first time. And maybe leaving is the only way back yourself.

Consider this your front-row seat to the live broadcast of my experience. I hope you stay tuned and tell a few friends, because I would love to have a dialogue with other women going through their own version of this part of their life. Let’s learn and grow and encourage each other along the way.

We all have different circumstances, but I know I’m not alone in feeling lost sometimes. So regardless of where you’re at: married or not, kids in different stages, trying to remember who you used to be, or realizing perimenopause is your new roommate…then I think you’ll feel at home here!

I intend to show up often and bring real honesty, humor and definitely unfiltered observations to this journey - I mean, I am a Leo so I don’t really know how to be filtered.

I don’t have it figured out — not even close actually. But I’m damn sure going to try.

~ X, Shelby

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