I think it started when I turned 35, that whole mid-life thing. I had always considered anything over 70 as gravy, so 35 was half-way there.

Oh My God!

I looked at my life at that moment and was horrified. I had nothing.

I’d just given up my entire life to help my mother with hers. Possibly the worst choice of my life, or perhaps just a part of the big picture plan, who knows. Either way, I was living in an unfinished basement desperately trying to please an unpleasable woman. My marriage was falling apart rapidly, my kids were suffering and I thought, this is what I’d worked my ass off for nearly twenty years for?

In all honesty, I fell into a deep depression that probably lasted three years and during that time I tried to accept that this was my life, end of story, this was as far as I got.

That season of my life ended and I thought that was that, but the following years proved to be even harder. I lost four babies and my marriage and I no longer speak with my mother or sister. I feel in ways I’ve lost everything that I was. There are night like this, where I realize there is really no one on the planet (besides my kids, I hope.) who would miss me if I disappeared and that makes me profoundly sad.

Turning forty was like the dawning of a new day.

There is this feeling of “I don’t have as long as I used to.” I mean facts are facts, and I feel this pressure to make the next twenty or thirty years (should I be so blessed) count.

I don’t want to flounder any more. I don’t want to wander along letting the current of others in my life dictate my path any longer. I want to do something meaningful. I want to touch lives and make a difference.

I want to become a woman of immeasurable worth. It’s time for the butterfly season of my life to begin.

About Samantha