Do you ever compartmentalize certain things and think they don’t belong anywhere other than the compartment your brain put them in? Have you ever felt like you have totally separate worlds (such as a particular career and a passion) that you belong to but you don’t know how to merge them together?
Without realizing it, I’ve been doing this with my writing. The other day my friend, Bruce Turkel, called to tell me how much he loved my latest blog post on marriage. My first thought was, “I didn’t write a blog post about marriage.” Then it clicked. “Oh, you mean my Instagram post.”
“Yea, your blog post.” He repeated, confused. I explained to Bruce there was a difference. “I write blog posts and I share those with my email community, but I also write stories on Instagram, but I don’t necessarily turn those into blog posts.” Bruce was dumbfounded by my rambling. (I have been accused in the past of overcomplicating things ?)
“Caroline, email and Instagram are just vehicles to share your work. Why are you compartmentalizing this? What you wrote was beautiful, and everyone in your community should read it. It’s a blog post, whether you choose to post it on your blog or not.”
I’ve listened to my friend/mentor and from now on I will no longer compartmentalize my writing.
Maybe you needed to read this today because you too overcomplicate your life or your work. Maybe you need to read it because of what I wrote about marriage. Either way, I hope my words inspire you.
Maybe that’s all it takes to be a blog post.
What it means to say “I Do.”
The day I said “I do” to my husband, what I was really saying was: “I’m committing to doing my best in this relationship, and I hope it works out.” But I don’t think I truly understood the depth of the commitment I made that day. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I didn’t know how long our marriage would last, or how much we’d go through. I approached our relationship pretty much the same way as I approach everything else — do the work and surrender the outcome. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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But if I’m being honest, my marriage didn’t seem like such a huge risk because I knew I could walk away. My parents divorced. My grandparents divorced. My siblings, aunts, and uncles had divorced. I didn’t attach shame or guilt to divorce. Marriage was like any other contract humans get into — sometimes it falls apart. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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In the beginning, whenever Orlando and I fought or he did something I couldn’t stand — my default thinking was “I can’t do this forever.” ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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But my husband thought differently. To him, divorce was not an option, which meant we had to do things like: forgive each other, find solutions, let things go, kiss and move forward. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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He taught me that things didn’t have to be perfect for the contract to survive — we just had to be willing to negotiate, concede, and adjust. We had to continue loving each other (even when it was an act instead of a feeling). ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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My husband taught me how to be married. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I have certainly put in the work on my end. I feel very lucky he has too (it takes 2 people to make the marriage survive.) ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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And here we are 14 years and 3 kids later. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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We’ve had highs, lows, and plateaus. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I love my husband more than ever. And although anything can happen, I sure hope I get to spend the rest of my life with him. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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I still “do,” and I get what that means much more than I did then.⠀⠀
