With a Little Bit of Luck: Claiming that Main Character Energy After divorce
In the musical My Fair Lady, Eliza’s father sings this wonderful song called “With a Little Bit of Luck” on the morning of his wedding. I spent the summer of 2003 performing in this show with a wonderful semi-professional theatre in Upstate NY, where I’m from. It happened to be the show where I met my ex-husband for the first time. This song was the biggest dance number in the show, and even though it thoroughly kicked our butts every night, it was my favorite number to perform. There’s something about being in a perfectly choreographed dance number and pulling it off in perfect harmony with the people around you that creates a magical energy. This is the hum, the YES, the thing that makes you feel alive and fully harmonized and like you’re doing exactly what you’re meant to be doing in that one moment. That feeling is what keeps me coming back to theatre year after year, and what I’m constantly hunting for in my every day life. With a little bit of luck, I hope to find this elusive hum every single day until I die.
When I started over after my divorce, I asked myself what I wanted my days to look like. So often, our daily lives becomes about what we need to do for everyone around us. Do they need us to take care of something for them? Do we need to clean the house so that they’re comfortable? Do they need dinner? Errands run? Anything special coming up we need to plan for? The list goes on and on and as a life-long people pleaser, I fell in line with this way of life during my marriage. I tried to make time to do the things that I enjoyed, but it was a struggle to feel like I was getting what I needed to fill my cup most of the time. My wants and needs felt like they’d been buried beneath the surface, and looking back, I knew that it was something I had allowed over years of surrendering to the pressures of society and expectation and my own inability to stand up for myself. So when I had the chance to re-think how I was treating myself and allotting the time in my day, I knew that I needed to make big changes.
I will add that I am very fortunate in that after my separation, my ex-husband was still very involved in my life and wanted to be very accommodating to my and our son’s needs. He still asks what I need every week when we are working out our childcare arrangements, and he gladly takes our son for several days, giving me much more time to myself than I have ever had before. It was an adjustment going from full-time mom to a mom that doesn’t have her kid all the time, but I’ve learned that those days are not for being sad or lamenting our time away, it’s time to take care of myself and see to my own needs. So now I cherish the opportunity I have to check in and see what I need to feel content and fulfilled as a fully autonomous person with agency over all of the parts of my life that I ignored and neglected for so long. And my main goal since making this transition has been to chase that hum, baby.
I asked myself if I could spend my day doing exactly what I wanted to do and being the truest most beautiful version of myself, to steal that fantastic phrase from Glennon Doyle, then what would that look like? I remember sitting in the sunlight on my porch one morning sipping tea, listening to lo-fi, and journaling, and I decided to visualize that perfect day. I closed my eyes and watched myself having a slow morning, doing spiritual work, meditating, doing yoga. Then an afternoon where I peacefully worked on projects that filled me with energy and purpose and satisfaction, things like recording voice over, writing, editing, designing, filming, and planning content. I took a break to go on a hike with my dog, to eat a healthy nourishing lunch, and to do some things around the house. Then I finished working and filled the rest of my day with joy. Singing, dancing, working in my garden, making dinner, drinking wine and reading, doing relaxing projects like painting or crochet, and taking a long luxurious bath before bed. I imagined that day then I also imagined a day with my son, where I was able to do many of those things alongside him, involving him, and adding things that we love to do together. I saw us laughing, so much laughing. This exercise filled me with so much happiness I felt I must have been glowing, radiating outwardly to anyone who might have seen me. I wrote it all down, I scripted this life that I wanted to step into, and I claimed it as my present and my future. That’s how I started on the journey to creating the life I wanted to live, a life full of hum and YES and THIS, every day.
For the most part, I try to deliberately plan my days with this vision in mind. Because I still have a full-time job that I do from home, part of my work day must be spent in performing those duties, but I also set aside time for the projects that I care about and that are feeding and growing the creative soul inside of me. But the big thing I realized once I started prioritizing these things, is that there is no reason why I couldn’t start living as if my dream life was already mine today. I used to push a lot of the things I wanted to do off until another day. I’d rationalize that I was too busy, I had to take care of my house, I had to make time for my husband, I had to be a mom, and that meant that the things I did just for me couldn’t take up my valuable time when they weren’t as important. But aren’t they? Now that I have more perspective, I know that they are just as important. They are as important as taking care of the people you love, because you should be on that list too. You should be at the top. I’m not saying to ignore your families or your responsibilities, but try to imagine your way into more balance. Imagine your life if taking care of yourself was just as important as taking care of everything else. Start to work in one thing a day that’s healing, or energizing, or brings you contentment. Maybe you’ll find you can work in more, then maybe you’ll start to find more of the hum in yourself more of the time. Until your life is the hum. That’s the goal. That’s living. That’s the secret.
Thank you for reading. Let’s talk again soon.
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