Survival Mode

No one told me how much of life was just survival mode. Some told me it would be amazing (and it is!) and some told me it would be hard (and it is!) and some told me to lean in or dig deep but no one told me how a lot of the time you just have to hold on, a white knuckled death grip the only thing standing between being here and drifting off like an untethered balloon towards madness or the heavens, same diff.

My mother used to say sometimes one day at a time is too much and then it’s one hour at a time, or even one minute. Maybe I’m weaker than her but I’ve amended it to one breath at a time and used that to move through whole piles of days on end where it wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t elegant but it was one foot in front of the other and breathe in, breathe out, keep going.

It was survival mode.

Parenting little kids has a way of throwing us into survival mode. So does depression or loss or the good ol’ flu. Sometimes we’re all jacked up for no good reason at all and that counts too, because it’s still a thing that needs to be slogged through, one breath in, one breath out.

I know this time of year is a reset for a lot of us and there are a lot of lofty proclamations being made and goals being set and that’s awesome. Aim high, my friends. Rock on. But I want to say one thing before we move any further into the golden light of 2019:

If all you did in 2018 was survive, that’s enough.

Happy New Year.

XOXO

Liz.

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Originally published at www.lizpetrone.com on January 2, 2019.