This reinventing yourself thing is difficult. It's not like I walked through a door as a married woman and walked out the other side as a single mother. Technically, yes----emotionally no.
Take today, for instance. It's the day of a large fundraiser for my children's school and I'm slated to help out for most of the day. Not only do I feel out of place because I'm usually one of the people that is organizing school fundraisers, but I'm now a single mom with limited resources and many complications. With a long story.
That story is difficult for me. It's not like I can just rattle off a line about my husband & I separating; or a story about my husband losing his job and sparking our quick financial downward spiral; or a story about being forced from our home and moving; or my multiple failed attempts at finding an adequate job----I can't because they are all true and to tell all of it requires a preface of, "Pull up a chair...!" I'm also not someone that likes to have people feeling sorry for me with that look of, "Oh, you poor thing." The entire story usually results in that look (or the bewildered look of fear as if my bad fortune will rub off).
But even beyond all that is my pettiness in trying to be "perfect" and my avoidance of how messed up my life is. I don't think I've come to terms with the labels: single mom, broken home, divorced, failed marriage, ran off with a younger woman... etc, etc. It's not what I wanted and I don't feel comfortable with it. I don't know what kind of dream world I've been living in to think that if I ignore it, it'll go away, though.
I'm realizing that part of my reinvention needs to be an embrace of who I am now. I'm a single mom. I'm single. I'm a separate being from my family. I don't know that I was good at looking at myself this way now or before. So, I'm trying to look at myself through new eyes and to accept the visage--- accept the truth.