Grateful for my ex too.....

I have been way up in my feels recently in terms of gratitude.......sliding down the sunbeams of my life, and just wondering how did I GET TO live THIS life!!!!!! The contrast showing up starkly for me often, and remembering......and I think I have always been a great mother......embracing motherhood, with both arms, and going all in......my loyal Taurus shrouding my children in that loyalty and love.......but at the end of my marriage, I felt miserable.....really miserable in all of the mess.....and I could not even admit it to myself....and it caused me to want to shut down....retreating within by day's end....Not much energy beyond trying to survive it, and work on my marriage, all of it.....beginning to feel really sour and short tempered, and I was anxious.....constantly afraid.....not sure of what?? The end I guess? The finale of our marriage....which by the way, I know I felt coming for a long time.....and I think maybe those anxious feelings were a result of not wanting to listen to my intuition.......wanting to bury the things I knew deep inside.....in the hopes that it would go away....and well....that isn't how it works.....and having that experience last Friday, with the allergic reaction....which I have since gotten an epipen for by the way:).....made me realize so much......as I sat with it this week.....first of all the knowledge that I wasn't gripped in fear.....not during it, or after....just a will to survive and get it solved.....and the fear was in watching my daughter, and my mom, and thinking of my dad and son.....but what struck me was the impression I would now leave with my kids had it gone sideways, and it would have been one of LIVING.......them knowing so fully that their mom loves to live! And the conversation my girl, and I had when she said her friends are enemies with their moms, and that we are best friends.....there is an ease, and a gentleness, and joy that has taken over my mothering in my new life, that is so good for them, and makes me want to cry:) Because it could not have been in my other life....while I was under extreme stress.....feeling resentful and snappy.....and so overwhelmed.....like I might drown at any given moment.....trying to keep this facade up, which no longer felt like me......and SO desperately wanting my family to work......as it was slipping through my fingers......and so my gratitude extends to him, so fully.....so genuinely......walking out to leave us to rebuild THIS life......he most definitely realized stuff I could not admit to myself yet.......I see that now.....and I appreciate how he has allowed me to be the mother I am to them.....respecting that amid the other challenges he and I have......and I can feel myself headed to something big.....so completely....bigger than me, and a life I already can't believe, and sometimes I wonder why I was called to this purpose....being forged in fire, so I can put out other's flames.....but I am so grateful I have been:) It is such an honor in every way......so I continue to sit with gratitude, and gratitude for him, freeing me so fully to live a life that feels so fully like my own......and continues to feel more and more like that every day, Amen:)