I have the day off today, and have decided to be deliciously irresponsible by postponing cleaning the house. This decision was made out loud, while standing in my kitchen amidst piles of unfolded laundry and stacks of mail. It felt extremely rebellious, because I put a lot of pressure on myself to keep things together and stay on top of all the chores at home. I looked to my cat for approval, who had been watching me carefully from her perch on the edge of my tiled countertop. She blinked at me once then looked away, as if to distance herself from my embarrassingly irresponsible decisions.

“If you care about it so much, you can clean the damn kitchen!” I told her, and then realized it was probably time to get out of the house so I went and bought myself some coffee.

The last two weeks have been a blur. Between faking my way through each work day (pretending to know how to create the looks my clients are asking for) and helping the kids get used to our new schedule, there really isn’t a lot of time left for “staying on top of things.” I feel like a triage nurse in an emergency room, quickly able to identify the most severe cases and making them top priority, while the old man with a splinter in his foot patiently waits his turn. I no longer have time for splinters, and probably never will again. Life is now about swift and urgent damage control, and- strangely- the immediacy of this existence comforts me. I’ve been thrust into living the way I have always strived to live: completely in the moment. For a girl with a tendency to over think things a little bit, a girl who wastes precious energy on imagining the worst outcome for every conceivable situation, this is a sacred gift. I’ve lost the luxury of thinking about it all, and I’m just doing it.

I have learned over the last few years that no matter how powerful my thoughts are, I can never think my way to a better place. Growth, life, doesn’t exist inside my head. It must happen on a physical level in order to be real. I can imagine what it would be like to live without fear or play scenes out in my mind where I act like the woman I want to be, but until I physically put those things into practice they are nothing but the intangible wisps of a dream. There are thousands of teachings from thousands of very wise thinkers on the subject of growth and change and action. Gandhi tells us to be the change we want to see in the world. Eleanor Roosevelt urges us to do the things we think we cannot do. Even Andy Warhol reminds us that although they say time changes things, you really have to change them yourself. I agree with all of these thoughts. I love them, and I try to weave these ideas into the doctrine of my own life. But I have to be very careful not to overdo it. I must continue to triage each situation and learn how to exist inside every imperfect moment. I must embrace my mistakes with as much fervor and passion as I do my successes. At the very least, I will try to remember what my friend said the other day (another one of the wise thinkers): all you have to do is show up and look alert. As long as I can do that, life will happen on its own.

Yesterday, everything changed for us. I started working full-time as a stylist at a great little salon. I am excited about this venture, the birth of a new career. But I am also terrified. There are many things that frighten me: learning the color line that my salon uses, fitting into the close-knit family of coworkers, taking clients with only some basic skills under my belt. These things are huge and scary, but they’re surmountable. I will learn, I will grow, I will develop. What scares me most of all is that now, for the first time, I am a working mom. A single working mom. And that feels a little bit like walking across a tightrope strung high above the hard, unforgiving ground, with no net to save me if I happen to fall. I feel alone up there on that rope, the wind whistling in my ears as I tremble and try to steady myself. I feel terrifyingly vulnerable.

This was not part of the plan, you see. When I was married, we chose to have children based on the facts of our life at the time. My husband had a good, stable job that would allow me to stay home with our kids. I knew that I did not want to bring a life into this world that I couldn’t nurture and care for completely. But life changes. And what else is there to do, but do our very best to adapt? I’m not married anymore. The choice to be a stay-at-home mom has been taken away, and that’s just how it is. There’s no going back. I must go forward, adapt to the changes and do the best I can with the life we’ve been given now.

I am filled with grit and determination. I don’t doubt my ability to create a safe and wonderful life for my daughters; I know I am smart and capable. We will be fine. But today I am grieving the loss of our life before, heartbroken over the memories of our playdough afternoons and wading pool summers. Things will never be the same for us, and as good and right as that may be I must still allow some space in my heart to experience the grief that comes with these changes. I often write about the process of learning how to nurture myself the way I nurture my daughters. For me, it’s an important skill to learn. I am a very emotionally diverse woman, and I have always felt everything big: big joy, big sadness, big contentment, big fear. It’s hard to have these big feelings completely on my own, without a hand to squeeze during the good times and a shoulder to cry on during the bad. But just as I need to learn how to navigate this new life of a working mother, I must also learn how to nurture my own heart through the changes. There’s no husband to pay the bills anymore, and no loving partner to kiss the tears off of my face at night. The future of my daughters relies on my ability to provide not only a roof over their heads and food in their bellies, but also an emotionally present and available mother. I may not be able to be as physically present for them as I used to be, but if I don’t walk myself kindly and lovingly through these big changes I won’t be able to be there for them emotionally either. And that would make all of this, all of these changes, worth nothing.

So I let myself cry when I need to cry. I make myself tea and go to bed early and let the dishes sit in the sink for one more day. I let myself feel proud for little, meaningless accomplishments (a clean car, a bill paid on time, a sentence perfectly expressed) and I reward myself with little gifts of chocolate or pretty flowers at the end of a long day. I’m learning how to do these things slowly, and it’s difficult. But the three of us all seem to be doing just fine.