I Thought I'd Have My Wings By Now?

By Monterey Laska

In "I Thought I'd Have My Wings By Now?" Monterey Laska offers a transformative roadmap for single parents in school while raising a family single-handedly. This empowering self-help guide encourages readers to look beyond hard emotions, resist binding societal expectations, and truly understand where they stand on their personal journey.

 

Through insightful anecdotes and practical exercises, single parents will learn to articulate their dreams and aspirations and break free from the confines of their comfort zones to pursue a life aligned with their soul's purpose. The book serves as a beacon of inspiration, drawing on the wisdom of diverse mentors who have unique insights from their own life-altering moements of clarity. From facign financial challenges to conquering self-doubt, there are invaluable lessons on finding happiness and fulfillment as a single parent pursuing education.

 

"I Thought I'd Have My Wings by Now?" isn't just a guide; it's a companion for single parents seeking daily joy and fulfillment. It's a heartfelt invitation to embrace the journey, unlock personal potential, and soar to new heights as a resilient and fulfilled single parent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monterey Laska
• Release date: Dec 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223697534

Monterey Laska

Monterey is a life-long student, mom, foodie, and creative soul.  While currently finishing her Masters in Architecture, Monterey finds balance and happiness by loving her 4-year-old munchkin Mazy and embracing her life's purpose, which is to: "Be appreciative of every breath, to experience love, stretching, and enrichment so that we can spread moments of joy, kindness, and possibility throughout the world." She has many plans in the future to continue this journey of lifelong learning and the pursuit of a life well-lived. Cheers to embracing the chaos and finding beauty in every corner!

Book preview

CONTENTS

1 You’ve Failed

NOTHING

Failure is devastating . And liberating.

The first lasts a short while, and the second lasts as long as you want. Or it may be the other way around for you, but we’ll get to that later.

Divorce was something I viewed as a sign of failure. A clear display involving picking the wrong person, not being able to keep a marriage together, and/or not sacrificing enough, not being patient enough, or in general: not being enough (despite it being my choice to leave, our minds work in funny ways). I wasn’t enough, and I had failed. I hadn’t been worth it for them to be the kind of partner I wanted and needed. I had one chance at the kind of life I wanted, and I had messed it up somehow, and there were no more chances. 

Shortly after, someone assured me it was all part of a greater plan, and I seized the proffered lifeline. This theory or view of my life absolved me of any guilt or wrongdoing or mistakes. Perhaps I did the best I could but because it was meant to be this way it wasn’t at all my fault? After several months, that just didn’t sit well with me. I believed in a creator and that there were multiple reasons I was here on this Earth, but playing as a puppet in a higher being’s story was not one of them.

It wasn’t until four years later that I discovered a life-changing concept: Taking responsibility for your life doesn’t mean you accept guilt for all of it. It means you are in charge of your thoughts, feelings, and actions regardless of whether it’s your fault you’re in the situation or not.

A lightning bolt would have had less impact on my heart. Okay, not really, but it would’ve shocked me less. Ha.

Wait, go back...WHAT?

My mentor at the time, I’ll talk more about him in a bit, likened this insight to if someone leaves a baby on your porch, you must take responsibility for it. It’s not your fault it’s there, but that doesn’t matter now, you are responsible for it. You’re responsible for your actions, your reactions, and the next steps you take. For so long, it felt like it mattered SIGNIFICANTLY to know how much of my life was my fault and how much I could blame something or someone else. Blame it on chance or bad luck, at the very least. I felt significant because of my problems and the sympathy they garnered because I’d gone through so much.

Of course, the exact influences on what ultimately happened are still unclear, yet I can breathe and smile far easier and with more meaning now. When I take responsibility for my life and truly believe I’m in charge of it, confusion dissipates, and desperation becomes satisfaction.

I ruined my life in the way that every adult who grows up needs to. I shattered the previous beliefs that constricted what could be and built new ones that were a thousand times better and more real than what I had. 

Having my wonderful little munchkin is better than I could have ever dreamed. 

Harder? You bet. 

More sleep-deprived? Yes. 

Less freedom and not as much fun with friends on the outside? At times, for sure.

Have the past 3 years as a single mother in graduate school have been some of the hardest of my life, including the times my marriage was verbally abusive and manipulative? Yes. Am I absolutely stinking proud of the person that I’ve become because of those years? YES. 

It’s surprisingly easy to picture who I might have been right now if things have gone differently, and while the outside things would likely have been a lot better, home finances, normal family etc, I feel far stronger and more capable now than I ever thought I could be.

Life gives us what we need to learn, sometimes wrapped in pain so we pay attention. Being pushed to the brink of exhaustion, depression, and slight insanity over and over, has forged me in a fire that I did not know I could handle...Until I had to. And I’m so grateful for it.

Did you or I actually fail in some way to get us here? Who the heck knows? Whether we did or didn’t, we can breathe and move forward and remember what we’ve learned either way. Worst case scenario, it was primarily our fault. What would that mean? Nothing would change. No, really, I don’t think that changes anything! We would still learn from the experiences that happened during and because of it, and we would take a breather and re-align ourselves with our goals and dreams. Sounds easier when put like that, of course, I know myself well enough that I don’t believe that fully to my core just yet. But I’m almost there. The heart takes a lot more convincing sometimes, particularly when it’s been hurt repeatedly, and you don’t think you can take hearing that it may have been at all or even microscopically your fault.

IF YOU FEEL LIKE A FAILURE, read on: 

It's usually in reference to other people that we feel like failures. You can feel less capable than others in your field, less clever than the people you associate with, or less accomplished in life than other people your age or younger.

Your feelings of failure are more closely related to how you see failure and what it means to you than to the actual failure itself. This suffering and fear and depression is found in your belief that it should be different and what that could say about you.

When we believe we have failed at something important, it causes us to doubt everything, including the core of who we are (our identity), and the purpose of our existence (our purpose).

Now, the human brain will fight rather strongly to keep us in line with who we think we are. Yet why, when we fail 1,000 times, do some people get happier with each failure and others rarely make it that far because it’s just too painful? Most who get happier aren’t psychologically masochistic or toxically positive, as easy as that answer would be. It’s because they see life events as happening FOR you and not TO you. Stare at a wall and repeat that to yourself a few times and see what feelings pop up. If you automatically feel a gut feeling to reject it, try and decipher why. Try to picture a successful person you know or have learned about...do they act like life just happens to them and they have to deal with it in good ways, or do you think that maybe they see things a little differently?

They see personal growth and difficult experiences as (albeit sometimes painful) gifts instead of undeserved sadness and fear to ignore, push past, find significance in receiving sympathy, or suffer through and resent.

In reality, a surprising number of the most well-known and prosperous individuals in the world have had the greatest number of frustrations and failures.

We usually hear about people who try one thing over and over until it works, like Stephen King, writing books like Carrie, which was rejected