“When you can’t find the light
That guides you through a cloudy day
When the stars ain’t shinin’ bright
And you feel like you’ve lost your way
When the candle lights of home
Burn so very far away
Well you got to let your soul shine
Just like my daddy used to say.”

Christmas 2020 was the first big holiday where I had to share custody of my kids since the divorce.

It was wretched.

But I’m a stellar mom, so I did what I do best and made the best of it.

December 25th also happened to be the…

“You know what it takes for a star to fucking shine? A shitload of darkness.” — Led By Heart

Day 11

I enrolled in a Medical training program today. I am going back to school at thirty-seven, and I am pretty damn proud of that if you can’t tell.

It’s a bit absurd how things work out sometimes. Without complete upheaval of my life as I knew it, not only would nothing have changed, I have a sneaking suspicion they would have gotten worse. …

Sweet and sour lemonade

Cold chlorinated ecstasy, mm-hmm.

Special thanks to Michael Burg, MD for the seventeen-syllable prompt invite and to Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and her publication, The Brain is a Noodle.

Thank you for your love and support. ❤

©2021 Divina Grey. All Rights Reserved.

Divina Grey is a ferocious woman and mother rebuilding her life one article at a time. She likes long walks on the beach, singing and playing her guitar, an electrifying workout, and a cup of coffee so decadent she can feel the frothiness in her bones. …

I haven’t published a story in almost two weeks.

I’m jonesin’ for a quick hit.

Over Winter break, I was able to put my (ten-pound) Medical Assisting book and stethoscope away and focus on my kids and my writing.

It was glorious.

But like all good things, they must come to an end.

Perhaps this title should read, I Miss You and I’m Sorry instead.

A perfect January day for me would consist of two cups of frothy to-die-for coffee, a terribly-painful-hurts-so-good workout, a steaming-hot shower, and absolute peace and quiet for the next sixteen hours while I write to…

Day 10

I am utterly broken.

I have to break apart the life that I’ve known for the last twenty years, piece by piece, and have faith that I can somehow put myself back together again someday despite some major missing parts.

I’m sorry, guys. That’s all I’ve got in me for tonight.

“And sometimes it doesn’t actually pass; it shifts and molds and becomes absorbed. Our pain wants to teach us. It often drops us to our knees and demands to be felt and acknowledged. Our pain requires us to pay attention and really lean into what the hurt wants us…

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as…

“Well this life that I live took me everywhere
There ain’t no place I ain’t never gone
Well it’s kind of like the sayin’
That you heard so many times
Well there just ain’t no place like home.” — Lynyrd Skynyrd, All I Can Do Is Write About It

Day 7 & 8

I was a breakdown away from deleting my Medium account yesterday.

I’ve had plenty of those to go around lately.

I thought writing online was my weakness. …

1. My kids sleeping in until 10:30 am during Winter Break.
2. Forgiveness.
3. Getting full custody of my one-eyed cat.
4. My boss.
5. Being accepted into a scholarship program for medical school.
6. Anti-bacterial hand rub. (with over 60% alcohol)
7. You and the entire Medium community. (you guys have been my life-line like you wouldn’t believe.)
8. Thrift stores.
9. Laughing out loud with my family.
10. My brother.
11. My friends.
12. You, again. (and writing in general.)
13. Post-workout Chipotle meals (it's the simple things in life these days.)
14. The gifts that divorce and motherhood bestowed upon me over the years. (*cough cough Superhuman Strength and Ruthlessness cough*)
15. …