Choosing your Hard: Cheers to 19 years! 🥳
A nostalgic lil walk down memory lane feels in order on this, the morning of waking up 19 years after saying “I do” to this guy! 🥰
I’m the first to admit marriage is hard work sometimes. There’s nothing simple about combining two lives, personalities, preferences, values, dreams, fears, and ways of moving through the world.
When we first met, I was a bit of an anxious scaredy cat…always tempted to self-protect by running from the best thing that had ever happened to me. Justin, meanwhile, was secure: calm and consistent, a much-needed reassuring and reliable presence in my life from day one. Over time, I learned to trust that…and I’m really glad I did. 😍
After 19 years of marriage, I’d also say this:
Most things worth building in life are hard.
- ✅ Cultivating strong relationships is hard.
- ✅ Consistently taking care of your health is hard.
- ✅ Building a business is hard.
- ✅ Moving across the world is hard.
- ✅ Learning, growing, changing, staying open, curious, present…all hard.
Chose your Hard
- ❌ But…so is staying stuck.
- ❌ So is feeling disconnected from yourself or others.
- ❌ So is avoiding growth because discomfort feels inconvenient or scary.
We don’t really get a “hard-free” option/version of life. 🤷♀️ We just get to choose which hard feels meaningful to us.
And the beautiful thing is that every time we keep showing up (whether in love, training, friendship, work, healing) we’re steadily building something, however slowly and imperfectly.
Even in seasons where things feel uncertain or messy, nothing is ever truly wasted.
Every challenge teaches us something. Grow through what you go through, trusting that, even if you don’t have enough runway to see it (yet), it’s going to leave you stronger, with more awareness, perspective, resilience, and capacity than you had before.
So here’s to 19 years (22.5 if you count dating!) of continuing to choose each other, again and again; through changing seasons, big dreams, hard conversations, cross-world moves, and all the wonderful weirdness in between. 🇯🇵✌️