Back from a very long blogging hiatus!

It’s been a long time since my last post and so much has happened. The Covid crisis, though not over has become something we are accustomed to now. Our youngest daughter graduated in May of 2021 and in the fall, as she departed for her first year of college, my husband Bruce and I officially became empty nesters. Our relationship was shattered and scattered, after an entire marriage prioritizing our farm, kids, extended family and just about everything else over our marriage. Mutual respect for one another was replaced by eye rolls, deep sighs and angry muttering. Strained pleasantries were all that were exchanged and resentments were stacked up higher than Mt. Borah, Idaho’s tallest peak.

I had communicated time and again that things weren’t going well to no avail. I tried having us go to counseling. I would try to talk and it would quickly escalate to arguing and worse, silence. There is no loneliness more powerful than the loneliness of not being noticed or appreciated by your life partner. Soon I busied myself with building the walls I hoped would save me from all that pain and resentment, then unconsciously, I did the same hurtful things to my husband that I accused him of doing to me. I moved out and filed for divorce.

Though I knew we were both good people, we were clearly not showing that side with each other anymore and neither one of us had the tools to fix it. The news rattled Bruce to his core. Long story short, he asked if we could find a counselor and together we could begin talking and start working on our marriage. He felt like while we had many challenges, we also had built too many wonderful things together to just throw it away.

After starting with one counselor that was clearly not a good fit, we found someone we could both talk to and who made sense to us. The single biggest thing he did was to get us talking, to help us realize that we didn’t need to agree but always needed to acknowledge the others feelings. We made the effort to see the other person’s side of things. We learned to apologize. We had stopped doing things together, so we started making sure that we planned time together.

Then I had a thought. “¿Si risolve anche pedalando?-Is it solved by cycling as well?” What if, through cycling, we could continue with these positive changes and learn to reconnect and love one another again?