Episode 18: Spring Break Mess

This week, Lara shares a very real recap of the past couple of weeks—from spring break comparison spirals and a meaningful trip with her daughter, to friendship accountability, letting go of someone from her past, and processing tragic loss in her community.

This episode is about motherhood, grief, emotional growth, and what it looks like to hold joy and heartbreak at the same time.

In this episode:

• spring break pressure and comparison
• friendship, insecurity, and accountability
• love, longing, and not sending the text
• a sweet mother-daughter trip to Biltmore
• a funny Banana Ball mix-up
• grief, parenting fears, and talking to kids about hard things

Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and grief. If you or someone you love is struggling, you’re not alone. You can call or text 988 in the U.S. for support.

Transcript

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And welcome to the Midlife Mess podcast. My name is Lauren Thompson. I am a single, divorced, working mom. I'm 42 years old. And I just bought a house with my 70-year-old parents. Welcome to my midlife mess. Hi guys. How are you doing? And welcome to the 18th edition of the Midlife Mess podcast. 18 is is one of my favorite numbers. Hopefully this will be a good one. I'm just gonna kind of talk about what's been going on in my life. It's been a busy couple of weeks since we since I've recorded. Last week was spring break for my daughter, and for the longest time leading up to it, I had some ideas about what I wanted to wanted to do. I didn't want to just sit here in the house all week long. I was trying to think of short little either like day trips or just like one night, maybe two night trips. I even had a big idea in my head at one point to take her to DC. She's never been there, and I'm really look forward to taking her to the place that I used to live because it is such a cool and unique place that I think it's cool that I know a lot about that town and how to get around and stuff. So I can't wait to take her and do that. But that plan fell through. Well, and I will just say another motivating factor was that I'm hearing so many other people have fabulous plans. I mean, I struggle with comparison in so many different ways. And it's funny, I was one of my friends, she and her family were going to Disney. Probably if I asked around, I'd probably know absolutely more than one family that went to Disney for spring break. Because from Charleston, South Carolina, Orlando is like, isn't it in Orlando, basically, right? It's probably about like an eight-hour car drive. So I mean, I mean, that's not fun, but that's not terrible. So a lot of people just hop on down there, and it's funny because growing up in my little small town in Virginia, I knew people that had been to Disney, but it really wasn't that common. I wasn't like a Disney princess girly. I still I have never been to Disney. That doesn't bother me. I mean, in a perfect world, do I want to go to Disney? Yes. Do I want to take my daughter? Hell yes. Just because she wants to go. I mean, but in my perfect world, we would be the only ones in the park. I don't really get it. Like, I don't get going to this place that it's probably a total pain in the ass to get in. Like, where do you park? You've probably got to park obviously so far away, or you have to spend a million dollars to stay in a hotel that's like connected to the whole thing. Then the tickets are crazy expensive. Oh, but you can upgrade and skip the line, and that's obviously even more crazy expensive. And then I feel like an elitist, and I kind of feel like that's wrong, but I guess that's just capitalism. And then it's already hot in Charleston. Like the weather here and there is pretty similar. So it's not like I'm going to Florida to be warm. I'm already used to and have to the the humidity hasn't started yet, but sometime in like mid-May is when the humidity starts kicking in in the Charleston area. I mean, right now it probably would have been lovely there this week. But I'm just saying, like a lot of people go in the summer. I do not want to go spend a bunch of money to wait in two-hour lines and be hot as balls. And I don't like the payoff is just not worth the struggle in my mind until the fact that my daughter does want to go. My daughter does love, she's growing out it. She's starting to, you know, think that like the Disney princesses are baby stuff. She has been like a, you know, wants to put her a princess dress on kind of girl. And living this close and having it be much more accessible than when I grew up. That's tough because so many more people that I know have been there. And a lot of people that I know have taken their kids multiple times by the time they're eight years old. I kind of have a goal to take her maybe for like her 10th birthday. So in two years, I know I need to start saving up my money now, maybe for our spring break in two years. Because poor thing, she is so her birthday is in early April, and so she's always going to be fighting Easter and spring break for attendance to her birthday. Poor thing. So leading up to spring break, I haven't made an official plan. Still trying to kind of feel things out. I've been checking on a couple of ideas, and then I have another friend that is going to this like fabulous resort in the Bahamas. I don't know. Comparison is a really hard thing in my life. And anytime that I start getting self-conscious that I am not worthy or could be seen as not being included, I get and there's certain like particular triggers, like the worst possible thing that someone could say to me is that I'm a poor hillbilly redneck. I know that none of those things are true, but we all have that thing that just touches a nerve, right? So leading up to that, I just I started seeing that I I like lashed out at one of my friends, and I just hate myself for doing that. And I lost a friend a couple of years ago through a long story series of events where yes, I said something weird, but you hope that your friends truly know you and like know when your words mean a lot and when they don't. Not that you should be able to just say whatever you want to say, but anyway, it was like the weird thing that I said was a tipping point for all this other stuff that I had no idea was brewing. That was one of the weirdest things that's ever happened to me, that a friend called me up and basically broke up with me. When I lashed out at a friend a couple weeks ago, that just and she so very rightfully called me out on it. And I'm so glad that she cared enough about our relationship to say, like, hey, check yourself, because she's the last person that I should be taking my insecurities out on. And I was just kind of having flashbacks of that feeling of a of losing a friend, but this time I did do something that was just wrong. I'm still processing that, and she and I have talked a little bit, not in person yet, and I'm very much looking forward to that. So I think we'll be okay, but I think that's something that happens that we don't often talk about is how that we it's kind of like how they say that the kids are the that the kids like act out most on with their moms because they know that that's the person, usually hopefully, that gives them the most comfort and gives them like the most obvious unconditional love. And so it's those people that you kind of give the worst stuff to because you feel like whatever you do, they'll love you. But I don't want to take that so far as and you can't with friends. That's not I like I snap at my mom a lot. God bless her. We're always fine, and you know, sometimes she snaps back at me, but you can't, that's not a friend relationship. I'm still working on that, still working that out, like processing it for myself, and I will be processing it with my therapist this afternoon, and with you guys, apparently. And hopefully I will get to talk with that friend soon, and I'll be able to earn her trust fully back because I don't want any of my friends to feel like, oh, is she in a good mood today or a bad mood? You know, like what am I gonna get today? I want my friends to know that they'll always get my just love and support and because that's what they deserve. I'll let you guys know if there's if I have any revelations there. So that was leading up to spring break, and I finally kind of pulled the trigger on some plans, literally, I think just two or three days before it was happening. But first, I want to tell you guys about a show that I've been watching. So a couple of weeks ago when I was having my sad Sally episode, and I'd said that you know, the biggest thing I'd accomplished was watching a TV series. That was true. And one of the ones that I watched was one of those that they released like half of the half of the season, which is so frustrating. That's just one new thing that all you Netflix people have figured out a way to get to us and our money. So I thought I'm gonna start watching something that I can just I don't have to wait on anything that's like it the it the series is like totally over. So I started watching Scandal, and I remember it being on a few years ago, and I'm sure I like caught a little bit of like I I kind of understood the basic premise, but I had never like really watched it, and I definitely had never like gotten into the storylines. I don't know, a week ago or so, I started watching Scandal, and oh it's so good. Oh my god, it's so good. So it's written and all that, like created by Shonda Rhimes, which god, some people are just a perfect storm of a human being, like Taylor Swift is a perfect storm of a singer. Shonda Rhymes is a perfect storm of a writer and like show creator. Everything she does is just gripping and such good storyline. Plus, living in DC, y'all, it really is kind of wild living there where there's just like black Lincoln town cars with blacked-out windows driving around everywhere. And that you're just like walking around, like they sh, you know, shot so many of so much of that show in and around DC. Like you see them at the Lincoln Memorial, you see them at the Air Force Memorial, which I used to live right across the street from. And you, you know, you just see them at all of these like really obvious places, and they're just in normal clothes and they're just sitting around talking. And I'm just saying, I think that is how real government works too, is that these people that are you know can't put stuff on in an email or a text message, you know, get together and just sit on a park bench and make huge decisions. Anyway, it's just wildly interesting to me. And I guess other than there's that element of it that's interesting to me, but also obviously the main storyline is this love and like sexual tension between Olivia Pope and the president. And I was just I guess I was kind of just in like a still in a little sad sappy mood whenever I started watching this, and you just they just they have so much. Okay, and y'all, I know they're not real people, but I'm gonna talk about them like these characters are real people, they just have so much chemistry between them that just looking at each other, just being close to each other feels like electricity, and I've known that experience before, and I miss that, and I want that. So, if what do I start doing? You guys are gonna start knowing the the routine soon. What do I do? I start thinking of all these things I want to say to Mr. DOD. Well, you would be very proud of me, and something that I have learned it probably in my midlife is to write the letter and then don't send it. Because you'll trick your brain into feeling like you got those feelings out, but then you're not humiliating yourself on the other end of that. And believe me, I've humiliated myself to him a couple of times that I've like sent him messages that haven't been responded to, and honestly, I'm okay with that because I'm okay with putting my truth out into the universe, whether a human responds to it or not. I think it's good and healthy for me to be putting it out there. So I start writing this letter, and then y'all get a notification on my phone for my daily horoscope from CoStar, which I talked about in a previous episode that I did astrology that I talked about astrology with you guys. And this is what it says. This is what my daily horoscope said that day. It said, all broken hearts heal eventually. It stopped me in my tracks. Totally stopped me in my tracks. It goes on to say, someone who promised to stay has left you questioning everything about how relationships work. Stop replaying their excuses. The problem wasn't your heart being too big, the problem was their hands being too small to hold it. I am so thankful for that message from the universe. And I mean, it stopped me. I stopped writing, and like the urge to get those feelings out and express them to the universe and to him stopped. And I hope it continues to feel that way. It's been a couple weeks now. I am like I think you got universe, whatever spirit you want to call it. I call it all those things at different times, and y'all, it also said it CoStar gives you three do's and three don'ts for your daily horoscope. And a lot of times I feel like they're like the most random, obtuse things, but they kind of crack me up a lot of times. So the the do's, they don't really make any sense. The don'ts say don't confessions, first dates. I don't know, there was no danger in that happening that day, and matching tattoos. And the matching tattoos is interesting because he has a matching tattoo with his fiance, and I mean, you just can't make some of this stuff up, right? I just that knocked my socks off, and I'm so thankful for it, and I'm just trying to really lean on that piece that that message gave me, and it's real, I've still it's helped me feel a little bit more hopeful about the future, and I just hope that feeling stays. Thank you, God, amen. Okay, that tied so many pieces of things that I've talked about on here together already. So I just had to tell you guys that story. But back to spring break. So I finally decided what we were gonna do for spring break. So we took, and I say we like my household, you know, me, my mom, dad took my daughter to the Biltmore estate for the first time. So that's about like a four-hour drive from Charleston, and it's a shorter distance from where I grew up. It's funny, it's probably just like I don't know, three hours from where I grew up. So I grew up going there a lot. Like, I think it was even like a field trip somehow with something at some point.

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So it felt cool to take her for the first time.

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And going back to that, like, you know, just traveling and experience thing with her, like we're getting to that point in her little life that she's going, she's much more mobile, and I don't obviously she's been like walking for years, but like she doesn't need like special food or special toys or something to keep her bit, you know, like she doesn't need all this like accoutrement that moms have to schlep around with them for the first several years of their child's life. And I mean, she can even like she can ride in a car without a car seat or booster seat or whatever now. She's very tall, so that's not a problem. So she's just so much more like you can just pick her up and put her down anywhere. It and that's like I didn't think about how amazing going into this phase would be, but it is, and then yeah, like she is going to remember all of this stuff. I mean, think about when you were a little kid, like what's your earliest memory? I think mine is probably when I was like six, five or six. I I mean it's hard because you've seen pictures, right? And so you kind of just get to a point where you don't know if it's a real memory or just because you've seen a picture so many times. I think at eight, we're it's we're pretty sure like you're gonna remember stuff from when you were eight. I mean, hell, that puts even so much more pressure, right? On like just doing activities and stuff. Anyway so we go to Biltmore. We stayed like in a little Airbnb in this little town Hendersonville that's like just like 15, 20 minutes away from Asheville, which is where the Biltmore estate is, and it was just so freaking cute. Like, intentionally looked for a place to stay that would be some kind of experience. So, like, she and I stayed in this loft upstairs where you had to like go up this spiral staircase, and it was like this little blue cabin thing, and there was a hot tub, and so we, you know, got in the hot tub both nights we were there and Just, you know, a change of scenery is so meaningful for a kid. Because, I mean, she's been in a hot tub before, but like that's still something that's like really amazing to her. Just every little new experience is so fun for them. So I'm so glad we did it. And we had gorgeous weather. It was a little on the chilly side, if anything. Gorgeous weather. Flowers, like the spring flowers at Biltmore, were not quite in peak yet. Overall, so fun. If you guys have never been, you should definitely go to the Biltmore. And Christmas time is kind of a even a whole other experience at Biltmore. They decorate, and I mean, it's just so gorgeous. So that's a whole other thing that I'm excited to take her to again, you know, either this year or in the future. I'm so glad that we, you know, actually got out and did something for spring break. And then now I feel like she'll have a little story to tell, you know, if she goes to school and it's like, what did you do on your spring break? Oh, I went to Disney. Oh, I went to the Bahamas. Then, you know, at least she can say, like, I saw a castle. Because the Biltmore is, I mean, I I think it's the closest thing to a castle and like, you know, not just the house, but like the grounds and stuff. I think it's the closest thing to a castle that we have in the US. So I'm really glad I got to give her an experience. And let's see, what else did we round out spring break with? Oh, so when we first moved into our current house at the end of last summer, I was a little nervous because we didn't move very far. We literally moved from the neighborhood, like beside our current neighborhood. You know, we could still do she'll she still go to the same school, same friends, can, you know, do the same play dates. But it's so important, I think, for when you're little to have friends like right around you that you can just go over to their house. And we had that a little bit in the other neighborhood. So I was nervous about that in our new location, but it only took a couple of weeks, and we met a little girl that's her age, and I'm friends with the mom, and I became friends with the mom, and they introduced us to this lady in our neighborhood that used to be an art teacher, and then she retired, and now she does these art classes out of her house. And yes, be jealous. This was the it was like the biggest sign to me that what I had done, you know, like consolidating our households and moving Caroline into a new house and, you know, slightly different location. It was probably the biggest indicator to me that that was the right decision was this was Miss Jill, the art lady. So she lives probably like not even a half mile down the street from from where we live. You can pick either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and I think she did Thursdays too during the school year for two hours after school. So from like four to six, you you know, pay, I think the going rate was kind of like around $25 or something a session, but you paid for it monthly. And you could do them all, I guess. Like you could sign your kid up for all week long, I guess, if you wanted to. I just signed my daughter up for the one that that her friend was going to every week, and it was just such a joyful thing. Like, Miss Jill is the sweetest, kindest, most talented person. She's just down the street. My daughter is meeting new friends in the neighborhood. She has something to do after school that's constructive. They like do whatever art projects that Miss Jill has for them, and then they play outside in the backyard. And I was just, it was so affirming to me. Well, Miss Jill has moved last Friday, the last day of spring break, was her last art camp, and my daughter went, and I just, you know, I don't know who's gonna miss her more, you know, me or my daughter, because it, you know, I felt so good about her having that activity to do. You know, I mean, parents, you know, you're you don't want to like overwhelm your kid with activities, but also you don't want them asking you every day when they get home from school, what am I gonna do now? Because I get that. So I like two or three days a week of her having something to do after school, I think is ideal. So I just really loved and valued that. And so shout out to Miss Jill. I know that your move is a good thing for you, and I'm very happy for you that you will be able to do that, but we will miss you very much, and I guess I'm gonna look for some sort of replacement, but it surely will never be as joyful and affirming as this experience has been. So I just wanted to say, I love that so much, and we're gonna miss her. Then over the weekend I had another experience where one of my friends said, one of my friends texted me and said, Do you want to go see the Savannah Bananas? You know, and she was like, Tickets are you know like $35 or something. I was like, Yeah, okay. Like I've never seen them before. I've wanted to see them, but I've but I haven't been willing to like enter a lottery. And I don't know if you guys have tried, my brother did, and they saw them, I guess it was like end of last summer in Charlotte at Bank of America Stadium. So yeah, the Savannah Bananas did a like stadium tour last summer. So then I'm thinking, why are they in Charleston? Because we do not have a stadium that's that big. Our baseball stadium, and that's you know, like that's I knew that that's where the game was going to be. Our baseball stadium, and I they said a number when when I was there that I didn't know beforehand, but apparently our baseball stadium has 6,000 seats or space, whatever. So I was thinking to myself, why in the world are they, you know, playing in front of 50,000 people last summer and 6,000 people this summer. So something felt a little sus, but I didn't question it. I mean, that's the kind of venues that they started in, and I know that they do still play in Savannah. So I went with it. Well, we got there, and she got the tickets through like her boss and her work and stuff, so we were going with her boss and other like people that she knows that she works with. So we got there, and we kind of like gradually started being like, Where's the Savannah Bananas stuff? We were seeing like all these merch tents and things. Y'all, it wasn't the Savannah bananas, it was banana ball, which is a very easy thing to you know get confused about. I don't blame my friend at all. But and apparently there's six teams in the banana ball league. I knew that there was like a whole special league because it's like who do they who they play? They don't play the Yankees, you know. If you guys haven't seen them online, look Savannah Bananas up because it's hilarious. It's I think Harlem Globetrotters kind of vibe where they do like trick things, but the whole banana, so I guess they like they started just being the Savannah Bananas, and now they had to like you know start other teams so that they could have other teams to play and blah blah blah. So now their league is called Banana Ball. Well, we found all this out once we got there on Saturday. So the teams that we were seeing were the loco coconuts of somewhere in Florida, and then the clowns out of Indianapolis, I think, except that because the players come out and mingle beforehand and after the game, you know, because like they're not like that famous. You know, we talked to one of the players, and he said they're all based in Savannah. It was like, huh? So I don't know how they've I don't know. I mean, the guy that started all that is like a business marketing genius, so whatever, dude. Like it's working out for him. But uh we thought it was a little confusing. So anyway, they do the game, just it's just like if you're seeing the Savannah Bananas, it's just called a different team, and it's you know, different people out there, but they're doing the same kind of thing that you see when you, you know, Google Savannah Bananas. So it was real entertaining, and our tickets were on this second row up behind the first baseline. So it was, you know, damn good seats. And I mean, yeah, we had a great time. It just was so funny because it wasn't what we expected. But if you have a chance to go see any of the banana ball teams, go do it. And I would highly recommend going to see, you know, like the other lesser-known teams that do the same fun stuff, especially if you have kids that again like may or may not totally remember this stuff. Anyway, search, look up banana ball, not necessarily just the Savannah bananas. The last thing that I'm gonna talk about today is really awful, tragic, sad news and sad thing that happened over the spring break. One of my new neighborhood friends, and when I met her, they like live behind us on a cul-de-sac behind us, so our girls can just go back and forth through like the backyard easement and you know, get to each other's houses. And I just I love that so much for them. You know, started getting closer with with my with my new neighbor friend. She has four kids, and you know, the youngest being my daughter's age, and the oldest being 18 or 19. I'm not sure of when her birthday is, but you know, she's always got a lot going on, and I'm always just amazed at how parents of two, three, four kids can keep up with the schedule and the activities and the lunches and the birthdays, and because I feel like my head is spinning with just one tiny human doing all those things to keep up with. You know, I always had like you know, I was just always amazed. And one of the first things that impressed me about her was that she was close with her kids, like they felt like they could come to her, and you know, she was like approachable with them, and that's you know, that's something that I think my best friend Melissa has done so well is that I think she's a parent, she's not just their friend, she's a parent, but there are still friends, you know. So the last few weeks, few months really, I guess, my friend's oldest son had been struggling and he had had some challenges in his young life in the last couple years. And last Tuesday of our spring break week, he decided he didn't want to be here anymore. So he's not. And, you know, then she can tell you guys whatever details she wants to. The only thing I can speak to is how it affected me. You know, I we were we were on our trip to North Carolina when I found out, and thankfully I did have stuff that was like in my face, like keeping my mind off of that news. But anytime that my anytime there wasn't like new information entering my brain, I my I would always kind of like go back to thinking about what had happened, and it's just so sad and so painful. And I guess as being a single parent to one child, you know, anytime that anything is very striking, you can only think of it through your point of view, right? And if anything ever happens to my daughter, like she's all I've got. And I just kept thinking, God, please protect her physically and emotionally and spiritually, because I can't lose her. And not that, not that my friend, not that it was not that it is any easier that she used to have four children and now has three, but I do think at least she has those three kids to live for. I guess I don't know. I'm just saying it's particularly scary to someone that only has one child. It's like you only have this one little precious egg, you just are trying so hard to protect that one chance that you have. When we got back on Thursday evening, my daughter and I went straight over to their house, and they're such social people. They always have people over at their house. I don't think I've ever quick so quickly met someone else's like whole circle of friends, you know. That's a really, you know, a huge gift. They're gonna have people around all the time. So my daughter and I went over, and you know, she was doing how you would expect a mother that had just lost a child to be doing, kind of just like getting through it like one sentence at a time. I just hate it for her so much. Please keep her and her family in your thoughts. So then that night, as my daughter and I were walking back home, my daughter asked, what happened to what happened to him? What happened to our friends, brother, son? I think I've said before, you know, I have a very firm policy with myself of telling my daughter the truth, because I just want her to always know that she can trust me and believe me. That is just of the utmost importance to me. And so when she asks me these hard questions that a kid of her age is not typically going to be able to process, I think I've done a fairly good job so far of being able to break down hard concepts into a simple and somewhat surface understanding for her at a level that she can kind of digest a little bit. I told her that he was really sad, he just didn't want to be sad anymore. Now he's not, and now he's in heaven because I do believe that there is, I don't know about golden streets, but I do believe that there is like an awareness in the afterlife. And I told her that if she was ever sad about something, that just please tell me, just please talk to me. It doesn't, it can be anything. It's uh she'll never get in trouble for telling me the truth. She's been, she's god, she is her emotional intelligence, is what I am most proud of her for, and what I am most proud of myself for instilling in her. So she's doing okay with it. She has asked a couple more questions, but most mostly she just has just told me that she feels sad for her friend and for her friend's mom and family and stuff, and she's been more clingy since then, and she's uh just she's a mama's girl, and I am so thankful for it. She always has been, but she's been more so in the past week, and I think that'll obviously it's just that's just what when an eight-year-old learns something hard about life, they're going to just want to be with what's most comfortable. That's normal. My mom went with me to the funeral yesterday, and it was beautiful. There were so many people. I knew there would be so many people. So we got there probably 20, 25 minutes before the start time, and it was already standing room only in the in the funeral home, and there were so many teenagers. He was 17. If I hadn't already said that, he was 17. He was a junior in high school, and he had so many friends. The thing I've said to a couple of people is God, it's just so wild how connected someone can be and still feel so alone in whatever they're struggling with. And it did give me a lot of peace about it. Just, you know, as I had told my daughter before, that he's not sad anymore, and I really believe that. We're sad that he's not here, but he's not sad anymore, and I think that's comforting, and I think it should be comforting, and oh, we went in and we were standing beside a woman that had a little baby in a stroller, and I mean this the baby was probably maybe nine months, maybe not quite even. And it was a little boy, and so I just oh, that was that tore me up because I just thought, oh my god, like you just you don't know, like you have this little, you have you make this little thing. I think I've said before on here that it's like you find out as a parent, you find out that all the cliche things are true. And I think the saying that has uh that describes it best is having a child is like having your heart walk around outside your body. I'm looking at this little baby and it's just so sweet and so perfect and so innocent. And you make this thing, you grow this little human in your body, and then it's your job to help them along their way. And and I think a lot of life really is just the luck of the draw. Like this kid just his brain and his heart worked in a way where he felt things deeper than some of us do. I think that my friend did everything she possibly could. You know, I I know that as humans, anytime that we hear bad news, we it's a coping mechanism to distance ourselves from the person that's in that situation to think like, well, you know, I would have done this or I would have done that. But I think she did everything she possibly could. And you just still there's just still such a big element of this little egg is out there and it's gonna get some cracks along the way, and sometimes you can't put them all back together, and it's just so hard. But I know that she feels like this has given her life purpose in a lot of ways. It will still be hard, always. It reminded me, I feel like no one gets through high school without at least one like really tragic thing like that happening. Like that scene of seeing all these teenagers at this funeral home. It it's so unnatural. I experienced that. It was for me, it was one of my friends, he died in a car wreck the year after we graduated high school. And he had so much, he was like going to school on a baseball scholarship. He just he just had the sweetest heart, and we had been friends for so long, and it just feels like such a loss. I remember thinking then, and it applies now too, that I think some people are just they're just meant to be here for just a little while. It's like some people are meant to cause change, and some people are here to be changed. I don't know. That's just a way that it helps me make a little bit of sense of really awful and hard stuff. That's where we are. This was a roller coaster of an episode. We were really high, we were really low, and that's how life is, right? This is the midlife mess. Here we are. I hope you guys will have a good next week and get caught up on the episodes if you are not already. We'll see what happens next week. Thanks, guys. Bye. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Midlife Mess. If something in this episode resonated with you, please share with your family and friends and subscribe so you won't miss new episodes every Wednesday. Please also go to my website, themidlifemass.com, where you can connect with me and find out more about how you can support the show and get some cool discounts. And of course, you can follow along on Facebook and Instagram at the midlife mess pod. And please rate and review the show on your streaming platform of choice. Thank you guys so much. Now go be your best man. Bye.