Living Happily Ever After
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Blog Articles

It’s Really About Moving On

Date: October 1, 2013  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Life is really about moving on.” (Oprah)

The unexpected life moves on.

And eventually becomes…your life.

This summer marked four years living mine: four years that I have lived in Utah, four years since I began living in a completely different world than the one I inhabited before, and I confess, I’ve spent four years looking out my window at the beautiful mountains of Utah County, admiring their rocky and jagged beauty, remembering the comfort and strength I took from them as a college student and taking those same feelings about them into the life I live now. A part of me has even considered them my personal barrier of safety from the horror I left in Colorado.

And then, a few months ago,  I realized it has been FOUR YEARS. Unconsciously or not, I’ve spent the past four years on this side of those mountains. Safely and far away from “terrible” Colorado. I didn’t tell anyone that’s how I felt or that that’s what I was doing, but it was. I haven’t set foot in the Centennial State I left it in the rear view mirror of my used Subaru July 13, 2009.

I’ve been invited to visit. There are people there that I love and miss. But there has been NO WAY I would ever return to the hard things I endured before I moved to Utah. I’ve stayed WELL away.

And then one day my husband looked at me and said, “Lets go to Colorado. It’s time you go back.”

I was stunned.

There is NO WAY I would ever go back.

Or is there?

Don’t Tell Women Your Secrets

Date: June 3, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Am I now supposed to go on Oprah and cry and tell you my deepest, darkest secrets because you want to know?” (Kevin Spacey)

In a word? Yes. Especially if you’re a 5th grade boy.

My middle son just completed the 5th grade today. He learned a lot this year, academically as well as socially, including some important life lessons. For instance, I’ll never forget the day he came home and said, with complete disgust, “Mom! NEVER tell women your secrets!”

I was somewhat offended. I mean, I know I’m very open with what I share on this blog, but I would never betray a trust of confidence placed in me, whether it be from a stranger, a friend, a family member or even an enemy (although I hope I don’t have any of those!) I never have and I never will. My children, of all people, should know that.

And then it hit me. This is my boy with a lot of personality and dazzling blue eyes. He has had girls chasing him (one even paid him coins every time he’d go to her house to play!) since kindergarten. I hoped I wasn’t right in my suspicion, but I had a sinking feeling he’d been a little too honest about something regarding the opposite sex.

“Uh, oh!” I said. “You didn’t tell a girl which girl you like, did you?” Everyone knows not to do that, don’t they?

“How did you know?” he asked.

“Just a guess, but now you know: NEVER do that,” I replied. “I’m sorry, I thought you knew that.”

“But mom, SHE asked me for the information,” he explained. “She PROMISED me she wouldn’t tell anyone, and then she went RIGHT to the girl and told her!”

“And?” I asked.

“And now the girls who like ME are mad!” he said. “NEVER tell women your secrets!” A very poignant lesson. And he stormed off to take his frustration out on the trampoline. He did some wicked flips that day.

“Dolphins. They think they’re so cute. ‘Oh, look at me, I’m a flippy little dolphin, let me flip for you.’” (Chum, “Finding Nemo”)

Just don’t tell a girl who you’ve flipped for…if you’re an 11-year-old boy!

A very important life lesson to learn.

Anti-Aging Secret of The Unexpected Life

Date: October 17, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Appearance is something you should definitely consider when you’re going out. Have your girlfriend clip your nails or something like that.” (Usher Raymond)

Appearance. Many times, it’s everything (as far as shallow standards go.) And no time does it seem to suffer more, in my opinion, than in an unexpected life.

I see women receive makeovers after life changing events: having a baby, losing weight, when the youngest child goes to college, re-entering the workforce, etc…But one I’ve never seen, yet is probably needed more than any other time, is after someone is handed an unexpected life on a platter of darkness and devastation. Sort of like I was. Where is the free makeover when you’ve been dealt not just one major life change, but many, all in one moment? Where is a complimentary makeover when you really need one and for the first time, have no money at all to pay for help with your appearance? Where is Oprah, Good Housekeeping, or What Not To Wear when you need them?

Sadly, in my experience, there is no free makeover for the unexpected life geared to improve the way the way you look. But I’m starting to believe if you hold on long enough, things can improve on their own.

One of my aunts called the other day to tell me she is particularly struck by how young I look–now. (That is always welcome news in your 40s!) She said she couldn’t believe how carefree, happy and how much younger I appear. She isn’t the only person who has mentioned that to me. So many people have commented to me about that, I finally asked my sister, “What did I used to look like?”

Without missing a beat, my sister said, “Defeated and exhausted. But how could you have looked anything else with all you were living through and going through?”

I guess I thought I was a better actress than I’d actually been. I had no idea anyone could see through the fake smiles I shared, day after day, month after month, for awhile. I had tried so hard to “look” like everyone else only to find out, after the fact, that my performance wasn’t an astounding success; it wasn’t as convincing as I’d hoped.

I do remember at the time I was unexpectedly thrust into my unexpected life, in the throes of shock and grief and fear and trying to stay afloat in the sinking ship that had become reality for me and my children, looking in the mirror and thinking, for the first time in my life, that I looked like an “old bag”: old, faded, wrinkled, blah, tossed aside, alone, past my prime and with not a lot going for me any more.

I guess when you lose everything in a single moment, the shock and devastation that is indescribable takes a serious toll on your appearance!

But I also think as you get a handle on your unexpected life, and seek to find happiness and joy anyway, it is also manifest in your appearance.

So forget those expensive anti-aging creams and potions.

Choose to be happy in whatever life you’re living, whatever the unexpected life you’ve got, and I believe eventually you’ll look younger too.

“How things look on the outside of us depends on how things are on the inside of us.” (Unknown)

I hope I’m living proof of that.