I’m Haley. Book midwife (editor), author, and single mom of four. Consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my family and gain access to exclusive content:
It’s my 40th birthday today! If you’d like to say happy birthday, consider becoming a paid subscriber to this Substack.
I saw my owls the other day. They’ve been around more often lately: two enormous barred owls that swoop over my yard, stopping to sit imperiously above me in the ancient live oak that stretches its ghostly arms over my house.
I call them mine because they seem to have embraced the role of being my eerie guardians who first revealed themselves when I was holding vigil with my grief last summer. They are a pair, but mostly took turns sitting with me in the darkness as I waited for the dawn on my front porch swing. They even began to swoop down and stare at me from the grass about 10 feet away, huge eyes that should have been unsettling but were somehow comforting. When an owl looks directly at you, it feels like they’re staring into your soul. So I have decided to believe that they know all about everything: my pain, my resurrection, my challenges and that they return every so often to keep tabs on the situation because they feel somehow responsible for my well-being.
As my 40th birthday approached, they’ve been visiting me almost daily which I appreciate because my emotions about this anniversary of birth have been mixed. “Thank you for checking on me,” I tell them. “I’m ok…but please come back tomorrow.”
As I greet the dawn this morning on my birthday, I am pleased to note that I am still the kind of person who talks to owls and has romantic notions about them being intentionally sent to guard me by Divine Providence in times of trouble. But heavens, how I’ve changed in this decade.
I remember my 30th birthday pretty vividly. Hildie wasn’t born yet. We had recently bought our house in Waco, TX after moving off the farm post-internship. We went to our neighborhood Mexican restaurant for breakfast and then saw a movie downtown at the historic theatre. And I felt like: Wow! I kinda have it all together! Marriage, kids, house, first book contract. Everything is going great!
I would have been devastated to know that in a decade my marriage would end after suddenly discovering it had never been what I believed it to be, that this central binding relationship was hurting me, that I would be a single mom of four. But I sit on my porch swing this morning, not feeling at all devastated, just contemplative, grateful, surprised.
I want to share a bit about some recent revelations and changes in my life, but I also want to protect my children’s privacy so thank you for understanding that the rest of this post is behind a paywall.