Tenacity!

reflectionsofthenorth

At the gym today, the husband of a friend of mine came up to me as i was running on the treadmill. He engaged me in friendly conversation & asked me questions about how things were going with my goals, etc. As we ended our conversation, he said: "girl, you have'Tenacity'"!

My first reaction in my mind was.... isn't 'tenacity' something negative? It certainly seemed in our conversation that he was 'paying me a compliment'... but ???

Well, it perked my curiosity & i had to go home and look up the actual meaning of 'tenacity'.

Here is what i found & almost instantly, the emotions welled & the tears began to flow...

With one small word-all of a sudden, the past 10 years of my life, and the life of my children, flashed before my eyes as i read the meanings and definations of Tenacity/Tenacious

• The quality or state of being tenacious; as, tenacity, or persistency, of purpose

10 years ago, this May-i became a single mother. In that first year, of the 10, it was a struggle to find the 'self' that i had lost in the 6 or so years of marriage to an abusive man. I hated who i had let myself become. I missed 'me' & knew that i had to find her. My 'tenacity' & 'persistency of purpose' at that time was to find that girl I had lost in the chaos. I knew she was in there somewhere... I was desperate to find her again. Determined. I was Determined to be the best Mother i could be to my two children, and to give them the life that they deserved or I thought that i could give them. It was going to be a long hard road; and in order to do that... I needed to find 'me' again. Succcess.

• That quality of bodies which keeps them from parting without considerable force; holding together-cohesiveness


• holding fast, cohesive/coherent: sticking together
  

On my road in finding that girl i had lost, i was also discovering & learning new rolls & responsibilities of being a single Mother. It was hard. There wasn't, nor is there still, anything more important to me then my two children in my life, except for the fact that the three of us were a family. We had to stick together-"I" had to keep us together. It was my responsibility. It was also my responsibility to give them the best life i knew how. It was beyond important, my job of 'holding us together'. That was my job. I needed to be that cohesiveness.

I left a broken life for one that was much improved over the the one I had left behind, even though it meant starting over as a single mother. Starting over period. Life. I felt safer & I was free. It was a new beginning, and we had to start from square ONE. Life continued to improve as that girl I had lost so long ago began to emerge from hiding, determined to hold us togher & have a better life. There were challenges & hard obstacales in the way many times, but one foot went in front of the other.

• dogged: stubbornly unyielding; "dogged persistence"; "dour determination"; "the most vocal and pertinacious of all the critics"; "a mind not gifted to discover truth but tenacious to hold it"- T.S.Eliot

I was definately unyielding in this effort, and for sure my own worst critic. Although i have a wonderful & supportive family, that I couldn't have survived without,-i have worked very hard & have been very determined & persistant in gaining what I knew that not only my children deserved, but what i deserved as well. Took me a long time to believe that i deserved good things, but i know that now.

• The greatest longitudinal stress a substance can bear without tearing asunder

There have been many trials since, and many things that i have tried to, 'tear asunder'. I have always come out on top-no matter how hard it was to fight for. I am proud.

I am a proud Mommy, and I am proud of what i have been able to accomplish. In recent years, I have accomplished many new goals and have been able to accomplish many things-to help me grow personally. Those have been hard too, and i have worked very hard to achieve those goals. I will continue to achieve them; and continue in reaching new heights and new goals while our little family grows. I am proud of what i have accomplished.

If you think you can... you will! I knew i could! --Jodi Allen Ü

So, as Oprah would put it, it was my "A-HAaa" or lightbulb moment....

.... I. have. T E N A C I T Y! sweet!

I don't think that he could have paid me a greater compliment.