New Adventures for Team Adventurers
I became a single mom when I was 32 years old; my kids were 2 and 4. It was not the easiest of times. In fact, it was probably the hardest year of my entire life. And if I’m going to be honest, I did not handle it well. But I kept things going. I kept us in routine. I kept us fed. I kept us clothed (well, mostly – 2 and 4 years like to strip).
Six years later, their dad died by suicide. I was a bit older and a bit wiser and I think I handled things a bit better. I got us to therapy. I got us talking. I got us finding joy.
Today, ten years after that, both kids are moving out of our family home to attend college.
Somewhere between becoming a single mom and a solo mom, I decided that our little family needed a team name. I was trying to reinforce the idea that as a family unit, we needed to work together. That every member was important and valued and had a responsibility to the team; mainly to be kind. Because we tended to embrace life as a series of adventures, we decided upon Team Adventurers. It fit.
I created a blog about us and routinely wrote about everyday adventures. I hadn’t written regularly since high school, and it was a balm to the hardships of life that I had forgotten about. I wrote about our never-ending battle with lice, my confessions of being a reluctant hockey mom, and later, I wrote about our healing after the death of their father.
These were all incredible moments and stories. But it’s the things not mentioned that I remember most.
I remember how we sometimes wore our toques to bed because I could not manage to keep the house warm enough, but we never missed a night of bedtime stories.
I remember how we used to put milk bags in their leaking boots to save money but it would never stop us from sliding across precariously ice-covered puddles on the sidewalk.
I remember the spell we used to recite whenever we turned on our old tube tv coaxing it to work, the spell getting longer and longer every time as the static slowly subsided.
And now as I look around my emptying house, I am so damn proud of each of us. We have all gone through obstacles that could have very easily left us too broken to continue. But we’ve worked though it, leaned on each other, and laughed our asses off instead.
We are still a team. We not disbanding. Instead, we are expanding our playing fields. Team Adventurers will continue to have adventures and seek joy and love life.
xoxo,
Erica (mom)
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Erica Richmond, the founder of Open Sky Stories believes that words have the power to provide connection & healing. She offers a variety of writing workshops and 1:1 mentoring. Erica has published three books: Pixie and the Fox, Pixie and the Bees and The Mail Art Stories Project: Mail Art in the Time of Covid-19.
She lives in Peterborough, Canada finding adventures in everyday life.
Follow Erica on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and real-life stories.
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