. Tribe Up .

When you're standing on the edge and the sand fills in between your toes and the cool water of the ocean washes over your ankles, you can see it coming. You can see it building, the powerful churn of the clear waves pushing towards you. You have a second to widen your stance, to stiffen your knees, and to prepare. And even when you see it rise up, you still have a moment to decide. 

Do you stay and let it hit you? 
Or do you jump back, out of the path of the current? 

The last time I was at the ocean, I stood next to The Brother on a cliff. Waves crashed below us and it was thrilling to stand on the ledge. He put his arm around my waist, half in a gesture of affection, but  mostly to steady me, to bring comfort to himself. A little safety in the form of a big brother.

When I think about bad days? I think about that day out on the cliff. 

You don't see bad days coming like you see waves rolling in. 

But when they come, I imagine myself still stiffening in response. Lowering my head to shield my eyes from the spray and clutching my hands together from the shocking cold hitting my shins. 

I think about having to brace myself. 

Mary Mary and I were talking the other day about our greatest insecurities and mine is that people won't think that I'm smart. I tell you this for one specific purpose: 

This weekend, I felt so. damn. dumb. 

Multiple times. Like more than once. Like MAJORLY more than once. 

Now. Listen. I get it most of the time. I really do. I still laugh at people falling in videos (clarification: I will ALWAYS laugh). I like expensive handbags. I'm blonde. I snort when I laugh. I get excited about puns, and I always tell people that I'm terrible at math (probably because I did my algebra homework next to my genius-aerospace-engineer-two-master's-degrees-in-back-to-the-future-shit brother every night). I don't really love to get dirty, and I will turn my nose up - literally - turn my nose up at any food that I feel like might have the slightest bit of fish in it. 

Sometimes people like to automatically assume that I don't have my biz together. And whatever, right? This is where I should tell you that it doesn't really matter what other people think. But it does. 

Women are hard on each other. We are really good at making each other feel like we're not enough. 

Like we're not good enough. 

Whatever enough. 

And there were a couple of times this weekend where that feeling pressed down so hard on me that my heels probably sank a little into the wet ground I was standing on. And you know what? It all just kept rolling in. Saturday bled into Sunday, and Sunday through Thursday morning was just the biggest hot mess I've seen go down in a long, long time. 

On Monday, Mary Mary brought me a Diet Mountain Dew and told me I was perfection.

On Tuesday, Bestie Betsy stood so firmly in my corner that I had no other option but to turn around back to the ring. 

On Wednesday, there was a card from BFF Suzy in my mailbox that read Kick Ass Mode Activated on the front, and on the inside, she wrote that I was sparkly. Because sometimes a girl needs that kind of reminder. Hutty and I rapped to Weird Al and I started to believe that grit was the only way to find grace. 

And on Thursday? The Boyfriend was a calm, confident presence when he knew (more than even I did) that I would need it the most. 

Momma Merz is coming home in two weeks, BFF Amber offered to get drunk with me, and you know what? It's finally the weekend.  

Sometimes weeks are just bad. 

Sometimes, you mentally just throw your hands up in the air, stare down the next round of crap hurtling towards you, and say, "Why the hell not?" 

And it's there - during the storms of the worst weeks - when you look around and you see the rest of your tribe standing with you on the cliff. 

Helping you shield your eyes from the spray. 

And teaching you to gracefully dance in the waves. 

xoxo, B.