Burnt Pasta

I want to thank you guys for last week, you commented privately or on Facebook or YouTube, and I just really appreciate it. The whole idea is for me I want to share my story, respectfully, but honestly and vulnerably to mirror you, and to open up conversation and for all of us to understand that we all are on a path of finding our best self, our higher self, a truer self, and one that’s filled without judgment and, and honesty, so thank you.

So, this story today is, it’s a tough one. However, I do feel it’s important to share because this was my moment of breaking open, and I call it my “Burnt Pasta”. In 2012, actually right around this time in 2012, I had been separated for a year, and thought everything was going fine. I think it was probably really angry, and I had discovered that my ex-husband at the time was starting to see someone, and it devastated me. It was super, super tough, it was really tough because she was a family friend, a colleague, and my children, you know, she knew my children, she adored my children, and so there were so many things, and, and she was a lot younger. And we had a lot of things in common, and it was just really, really tricky.

I understand a lot of things now, but at the time, I couldn’t see it. I’d also just completed two fitness competitions, and one of them I’d done really well in, and it put me in the newspaper, on social media and through that, it had according to…it had embarrassed people. My mother wasn’t speaking to me, my children were, it was tough to go to school, my oldest was in high school and it was embarrassing, and, and then I had started this program called the “Soul Sisters”. And the Soul Sisters was a specifically, just a women’s only program. It was new to my business, and I was being told it was ruining my business, and so I stopped it. And so I started it, and stopped it.

So, there was so many things. I had felt at that time that I had ruined my marriage, it was 100% my fault. I was not parenting well, I was making bad choices, and you know, and my family was upset with me, my extended family was upset with me. And I really was feeling like good God Andrea, you have totally screwed up, in a life that quite frankly, I was 41, I had lived a lovely life, I thought I had a great marriage, and I thought, you know, I’d raised these four amazing kids, but at that point in my life, I felt the lowest that I’ve ever felt in my life.

And so, I’m trying to one night make dinner, and I put the spaghetti on to cook and I leave. I had at that point had been very, very, mindless, I couldn’t remember things, I wasn’t eating, I was super stressed all the time, had an awful pit in my stomach all of the time. Anyways, however, the alarms went off in the house, and I ran to the kitchen, and so did all my children and I burnt the pasta. I’m Italian, Italians don’t burn pasta, and, and I just turned it off I walked out of the house. I am, I went down to, my parents have a little cottage close by, and I went there, told nobody, didn’t bring a phone, and I sat there, and I cried and cried and cried. I cried so much that I felt drunk. I felt delirious. I felt very wobbly.

And I cried and cried and cried until it was like pitch black dark. And in that time, I realized that I was doing more harm to my children, then good. I felt, at the time, that my husband was in a better state than me, he was happy, he was with somebody who loved my children. And I felt that they could do a better job than me and my presence was creating pain to my children.
So I, I made a plan right then and there, that I would leave. I would bring the children to him tomorrow, and then I would pack up my car, and I would drive West. I felt I could bartend. I felt that was something I could do. I could be social but then I could be distant, and I and I felt that that’s what I deserved.

And ahh…it’s tricky. So, I made this decision and I was super, super clear. I had it all in points, as to how I would do it and what I would do, and, and so I stood up to leave, with my plan. And here is the craziest thing, a voice, a thought, a something came to me, and all it said was, “this is not how it’s going to end Andrea. This is not how it’s going to go.” It was either go or end, and it was clear enough, and intense enough for me to, to know that that was truth. It was the clearest thing I had heard or felt in a really, really long time.

So, I got up, drunk, feeling drunk, went home, walked into my house with my children, oh so frantic and so sad, and scared, and I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was that I was here, I was staying, I was, this was where I needed to be. And so then, that was the beginning that’s what I call my breaking open moment. And that breaking open moment, how I understand it now, six years later was, was, I broke open, I broke out of judgment, I broke out of self loathing, and I realized that as messy as I was, maybe this was who I really was, and this is who I needed to be. To be a better mother, to go through the dredges of creating a program like the Soul Sister Program that opens up conversation and allows women to be themselves without judgment.

And I also learned then that I needed to stop blaming, I need to stop blaming my ex-husband, I needed to stop blaming what was happening in the world, I needed to stop asking why this happened. I needed to stop. I need to start owning my shit and that was my breaking open, and when you break open, what I understand, and have learned is light comes in. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve changed, I’ve stayed the same, I’ve appreciated who I was then, and who I am now. I’m a better mom, I’m a better friend now, and I have I have a great relationship now.

I’m telling you this story because it’s, it’s dear to me, and it is, it’s, it’s, it’s tough because I think to have those moments, to have those moments that you hang out on your kitchen floor, and they’re super, super tough, and you don’t think you can get up, you don’t see your purpose. I really encourage you to get up, take your time, love yourself and understand that as ugly as life can be, that if you listen and believe in yourself, and believe that you’re here for greater good, you, you will see. Give it time.

I told my children this story two years ago, it was tough. They sat there, and they couldn’t get it, they went through, we went through this, all of this with the therapist, and the therapist had explained me as a super mom, they didn’t see a lot of emotion other than frustration, a lot, when we were younger. And, but she explained me as a super mom because I just did everything, and just kept going, and I was clear and they were directed and everything else, and then they saw their supermom crash. And it was super, super hard on them.

However, I told them this story because I wanted my kids to know that you can crash, and that life isn’t easy, life is hard. Life can be beautiful, life can be easy, but life can be hard. And that sometimes when those hard moments come, you need to sit, you need to believe in yourself, you need to love yourself, and you need to know that you gotta get up. And then by getting up you’re going to be stronger and you’re going to, you’re going to move to that greater place. And yeah.
So I hope that this sheds a moment of “aha” with you, and if it doesn’t today, maybe it will tomorrow, or next week or next year, but I wish you much strength to move forward, and then to find your best self. And to find your soul, and to listen to it, and believe that life is moving you to a greater place even that ugly, even in that mess.

Hang in there, find your soul and your sunshine.

Thank you