Scrolling Back: A Recap of the Year That Almost Took Me Out
What in the actual fuck was that?
2023 I mean...
Well, if we're being honest with ourselves, it's been a fuckery since 2020. A fuckery that we have all been stumbling our way through. But got daymn. This last year really fucked some shit up in my life, while simultaneously gifting me with some of my biggest manifestations to date. Let's unpack.
But incase you're new here let's get you up to speed.
I'm Molly, yes Meek is my real last name.
My mom always said she worked really hard on naming me because she felt like I was going to be famous someday 😅🙃☁️🥂
But I haven't had my breakthrough yet.
I am a 35 year old single mom to an almost 9 year old (Pisces giorl) that assumed the title 'divorcee' in 2017 after being married for 5 years, when our daughter was only 2. I was single and dated myself (in between fuck boy situationships) for 3 years before meeting my now boyfriend, Ian. A literal saint. (more on him later) that I have been with for almost 4 years now♥️
I have been in the beauty industry since 2009 and went to college for Holistic Health prior to that, to become a life coach. Life lifed though and I wasn't able to finish my major so I moved back home (literally only 55 Miles and one left turn) to enroll in cosmetology school, - which was my first plan, follow your gut sis. That bitch be knowing shit!!
But, since my divorce I reinvested in my certifications and have been coaching and consulting women online and in person at retreats for the last 7 years.
Turns out both skillsets come in handy as most of you babes can attest- we treat our hair stylist like a therapist and be telling them shit we could never tell our Moms about.
However the last decade of my career in the beauty industry, I spent owning salons and mentoring 100's of younger stylists as they began their own career
I always saw my end game as living a luxurious life, owning salons(yes plural) in Columbus OH, building my empire one brick and mortar at a time.
2023 was the year that wrecked those dreams for me, and the reminder I needed that I don't always know what's best.
It's important to revisit dreams that are no longer in alignment with what we truly want.
And what did I want? To build a life with a man who loved me unconditionally, that my daughter could witness, to break generational patterns while impacting and inspiring the lives of millions of women.
Which didn't have to be limited to Columbus, I guess
Sometimes life has to crumble in order to rebuild itself on a stronger foundation.
And fuck did I crumble last year.
It was the worst and best year of my life.
Let's recap shall we?
January
Psh. If that bitch could see me now, she wouldn't believe the year we've had. As Always, had such high hopes when the ball dropped. And like why I gotta do me like that, every year. I- like most, set myself up for disappointment with unrealistic expectations and this year was no different. (This is also why I don't set resolutions, only intentions & truly come to life in the spring with the equinox but that's an another blog for another time)
But the year started off raw dogging me, as I started out financially struggling and dodging apartment evictions at my old place in Columbus.
January was my first full month in my new salon space after downsizing from my 3 story, corner store front on High St in downtown Columbus Ohio.
I had a huge awakening when it came to how I wanted to operate my salons and what was best for my and my actual aligned dreams.
They new space felt so right, so justified and necessary as I had officially decided that come summer I was moving to that state up north. (for those of you - like me who give zero fucks about sports... I moved from one college rival state to another and people have such loud opinions on the matter 😂) But it was going to be so nice having a smaller salon to return home to and run from Michigan.
February
Feb is always a special month, as it's my daughters birthday. She turned 8, though she is going on 28! And it's Ian and I's anniversary. Incase you are new new here- Ian is my boyfriend, which is the reason I moved to Michigan. He is finishing residency - think grey anatomy szn 3 & no he is not in school, as many people think- he is an actual doctor going through his general surgery program that is necessary for him to practice on his own in a few years. It's a 5 year program and we did long distance his first 2 years.
Well more like our whole relationship has been long distance since we swiped right on bumble in 2020, when he was finishing med school in West Virginia.
But during February I was getting into the routine of working with a smaller group of stylists again. I went from a team of 10+ to just 3 of us in a matter of months. Which was breathing life back into my soul.
I was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel again but the bills and broken salon leases were piling up and I still found myself barley getting by as I was still living in fear of being evicted, yet again.
However the glimmer for Feb 23' was watching one of my best friends, who was a previous stylist at my bigger salon, spread her wings and soar as she opened her own salon after 3 years of mentoring under me.
March
The month things started to become real. I officially announced my move to the public and started preparing my clients for our new reality. Where I would come back every 6-8 weeks to do my OG clients hair while I would referr the rest of my them to my stylists and friends who also own salons in the Columbus area.
What I didn't expect was the majority of my clients looking for a new stylist immediately and not even waiting until I left.
I started hunting for places to live in Detroit, and found the perfect condo. I booked moving trucks, and scheduled utilities to be shut off in a couple months as we had officially set my move date as May 31st.
I even toured salons in the metro Detroit area, looking for somewhere new to call home once I moved.
This prompted lots of deep convos with Ian, and my daughter Hadley (we call her Hads)
The kind that are uncomfy, but necessary for growth.
This is when we knew were on the same page and wanted to make forever a thing, as I was making major life changes to ensure we could start building an aligned life, not two separate ones in two separate cities, in two separate states.
April
During April, I began seeing major results from my semi glutide (ozempic) that I had started 8 months prior to help with weight, hormone and blood sugar management. It was changing my life & giving me more energy.
I began selling everything from my apartment in Columbus to downsize, and make moving easier. It started feeling so empty and surreal.
April was when my daughter, Hads got braces, and we started stacking her social calendar as she only had a couple months left of school & time with her friends in Ohio. We had more big conversations and tried to emotionally prepare ourselves for the shift as best we could.
This was also another month of avoiding evictions, and waking up one am to someone breaking into the back of my jeep to steal my golf clubs
It felt like the first tower moment that took a piece of my soul with it. I was already struggling so much financially and stressed about the future, to have this burden piled ontop of everything else felt dibilitating in the moment.
I began applying to dozens of jobs a day on indeed as I knew moving away from my salon would immediately decrease my income to basically zero. I wanted to find some full time remote positions to help the transition. I was in a constant state of tears and fear from this day on
As if April wasn't fucked enough, it was the month my best friend and her husband birthed and lost their first born son within a matter of weeks. It was a rare heartbreaking disease that shatter the hearts of all of Columbus tbh. 🌈
I hated April.
May
May, my apartment was practically empty aside from my bedroom and the minimalistic closet I had downsized to after selling what felt like all my life assets.
It was also the month Columbus had a massive spike in shootings and as my salon, daughters school, and our home was all within 4 blocks of one another in the heart of The Short North there was no avoiding them.
One night when I was out with friends (during one of millions of goodbye parties they threw me that month) I was walking home when one of them took place and had just left the area only minutes prior, after listening to my gut to go home hours before I ever planned to. (See, she be knowing shit)
My salon was blocked off and for weeks a huge police tower sat outfront of it as the city increased precautions and enforced curfews.
This was the month I attend my best friends, new borns funeral. Which is a memory I will never be able to erase from my minds eyes and I promise you there is nothing more sad than a baby sized casket and watching your best friend's whole life collapse before your eyes.
The one glimmer of light that came for me in May was that I found a part time, remote social media management position for a Early Childhood Education Center that was located in the metro Detroit area , where I would be moving to at the end of the month.
As the month came to a close, my friends threw me the best parties, my daughter Hads and I spent our last Columbus days going to all our favorite places to eat.
My clients and I cried and some even showered me with gifts as we knew it would be goodbye for most, and see you someday for a select few.
I threw a going away party for my daughter and all of her friends, as she finished out her last week of 2nd grade at her private Montessori school a block from our complex.
I felt like the queen of Columbus that last week, as my friends, brand partners (I've been creating content for 5 years for companies) treated me like royalty with gifted services and amenities! (Like lip filler, makeup sessions + photo shoots and car detailings) It was truly the silver lining in a year thus far that felt like hell. (felt, key word - hell would actually consume me the following month)
May 31st - my friends all came to help me load my Uhal and my cousin drove it north for me. Once we made it to Michigan we had to not only unload it (my condo has 52 stairs 😱🫠) we had to go move my boyfriends furniture from his place, to our place, as he was still in surgery and didn't get home our first night, that night until 11pm.
June
I woke up June 1st alone in my beautiful condo, in the middle of the living room, with my mattress on the floor as Ian had already left for work. Felt so surreal. I had the whole first week to myself before my daughter arrived with my parents the following weekend. I spent my days applying for more jobs, unpacking and decorating what felt like a new castle.
Hads and I spent the coming weeks exploring. Detroit and its surrounding area is truly mezmorzing in the summer and I felt like the main character in my own Netflix series. One who just moved to a new city leaving behind everything she thought was anything
I made new friends and even acquired a couple hair clients, making finding a salon space here more of a priority. I had connected with a local salon owner the month before I moved and we finally met up and immediately hit it off and I had intended to rent a chair at his new 2nd location which was a booth rental open concept salon (like my last large salon) when it opened later that summer.
June felt like a sigh of relief (momentarily- yes that's foreshadowing 😢) as I spent most of it hosting friends that visited, going to concerts with Ian, and being a patient for a botox clinic of his, perks of living in the same city finally. We did the most millennial couple thing ever and couldn't wait to join Costco. Our place was really starting to come together.
I was no longer dodging evictions but that's only because I now was in the presence of a partner that was a supportive provider and able to split lots of things we both had originally been paying fully
I traveled back home a couple times for clients weddings, but my whole world stopped spinning when I was driving back to Michigan on June 30th.
I was on 23, almost to 75 when my aunt called me.
My heart sank. I had been waiting 30 years for this phone call. I already knew what she had to say.
"Moll, are you sitting down?"
"I mean my ass is in the driver seat- just say it" - as tears filled my eyes
"He's gone hunny. Your dad's gone, we found him this afternoon in his room"
My ears started ringing.
Everything went silent and I pulled over to call my mom and send an SOS text Ian in hopes he could call in between surgeries.
Nothings felt the same since that moment. Tears are streaming down my face as I type this now, reliving those feelings.
They (said feelings) really paralyzed for the remainder of 2023.
Again, for those of you that are new here- the daddy issues run deep. Like more issues than vogue
We're talking child of divorce since age 7, spent a lifetime pining for her fathers attention who always chose a long neck bottle over her issues.
We weren't super close when he passed away as I had set really clear boundaries once my daughter was born - that he wasn't going to ghost her like he did me, my whole life. Therefore we kept him at arms length.
Addiction is such a painful thing to witness and be a casualty of. I began doing what helps me heal the most, which is writing. I started writing a book that's been living dormant inside me since my early teens.
I hope to finish and publish it by the end of 2024🤞🏻
July
July was a blur, a moment frozen in time.
I collapsed & had zero capacity for anything life.
Motherhood was hard, working was harder and I stopped job searching and began questioning my career in the beauty industry completely and started asking myself what I wanted my career to look like.
I spent most days rotting on the couch, trying to peel myself away from it so that my daughters summer memories weren't of her being stuck inside all day long.
The rest of my days in July were spent dealing with dead dad duties. As an only child, my dad wasn't remarried, making me next of kin and having to do things I thought I had decades left to prepare for.
No one teaches us about life insurance, funeral planning, and the process of it all. Especially when there's no living will to reference.
I was drained. So defeated. I had to plan his memorial, close his accounts, collect his belongings, write his obituary, go rounds with life insurance companies while going back and forth between Ohio and Michigan multiple times to handle it all.
Once I shared about his passing online I was over whelmed by the amount of messages I received from people who knew him, knew me.
From his old classmates, teammates , and old club members (we spent the summers traveling the country competing in water sports with one another when I was a pre teen) or his old friends and sponsors from when he was in AA right after my parents got divorced and I would tag along to his meetings during his weekends.
So much surfaced, so much I haven't even had time to process fully.
I tried to do normal things, to balance out the grief.
Like 90's themed girls nights, or visits from my 5th grade bff, whose daughter is my daughters bff.
But the month ended with me hosting his memorial for all our family and his life long friends & seeing clients back in Ohio and still fighting with insurance companies
August
Is a month I'm not ready to publicly talk about, maybe one day. But it was another month of loss.
However the Libra in me, is forever trying to keep the balance and raise a healthy whole daughter. So I slumped my way off the couch as much as I could and made another trip back home for a double header weekend of Morgan Wallen concerts, one night where I took Hads to her first big girl concert, to see her favorite artist. It was magical, and so full circle. As my first concert was a country concert with my mom and dad when I was her age.
The rest of August I put a mask on and tried to power through the days, longing to be in bed more than anything
I attended resident parties, with my bf, as we spent weekends off golfing (our favorite pass time)
The last week of the month I was coordinating playdates with moms I found in Facebook groups who also had daughters in Hads upcoming 3rd grade class, in hopes to make sure she had familar faced on her first day at a new school
Our mornings and afternoons were spent in school drop off and pick up lines, and having lots of conversations with her new teacher as this was going to be a major transition from not only private to public school but from Montessori curriculum to public curriculum.
August was also the month I really started to consider closing my salon, in Columbus, permanently. I began asking myself questions I was always scared to know the answers too.
Like what would my life look like? Who was I if not a salon owner? Ian and I knew Columbus wasn't our next stop, after Detroit. It would be Cleveland.
Columbus was quickly becoming the hallmark movie version of "home" to me and I realized I was creating a life that no longer included it. So keeping a salon there seemed pointless, and was becoming too much for me to mentally handle, especially a state away. By the end of the month my mind was made up & I started refocusing, rebranding and pivoting what I had built.
September
I finally started to feel a little like myself again in September, as we spent the first weekend of the month at a festival that takes over town with food, art, and stages all over downtown for Labor Day.
I basically became a crew member on below deck for the amount of hours I spent watching it and summer house. (Cue giggly squad podcast obsession)
Started doing more clients in Michigan, and revisiting the job hunt while simultaneously launching my new brand SEVEN - a social society for spiritual entrepreneurs looking for community, support, and friendship.
We celebrated Ian's 32nd birthday, and him and I even took a trip to harbor springs for it. That weekend changed something in me. It's so on brand for us, a weekend in a cabin, in the woods, spending the day at country clubs and the nights eating steak and sipping espresso martini's. It was like a glimpse into forever
Though we moved into together this summer, after being long distance for 3.5 years we still see each other the same amount of hours, with his crazy schedule at the hospital. We always live for weekends away like that. It was the first time life stopped and we got to really reconnect since me moving, my dad passing and ya know, trauma.
I went home again, to do hair one last time in my salon before I turned in my keys, and move out all my things. Which was so surreal and something I didn't even have capacity to process then
The next day before heading back North, I attended and co hosted one of my bff's bridal showers, whose wedding I was not going to be able to attend as they were doing a destination in Mexico come November, and as a single mom, a state away from all of my support I couldn't swing the childcare for that week of vaca. It was so bittersweet, being apart of her bridal shower, but knowing I washing going to be by her side, for the best day of her life. A day that Im still sad I missed
September was yet another month of loss tho, as I miscarried a pregnancy I didn't know I was carrying ar the time
It wasn't my first, I've unfortunately had a handful in my life time, but they never get easier, even when you are in a place that you want more kids. It's still a loss, and a heartbreaking one at that.
October
October is my favorite. Always. As an October Libra.
I spent the majority of it in mom mode, or negotiating a new contracts + preparing to start a couple news positions that fell in my lap.
The salon owner I connected with early summer was opening his 3rd salon store front in metro Detroit - a hybrid salon concept and wanted me to manage it. Dream gig in the making for what I keep calling my "3 year vacation in Michigan" as well as landed a freelancing gig for a social media agency that I am now an engagement specialist for.
Took another trip back home to do hair for one of my bff's brothers wedding.
Got tatted by my bff who lost her baby in the spring. She owns a lash + tiny tattoo bar in Columbus. 1 for my dad (a propeller with his initial in memory of our summers spent on lakes) and 1 for me that was a hilarious mishap where we thought I was getting the symbol for dopamine but she forgot to add a couple lines that my boyfriend pointed out as one would with a degree in neuroscience. Turns out I was rocking an unstable molecule (iykyk) for 12 hours until we fixed it 😂😱🙃
The rest of Oct I started helping with the opening of the new salon, doing city inspections and lining up interviews with potential stylists.
October was also the month I introduced my daughter to press on nails, and I will forever regret that 💅🏻🙈
Mid month Ian and I traveled to Springfield, IL for a weekend to attend one of his co residents weddings, where we explored the home of Lincoln and his hometown. We had THE best time and enjoyed another adventure away together.
I turned 35 on the 21st. The day my salon lease was dissolved. And I was no longer a salon owner. What are the odds. My bestie and I always say, 💯
My daughter and I celebrated my bday by seeing the Eras Tour Movie in theaters and it was a core memory for the both of us. Ended the month with date nights, friend coffee dates and Ian and I taking Hads trick or treating with one of her new friends from school. Core memory for me 🫶🏻
November
November began breathing life back into my soul. The new salon opened, I started working more, but quickly realized how much of my worth I associated with my job and net worth (truly rooted in all those daddy issues) and was something I wanted to start unraveling.
However having somewhere to physically be 3 days a week made me get back into a routine and feel human again.
I also started to create a new podcast with one of my bffs from Canada, it's called Sagi Hour + she's cute. More on her in December.
It will be the 4th womens podcast affiliated with my media company I started back in 2018 called Her Mind Matters.
Life started feeling normal and the weekdays were spent in salon manager, social media manager, or mom mode while the weekends were reserved for date nights, girls nights, and visits from Ohio friends and trips home for Thanksgiving
Spent the majority of November navigating salon manager life and finding my place within the role (still a work in progress) but am loving the connections and community I am building here in Michigan because of it.
December
December was probably my favorite month of the year.
Because it was the furthest month to date from the one my dad died, or I moved state lines, closed my salon, and changed everything about my self image and life.
My old life was starting to feel more distant, more of a memory, like I could physically feel the time slipping and viewing those milestones that happened only months prior as a thing of the past.
December was the month I started living again.
It was filled with lights on things, new favorite coffee shops, holiday gatherings, party buses, Christmas bars, and glitter, lots of glitter.
Trips to CLE. More visits from Ohio friends. Bridal party hair and becoming the go to stylist for all of Ians co residents. New podcast launch (Sagi Hour, look her up - now streaming) and Christmas in Columbus, where my daughter still is for her winter break.
The week in between New Years, Ian and I both took off work and enjoyed a much needed stay cation.
Original plans for a couples vaca fell through but we decided to keep the dates blocked off to ensure we eased into the new year, together, with uninterrupted time with one another. And it was everything my soul needed.
2024
Ahhhh you're here bitch
It's now January 3rd.
And as I sit here and reflect on the fuckery that was 2023 for me, I can still see through all the tears, loss, and changes that it really tee'd me up for the perfect next chapter (more like entirely new novel)
2023 was the year I made the least, the year I spent every other weekend crossing state lines to parent swap, the year nothing stayed the same but the color of my hair. The year very little seemed to go right & the year God/Source/Universe, what you personally call it, tested my patience and perseverance more than ever
It cleared SO much from my path, allowed me to move in with the LOML, spend wayyyy more time with my daughter, have more free time than I knew what to do with when all I had been asking for was freedom the past few years (careful what you wish for) and started getting closure on things Ive searched a lifetime for
Moral of this very long story, you can always find the silver lining when things get hard if you view the world as happening for you not to you, almost as if all the trials are to help activate and exand
Because life never gets easier, we just expand and get better at holding more, knowing more.
This is also your daily reminder that not everything is as it seems & we never truly know what's going on behind the scenes in others lives