Your RE era. Reconsider Everything: Your Life, Your Roles, & the Truths That Pain Is Trying to Teach You

Ruthie embracing her RE Era.

Yesterday, I posted the first piece in the REera series, where we Reconsider everything. It was vulnerable. It was personal. Writing pieces like that is deeply healing for me, but also emotionally exhausting. So after I hit publish, Scotty and I drove up into the rainforest for a long awaited photo shoot.

For context, my Captain Scotty grew up in a rural Amish farming community, so the man is not exactly a fan of cameras. He doesn’t like being in them. Doesn’t like taking them. Doesn’t really even trust them. So naturally, he’s now my photographer. What could go wrong?

Meanwhile, I have a tremendous fear of the camera (well… this is about raw honesty, so let’s be clear. I’m not afraid of the camera. I’m afraid of the image I see in it. Because I’ve spent most of my life feeling… not beautiful) And somewhere along the way, I decided I’d just make up for it with a sparkly personality. At least then I’d still be valuable. Still lovable. Still something. So yeah, this photo shoot? I had been pressing for it and dreading it at the same time.

I know I need to be seen. I know this project matters. As much as I prefer the written word, it’s clear that videos connect more. Which means I am in another RE era, where I REconsider everything, what works and be to be brave enough to practice being more comfortable on camera. And that is hard for me. Really hard. Some of the shots were good. Some were awkward. It was weird. It was fine. It was all stressful.

Good Lord, though…it was also the first time I’d ever seen high-res photographic evidence of the bat wings of loose skin that now hang from my arms. This is one of my least favorite souvenirs from losing 82 pounds after years of survival mode and dopamine-driven eating.

Afterward, a few deep breaths and then we stopped at a roadside Chinchorreo for an empanada and a bien fría Heineken!

🔥Neurospicy/Squirrel Moment!🔥 In Puerto Rico, when a beer comes out of the cooler covered in white frost, it’s called a “vestido de novio”- a wedding dress. That’s how cold you want it. So when you really need to cool down from a soul-sweat meltdown, you say: “Bien fría… con vestido de novio, por favor.”Anyway. Cute, huh!🔥

I sat down at the table, Gilligan at my feet, opened my phone—first time all day since the rainforest has no reception—and there they were. Four messages. From women I love, whom I hadn’t spoken with in too many years. Each one different, but all leading to the same thing: That this work I am doing… this soul deep truth-telling I am trying to do… meant something to them. That they felt less alone, felt seen, even understood. Cue INSTANT energy.

And just like that, everything shifted… for ME. One minute I was obsessing about how to hide my arms. The next, I remembered what the hell I was actually doing. Not posing. Not performing. I’m building something. For her. For me. For all of us who arrive mid life and look around… and it just kinda sucks. Because I’ve lived through enough storms to know that someone out there, someone really important, is still in one. And she might need a hand to hold. And I’ve got one. Ready and willing.

That’s what Spicy Living is. That’s what a RE-Era is. It doesn’t start with a clean slate. It starts with a cracked one.

It starts when you’re willing to REconsider what YOUR life is really all about.

Look, most of us have been telling the same story for so long, we don’t even realize it’s a story. It’s the script we were handed: Who we’re supposed to be. What makes us lovable. What we have to do to be “enough.” What strength is. What success is. What it means to be a good woman. A good wife. A good mother. A good boss, daughter, friend. So many roles with truly exhausting expectations and belief systems.

And those core beliefs? They were shaped by your parents. By the era and location you were raised in. By the culture around you. By the people you were trying to love. By society’s THEN rules about right and wrong and worthiness. We absorb them. We internalize them. We accept them as permanent information about life.

But the only truth we can truly depend on is that everything changes. Everything. And remember… You’re not the same person who first received those ideas. You are not that little girl anymore. You are not that new wife, or that overworked mother, or that younger version of yourself who was just trying to do it right and hold it all together.

So maybe… it’s time to go back to the well. And the well isn’t out there. It’s in YOU.

I’ll never forget this moment, 15 years ago, in an affirmation circle. A woman named Ethel. God bless her, Ethel. She put her hands gently on my shoulders, leaned in close behind me, and whispered in my ear: “Everything you need is already inside of you.” And I just… lost it. Right there in a room full of women, I ugly cried into my coffee. Because some part of me knew she was right. But it was so hard to accept. I felt so broken. And how could someone that broken possibly have what she needed inside her? I was failing in so many places. Trying. And trying. And trying. Endless trying.

And there I was, in a tremendous amount of pain, with failure all around me and humiliation was tapping on my shoulder constantly. Confused. Betrayed. And that part, where you realize that everything is falling apart, had become this tremendous gift. Yeah, really.

And I must be honest, I didn’t want to go through that at the time. I wanted everything to get fixed and go back to what I thought was my normal. Back to surviving my life. But that wasn’t possible. Thank GOD. Because I got to REevaluate all things Ruthie.

I got to get serious about REconsidering the story I’d been living. I got to look at the beliefs I’d inherited, some without even realizing it. I got to decide what I wanted. What I needed. Was I even allowed to need? Who was I, anyway? Without all the roles of who I was to other people… who was me?

Because in the middle of the mess, there’s a strange kind of freedom. And once I started sorting through it all, I started coming home to myself. A woman I hardly knew. But I’ve come to like me quite a lot. It’s a new relationship… Me. Like all things new, there is a lot of learning and adjusting and REwriting going on. I love this chapter I am in now! ❤️

Some days, I still want to go back and wrap that younger version of me in my arms and whisper, “You’re going to be okay. I promise. It gets better. You become you.” And 🔥spoiler alert🔥 You are a cool chic, a badass, and a real sweetheart.

And if you’re in the broken place right now, sitting in the ache, feeling like you might not have what it takes, too exhausted, too beaten down… If you feel too broken to begin again… That’s a holy place. It’s worth the time, the resistance and the fear to understand. That voice that says you’re not enough? That’s fear. It’s a script handed to you from generations past. And fear only knows fear. This right here...is your RE-Era. You don’t have to know how it ends. You don’t even need to know where to begin. You do have to be brave enough to begin anyway.

You have wisdom. You have strength. You have compassion. And the same compassion you pour into everyone else? Go to the damn mirror. Give it to yourself. You deserve it too. This is the moment. This messy middle? This terrifying in-between? This is the magic. This is where everything changes. This is where we become powerful.

This is where we stop surviving the old story and become ready to REwrite the next chapter. This is where we REconsider. We REconsider our values. Our goals. Our default settings. Our beliefs. We open our baggage, piece by piece. And we ask each item: Did you serve me? Do I still need you? Can I let you go with love? We don’t have to leave it all behind. But we don’t have to carry it all forward either.