You see these pictures on the left? Since late 2013 all the way until early 2022, I wouldn't have been able to do these kinds of movements without risk of throwing my back out. I do them every day now. I want to share with every woman out there why this is so important. 

After I had my 4th son in May 2013, I started experiencing some concerning problems that multiplied until I could no longer ignore or push them aside. I began researching my symptoms and discussing them at length with my doctor, asking for any and every test he could offer in order to figure out the source of the problem and fix me so I could function normally again. Well, he did order many tests and refer me to multiple specialists, and I ended up being prescribed medications that did not help me and in many cases made my issues worse... I even picked up a few more issues, as overwhelmed as I was already. 

After having tried every natural protocols, which is my normal approach, I'd had no choice but to accumulate the list of problems I had and place it in front of my doctor along with my trust that perhaps he could figure it all out. I remember clearly the feelings of desperation I had and my inability to control my emotions every time he walked into the room where I was waiting for him to tell me what we would try next.  I sobbed through every word, hiccuping and blotchy faced. I felt my doctor's empathy and desire to help me, but I also sensed that he didn't know what  was wrong or how to fix me. With every test result coming back normal or unremarkable, I felt even more hopeless that I would ever feel like myself again. What made it all worse still was that I was trying to raise 4 little boys and hold down my job and maintain a too-large house while I had a husband leaving the house at 5am and coming home at 10pm or later most nights, and this doesn't even include the childhood traumas coming back to haunt me. Unfortunately, I continued to feel less like myself every day. As I wrote a few years ago when I was finally able to sort it out in a readable format, as dramatic as it sounds, I truly felt like I was gradually dying.  After going from feeling bad a couple hours a day to gradually reaching a state where I only felt good for 30 minutes in the morning before it all started to go downhill for the rest of the day, there was no place else to go except to not be able to get out of bed at all... and then what?

It's been a few years since I detailed that all out in a post, and this is the "Continued" part of my "To Be Continued" status I last shared. If you read any of my original posts and what I've written here resonates with you at all, please know there are some real positives that have happened in the last 2 years in particular. I want to share them because when I was so desperate to know if anyone else shared my experience and had the keys to the fix, I could not find anything.

If you want to see what I wrote about that is referenced above, you can go to my 2019 blog posts and find two different entries on the topic. There you'll find descriptions of the symptoms I was battling, but the biggest issues I had were my inability to sleep, hip/back/neck pain and stiffness, terrible anxiety, chronic migraines, brain fog, and complete and utter fatigue.  All the other symptoms like losing my eyebrows, swelling, random nausea, fuzzy vision, tingling appendages, etc. were just annoying background noise to those larger debilitating symptoms I was having.

If you'd just recently met me during that time, you may not have seen what was going on with me because you wouldn't have known me any other way. If you'd always known me, you might have thought I'd let myself go. The truth is that that was not who I was, and I had not *let* myself go; I was desperately clinging to who I previously was, trying to keep myself from slipping through my fingers.  The active, energetic athlete I previously was (I was on a beach volleyball league in San Diego in my 30's for crying out loud - that's no easy thing compared to the 20 year olds I was playing with) had been replaced with someone who could barely get up and down from a chair, who couldn't stand up straight most of the time, who had to roll out of bed in a very careful process so as to not activate the spasms in my abdomen that would cause me to lose my breath until it passed. At the age of 40, I felt like a 25 year old in an 85 year old's body, and I didn't know if I'd ever recover. I did not want this to be my life.

I could detail all the various tests and treatments my doctors tried on me, but none of it matters. Every approach was the wrong one and did not serve to help me.  I want to tell you what helped me and how the pieces of me started to come together again.

A year after I had my 4th son, the first thing I mentioned to my doctor was the uncontrollable spasms I was having in my abdomen.  He lifted my shirt and quickly identified the source of the problem - an umbilical hernia likely caused from pregnancy. I'd had a twin pregnancy followed by two more pregnancies very close together, so he was not surprised.  He sent me to a surgeon to have it repaired, and surgery was scheduled.  I was informed that a piece of mesh had been inserted to prevent my intestines from pushing through my navel and that my abdominal spasms should be a thing of a past. 

They weren't.

I continued to have these spasms, so if walking and just living was difficult, working out with weights was a near impossibility. I learned to move in ways to prevent the spasms from constantly hitting me, but I often ended up throwing my back out over very minor movements, which would keep me partially bent over for weeks. My neck was incredibly stiff to the point that it was absolutely brutal to turn to look for cars when I was driving or to look behind me when the boys called out, "Mommy, look!"  This movement would often result in a migraine for which I'd have to lie down in the dark for hours and then getting up feeling disconnected and disoriented for the rest of the day. This was all compounded with anxiety hitting me with hot flashes, a pounding heart, impatience, and feelings of agitation.  Because I was no longer able to exercise, my face and body sort of transformed into something I didn't recognize. I was soft and swollen and my hair and nails were dry and brittle. I was terribly embarrassed by all of this.

The year 2020 was pivotal for most everyone on earth. Covid-19 hit and I don't need to detail out all the things people experienced during that time. For us, it was stressful because, in addition to having 4 young boys at home attending school virtually, my husband lost his job when his entire department's responsibilities were moved to India. A few months later, while people were fighting for their lives in the hospital, I began having severe pain that was so similar to the pain I'd always experienced with endometriosis, that that's what I thought it was at first. I dealt with until it worsened to the point that I was in a ball in my bed holding my stomach and crying at the searing, stabbing pain.   My husband took me to the hospital where they hooked me up to an IV with fentanyl to give me some relief, and shortly thereafter I was diagnosed with diverticulitis.  I was sent home with an antibiotic and did my best to breathe through each episode of unbearable pain that gripped me every few minutes. After a week without relief, I went to my doctor, and he prescribed me a different antibiotic and some pain medication.  I thought I was recovering until...

It was exactly a month later when I suddenly had the same pain as before hit me, causing me to collapse to the floor, holding my stomach and my breath until the pain passed. What was different this time was that I had this awful pain in my shoulder too. It felt deep and cold and blunt. It was so severe that while I held onto my stomach with one hand, I held my shoulder with the other. Since I'd been diagnosed previously with diverticulitis, I decided to call the Gastroenterologist that had conducted my age-recommended preventative colonoscopy 7-8 months before.  When I explained my symptoms to the receptionist, she told me they could see me that afternoon.  I went in and after a short visit with the doctor to discuss my history and symptoms, he wanted to send me to get a scan with contrast.  Unfortunately, no one could get me in that day because I didn't have time to fast the required number of hours before they closed. So I had an appointment for first thing the next morning with the imaging office to whom I was referred.

After a restless, pain-ridden, sleepless night, I was in the office first thing in the morning while it was still dark outside, drinking an awful tasting bottle of contrast, nearly vomiting with every swallow.  They took me back and froze me nearly to death while I laid inside the enormous capsule and scanned my trunk and then told me to get dressed and wait to hear from the Gastroenterologist I'd seen the day before.

I had just gotten home and sat at my desk trying to do some work in between the painful episodes, which were now nearly constant without any breaks (this is a terrible experience because you cannot escape yourself) when the doctor called me and told me I needed to drop what I was doing and go straight to the hospital. He was sending in the paperwork at that moment, and they would be waiting for me. The reason? I had a perforation in my intestines, and I was likely suffering from sepsis.

Jose, with a fleck of panic in his eyes, rushed me from my seat to the car, telling me he would put together a bag of what I needed and bring it to me later.  Remember, this was in the midst of the worst of Covid, and hospitals were full and no visitors were allowed. So when he dropped me off at the ER, he asked them to bring a wheelchair for me knowing I would be on the floor again when the next wave of pain hit me, and then he kissed me goodbye not knowing what would happen next.

I was so fortunate when I arrived at the hospital that, when they moved me to a room in the ER until my Covid tests could be run and a room on the appropriate floor (depending on my results) opened up, a friend of mine happened to be working and was able to care for me. This was 180 degrees from the cold and uncaring treatment I'd received in my initial visit. I didn't even go into that when I wrote about it above, but I had actually cried during that visit because the nurse was so awful to me and the doctor was only slightly less dismissive, sending me home without anything to help manage my pain while the (useless) antibiotic went to work.  My nurse friend who was now taking care of me kept me comfortable with lots of extra blankets and helped distract me and manage my pain. I was and am to this day so grateful to her.

I was taken back for a series of tests and then a doctor came to my room and told me I would be admitted for 4-5 days and placed on intravenous antibiotics while they conducted other tests. I learned that the perforation in my intestines appeared to have been there for some time and was likely there when I'd first visited the ER but overlooked.  I also learned that the endometriosis I'd had my for most of my life was probably a contributor to the problems; it had bound my uterus and ovaries to everything and an abscess formed between my uterus and intestine, eventually causing the perforation that resulted in sepsis. Over the course of those days, several doctors visited me each day. One of them informed me I would be going home with intravenous medications and be checked by a home health nurse twice per week until the infection and inflammation was decreased enough for me to have surgery. The surgery would entail removing part of my intestine but could not be performed with the current angry level of infection. I would also have to have a complete hysterectomy so that everything could be removed in one piece to avoid hemorrhaging.  This meant I had to have 3 surgeons in the room - a Urologist to address my bladder, a Gynecologist to address my uterus and ovaries, and a Gastroenterologist to do the intestinal resection. 

After 4-5 days, I was back home with a husband-turned-nurse who helped deliver the medication via IV that I needed multiple times per day and a home health nurse that came to take blood, take vitals, check my pic line, and replenish my supplies.  Every week, the doctor called me to deliver the current status of my labs, and every week I was told that the levels weren't improving very fast, so the surgery date was still elusive.  Finally, after a month, I got a call saying that despite the higher-than-preferred level of infection and inflammation that remained, we needed to move forward with surgery. 

I checked back into the hospital 2 weeks later with the expectation of being there up to a week. My nurse friend that took care of me in the ER the previous hospital stay would come up to see me before or after her shift; she was pregnant with twins, so you can imagine the extra effort this required of her.  The surgery took almost 7 hours, and I learned that the majority of the time I was at a decline almost to the point of being upside down. As a result, when I awoke from surgery, I had vertigo and was on Zofran to control my dizziness and vomiting. It was awful, because I was recovering from surgery while clenching with each heave and unable to move my head without a violent spinning sensation. It was day 5 of my hospital visit before they sent an ENT to my room to help me with the vertigo, and that was almost worse than the pain from surgery.

After the surgery, I learned something else - the mesh that the surgeon had placed in my abdominal wall to treat the umbilical hernia was a total mess, and the doctor recommended I go have that looked at in the near future. I took that info and set it aside, because the last thing I could or wanted to deal with was another potential surgery. As it was, I was trying to keep up with work as best I could because I felt so bad for having gotten sick so soon after taking on my new role. In hindsight, I realize how ridiculous this was; I should have taken the time off that I needed. If I had to do it again, I most certainly would.

The recovery from this surgery was lengthy - like 6 months. During this time I longed to be able to be mobile and active. I was still having the abdominal spasms though and most of the other issues still remained, although by this time, I was on medication for chronic migraines, which took the edge off of all of my other years-long symptoms.

Fast forward to March 2021 when my husband and I got Covid.  A week into it, I had to take my husband to the ER, because he was suddenly declining and his oxygen was low.  I found out that night from my nurse friend that he had been admitted for Covid with double pneumonia. The next day I found out from his nurse that they had to work on him all night to keep him breathing. He did recover, fortunately, and by the time he came home, he had gone into a diabetic state due to the steroids they were giving him at the hospital. He immediately went into a strict-Keto diet while he completed his medication protocol from home over the next 2 weeks.  He saw his labs settling into normal levels from top to bottom, and I began to eat what he ate so that I could learn how to cook for everyone so we were all eating essentially the same thing instead of separate meals. Eventually he recovered, and we just continued following a Keto lifestyle. 

I had started seeing a chiropractor once I recovered from my surgery, and he told me I had high levels of inflammation in my body and that because I had been on so much medication the prior year due to my health issues, I would likely feel like I had the flu after my first couple of adjustments. Boy was he right!  This speaks to just how much your body holds onto toxins unless it has a vehicle for being released.  I began to feel much better a week later, and even noticed that the swelling I'd become use to in areas like my wrists and hands went away.  The problem still remained that my body was not holding the chiropractor's adjustments, so I walked away feeling great only to be hunched over again by a couple days later.

Towards the end of 2021, I began to research umbilical hernia repair again remembering the surgeon's recommendation, and I saw a couple of doctors to see what method they would recommend in removing the mesh and treating it another way. I will still experiencing spasms, which were becoming even worse and more frequent. I selected a doctor I felt most comfortable with who, during the exam, told me that instead of placing more mesh in there, he would actually repair the muscle itself; muscle separation was what caused the hernia to begin with so it makes sense to repair the muscle for a permanent fix.  The surgery was ultimately scheduled for March 2022. My hope was that the spasms would be gone after this re-repair, and that I could eventually begin to exercise again.

The surgery took place and went well. Afterwards, the doctor told me my abdominal muscles had separated a full 6 inches and were torn from top to bottom, most likely due to my original twin pregnancy and then exacerbated by the additional two pregnancies.  He repaired the whole thing, sewing my muscles back together. He told me the debilitating back problems I'd had would likely improve since I would be able to finally build back my core strength, which would stabilize my spine.  I did not realize then the full extent of the healing that was about to take place.

This surgery was another long recovery. Hernia repair is already a 5-6 week recovery, but I had my muscles repaired as well, so it was easily 4 months before I was completely healed.  Immediately after the surgery I noticed that I had no more spasms.  I waited to get excited just in case they came back. They didn't.  Six months after this surgery, I went in for a final check up and I had only one complaint -- I now had an outie! I was thrilled that the hernia and my muscles were repaired, thrilled that I had no more abdominal spasms and could tie my shoes or roll out of bed or get out of the car without a single thought as to my precise movements, but I was VERY disappointed that my previous innie was now an outie.  My doctor nodded and assured me, "We can fix this easily. Have them schedule it up front."  And so I scheduled an navel revision, and sure enough the outie is an innie once again. Unfortunately, it was another long recovery, but 3 months later, I am here to tell you that it was worth it.

So where am I today? Migraines have improved to the point that I no longer need to take my daily medication for it, abdominal spasms have ceased, I am exercising and weight training, and my core is stronger than it's been since I first delivered twins in 2009. You know what happens when you can strengthen your core? You spine is stable. What happens when your spine is stable? It takes pressure off of your neck.  Guess what happens when all of this aligns? You're able to hold the chiropractic adjustments, and you can turn your head, twist your body, stretch, get up and down with little effort, move without triggering a migraine.  It is life changing.

Where did it all start? It started with an umbilical hernia caused by muscle separation in pregnancy that was repaired with mesh instead of repairing the abdominal muscle that was allowing the intestine to poke through to begin with.  That domino fell down and hit the exercise domino which hit the core strength domino which hit the unstable spine domino which went all the way to my neck and my brain.  Your spine affects every single function of your body. So migraines, brain fog, fatigue, etc etc etc start to take over your life. Compound that by eating something that you have become sensitive to without realizing it and it perpetuates the spread of inflammation. All of these things feed off of each other.  Over the years, I have addressed things nutritionally and saw some benefits but not a complete fix of anything. I removed toxins from our home and it helped decrease the severity of my migraines but it didn't fix them. I walked as much as I could to help my back even though I couldn't work out consistently because of my back, and it was a vicious cycle in and of itself.

You can throw everything against the wall to help yourself, and you can make small improvements that way, but unless you can find the root cause of it you will not be completely healed.  My root cause? Not knowing that mesh to repair my umbilical hernia was not going to help me. Not knowing that muscle separation due to pregnancy can upend your entire life and state of well-being.  All of these things contributed to the physical and mental ailments I began to suffer to the point that I felt like I was gradually dying.

Today? Today I am the person I was before I ever had kids. I am active again, I feel good again, I can move again. I still have some backpain; I have arthritis in my lower spine and my neck, so I can't completely escape that pain, but I can get up and down from chairs, my car, and even THE FLOOR, and it takes very little effort now. I remain on a mostly Keto diet, because I like the feeling of not having inflammation in my body. If I add things like sugar back into my diet, I feel it in my hips at night when I try to sleep. This reminds me -- guess how many pillows I had to sleep with prior to getting my abdominal muscles reattached? If you guessed 6 you would be correct. Guess how many I sleep with now? The answer is 2 - one for my head and a body pillow because I am a side sleeper and hate having my knees touch. 

Something else that helps me sleep at night? My doctor prescribed me 600mg of Gabapentin to take before bed every night. If I take it every night, I sleep all night. If I forget to take it, I wake up constantly the entire night. When I get good sleep, I feel better all around. If lack of sleep is plaguing you, maybe ask your doctor about Gabapentin. You can safely take a much higher dose than I'm on, but 600mg works for me.

So for those who met me when I was a mess, you didn't know that I wasn't always a mess so now you're the ones telling me I look great and asking what I've done. For those of you who knew me before you're like, "Oh, there you are!" And I say that to myself every day now - "Oh, there you are!" It's a great feeling, but I have a tremendous amount of empathy for women like me who are struggling to figure out what went wrong and why they have the physical and mental ailments they have now post-pregnancy, in particular. If this is you, maybe this info I've shared can help you investigate a rabbit hole you hadn't previously considered.  I desperately needed a light at the end of the tunnel, and I hope this entry becomes yours. Love to you.
    

​There’s a scene in Scary Movie where Ray and Brenda are in the bedroom, and she is sitting on him and excitedly and sensually showing off her football jersey. Ray gets an idea and asks her to show him from a distance, so once she gets to the foot of the bed, he starts throwing other pieces of a football uniform at her… the pants, the shoulder pads, and finally the helmet. Brenda becomes more unsure of his requests with each article she puts on, but Ray becomes more and more excited. Once she is fully dressed in the football uniform, he ravages her... um... from behind. This scene is hilarious, because the audience knows from Ray’s antics that he is clearly gay, while the rest of the cast in the movie seems oblivious if not with a hint of suspicion.

My story happened a decade before Scary Movie came out. It was the early 1990’s, and that meant that being anything other than straight did not seem particularly mainstream in midwest America. If you were to ask me back then what the chances were that I could date a gay guy and not know he was gay, I would probably answer "slim to none". Truthfully, I thought gay people looked like Boy George who I'd first seen on Solid Gold one evening, and, while I was obviously completely ignorant about what it meant to be any one of the acronyms in LGBTQ+, I was always accepting of and loved differences in people. I knew then what I know now that differences make the world a more interesting place. Even now I wish that people I later learned were gay, transgender, or fluid knew they could have trusted me with their truth and be their complete authentic selves around me during years that are already confusing and hormonal without the heaviness of a secret that big. Still, my idea that it would be obvious if someone wasn’t straight was clearly severely flawed in hindsight.

I was walking down the hallway in high school between classes one afternoon, and this handsome, tanned-skin guy I shall heretofore refer to as James was about to pass by me. Even before I saw he was holding a note, my heartbeat sped up per usual. I didn’t know him well, but I saw him every day in the halls, and boy did I have a raging crush on him. He was absolutely beautiful to me; he had a strong jaw, which I am a total sucker for, and he had a perfect face, broad shoulders, and - I had checked out his behind a time or two - and all was well in that hood too.  To my complete surprise, I was suddenly holding a note between my chest and my brown-paper-bag-covered school books covered in colorful doodles. A girl I had been talking to grinned when she saw what happened. I tried to act casual while adjusting my armload so that I could read the note as soon as possible.

The letter referenced another guy that I can’t say I was seriously interested in but had recently began to entertain in an it’s-complicated sort of way. This other guy happened to be a good friend of his, so you can imagine my surprise when he wrote that I should drop that guy and start seeing him instead. My brain was automatically screaming “yes, please!”, and, though I can no longer remember every word in the letter even though I did memorize it from repeated reading that day and the days ahead, I do remember enjoying reading the reasons he felt he would be a better boyfriend. They checked all the boxes. Well, the boxes I could see on that paper, that is.

When I got to my next class, I was actually late, rushing in as the bell rang and sitting down flushed with excitement and anxious to tell my friend Lynn (name changed) about the sudden development. Just before I could say anything, she said giddily, “Oh my God, I just saw James in the hallway. He is SO hot.” I thought it was such a coincidence, and, given what was in the note I’d just gotten from him, I decided I better, figuratively speaking, go ahead and pee on him real quick before she made any plans. After all, Lynn was one of the most beautiful people I knew. She had straight, shiny, long hair, an enviably curvy figure, the BEST tan, and the cutest smile and face; she was also super sweet to boot, a real sweetheart. To me she was everything you could want to be in one package, and I didn’t really need or want her as competition for my future husband.  The only reason this was even a potential scenario is because she’d recently broken up with her much older boyfriend and was single for the first time in a long time. I knew she was probably anxious for a solid rebound, so timing was of the essence.

I answered back with energy matching hers, “I know! I saw him too, and he actually passed me a note in the hallway.” She wanted to read it, and since we were really good friends I went ahead and handed it to her, studying her face and trying to determine by her expression which sentence she was reading at any given moment. I saw the slightest disappointment before she handed it back to me, smiled big, and said, “LUCKY!” And that’s when I knew we were good and she would be - at least on the outside - rooting for me.

What followed this whole dramatic scene that afternoon was me giving him a note back agreeing wholeheartedly with everything he’d written in his letter and immediately forgetting all about the other guy I had sort of but not exactly been talking to who, frankly, was filling a hole in my heart caused by a recent, sort of insensitive break off from someone else I had really liked. From then on out, I began anxiously awaiting any consecutive minutes or seconds that I could bask in James’ gorgeous glow. I had imagined that we would suddenly be attached at the hip, that we’d be one of those couples holding hands in the hallway every day or one of the ones making out between the lockers and windows on every floor of the building. I fully expected we would start spending every Friday night and Saturday together - “Oh, what lovebirds!” people would say. By the time we graduated from high school, we would be that airtight couple everyone expected to get married and have  the most beautiful babies anyone has ever seen. 

What I had not imagined was that I would begin to and would continue to look for any sign that he was remotely attracted to or interested in me. I blamed it on him being shy or distracted or busy. He was an athlete but a little too adamantly told me I couldn’t come see him compete; I decided he must be super humble. When I saw him at work, I reasoned that he couldn’t talk to me much before or after our shifts because he might be worried that our manager would complain. When this one time he invited me to join him at one of his friend’s houses for a party, I thought “finally!” and figured I’d spend the entire night pushing his hands off of me. Instead, we all played cards until late into the night, and he talked more to everyone else at the table than he did to me. I figured he was playing it cool in front of his friends.

When it was agreed that we would probably just stay the night at this friend’s house, I was thinking, “Ok, I’ll need to set an expectation that we won’t do anything more than kiss.” HA! How cute was that? Because what ACTUALLY happened was that I began to hope that I’d even catch his eye during any portion of the evening let alone have him pawing at me. When everyone was going to sleep for the night, we grabbed blankets and pillows and settled down on the floor for the night. While, at this point, I was super anxious for an obscene makeout session, he kissed me like I was his sister and then turned his head away. Thinking he was just being a gentlemen, I am a little embarrassed to say that I basically threw myself at him at the expense of what little ego I had. After a couple more awkward pecks and the fact that I actually never saw him again other than a split second in a school hallway one day weeks later, I settled into a debate in my head that I would revisit from time to time for the next 25 years. Was he just exhausted and needed to sleep? Was it me? After some years had passed and my knowledge of LGBTQ+ evolved, I asked myself if perhaps James was… gay? I mean, of course he wasn’t gay, but… was he gay?  Or was it me? But if he wasn’t into me then why the whole charade with the romantic letter? Even if he wasn’t into me for a long term relationship, what teenage boy on a pallet next to a girl in a dark room doesn’t still show some interest? I mean was I so hideous to him that he didn’t even want to take a little advantage? 

I am not even joking that I still asked those questions somewhere in the recesses of my mind as a grown, married college graduate and career woman and then mother. Why would I still care you might ask? Because it was one of life’s greatest mysteries. I had had men and boys take liberties with me that they weren’t invited to take since I was 5 years old, and yet the one boy I really wanted to have consensual anything with was like “meh”. It confounded me.

Then this thing called Facebook came along.

One day, I’m scrolling along when I get a friend request. I see the still handsome face and name and immediately my heart skips a beat much like it did every day in the hallway in high school. Only this time it wasn’t because I was crushing on him; it was because I was still trying to process what had all happened - or not happened, as it were. The first thing I did was go to his page and look for a happy, committed gay couple in his profile pics. But no, there she was… the mother of his children. Yes, children. Dagger to the heart! I was hideous after all!!!

This confirmation of his relationship status continued to fuel the questions in the back of my mind, but of course I had many other things in the forefront of my mind. It sat back in my mental files with other things like wondering where Lynn ended up, trying to remember the name of my chemistry teacher, etc. My primary thoughts involved work, kids, schedules, marriage, finances, friendships, and everyday life and stress.

Then one day…

James changes his status on FB. I had noticed for a while that I’d been seeing a lot of pictures of him and this other guy, and I assumed they were close friends for a long time. But the status change on FB was… a relationship status change. And this guy… was his significant other!! There was an instantaneous build-up of emotions in me including an elation that surprised me considering how many years had passed since that brief, wannabe love affair (“wannabe love” on my part… BEARD on his). He. Is. Gay. He. Was. Always. Gay. It. Wasn’t. Me. I. Wasn’t. Hideous!!!

I found myself texting people that didn’t even know me before we were 30 years old and saying, “So one time, there was this hot guy… and HE’S GAY!! It wasn’t ME after all!!”. 

Of all of life’s mysteries, I could file this one under SOLVED. And, again, I wished that he could’ve let me in to his thoughts and his real self back then. I would have been the best BFF and wingwoman he could have wished for. But times were so different then, and trust isn’t easy now let alone in the 1990’s. Still, I didn't and don't like that I was used, if I'm honest.

I have speculated about how I was searching for something I’d never had with baggage that included both mommy issues, daddy issues, trust issues… and how I ended up trying to date a person who had his own issues and was also searching for something that he saw in me could be some sort of a cover. Even though there never appeared to be any intention to get to know me, I made excuses for it all to try to fit my idea of what the relationship could be.  This made me seem a bit desperate and clingy, and I hate to say it wasn’t my last time to approach a relationship this way.  It took a couple more disasters for me to take a hard left and do things differently. This relationship with James or whatever it was was a learning experience if nothing else.

I'm happy to say that I don't think I ever dated any other gay men. Since then, as a matter of fact, the only gay people who have given me the eye have been women, and that, to me, is the ultimate compliment. Because they mean it. 

So there's another “Of course it happened to GINA” entry for the books.

#straightwoman #gayguy #datinglife #learningexperience #teachablemoments #LGBTQ #highschoollove #younglove #dysfunctionalrelationships #isawyournutsmommy #ISYNM 

Today is our 18th Anniversary. 18 years of marriage. Now when he smacks my butt something in my back slides out of place for a second. 👵🏼 But I still like that he smacks my butt. 😚 (If I start breaking hips at some point we will have to revise this practice…)

I want to get reflective and personal in this anniversary post, because I feel like there have been breakthroughs that I can actually visualize with strings linking one thing to another, and there is some real beauty in this. Some of this has happened during the Covid era, so when you need to find silverlinings, this has been one for us possibly.
When this picture of Milo (Jose) was taken, he was a little boy living in the desert of New Mexico near the Rio Grande close to the Juarez, Mexico border. His dad had died when he was a toddler, and his mother worked hard to feed and clothe her children during an era that was not kind to single mothers. Milo spoke Spanish to communicate with his Grandmother who birthed all 11 of her children in a small adobe house with dirt floors located in beautiful historic Old Mesilla, and he learned to cook the most amazing Mexican food from scratch (masa, whole chiles, etc) and be responsible and take care of others. There’s a lot he had to learn to compartmentalize and rise above from an early age. He grew to be one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met, someone who was an all star wrestler in high school, tested high on his ASVAB and became an intelligence analyst in the Army, went to college and has a Masters in Accounting. He’s someone who cares about people and understands hardship in a deeply personal way. He shows his love by acts of service and that core belief has been challenged during his life with me because I believe his time and his words are what make me feel loved and seen. He is an amazing cook, he knows how or can figure out how to do anything, and he is one of the most stubborn people I know. He is also sensitive when you get through that stubborn layer, and I love him even more when he shows me that depth. I find him immensely handsome, and he just gets more handsome by the year. His acts of service of part of who he is: making and bringing me a cup of coffee every morning, buying my favorite flowers for no particular reason when he's out getting some groceries, starting my car on cold mornings... the list goes on.

I was still a baby when this picture of him was taken.

When this picture of me was taken, I was 1,700 miles away from him living in Apple Carr trailer park in Muskegon, Michigan. My parents had recently divorced, and the last time my dad came to see me was around this time. I too began to learn to compartmentalize at a young age, and I tried always to be a good girl who stayed out of trouble. I was incredibly sensitive, and it took me many more years to be able to cover that with stubbornness that impressively rivals that of my husband’s. I have felt the emotions of other people and animals for as long as I can remember, and somehow even at the age you see me in this picture, I knew that my life was going to be extremely painful if I did not find a way to learn how to manage the effect on myself that I would feel from knowing about all of the pain in the world. More importantly, because I grew up around tough kids in my neighborhoods and schools, I had to learn to not show my emotions so that it would not be mistaken for weakness. I learned a real appreciation for gardening and preparing meals from the summers I spent with my grandparents in the south while growing up, and I learned about which peppers taste best in butter beans from my grandma. If not for that those experiences, I would have known even less than I knew about cooking when I was a young adult. I was a hard worker from the time that I realized I could make people happy doing things for them and that I could earn money helping people that had tasks to be done or kids to be babysat. I loved to feel useful. I did not know how to become a successful person, but I knew I wanted it. If I knew then what I know today or if I'd had someone back then to ask, there are things that would be infinitely different in my life and career, but I went to college and I found my footing in the business world, and up until the day I gave birth to my twins, I looked very much like a workaholic. A lot of things have changed my views about the difference between a strong work ethic and balancing it with the things that really matter - which is the people around you that cannot be replaced and the experiences that you can’t have once you’ve missed the opportunity. I still struggle with showing vulnerability in person, I have trouble trusting, and it’s hard for me to say no.

Both of the people you see in these pictures communicate in different ways, are both stubborn and a little set in their ways. They each had to grow up quickly, they learned how to take care of themselves and do things without help, and they both grew up without their dads and experience and work through their own versions of abandonment issues. They both prioritized work over a life for too long and are working on each of these things. They both love to cuddle, and they both love humor and talk to each other in movie lines, and they both put fries on burgers.

Our relationship is not nor has it ever been perfect. We are both Type A people who don’t like to have to get permission from anybody to do some thing we feel is right thing to do at any given time - including each other.  Our communication styles are so different that at times I have felt that he really did not know me all the while he thought he knew me better than I know myself - wrong. One thing that we share in common is our need for touch, so, those cuddles… here for it.
I shared with him a couple of weeks ago when we spent the weekend together in downtown Dallas to celebrate his birthday (Mar 24), my birthday (Mar 11), and our anniversary (Apr 9), that when we were in our separate spa treatments the first day of our weekend, I cried quietly throughout my triple body scrub. I was embarrassed and hoped because the room was dark that she could not see the tears pouring down my face. I told him that I always find myself having emotional meltdowns during any sort of self-care treatment like a massage or a restorative yoga class or just any sort of session where a person does something nurturing to my body. I know these individuals are strangers and they do not know me nor do they love me. But I think because my entire childhood I was someone who needed physical touch as part of my love language, and almost the only time I was ever touched was by someone who was doing something bad and self-serving to me, I now as an adult just have these very deep seated emotions that come out when someone does something genuinely nurturing to me like scrubbing my body with salt or rubbing oils into my muscles, or lying a blanket over the top of me, or putting a warm towel on my face with drops of essential oils on it… any act involving nurturing touch opens up my flood gates. Sometimes even an extended hug from a friend causes me to have to hold back tears.
I’m telling you all this to say that on this our 18th anniversary, I am still learning how to tell my husband who I am, because there are many layers beneath the opinionated, funny, loving, book loving, recipe creating, nerdy, curious, business person, journaling mother and wife. And he is still learning how to hear from me that he doesn’t know all the parts of me that he needs to know to understand me better. And I need to know all of his parts to understand him better, because he is more than a boy who lost his dad, more than a foodie, more than a brilliant accountant, more than a stubborn but funny grump who makes amazing coffee, more than one of 7 siblings each with their own stories, and more than a dad of a little girl that experienced many painful years after his divorce from his first wife. And the more we do this actual listening and asking and paying attention and being thoughtful before speaking, the closer we are, the happier our life together will be.  But I can’t just be the one doing it, and he can’t just be the one doing it. We have to both be doing it.

And I’m happy to tell you that 18 years in we are probably in the best space we have been in yet because with all of this work comes more patience and more respect. And while he’s always been the best cuddler I’ve ever met, it’s even better sharing those physical touches with someone who knows the parts of you that heal a little more with each one.

I think I just wanted to share all of this because someone reading this might find something resonating about it. I wish I’d understood from the beginning of our relationship that while I thought we connected in our ability to communicate, he thought we connected on my carefree attitude and the fresh air it brought to him and his tendency to be uptight. When I learned we actually did not communicate the same way, I was honestly confused and often felt hurt. All of my loneliness from my whole life set in again very deeply and very quickly in moments of misunderstanding… which bred resentment. But I know now too that as a result of my reactions to not having the communication I value so much and had expected, I lost some of that care free spirit that he first fell for… which made him feel more distant. These realizations take time and addressing them while also being consumed and saturated with jobs and child rearing is in my mind probably one of the biggest reasons that once children are grown and leave the nest, marriages don’t always survive. Neither of us wanted to be in this statistic and on this we were united.

Something I learned from him fairly recently that helped some of the hurt is this: a traumatized person isn’t always able to handle the traumatization of the one they love. He knows some - not all - of my “stuff”, and I have never been sure that I know all of his but he tells me I do.  I had wondered why he never asked many questions or why he never read anything I write. He told me he didn’t want to read about me; he wanted me to tell him about me. It then took me years to explain to him that I can finally write about things but I still cannot simply speak them. It takes me hours and hours to even write something out to make sure I am expressing it exactly as I mean it, and I am utterly exhausted by the time I finish. So I pressed him on it again and again telling him that if I knew he’d written so much as a sentence about anything I would be reading it that very second because I want to know every single part of him and his mind and his heart and his soul no matter how mundane.  Then one day recently he did read some thing I wrote, because I was dealing with a lot of backlash as a result of it and I couldn’t even talk to him about what those feelings were like if he had not even read the subject of what was hurting me in that moment. He ended up reading it, and I was able to have an outlet and sounding board from the one person I needed it from. And he finally told me the answer I have looked for for 20 years. He said, “It hurts me too much to actually know details of things that happened to you and how they made you feel and how they have affected your whole life. It’s enough for me to know about them and I’m sorry I cannot let myself get into that space with you in the actual events themselves, because loving you and hurting at that level is too much." And he said all of this through tears.

People, when I wrote above that I knew early in my life that the pain of other living beings was going to always be a struggle for me, I saw him in myself when he said those words. He was also protecting himself from pain he didn’t feel he could bare about my own pain. I understood him finally for the first time, and I actually felt more loved by him than I may ever have before. In having that conversation, I was also able to let him know that I needed him to know me through and through, and that I might need him to get into the trenches with me anyway even if it hurt him to do so. Because he’s my partner and literally the only person that really does have to know everything about me if we are seeking the oneness of marriage. Still our individual selves, yes. But also a oneness.

This is all stuff over the course of 18 years of marriage, of course… part of the ups and downs. As anyone who’s been in any kind of long-term relationship knows, there are ebbs and flows in relationships. And all of this is why everybody who is married says it’s hard work. Because it is damn hard work. For people who come from backgrounds that caused them to build walls and struggle with trust, the “oneness” of marriage might be the most ultimate and yet unattainable goal of all. But getting to a place where you each can know each other and understand each other and be sensitive in the right places, spaces, and times brings you closer, and there is more of a oneness. And isn’t that the point of marriage anyway?

Happy Anniversary to my love… the one who  with whom I will always roll into a cuddle. Thank you for loving me.

Half of my life ago, I was in Spain for 9 days trying to figure out a plan to move there permanently - sell sunglasses on the beach? Open a food cart? Buy a B&B to rent to tourists? We all know how that dreamed panned out.

During that trip I had a lot of firsts besides the most soul-inspiring views that I never could have imagined:

1) I did karaoke (Brown Eyed Girl ~Van Morrison). The crowd roared. Ok maybe not.

2) I went topless on the beach after realizing that it was full of every age and shape of person - including grandmas with 4 arms swingin’ in the sand who weren’t inhibited so why should I be? As a result, I had the best tan I’ve ever had before or since! 😂

3) I learned that eating the fruit from a sangria lands you in the lap of the middle aged guy next to you when you stand up - and hopefully his wife is gracious and understanding (she was 😅).

I was obsessed with the pizza from this walk up restaurant on the strip in Lloret de Mar, and I was equally obsessed with the 2 dimples on and under my right butt cheek. And every slice of pizza I ate I envisioned more dimples popping up everywhere. This isn’t my only regret from that trip.

I watched other girls around my age having a kind of carefree fun I wasn’t capable of having. I felt so much older than all of them, and already had a tiredness about me that comes from growing up too fast. It’s only now that I can look back and realize we were the same age. At the time I considered them practically kids. But so was I really. And I secretly worried that my then-husband wished he was with them instead of me - I would never let him know of these insecurities, of course; it was important to me to look unbreakable to everyone around me.
I soaked in everything during that trip - people we met and conversed with, music in the streets all night long, an energy I'd never experienced, a heart-jolting realization of just how big the world was and how there are infinite lives we can have depending on our choices and resources.
Since that trip I finished college, I finally did break after all and got divorced as a result, I moved, built my career, got remarried, moved again… and again, had 5 kids, and each of those is a long, long story…

Here I am now double the age, and I have more than 2 dimples on and under my right butt cheek, and I still think about that Spanish pizza. I still dream of spending my days by the ocean. I still feel older than everyone around me - many of whom are the same age as me or older. I've been to many more places since then and grown in ways I can't do any kind of justice in a short story. I’m still in my head a lot, but the thoughts are different. 

I have *almost* everything I always ever wanted and never thought the universe would let me have. I still battle a sense of loneliness that I can’t shake and a neediness in my current marriage that stems from deep seated feelings of abandonment - and I still struggle with expressing it verbally and pushing it down deep inside. But I am surrounded by love and my misunderstanding of men has been healed  by giving birth to 4 future men of my own and helping raise a little girl into a woman who’s doing life in ways I wish I’d done has been another kind of healing. Any of these things is missing context without the other. I continue to be full of optimism and gratitude and excitement for the future even if I still always have a sense that unimaginable loss is hiding behind doors I haven't yet walked through. But still, I know I can't focus on that fear or I miss out on the beauty of being present.

As I contemplate my 48th birthday, do I love noticing that my skin isn’t what it use to be and that I’m having to make a decision soon between highlights and actual hair color, that I now check the mirror to make sure my nipples are sitting where they’re suppose to be in my bra, and that there’s no sign of a fupa or camel toe before I walk out the door, that I sometimes wonder if my husband will one day not be attracted to me (this is conditioning of society and my life experiences not reality, I remind myself), and that I may become irrelevant in my career (that glass ceiling is still tightly in place but there are cracks! 🙌), etc…  The answer to all of that is also no. Of course I don’t love any of those things - does anyone?

But I’m where I’m suppose to be, and I’ll go where I’m suppose to go. I’m aging because I’m aging. I’ll still be me when there’s no more help for my skin or my boobs, and I will still see my husband for him as he will see me for me. And we will watch our kids grow to be adults with their own lives who visit us and love us and I’ll look back one day and say it really was Happily Ever After… because every story that ends that way has challenges and hardships and personal growth from failures and insecurities and heartbreak. The middle is never easy but it’s what makes the ending beautiful anyway. Sometimes tragically beautiful... but I push that thought away from me.
I still don’t know what the next half of my life looks like, but I know it’ll be hard, it will be beautiful, it will suck, it will be amazing, it will be gut wrenching, it will be heart bursting, and when I’m 90 years old I will still feel older than the 100 year olds. Hopefully I won’t care at all about the dimples on my butt. Hopefully I will look back and know that I loved myself more and more with each passing year. Hopefully I will see that the insecurities I have today were as much a waste of time than worrying about how many slices of pizza I ate in Spain, and I will see myself in a gracious light. Hopefully I will be happy with the life I’ve led. And hopefully I won’t have to sell glasses on the beach to live by the ocean.

Happy Birthday to me and now on to another trip around the sun...

I was 11 years old in this picture, which is a year younger than my twins are now. I look at my boys, strong and confident but needing reassurance sometimes as they adjust to the continuous physical changes to their bodies, the dynamics of middle school that’s filled with clusters of individuals navigating the same and other circumstances specific to their own lives, and the stresses of being more aware of the good and the bad going on in the world around them and beyond them. I am in awe of them constantly for the knowledge they have acquired in their short lives, and I do my best to help them be aware that there is plenty they don’t know that they don’t know and that that singular fact will never change. So it is important to be someone who is open to learning and understanding and showing grace. I remind myself of this often too; I’m human and am prone to trying to “figure people out”; it’s important not to run with the results of that expedition and close the door on other levels of understanding.

We are all individuals that no one really knows in their entirety other than oneself. We are all full of experiences and dreams and wants and needs that no other one single person knows all about. Does that thought invoke loneliness in you? Does it make you feel terribly misunderstood? Are you terrified of being found out while at the same time desperate to be seen? Does it inspire you to be more than those around you think you are? Is it a catapult to be more than anyone gives you credit for? Do you feel a surge of desire in yourself to take over the controls and not be stifled, not be limited, not run out of time to make up for lost time, not lose the qualities you have within yourself before you have the chance to nurture them and let them soar? These were all a yes for me.

When I see this person in the photograph that I was then, all of the insecurities, fears, and heart compression returns to me in an instant but at a soft distance, because I’ve learned to not let it consume me when I look at it. I was an individual that no one really knew entirely other than myself, and I was lonely, I felt misunderstood. I wanted to feel safe and protected. I wanted to feel what unconditional love felt like. I was keenly aware that unconditional love wasn’t something you could go out and get; someone just felt it through no actions of your or their own part. How would anyone ever just feel that for me for no reason? I longed to be able to set all my problems down in front of someone who would take them from me, heal me, love me, protect me, not make fun of or belittle me, not minimize my hurts. I longed for someone to hold onto my sensitive, vulnerable heart until the cracks were no longer visible.

I didn’t know this then, but I needed someone to talk to me about the various definitions of beautiful; I needed to know it wasn’t one perfect, unharmed thing. I needed someone to explain to me how the things people did to hurt me weren’t reflected back to other people that passed by; I didn’t carry around a “look” that immediately identified me as icky, dirty, and greasy. I wish I’d been told ithat I was not expendable nor was I deserving of being sexually and mentally abused. I felt like I walked around with my insides on the outside - exposed, vulnerable to comments, causing people to wince at the grotesqueness, awkward. I was so sensitive and so nervous. I wanted to feel beautiful, and I might have if I'd known that strength is beautiful, surviving is beautiful, maintaining a kindness in the face of pain is beautiful.

Yeah, so, I was 11 years old in this picture, and my step dad was sexually abusing me. That smile? I got good at that smile to the point that I grew up with people telling me, “You’re always so happy and smiling”, and my internal reaction would be, “Really?” It was counter-intuitive to believe that people could see that I was being abused but also believe I was a happy person. I deduced that they could see something ugly, something off about me but not quite put their finger on what it was, especially since I was so “happy”. So this became a survival skill of mine for many decades to come - poker face, happy smile, fake-it-til-you-make-it, etc. The thing I couldn’t shake then or now is feeling like an imposter. A work in progress, I am.

I remember scouring my mind for people I could run away to, show up on their doorstep, and be welcomed with open arms into a safety net where all my anxieties would fall away. I could not think of anyone that could be a serious option. I would imagine a family and then remember a reason they wouldn’t want to keep me. I’d remember someone else and know they’d just send me back. This other family would say they don’t want to get involved. These people that I KNOW would take me are too far. The future project manager in me would, from time to time, pick the plan back up to get 5 states away on my own without any one finding out. I anticipated challenges along the way and took inventory of the various options for each.

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that I just had to ride out the rest of my childhood until I could afford to move out. And so this became the beginning of my quest to take any and every job I could in order to save up enough money to leave. My goal was $2k. I babysat, I pulled weeds, I mowed lawns, I cleaned out gutters and closets and garages, etc.

A lot happened between the day I made this vow and the day I walked out the backdoor with the last of my belongings and $2k in ones, fives, and tens in a pink caboodle, still unsure about how I was getting to school, to work, and back home every single day in all kinds of West Michigan lake-effect weather. But I knew I would find a way. If I was willing to walk 5 states away, I could walk a few miles a couple times per day from the cold, damp basement of a house of adult roommates to stake my own claim on my own life and be free. It wasn’t without cost to be sure, but I was willing to do whatever I had to do to survive on my own long enough to finish high school, turn 18, be able to legally make my own decisions, and launch myself forward with challenges I knew I would be able to overcome if I dug deep. It turned out that there were a couple of angels along my way that gave me a second wind here and there when I really needed it. I’ve always known I may not have survived it all if it weren’t for them because I was continuing to realize just how little you can count on people displaying good behavior even if they’re suppose to care about you.

In this picture is a girl who spent her summer break terrified of being alone in the same room with her stepfather. It’s a girl who was scared, confused, overwhelmed, could not talk to her mom about anything, and questioned whether her mom even loved her. It’s a girl who jumped at the chance to go spend summers with her grandparents to get away. It’s the girl who one night in the dark told her grandma that she needed to tell her a secret.

In my young mind, my grandma loved me enough to keep my secret. In my grown up mind, I don’t understand why my grandmother didn’t love me enough to not keep my secret. Between then and now I learned that she had actually told some pieces of it to some people, none of whom did anything to intervene. In fact, when my mom finally insisted I tell her if something had been done to me after nagging me for hours about the way I treated my stepdad with indifference, I didn’t see shock in her eyes at all. Maybe it was there; maybe she had a good poker face too. But if I thought that she was going to whisk me away from him and get as far away as possible so I could feel safe, I was very, very wrong. In fact, a few days later she asked me if I wanted her to leave him. She asked this people-pleasing, devoid of any self-esteem or self-worth teenage girl if I wanted to be the reason everyone’s life was turned upside down. Ok, she didn’t say those words, but that was what it came down to. I didn’t know how to answer a question like that. My answer was obviously yes, Yes, YES!! But she’s asking me with this tone in her voice that sounded to me like, “Can’t you just deal with it and let it go? Let bygones be bygones?” She didn’t say those words, but she may as well have. I could tell from her posturing that she wanted to just move on and wanted me to do the same. The gist was she would talk to him, and it wouldn’t happen again, and that should be enough, right? Let’s just say I would have done things completely different in her shoes. But then we are cut from different cloth. I just shrugged and told her I didn’t know. I kept thinking maybe if she knew everything her husband had done to me she wouldn’t be asking me this, but then I had to wonder why she didn’t ask me what all he’d done to me. Didn’t she want to know? Didn’t she need to know? Is this what it means when people say “Ignorance is bliss”?

I went to a Christian school from 4th to 9th grade, and I felt like I walked around with a tremendous pressure on me to keep my secrets, to not be exposed, and all of this while I was also beginning to go through puberty and deal with catty girls and punk boys at school. You never knew from one day to the next who was going to be your friend and be nice to you and who was going to make fun of and torment you. There was so much jealousy over who is better friends with whom, and I just wanted to be liked by everyone. Those things on their own would have been plenty to deal with and most kids deal with these things to some extent in the course of growing up, but when there’s abuse at home and secrets to keep, the compounding of it all can feel like too much to some kids. It certainly felt too much for me. I felt daily like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and I couldn’t get to my $2k goal fast enough. I cried myself to sleep almost every night, and I just clung to the day when this would all be in my rearview mirror.

Fast forward to 2021

My friend, Melissa, has a sound bath and energy healing business called SoulcialLight. She is endlessly creative, fun, introspective, and thoughtful. She invited me to one of her sound bath events in Dallas, and, while I’d always wanted to experience one, I didn’t know what to expect. Honestly, I was just excited to lie down somewhere uninterrupted and feel some calming sensations. What I ended up experiencing was so meaningful to me that here I am a year later still thinking about it and feeling some peace from it.

Once we did a quick little warm up with stretching and light yoga, we moved into position on our backs with a pillow and light blanket. When Melissa started using the bowls and sounds were swirling all around me, I found myself sort of separating from my body and looking down at myself. I spent the next hour visiting myself at different ages, and I spent a particularly long time with my younger self during the time when I often cried myself to sleep every night with deep heaves and puffy faced headaches. As the little girl, I felt like someone was there caring for me. As the spirit, I took on the too-big emotions of my younger self and let her know she was ok and would come out ahead of all of this one day. I was myself as the little girl sobbing and the spirit of myself visiting her at the same time. Though I was still physically lying on the floor with my blanket and pillow in the sound bath room, I was also in these other places, and I felt tears falling from my eyes down my temples, onto my ears, and dripping onto the mat below me.

Once I left my bedside, my spirit self was sitting next to me as a little girl in my neighbor’s backyard where I went to pick mulberries and hide from my stepdad. It’s where I could sit under the Weeping Willow tree and see and smell the lilac trees that lined the alley behind their yard. The days I was actually back there as a kid, I was scared and sick with worry. In this sort of vision I was experiencing, the child-me felt soothed by my spirit being there. My jumpiness and anxiety calmed, and I took deep breaths and let my shoulders down. I felt like i was going to be ok. These are feelings I desperately needed to feel back then.

And so on it went - I would go directly to the scene of myself as a child when I was hurt or scared or sad and I would sit with myself and put a cloak of safety and warmth around me as the little girl. And what came over me every time as the little girl version was a sense of feeling protected by the spirit of myself that I couldn’t even see. It gave me a strength in knowing I would be ok.

The time continuum of all of this was not lost on me. Those things that happened to me as a little girl already happened, and I know that feeling of not being comforted and not feeling safe in my memories. But after this Sound Bath experience of visiting myself during those times and offering comfort now in my adulthood, well, it oddly enough takes some of the sting away from my memories. If no one else was there for me during those painful times, I was there for myself. And I’m the only one that knows me inside and out, top to bottom. Because as I said from the beginning, we are all individuals that no one really knows in their entirety other than oneself. So in that moment on the floor of the room in Melissa’s class, what I experienced was the thing I’d spent my whole life wanting so badly: unconditional love. And I got it during that experience. I got it from myself - the energy and spirit of myself. And I still feel a peace from it today.

Melissa is a Vision Strategist and continues to hold these sound bath classes at various locations around the Dallas, Texas, area, and you will do yourself a beautiful favor by attending any of her classes. You can find her on Instagram at @soulcial.light

If you’re in or close to the Atlanta area, I highly recommend finding a schedule of events from Angela; she is a Certified Sound Practitioner, and her business is called In The Key of Love, and she focuses on sound, music, and lyrical intentions, which includes sound baths, as well. She has gone through her own journey with anxiety and hard emotions, and you can trust her with yours. Her Instagram page is @InTheKeyOfLove.

Your experience during a Sound Bath class will be your own and look quite different from anyone else’s, and that’s probably because you’re not anyone else. Gift yourself or someone else with the time to sit in your own thoughts and emotions and see how the sounds Melissa and Angela provide help you process them.

#trauma #abuse #childsexabuse #healing #ptsd #recovery #anxiety #depression #mentalhealth #therapy #musictherapy #soundtherapy #soundbath #spiritualhealing #comfort #mentalabuse #emotionalabuse #sexabuse #pedophiles #meditation #InTheKeyOfLove #SoulcialLight #LoveYourself #emotions #lifestories #memoirs #keepmovingforward

The car smelled like the person who had it before me spent the weekend smoking and farting in it, so I grimaced when I got inside, but I was grateful to have not had to wait a crazy long time at National to get the next car that arrived at the empty airport rental lot. There were 4 people in front of me when I walked up from the shuttle I took after grabbing my suitcase from baggage claim, and it was the first time I’ve ever seen Emerald Aisle bare of any vehicles.This was the first hiccup of the day, as my arrival to the airport in Dallas all the way through to landing in Raleigh was noticeably uneventful except for a Starbucks cup for Jenet instead of Gina. I’ve been called worse.

It was a beautiful if a little chilly day, and after cracking the windows to air out the ashtray farts, I drove the Nissan Altima that would be mine for the week to my hotel.  With the Digital Key already available, I went straight to my room to unpack and change in time for my first meeting.

I’ve been to Raleigh before but briefly and without having really looked around much, so I took the opportunity to appreciate all of the tall trees and rolling hills, and I found over the course of the next few days that the people I interacted with were as lovely as the scenery… except for the guy who got upset at me when the lanes didn’t line up properly across the intersection, confusing me about which one I should be in. This peach a couple car lengths behind me jerked his car, floored it, and drove right up to my bumper, riding it closely like I had just intentionally tried to ruin his day. As I was waving to say sorry, I noticed in my rearview mirror that he was yelling something and flipping me off; he was so close I could see how red his face was… Kind of dramatic, I thought, given that he wasn’t even that close behind me when it happened. While he didn’t know I’m from Texas, he could surely see the Ohio plates on my rental car. I tend to give people a pass for annoying traffic choices once I see out of state plates, but maybe this guy didn’t notice mine or maybe all of his exes live in Ohio.  Anyway, other than that guy, every other person I dealt with in any kind of way was just plain charming.

Well, there was that other guy…

I’m still trying to figure out how to describe this other guy that I didn’t see coming in my week of experiences.  I was at a Panera the next morning to meet up with a local colleague and a channel partner to discuss some business opportunities in the region. All I was having was coffee, and when I got my cup from the cashier and went over to the coffee station, the dark roast was bone dry.  Back to the register I went to wait in line to ask if there was more coming out soon or if I could get some from behind the counter.  From over my right shoulder, I heard a cheery male voice asking if I was going to order something. It was a strange question since I was in line… at a restaurant, but I turned to look at him with a smile on my face and said, warmly “Just some coffee. They’re out of the dark roast at the coffee station.” I thought that would be the end of it, so I turned back towards to the register when he continued, “Oh, so you’re a dark roast kind of person. You need the strong stuff,” and he cackled a little. He was a rather short fellow, with salt and pepper hair, dressed in business casual attire. With my heels on, I towered over him, so I made a point of not standing too closely to him (tall girl habits). I looked back at him again and smiled, “Yep, dark roast for me.” He continued to go on about the coffee, which, I’ll be honest, was getting weird.

My colleague walked up, so I took the opportunity to say something to him and hopefully be done with the discussion about the strength of my coffee for good.  As soon as there was a break in our conversation, the same man behind me pointed at me and then raised and lowered his index finger to indicate he was talking about all of me and said, “I’m liking this look. The black outfit, the glasses. Not everyone can pull off glasses like that.” Not having ever heard this before and wondering immediately if there are different regional preferences on glasses between Dallas and Raleigh I nodded, raised my eyebrows, and said, “A little on the nerdy side you think?” He continued, “They’re a bold choice.”  I may have actually starting belly laughing at this point, because I found it really comical - both that my glasses seemed like a bold choice to him and also that he actually just said those words to me, a complete stranger.  And right then I liked him. And as I am typing this, the word to describe him just came to me: quirky. And I love weird, quirky, unique people; I love the surprise they are to my day.  I love that I walk away trying to see their perspective and understand their choice of words. And I’m pretty sure there was a genuine compliment in his last statement.  My colleague overheard all of this, and as we sat down at our table, he laughed and said, “He was very interested in you, wasn’t he?” I reassured him that I was put on this earth to meet unusual people - it’s what I do. I don’t look for them; they just find me. Case in point.

I should point out that for 4 days I was getting in and out of a car that smelled like a cigarette ate eggs and then farted, and this was even less appealing when I’d get back in after eating.  That said, every thing I ate that whole week was amazing. And, again, the exchanges with people I had were as much souvenirs of my trip as the meals themselves. Other than one dinner, which I had with friends who drove over to visit with me, I went to dinner by myself. I’m the person that sits at the bar to eat while I read. So there I was sitting at the bar reading a book with my bold choice of glasses, fresh hair and make up at a place called The Rockford. It was a restaurant & bar located at the top of a steep set of stairs just off the street in between other businesses. I was paying attention to my book, but I was also listening to the conversations of the other people sitting at the bar. There was an older couple to my right who seemed like they were still in a new-ish relationship, a 30-something group of friends further down talking about work and other people they knew mutually. To my left was a couple in their late 20’s or so who seemed like they’d been together a long time. The bartender was dressed in sort of a gritty biker style, and when we made eye contact, I asked for a Malbec.  He waved his hand in the direction he turned to get a glass, and it was the most graceful gesture. I found myself watching him pour the glass of wine and bring it over to me, his head cocked to the side as he set it down. He had a beautiful flamboyance about him, and he was warm and human and… well, I just knew I liked him and would enjoy this dinner. I couldn’t help but notice what an eclectic scene this was - the diversity in this group of people, the very different conversations taking place. It felt like a place I would go to if I lived there.  After I finished eating an amazing dish of Blackened Salmon, Baked Kale, & Cheddar Grits, the bartender brought my check over to me saying, “Here you go, Gorg.”

As I was getting my card out to pay, the older new-ish couple to my right asked me what I was reading. I told them it was “a less cerebral choice than my usual, but it’s Slash. Written by, well, Slash. As in Guns-N-Roses. You know, the one with the long black curly hair and dark glasses playing the guitar often wearing a hat?” They feigned interest with a higher pitched, “Ahhh ok, well that seems interesting. Must be quite a read.”  Actually, it is. I resisted the urge to tell them that the only reason I’m reading it is because I had a major crush on this guy for my entire teenage life - like a heart-aching sort of crush. And the fact that he’s still alive and didn’t die from some pervasive STD or chemical overdose is intriguing to me. So I’m taking a break from my typical choices and reading this. Part of me wished I was reading something else at this moment, but it was what it was.

The last evening I was in Raleigh, I almost stayed in and ordered something for delivery. My feet were killing me, and I didn’t know if I could strap my heels back on for another trip out. I had surgery to remove some hardware from my left foot a few months ago, and I developed a cyst under the incision. My doctor keeps treating it and it returns immediately. So as I wait for another surgery to remove it and figure out what’s causing it, I’m very limited in the shoes I can wear. Nothing can touch the top of my foot. I bought a pair of flats for the trip that I thought would work, but I wore them during a visit to a customer’s factory that day, and they were rubbing the side of the cyst on my foot. I knew I could not put them back on.  I really wanted to try this place called Tazza Kitchen, so I made a reservation and then got myself dressed and ready. It was really cold out, so I left my mask on even after I walked out of the hotel. It felt good not to breathe in 20 degree air. I considered leaving it on in the car to muffle the smell of smoky farts, but I went ahead and took it off.  There was nothing particularly interesting about any of the people I associated with during this visit, but I did notice a fellow business lady wearing glasses and reading a few seats down from me: my soul sister.  After an amazing meal, I went to the restroom and reapplied my lip gloss, which, by the way, if you like a good plumping lip gloss then City Lips is worth a try. It’s so dang sticky that I swear I’ll never use it again, but then I find myself using it again. And again. And again. It just really works well, and also I love the high gloss. Sometimes I apply my own lip balm to the top of it to tone down the stickiness. Anywho…

The next day I was heading back to Dallas if I could depart before the winter weather moving in.  When I returned my stinky car, I was so tempted to blurt out “I don’t smoke, and those aren’t MY farts!”, but I didn’t. And I’ve regretted it ever since. I am glad to be rid of that car though, and bless the next person who got it.

It turned out my flight was delayed 30 minutes, and most of the seats near the gate were taken. So I stood nearby and found myself absentmindedly leaning back against the “wall” with all of my weight in very much an “ahhh” moment of relief that I was giving my poor back a break. The second my butt hit the wall, though, I immediately started flying towards the guy to the left of me who was on his phone. In nothing short of a Herculean effort with reflexes only a mother of 4 or more boys possesses, I pulled myself off the wall and forced myself back up to a standing position before having a very awkward and possibly painful collision. It was at that moment that I realized that I had just leaned back against the moving sidewalk railing, which moves along with the conveyor on the floor… all the way on my side of the railing too. Crisis averted. I have mad skills. Not a lot of gracefulness, but let’s face it, I’m a survivor.  A survivor who requires dark roast, mind you.

The rest of my trip was a breeze - I slept on the plane, I landed in Dallas to a sunny 60 degrees, my uber got me home in 30 minutes on a Friday, and no one told me I had weird glasses. Also no one called me Gorg, but also no one called me Jenet, so it’s a wash really. Mostly, I rejoined people who missed me and who I missed after a week spent in one of my new favorite cities: Raleigh, NC.

#RaleighNC 

​





​​I had an experience a year and a couple days ago that has stayed with me. Today, one year since we lost my Aunt Bev, I feel ready to share that experience.

If you’ve read up much on various theories of the afterlife, you may have read about topics such as mental consciousness vs consciousness beyond the brain (when the brain no longer functions, neurons die, and memories are lost thereby transitioning to a different consciousness that does not include the personality and belief systems provided by the human brain), and the difference in the concept of time and space in the human body vs time and space after leaving ones human body - that distance in the afterlife is traveled in the speed of thought and that time is an illusion, not linear but instant and infinite, all happening at the same time.

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity seems to support the concept of spacetime, 4-dimensions instead of 3, with memories and experiences not being past, present, and future but rather all together with identifiable space and time coordinates. I read somewhere - and I wish I could remember where - that the human existence on earth is to see experiences as in a continuous string of yarn the keeps going, going, going and being able to look behind and seeing the string behind you and just in front of you but not knowing what’s coming in the “future”; occupying the afterlife is to see the entire ball of yarn all at once. I really like that analogy.

And then there is the wordlessness in the afterlife - the open thought communication, the sense of love, light, comfort, and safety among familiar beings.

There is a book I read by a woman who has the gift of clairvoyance, and she described something in such a way that it opened my mind to understanding experiences that some have and others don’t - her, specifically, as a clairvoyant, but others I know that also have experiences with “the other side”.  She wrote that when people die, their essence, their energy, their spirit - whatever you want to call it - remains close by. It’s as though there is a sheet of paper between you; they’re just on the other side of that paper. But the human experience is one that it feels like that person is gone; death is final, the body is gone, we feel we only have our memories; we cannot see them other than when they may appear in our dreams.

As I sit here on my couch typing this, it is possible that my Aunt Bev, who I am missing so much on this 1 year anniversary of her passing, could be sitting right next to me without me seeing her - because of that paper like existence hiding her from my human eyes.  When someone very close to our family died right after Santiago was born, I struggled so desperately with making any sense of it, and I started reading whatever I could get my hands on about death and coping. It was during this time that I came across some Buddhist writings, some writings from Light workers, and some Scientific studies on end of life and how some peoples’ near death experiences can be explained.  For me, the answers I grew up with in the church that came from the Bible did not resonate with nor comfort me. They never did, and they still do not. There is not a truth in them for me despite there being a profound comfort from them for many others - maybe even you, the reader. But I CAN wrap my mind around the existence of energy within the body that leaves when the body dies and must go somewhere… and I am open to the various ideas of what that could mean. I recognize it is possible to maybe merge this with some Biblical or other religious teachings, but that isn’t the purpose of my interest. I just want to know what others experience, what happens to the brain during death, thoughts and scientific reasonings on why a “person” in the afterlife would not be the same as the person in the body in which I knew them on earth, how these beings would view us now without their human brain memories, and so on and so forth.

I grew up hearing my grandma tell stories about people coming to her and her instantly having a “knowing” about some things without any words spoken. This is how she knew that one of my aunts almost drowned that day, this is how she knew I was born, and there are countless other stories I remember from her. I never questioned it; I always just wished I had those abilities. As I grew up I didn’t know where to put these sorts of things, because I’m not one to question what someone else says they have experienced and yet I had not had any of my own to internalize what it all really meant.

My Aunt Bev told me that about a year before she was diagnosed with cancer, she had an experience that gave her a “knowing” that something bad was coming her way. When she found out about the tumor in her lung, she immediately flashed back to the experience she’d had when she first felt something bad was going to happen to her. Just as I never questioned my Grandmother’s experiences, I did not question my Aunt Bev’s. It was real to her or else she was a liar; and she was not a liar. So then what do I do with this thing she is telling me other than to add it to my curiosity about what it all means, where it all comes from, and why some people have these experiences and others - like myself - do not?

A year and a couple days ago from today, I was feeling tired. It was the middle of the day, and I decided to take a nap.  I turned on the floor fan as I always do when I am getting ready to go to sleep, and I rolled over with my pillows tucked in all the places to support my back, hips, and neck. I closed my eyes and was not anywhere near close to sleep yet. But the moment I closed my eyes, I was “seeing” and what I was seeing was something light-colored and ethereal without clear detailed lines floating down towards me, wrapping something around me before opening back up, rising above me, and then lowering again, encapsulating me in the softest most delicate wings or sheets or whatever it was wrapping around me. This lowering and rising, wrapping, and unwrapping happened over and over a few times. The whole time I laid there feeling a sort of emotional and mental warmth and comfort that I still lack words to describe. I was completely awake and yet I was experiencing this thing that felt very dream-like. I wondered what it was, who it was, why it was happening; I kept reminding myself I’m completely awake - how can I be seeing this? How can I be feeling this? The was a sound that wasn't a sound; something that "felt" louder as the figure got closer to me, and that sound seem to trigger an emotional response in me and a tug in my heart. I felt tears in my eyes, but I mostly just felt so incredibly nurtured by this - whatever it was that was happening to me in this moment - it felt feminine to me, but I didn't sense an obvious gender. It felt like a being, an ethereal being; it did not look like anyone, it did not look human, it did not speak, it only moved and cared for me in the most loving and intentional way. When it was gone, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was thinking about what had happened and still feeling the comforting sensations it left me with.

My husband walked through the room later as I sat up from my nap. I told him all about what I’d experienced before my nap. It was the strangest most lovely thing. It felt weird trying to put it into words - I even wondered if he thought I was nuts as I was telling him about it. I wanted to know what it was, why I experienced it, what it meant.  The whole rest of the day I pondered all of this. As I went to bed that night I realized I had not called to check on my Aunt as I’d planned to do. I had been dealing with the perforation in my intestines at the time and had been in and out of the hospital, so I wasn’t feeling well and hadn’t called her in a while. I decided to call her the next morning. I think I tried to FaceTime her the next morning or sent her a text or both, but I didn’t hear back from her. This was not unusual as her health was declining and she was so fatigued all the time. Texting was almost impossible for her, and she slept a lot.

The next day, I got a phone call and learned that my Aunt Bev had just passed away from the cancer ravaging her body.  Suddenly I was thinking about the experience I’d had a couple days before, and I asked my Uncle about the series of events in the previous days. He told me about a trip they’d taken together on her last good day. He told me about their trip to the hospital for her treatments and how the morning of, she seemed off at the hotel. He told me that he realized she’d probably had a stroke. He told me about getting her to the hospital and how quickly everything started to deteriorate from there.  She had not passed on when I’d had my experience, but it seemed she’d begun the process of transitioning from this life. It was confirmed she’d had a stroke, and she was not completely coherent after that. I decided to set aside what I’d experienced, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was her spirit - her energy - that had come to visit me. The visit was so loving and nurturing, and the timing was too closely aligned to be a coincidence. Still, though, it was surreal for me.

It was a couple weeks after she passed away that I was chatting with my cousin, and we were talking about my Aunt, and I told her about what had happened to me. I didn’t imply anything to her. Her response to me? She felt it was her mom coming to visit me during her transition. This was really all the confirmation I needed to finally stop questioning it. My Aunt Bev and I had spoken about what sorts of things she might do to let me know she was around after she passed away. I remember thinking there was no way to hold her to any of this; neither of us had died before and neither of us knew what was even possible if life DID go on after the bodily death. She told me she would come to me in a swarm of hummingbirds, and I told her she better make it obvious because I have a skeptical mind. To this day, I have not seen a swarm of hummingbirds, but what I believe she did for me by coming to nurture me into my nap and to make me feel the most intense sensation of being loved and cared for was really all I’ll ever need.  It was the first experience I have ever had like this, and it makes sense that she of all people would have been able to get through to me in that way. 

I prefaced with all the afterlife readings and theories to explain how my experience parallels with some of those things - the wordless communication, the loving sensations, the difference in this ethereal being compared to her as a woman on this earth, the concept of traveling at the speed of thought and being multiple places very quickly… this last part because there were moments during her final hours where my Uncle saw clarity and recognition in her eyes. 

I’m not writing about any of this for any particular reason other than that it’s been on my mind ever since it happened, and just as I sought out others’ experiences, someone might find something of use in mine. The biggest takeaway for me on the whole subject is that if someone told me I didn’t experience what I experienced in my awake state that I would have no way to prove it. I can only relay my experience as it happened. So if any of this makes you uncomfortable, it’s ok. But maybe you’ll have your own experience like this or in a little different way, and I really hope you do. I feel like I got a souvenir from a most special someone’s trip, but it’s much, much nicer and more memorable than any t-shirt. I'll hold that gift close to my heart forever.

I have a certain style of communicating with my kids that started way back when our daughter was approaching the teenage years. Because it can feel embarrassing or self-conscious to have someone call you out directly on something, when a serious topic was on my mind, I took the approach of striking up a random conversation and steering it accordingly and in hopefully a not-obvious way. 

​In my mind, being able to say some things that could be thought about after the conversation - assuming it was relatable and made the intended impression - opened up more of a possibility that it might be applied to the situation intended all along. She didn’t immediately feel exposed and then defensive, and I could speak about possible consequences and outcomes that had to do with this other person in their own situation, not her. For example, if I happened to come across some information about something she was doing in secret that I felt warranted some counsel but didn’t want her to feel like her privacy had been invaded, I might bring up a conversation about a similar situation and talk through it with her, eliciting her point of view and thoughts on it before wrapping it up with some things that she will hopefully think about and apply to her own situation. 

There’s that whole part of kids’ and young adults’ brains that isn’t fully developed yet, and we can’t expect them to connect all the dots of cause and effect on their own. At the same time, the benefit here is to say something without telling them what to do; to say it in a way that might in turn help them to make a decision that feels like their own —- this is empowerment and it’s more likely to build confidence.  At least this is how I see it. 

What I know is that no one really likes to be told “you should do this” and then expect to hear later, “I told you”. However, if it’s not direct and unsolicited advice but rather conversation, then it gives the other person the freedom to take from it what they will and hopefully make a more informed decision “on their own”. 

There is a quality in one of my kids that I saw very early on - it’s a wonderful quality; it also is one that can set him up for being taken advantage of or of being unfulfilled personally in order to make others happy instead.  I recognized this in him probably because I saw it in myself. It’s the PEOPLE PLEASING quality - the one that prompts a person to always let everyone else choose what they want first, to always give others the thing that would make them happier - but at the expense of what I myself might have chosen for myself; at the expense of being free to feel my own feelings and to express my needs and live my life the way that feels good and healthy to myself. It puts everyone else’s needs ahead of my own and makes my own feel expendable. It teaches others around me that I don’t feel strongly about my own desires and, as such, my wants are unknown and become insignificant to others and possibly even enables others to feel more entitled to theirs. It downplays the validity of my own feelings. It festers a loneliness in myself that will take me until my 40’s to try to turn around. Because very rarely does the other person say, “No, you choose”, and especially if it’s inconvenient for them. 

After a while, you can forget what it was you might have chosen for yourself and after a while longer, you can forget how to express your needs at all, how to feel entitled to your choices, how to feel worthy enough to speak your mind. You can actually begin to feel like it’s your RESPONSIBILITY to forego your own needs out of love for others. Please know I’m not talking about common courtesy here, I’m talking about giving our best to others while also having a reasonable expectation of how others treat us too and not lowering that bar. 

If we teach people how to treat us, then isn’t it important that we assert ourselves so others know these are my boundaries, that I’m not afraid to say what I like and don’t like, and that I expect you to do the same? To have our space in this world and to know who we are, what we like and don’t like, what we want and don’t want — it sets us up for a happier existence.

When I see any of my kids having trouble speaking up, I remind them that their point of view is important. One of the topics that comes up often in our house, for example, is the mispronunciation of our last name. My husband himself is guilty of not correcting people when they say it wrong, and just saying it wrong back to those people to make it easier on them. I put my foot down about this when the boys were born, because to me it’s not for a person to get use to other people saying your name wrong, it’s for other people to learn to say it right. And I want our boys to be proud of their name, to remember their Spanish heritage every time they speak it, to not allow others to inadvertently white-wash it, and to teach those around them how to say it correctly. Our family doesn’t walk around mispronouncing other peoples’ names with the attitude that “This is just how I say it so deal with it.” We actually want to know how to say someone’s name so we can say it correctly. Why shouldn’t it be this simple? So I have been persistent about teaching our boys that it only takes someone a couple times of being gently corrected to remember and that it’s important because it is a part of their identity. When I dropped them off at summer camp last week and we reached the desk to sign in, the boys gave their names. The person looking down the list found them and then read their names back to them - incorrectly. All of the boys in unison corrected him, respectfully. I was so proud of their courage. I want to see them replicate this courage and confidence in every aspect of their lives. I want them to do the things for themselves that I didn’t do and that I still to this day am paying for… because I taught others how they could treat me - which was way less than I deserved, what they could expect from me - which was to bend over backwards to make them feel comfortable at the expense of my own dignity, to feel entitled about their own needs and to see my needs as being an inconvenience and imposition on them. Had I done the things I knew were right for myself 35 years ago or anytime since, the complications in my life would be less today. People would have respected me for it or not but I would not have been a doormat for all of those years, and maybe I would not have suffered in my health, in my mental and emotional wellbeing, and with my self-worth.  

So today this sweet, people-pleasing boy of mine that I want to protect from becoming me or rather I’d like to help become more like the version of myself I am today… I had a conversation with him after finding out that he once again found himself in a situation of doing something he didn’t want to do all because he didn’t want to speak up and say what it was he wanted. He felt he would be perceived as a bother if he’d said, “I don’t like that. I’d rather have it this way.”  And so then he had to deal with the awkward and uncomfortable consequences of just going along with what someone else chose for him. Without addressing that situation directly and saying, “You should have…” I stopped the car and looked at him and said, “I want to remind you of something.” He looked at me and asked, “What?” I said, “Baby, the things you like, what you want, the feelings you feel, the opinions that are yours - they are all as valid as the likes, wants, feelings, and opinions of any other person on this earth. Don’t ever stop yourself from saying, “How about this?” or “I’d like to” or “I really don’t like that, but I like this”.  Because the other person can still choose for themselves too, it just doesn’t mean they have to choose for you. You both deserve to be happy. You deserve to enjoy every situation as much as everyone else and you deserve to be yourself as much as anyone else. You’re not ever a bother. You’re an equal.” Basically, I said all the things to him that I wish someone would have said to me when I was his age.

He looked up at me and said, “Mommy, you know what I realized this morning?” My heart fluttered with excitement about what aha moment he’d had that I might have contributed to with our conversations about life, and I said, “Tell me”.  Full of enthusiasm he said, “I realized that I like microwave bacon.”

I tell myself this going exactly as I planned. He is taking the pep talk I gave him and will be applying it later… as his own idea. We can start with bacon and go from there. 👊🏼

“But Santa won’t come,” I said quietly through teary eyes, knowing full well as a 5 year old that whatever this was, it was naughty.

“Yes, he will. Don’t worry,” said the older boy who was lying behind me at my grandparents' house. He was spending the night, and my grandma had put him in the pull-out with me. My grandpa also slept in this room, but he wasn’t in here yet.

I didn’t know what was happening or why, but Adam, I’ll call him, was lying behind me and pulling on my undies. I was asking him what he was doing and he said not to worry about it. Next thing I knew, I felt something poking me. It felt soft and spongey, pokey and intrusive... like a finger but something else. I pulled forward away from him suddenly. Confused about what was happening, I told him to stop it. He said this is what people do with each other and it wouldn’t hurt. It would be fine. He was older than me; maybe he knew something I didn’t. But he was hushing me, and usually you only get hushed when you’re going to be in trouble.

Next thing I knew, my undies were pulled down, and I felt him bumping up against and away from me, back and forth really fast... the pokey thing... his fingers grasping my arm tightly and then my hip... breathing hard. What was he doing, and why was he doing it to me? I’m nervous and anxious and so scared that I’m going to be in trouble, that Santa Claus was watching and that the one day I looked forward to all year would be ruined by this one incident that I didn’t even want to be doing and there would be no presents for me under the tree, and that my grandma or grandpa would walk in and I’d be in trouble for messing around instead of going to sleep.

And then he stopped bumping against me, the pokey thing wasn’t pokey anymore. He told me to be quiet as his breathing slowed, and I laid there with a million questions, realizing for the first time that boys don't have the same parts as girls.

He told me I couldn’t tell anyone or I’d be in trouble.

There it was. Confirmation.

This was the first time, but it became a common occurrence whenever this older boy spent the night. He used a very kind voice with me each time right before he began to tug on my undies and was almost pleading in the way he spoke. This attention he gave me in the dark when we were alone formed some sort of reasoning in my young mind that this is what people do when they care about you - even if you have to be quiet and keep it a secret. During the day when it was business as usual, I found myself missing the attention and wanting to be back on his good side, in his good graces, when he spoke sweetly to me to get his way. The way he treated me during the day around other people was different... antagonistic: my kryptonite.

I had watched my dad behave violently the first years of my life, and to me yelling was scary; angry voices were scary; aggressive energy was scary; criticizing me was scary. A soft voice asking something of me seemed loving and different. I wanted more soft voices, more gentleness. I remember the day I realized my body was being used and that it wasn’t affection or love after all. I didn’t believe in Santa Claus anymore by then. But the repercussions of twisting my psyche at the age of 5 with sex and even before that in witnessing and experiencing the actions of a violent, addicted father affected my sense of self-worth in a way that I believe made me a target for other boys and men throughout my childhood. I had no idea that first time that Adam sexually abused me that there would be other boys and men and that I would spend my adulthood trying to rewire my brain and undo the effects of the indoctrination of child sexual abuse: poor self-esteem, extreme self-consciousness, a feeling of dirtiness and less-than, bad, undeserving, not good enough, ugly. I have wondered a million times what had happened to Adam and if he’d have done this to me even if he’d not experienced abuse himself. It’s a possible reason; it’s not an excuse. Still, I’d very much like to try to understand it.

My healing has been a work in progress and continues even today. It is my life’s mission that my own children - while they will certainly need to overcome challenges in their own lives - will never know these particular challenges. While in my own life people preferred to look the other way, minimize and excuse the abuse they knew about, and tell me to just get over it and not make the perpetrators or the family feel uncomfortable, I personally have no qualms or second-guessing when it comes to my children. I have no hesitation about cutting a person or people out of our lives if the safety or well being of my kids is threatened. I will report someone in a heartbeat if I know they are causing harm to a child. I took one for the team every day of my childhood to avoid more guilt, more criticism. Taking one for the team looks a lot different on me now. It means I have my power back, and I will use it.

My biggest challenge today is trust, and having children aroused in me a deep seated fear that I have to mindfully manage so as to not put that burden on my kids. It is reflected in the extreme difficulty I feel in letting my kids go places where I cannot watch for the bad guys that look like the good guys. The ones that take a child’s sense of beauty and goodness from them and leave ugliness and shame in their place.

The ones that make a child worry that even Santa Claus will turn his back on them.

#isawyournutsmommy #youbetterwatchout #youbetternottell #survivingabuse #santaisntcoming #bloggermom #journaling #healingjourney #breakthecycle #kickatdarkness #childabuseawareness #preventabuse

Adrian, sitting next to me in the same spot on the patio yesterday morning while I drink my coffee...

“Mommy, do you think those trees by the fence will be big enough for me to build a treehouse in them when I’m grown up and get married?”

I look over to the northeast corner of our backyard, just off to the right of the makeshift fire pit we use when the weather is just right for making s'mores or for just sitting around listening to the crackle of fire with music in the background. Jose and I sit with our arms a pinkie's-distance apart while we sip on wine or a cold beer and watch the boys take turns one-upping each other on the trampoline. So many memories we have right there already, it hits me. I can see Veronica sitting across from me in the dark, the fire between us lighting up her beautiful face with her shiny dark hair framing her smile. I remember wondering where the years went as I look at her adult face and realize now that even that memory is almost 8 years old.

With all of that still playing in my head, I answer, “Hmmm maybe not those particular trees, but maybe we could plant another kind of tree now that would get big enough. What were you thinking about exactly?”

Adrian is looking towards the spot for which he is making plans and says, “Well, when I get married, we will need a place to live, so I’ll build a treehouse right there.”

Of all the things Adrian tells me, this one takes me a little by surprise.  Adrian? Thinking of getting  married and what his home will look like? “Oh nice! Can we meet right here each morning for coffee or iced tea or hot chocolate?” I add the tea and hot chocolate option, because he is convinced he will never like coffee, and I am looking for immediate gratification here.

Adrian doesn't disappoint, saying, “Yeah, we can probably do that.” Maybe I was looking for a resounding yes, but I'll take the "probably". He seems distracted in his thoughts, and I picture his mind swimming with visions of him wielding a hammer and a drill, holding screws between his lips while he looks down and asks for someone to hand him something out of his reach.  

He asks me where he would find the wood he needs and how we would get it here. There are so many details to think through that he decides he better start sketching some ideas soon. I agree that it's a great project for him to start on, and I remind him that he has his new sketch book with lots of clean pages.

Because I'm quite sure he hasn't thought of it yet, and I need to know what we are looking at here, I ask him, “Will you also put a bathroom in the treehouse? Or how will you guys take a shower and use the toilet?”

Adrian, thinking for a bit, finally answers, “Well, we will probably just come inside, because there’s not really enough privacy to use the bathroom in a treehouse... which reminds me! I’m gonna build a slide on it.”

The slide is a great option for getting down quickly when nature calls an emergency, I reinforce. He agrees.

“Will you have a kitchen so you can cook your food, or?” This is another detail I don't know if he has considered while he begins laying out the number of rooms he will need to build in this family treehouse of his. He will need a place to store his Z-bars for breakfast and his pepperoni and salami for sandwiches. We don't even know yet what his partner will consider staples.

Adrian opens his eyes wide and then blinks with a realization that the need to store and prepare food could present a challenge. But he decides fairly quickly, “We’ll probably just have a wireless stove or a grill something.”

Not wanting to overload him with too many things at once, I assure him that “Daddy can help you build a chimney so you can cook over fire maybe.” He twists his lips and tilts his head to the side, nodding slightly in a partial agreement.

Suddenly, Adrian's face lights up and he excitedly tells me, “OH! I know!! Let’s plant an apple tree right over there, so when we get hungry we can just reach out the window and grab an apple! I’m gonna go get an apple and eat it so I can get the seeds from it. You research how to plant them while I’m gone, ok?”

So I google how to grow an apple tree from seed, and when he comes back we read about it. Apples don’t look particularly promising here in North Texas, but we decide to try it anyway until we find another fruit tree he and his family might like just as well. I suggest a pecan tree, but that is quickly nixed since he's not a fan of nuts unless they're coated in sugar. But they grow really well here, I mention, just in case.

After finishing his apple, I help him pull the seeds from the core and find him a baggie with a paper towel so they can dry.

And now we have a baggie with granny apple seeds in it that today we will be adding peat moss to and putting in the fridge for 4 months for germination. Then we will transfer them to individual pods to see if they'll sprout, and THEN after a few more months we will eventually plant them in the ground and wait for them to amaze us with growing from sheer force of a 9 year old boy's will or prove to be a poor choice for Texas soil and climate after all.  

What are YOU doing this weekend? Getting a start on any future life plans of your own? 😜

I’ve written before about how the day I became a mom I started seeing other people differently. I couldn’t help but see people through the lens of thinking about how their mothers see them. Instead of sitting next to a man at Starbucks and not thinking twice about him, I’d give him a real look and search in his face, his expressions, his gait… all the things that his mom might see when she looks at or thinks of him. Instead of just standing behind a teenage girl and being glad those years are way behind me, I’d look at her and think about how her mom use to do her hair but now probably worries about every choice she might make while she’s off exercising her independence and how she wishes she could protect her from all the things that she knows exist in the world around us that will ingrain in her that she isn’t good enough despite all the things she has done to try to make her immune to those messages.


But then…


I learned a long time ago not to be too quick to apply my own values to other people and assume they think the same, love the same, protect the same, or basically have the same onion of a brain with all the layers that I have. Maybe their concerns are a different sort that I haven’t and wouldn’t even consider just due to the nature of our life’s circumstances and experiences. Maybe they have an element to their personality that I don’t have, such as the ability to not worry about the future, the ability to trust that everything will work out no matter what they do, the ability to just know they’re doing the best job and not stress about what they’ll realize later they missed… maybe they’ll never even give thought to what they might have missed and assign it to the category of being a result of someone else’s choices or just the results of chance. Some of those capabilities would be nice to possess, while others, both on this list and not, I feel grateful I don’t have. While I may one day look back on my life and these years of raising children and realize that I made poor decisions that should have been made differently, I know for certain that I am intentional every day in the attempt to not be that person. I try to find solace in knowing I spend a lot of time in my own head wondering what’s going on in my loved ones’ heads. I wonder sometimes where that comes from; was I just born that way or did my own journey through childhood and adulthood create this result? I think it’s a mix of both, although I wouldn’t attempt to guess the ratio. I am empathetic and compassionate to a fault - or is that even possible? But, if I could, would I choose to be less of either of those things? I don’t think so. But do others who do happen to be less of these things wish they were more of those things? I don’t know.  As I said, I cannot assign my own values to other people nor presume to know their point of view.


I do know it hurts me sometimes to think of the suffering of others and even more so the lack of concern from people for whom those sufferings don’t affect… that apathy… it bothers me, because I know it hurts people.  I know this because the apathy of others to my own pain has hurt me. As a result, I feel others’ pain when the indifference of people who have the privilege of not having been dealt that particular hand means that their pain goes unacknowledged or insignificant enough to do anything about it; even worse is when they presume to know what it’s like and determine that it’s insignificant.  Maybe the worst yet is those who DO know from experience and choose to ignore. The fact of the matter is that every single individual born has to live their entire life inside their own existence, and it is entirely unfair to have one person’s circumstances deemed less important than the circumstances of someone else. It is unfair for people who can choose to make life better for someone else to instead choose to make life better only for themselves. And it leaves a mark far beyond that moment.


Many of the people in my past feel like ghosts to me whether they’re alive today or not. Others feel as real to me and as constant to me as they did in my most nostalgic moments.  For some reason, when I wrote that last sentence, I had to stop; a heavy wave of emotion and tears came over me. Lifelong sadness and loneliness that I keep pushed down deep rose up and pushed its way up to the surface of my chest, up my throat, and out of my mouth and out of my eyes. This happens sometimes, and, when it does, I feel a bottleneck inside where more has risen than what I can get out of my mouth and eyes fast enough.  It’s been a while since I last wrote, and I think it’s because I haven’t wanted to feel the feelings I feel when I write about certain things that weigh on me. And now, there’s a bottleneck.


In a few hours, it is Father’s Day. As I do every year, I will focus on the man that is my kids’ father. The one who grew up without his own dad who passed away when he was a baby, the one who had step-dads who aren’t in his life today, and the one who somehow, despite all of that, just knew how to be a great dad to his own kids, guided by nothing but love and a strong work ethic. He has his faults as we all do, but he is not a mirror image of any of the father figures in his own life or in mine.  He is something much, much better. I have seen men with the best examples of how to be a father not be the kind of dad my husband is. This makes me grateful beyond measure, because the one thing more than anything that I want is for my kids to grow up with not a single solitary moment of doubt about how much they’re loved, how much they matter, how much we dedicate every moment of every day to being for them what we didn’t have.


But, here lately, I have been noting through the peripheral of my sub conscience that Father’s Day is approaching, and I’ve been allowing myself to think about what that day could be for me under different circumstances. I think about the many others (there are so many of you) who also focus on what Father’s Day means for their kids, ignoring their own needs that weren’t and aren’t met, stuffing their feelings deep inside and covering it with all the reasons they have to be grateful for other things so that they can make flowers grow from the rot below. I am covered in flowers. It looks like a magnificent garden from a distance, I’m sure. But sometimes that rot in the ground beneath the garden quakes and out from the cracks comes the sense of loss I have felt my entire life, out comes the pain I have felt from the indifference of others who don’t love me like I love. I grew up knowing every single day of my life that I was not loved the way I love. I’m 45 years old now, so that’s a lot of days.


I tell myself I am well-adjusted and don’t need those things and that I have filled in those spaces with other things that make everything ok. And I truly don’t need those things. But I want them. When my feelings rise to the surface, I go sit by myself in the dark so no one sees my red, blotchy face, and no one hears my uneven breaths or my now-stuffy nose. I don’t want to feel pity from anyone. I don’t want someone to stroke my arm. I don’t want to be reminded of all the wonderful things in my life - I know those things well and I can give a longer list of them than anyone else can give me. It’s not a ungrateful thing, it’s a worthiness thing. I just have to acknowledge what I push down and cover up and shrug off… that I want a dad to celebrate tomorrow that loved me from day one and did everything he could both tangibly and intangibly to make sure I knew that. I want a parent who walked around with their heart outside their body every day since the day I was born like I did when mine were born. I want to be that important to someone, that worthy, that special, that indispensable. But I’m not. And that’s not something you can just become one day. You either are from the beginning or else you feel the void of it until the end.


When I look at this picture and the few others I have from a time when my dad was still a part of my life before the next 17 years that he wasn’t, I see a ghost of someone that I wish I knew now in the way I knew then. The way I knew him then was without knowledge of 17 years of separation that were to come from ages 5-22 and without the 8 years of reconnecting from ages 22-30 that ended in me being angry that I lost him before I’d had the conversations with him I was waiting to have until he reached his senior years and would be ready to speak on things from the mature perspective that I needed. He died too soon and from something preventable… bad choices, bad habits, a predisposition… it’s hard to find the right words to sum it up. But I was angry, because I felt he owed it to me to have conversations with me I needed to have when he finally realized I’m very perceptive and hyper sensitive to bullshit. I knew he wouldn’t realize it anytime soon; he would get exasperated with me when I didn’t accept his words as genuine and refused to concede that I saw through his words. I was willing to wait, because what choice did I have? But then he just died. And so in my mind I focused on my brother’s pain instead of my own. I felt it was my brother who deserved that consideration, not me.


The man in this picture with me was practically a kid himself, just 17 years old when I was conceived. I found out the first time I talked to him at age 22 that I was born on his birthday. No one had ever told me that before and I didn’t remember knowing when I was little and he was still around.  In an odd way, it gives me a sense of a connection with him now. He’s been gone for over 15 years, having died a few months before Jose and I got married. He left me the gift of a brother who looks so much like me that I have always had to force myself not to stare at him. I spent my life searching for my face in the people on my mom’s side, and I never saw it short of a small similarity here or there. When I saw my dad for the first time at age 22, he was walking towards me. I hadn’t been sure I’d know how to tell who he was if there would be other men around, but the second I saw him and he saw me, we instantly recognized each other. I was staring at the male version of my own forehead, my own eyes, my own nose, my own cheekbones, my own mouth, my own body frame. We were very different people in mind and heart, in perspective and character. But he was funny, and I’ve been told I’m funny. So there was that. And he had a son whose voice I had heard when he was a baby when my step mother - my baby brother’s mommy who passed away before I ever had the chance to meet her, asked for me when someone at my house picked up the phone when I was around the age of 9 and handed it to me, telling me it was my best friend Cirila.  As I started chattering away and became quickly confused by the voice on the other end who clearly was not Cirila, and before I even understood her words telling me who she was and passing the phone to my dad, I heard my baby brother’s voice in the background. I remember very well the feelings I had in that moment: shock, fear, happiness - that he actually might love and think about me maybe, jealousy… yes, jealousy. Because they got to know my baby brother and I didn’t. Because my baby brother got to know my dad and I didn’t. But the next thing I knew, the phone was taken from me… someone had seen or heard my confusion. I never spoke to any of them again until the day when I was 22 years old I dialed the number for information and asked to be connected to the man who was responsible for my existence. It was amazing how easy it was to reach him. I remember the shock of it. All the stress and anxiety and courage it took for me to finally make that call with sweaty hands and within minutes his voice was on the other end of the line. I remember wondering if I should have tried sooner? But there was the fear… I never would have been so brave even though I had searched the faces of every stranger I’d seen growing up, always wondering if I might run into him and if we’d recognize each other. In my imagination, he would smile and hug me and say he’d been looking for me every day since the last time he saw me. He would say he never stopped loving me.


And then there was my baby brother now a 14 year old boy. He wouldn’t remember that phone call that our dad and his mom had made to me all those years ago. He probably didn’t know that I’d heard his voice and thought about him every single day since. He lost his mom when he was a little boy. That made me so sad. We had both suffered losses, but he lost his mommy. When I had my own kids later, this fact made my heart ache even more.


During those years of reconnection with my Dad, I got to meet (again) that whole side of the family and realized that I’d had another loss that I hadn’t fully grasped - the loss of people that I believed — and know now, especially with the years that have passed since - would have filled me with the kind of love and acceptance that I longed for growing up. It’s not that I wasn’t loved by mom’s side of the family; it’s just that there were so many conditions on a lot of that love… which you could argue means it wasn’t really love at all but instead some other sort of shallow affection.  But the love I have from my dad’s side of the family is real and has substance. My dad might not have been a great human being when I was born and I don’t blame my mom for leaving him, but the rest of the family was wonderful, and I hadn’t known that they’d missed me all those years. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was special enough to be loved and missed by people; surely, I'd assumed, they’d forgotten about me 10 minutes after my mom left with me and took us 1,000 miles north.  It took me quite a few years to believe that they cared about me as much as they said they did. I think a part of me waited for them to forget about me… that they’d be curious at first and then grow tired of me. The best thing that ever happened was when my Aunt Brenda took me by the hand via a group text with my aunts and cousins and pulled me into the fold. I’ve been there ever since, finally realizing that no one was going to forget about me, and, there, I was free to express my love for them too without fear of them throwing it away.  These are many of the seeds that became flowers in the garden that covers my sadness like a soft bandage.


During all of those years when my Dad was not in my life, I grew up wondering if he thought of me or if he’d been glad to have been rid of the responsibility. I carried on in the life I had without him in it and did my best to be a good kid, do well in school, stay out of trouble. My mom had remarried and had 2 more kids, and from the outside looking in, I’m sure it seemed like a story of redemption for her.  But, eventually, I began to experience terrible things that I knew in my very cells had to be kept secret lest I make someone else’s life complicated and uncomfortable. It would be a domino affect, and I dare not knock that first domino over.


For many reasons that I won’t write about here, I developed a convincing poker face that prevents many people from knowing what lies beneath. It’s my armor, my protection from showing my vulnerabilities that others might not understand or might take advantage of. At one time it was so I could survive. Now it is critical in ensuring that I’m able to maintain some control in my life - control I never had growing up and maybe control that I don’t even need now but still cling to… I’m working on this.  But part of that lack of control I had growing up was all the years I spent overcompensating so others could be more comfortable; anything less resulted in me feeling guilty for their discomfort. I was trained to do this by people who let me know in no uncertain terms that it was expected of me… people that “loved” me but not really… not the way I love.  During these years, I thought about my Dad and wondered if his violent tendencies towards my mother could be any worse than the private torment I had to endure and felt trapped inside. The things that were a part of my world now included the constant shifting of focus away from the bad behavior of others and placing it squarely on my shoulders to carry on without a fuss so everyone else could pretend nothing had happened. Years later, I would realize the extent to which this was true…. a few more years would pass and, with more age and wisdom, I’d realize it was even worse than I’d realized previously. Some people are capable of turning a blind eye to almost anything as long as it means they can live in their fantasy world where everything is idealistic and those that don’t conform are just causing trouble - I was and have actually been made to feel sorry for hurting other people’s feelings who had harmed me.  As I sit here typing these words, I am reminded that it took me until I was over 40 years old to finally take a stand and say, “No. I will not be your doormat, and I do not have to pretend, and I am worthy of more than what you are either willing or capable of being, and I will not spend another day of my life making yours easier for you by pretending that the images in my head that I have to live with don’t matter. To me, it’s unacceptable that I could never have a relationship with a man that has a beard because it makes my skin crawl to feel it on my skin. Since drawing boundaries that have continued to be violated repeatedly, I have been told that I’m selfish for not taking certain secrets to my grave. True story.


It’s not surprising when I look back that one of the recurring nightmares I had from the time I was a kid all through my teenage years and once in a while into my 20’s was of me walking quickly in the dark down the street towards the house my family lived in. I have the sense that someone is behind me and getting closer, and I’m picking up the pace feeling like I can’t find my breath. I get closer and closer to my front porch and become aware that the person behind me has a large knife. I am in a straight-up panic to make it inside in time before the person behind me stabs me. The porch light comes on, and I think I just might make it inside, but no one lets me in. I am banging on the thick, heavy door with both fists as hard as I can, and I only see faces looking out at me from the window at the top of the door. I am screaming but nothing is coming out. I sense the person right behind me and anticipate the knife plunging into my back right as I wake up in a full sweat and gasp for air, finally realizing that I couldn’t breathe in my dream because I’d been holding my breath in real life. If I had this dream once, I had it 1,000 times. It felt just as real every single time. It took me moving far away and physically separating myself to finally be able to mentally and emotionally separate myself years later from what had torn me apart for so long. Still, though, I continued to feel it was my responsibility to keep the secrets that so many who should have helped me already knew so that I wouldn’t disrupt others’ happiness. And that festered in me and weighed me down more and more as the years passed.


I said I look at people around me like their mom might look at them, but I realize - because I cannot apply my own values to other people - that I’m actually looking at them like I would if they were mine.  I’m looking at them like I wish someone would look at me, I suppose.  No man has ever looked at me the way my Dad looked at me when we reconnected when I was 22 years of age… full of amazement, gratitude, love, and pride and even some regret, I believe, at what he’d lost, and that’s another seed that turned into flower. I hold that memory close because I don’t have a lot of that sort.  Other boys and men in my life made me question whether I had any value at all for what’s inside my mind and heart or if I just had one use. They caused me to wonder if boys and men in general had any capacity for genuine love, integrity, morality, and trustworthiness. If not for a handful of truly good men like my Uncle Jerry, I would have grown up convinced of it.  But the women in my life were often just as bad because so many of them were complicit.  It took me many, many years to sort out what constitutes evidence of actual love and that I don’t have to DO anything to be deserving of it.


My Aunt Bev is one who is not a ghost to me. She is and has always been as good and as real and constant as my most nostalgic memories of her and so many flowers in my garden are there because of her. She is one of the shining stars from my childhood, the reason I do have some good memories too. From the night I slept next to her on the floor of the living room when I was 3 or 4 years old so she wouldn’t forget to take me to school with her like she’d promised, to the days of lying out on a blanket in the sun with her while we listened to her portable radio and wore big sunglasses, to the hours we would spend playing games with cards and dice while drinking sweet tea, to the summers I would spend at her and Uncle Jerry’s watching movies, loving her homemade chicken fingers, cutting her hair for her, and the hours and hours we would spend talking while she doodled out her name in bubble letters and painted her nails… all of this without me ever feeling for a second like she was hanging out with an annoying kid but that she genuinely enjoyed being around me.  When things were really, really hard for me, those memories and experiences reminded me that I was lovable and that there was good in the world and that the world was waiting for me to get through those tough years and find even more good and more love.


I can’t say that this is the part where I say, “And then everything was perfect.” No one can say that. There was more and more disappointment and hard stuff to come, but there was also a lot of self-discovery and beauty too… lots more flowers. The older I get, the more I realize and appreciate my need to care for myself. If I say I value myself, then I must act that way. I must insist that others might have to get a little uncomfortable if it means that I can finally find some semblance of comfort. It’s not about getting over something - I’m not persistently wallowing in anything; it’s about understanding that others’ discomfort is not my fault. The fault lies with the individuals who did the things that caused it all to begin with. I am within my full rights to create distance where I need to in order to finally let the broken pieces of my heart heal without it constantly being reinjured. I am entitled to a life without the constant reminder of toxic and painful experiences. I am deserving of inviting all the most loving relationships to come in and have the closest seats even if it means that others that previously occupied that space get moved further back. I must send some people out of the building altogether, and I have.


In Oprah's book The Path Made Clear, there are words contributed by Brené Brown that resonate with my feelings on being a parent, and they are: “Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable. You will learn this from my words and my actions; the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself.”  I cannot say that anyone would have written those words to me, but I can say that I feel these for my kids. I know Jose feels them for our kids. And I know now that there are a tremendous number of wonderful mothers AND fathers out there that feel the same. I’m grateful to be among them, to have the awareness that I do even if I didn’t receive that - actually, especially because I didn’t receive it.


And now, with these words out of my head and off of my heart, I will look outward and focus on the man who is the best father to my kids that I could have asked for and celebrate him on Father’s Day.


With Love…

#ThePathMadeClear #OprahWinfrey #BrenéBrown #abandonment #flowergarden #nostalgia #healingabrokenheart #selfcare #motherhood #childabuserecovery

I skip the drive through line at Starbucks so I can run into the restroom first... I’ve been doing the pee pee dance in my car seat for over an hour now. I’m in line to get a pick me up since I’m about to fall over at this point. A nice - but, if I’m honest, too perfect - looking guy in line in front of me turns around and says hello. I smile and say hi. He turns back around and I look at the menu to decide if I want to use my star reward for a special drink or if I just want a dark roast pour over. I feel like someone’s looking at me and realize the perfect face in front of me is facing me again. He apologizes and says, “I just wanted to tell you that you have great cheekbones.” A little surprised I say, “Oh! Thanks!” I mean that is not a compliment that normally gets thrown around in the general public. “That’s random,” I think to myself, “but hey that’s kind of cool too...” I’m thinking about this now when he continues...

“I’m actually a cosmetic surgeon, and people pay me a lot of money for cheekbones like yours so I had to tell you. I’m sorry if that was awkward.” And then he laughs a little. Suddenly the compliment makes perfect sense, and I realize that because of his training and workday, he probably sees all the little details about a person right away without even trying. I’m still a little nerdy every time I see a mass transit vehicle and notice the bike rack orientation and whether the decals are the standard or upgraded packages... I spent 9 years in that industry with half of it in Project Management, and you just can’t help it. So I kind of laughed to myself a little and thought that was the end of our exchange.

We could have stopped right there; I would’ve gotten the Americano that I settled for, and I would have maybe had a little extra sassiness today with my new appreciation for the cheekbones I got my from dad that I also always notice when I see pictures of him and his ancestors. But it’s never that easy is it?

He says, “If you’re ever interested in stopping in, here’s my card. You have such a great smile, and I could tweak those scars at the corners of your mouth. You’d look amazing.”

What. The. Actual...

I look back at him, tell him politely, “thank you... that’s actually a dimple and it doesn’t bother me. The other thing is a scar from a dog bite, and it also doesn’t bother me. But I’m sure you do great work.”  I don’t take his card. He smiles again and it’s now his turn to place his order. Afterwards he smiles again, waves, and tells me to have a great rest of my day.

I suppose this is how it is for any expert of a particular field, they notice maybe not flaws but maybe opportunities to fix things. Part of me was like “Why is it always me that runs into these folks??” But maybe it’s better that it was me. Because I’m truly, honestly, 100% ok with my dog bite scar and dimple, and maybe someone else would have had to order the entire display of chocolate croissants after that exchange. Not me... just my Americano... so maybe this was an alright confirmation of something else... that I have 4 little boys who’ve already humbled me more than he can do in a 2 minute exchange at Starbucks. 😂

Oh and this is where I suggest if you’re in the cosmetic surgery business, that you pay the compliment and then just stop yourself from going further... Just... hush... shhhh... 

Some people never remember their dreams. I always do. Very often I wake up feeling like I ran my butt off all night and am exhausted.  My dreams are nearly always very fast-paced, stressful, mission-related, and I never complete the mission because of distractions… they end up being fragmented and difficult to describe verbally. Metaphor for my life in a lot of ways? I think yes.


I have been intrigued by this bottle of Dream Catcher that I’ve been reading about… it’s an essential oil by YL that is suppose to aid in emotional balance that induces positive dreaming. I thought, at a minimum, this would be great to diffuse in the boys’ rooms. Well, it arrived on my doorstep last night, so I decided to try it out for myself right before I went to bed. The jury is still out on whether or not I think it improved my emotional state and dreams… here’s why…

So I wake up this morning to Jose kissing my cheek, and I’m confused because I’m being pulled into reality with light, sounds, smells of coffee, and kisses with scruff… I’m transitioning from the very-real-feeling place I’ve been in… in the bed with this woman… ahem…

Preface needed…

Yesterday before all of this started, I was at my neurologist’s office I go to for a prescribed massage - yes, these massages are prescribed; who knew that’s a thing?  They’re to help work out some of the tight neck, shoulder, and back muscles that may be contributing to my chronic migraines. Anyway, my massage therapist is this awesome woman who could easily be a really good friend of mine if we’d met outside of this professional setting. She is similar to me in mind-body-nutrition views and she’s also an animal lover. She has amazing eyes, and she tells me funny stories about her and her wife while she masterfully works out the kinks that plague me on a regular basis. I left her office feeling a lot better and looking forward to my next appointment, because these moments of physical relief are like jewels to my emotional side. She may be the reason I was able to sleep so well last night.

Additional pre-empt…

One of the few shows I watch is The Bachelor / Bachelorette / Paradise family of shows. It’s mindless and an obvious guilty-pleasure. It’s stupid but entertaining. Thus… Jubilee.

Side note…

I’m just going to say it - I am a bit of a hooch in my dreams… I tend to end up in precarious situations with strangers on a regular basis and then wake up sort of horrified that I live this double life in my dreams.  I don’t know why; it’s not my fault what I dream; I just do. And I feel guilty about it, but… I mean…?

Ok, so now that you have these other tid-bits, back to my story…

I’m waking up this morning to scruffy kisses with the smell of coffee in the air, cartoons in the living room, Santi arguing with Dominic over who was holding Mrs. Robert first, and meanwhile, I’m leaving this awkward situation in my dream with Jubilee from The Bachelor where we have just kissed, and I’m telling her I love her lips. She says “Thank you” in a way that makes me think she hears it all the time (I’m sure she does, because the truth is - and this is me in my awakened state telling you that - she has beautiful, amazing pillow lips). A part of me feels relieved that this was a dream because I am not attracted to women in sexual ways at all, even if I have my list of “If I WERE a lesbian, you’d be mine” that I believe most women secretly have even if they won’t admit it (Jubilee is on it, btw, duh). And truly I was worried in my dream about what Jubilee’s expectations were going to be because the only thing I’d actually be up for were whatever SHE wanted to do TO ME with the lights off while I pictured Javier Bardem or Nathaniel Arcand instead of her. Sorry, Jubilee… Actually, she’s probably relieved too, because I don’t think she’s into the ladies anymore than I am… Anyway…

How did I end up in a bed kissing this gal’s perfect pillow lips, you ask? Well, because I WAS The Bachelorette, of course, and I had my Fantasy Suite cards to hand out. Everywhere I looked were these 28 year old chiseled men in their underwear, and not a one of them wanted my card. SERIOUSLY!!  They were all, “You’re a little too old for me” and “I didn’t realize YOU were going to be the Bachelorette” and “When did they start letting old cougars on the show?” and my favorite, “I’ll take your fantasy suite card” and then once in the room they were just mowing down the liquor cabinet while I waited for them to come rock my world. 

Once I’d gotten to the last guy who was now drunk and passed out on my Fantasy Suite bed, Jubilee showed up to say hi. She was trying to make me feel better, and next thing you know, I kissed her. She started to lie backwards, I was following thinking, “What the hell am I getting myself into and how do I get out of it?” when, just then, my handsome real-life husband who doesn’t think I’m too old and haggard and who still wants my Fantasy Suite card every day is kissing my face in real-life telling me it’s time to wake up. I tell him he just rescued me from a really sad dream. He asks if I was dreaming that they were all out of ice cream to which I replied, “It wasn’t THAT sad, but it was still really sad.” I told him what happened, he asked why he wasn’t one of the bachelors (I smiled because he NEVER acts jealous - and is this… a little jealousy I’m hearing????). Then I complain about how he’s hurting my shoulder and he asks, “What’s wrong? I’m not woman enough for you?”

So you can be the judge of whether you think this Dream Catcher business contributed to a different kind of dream. Was it slower paced than usual? Yes. Did I complete a mission? Well, if chasing off 25 young men is an accomplishment, why then YES, I reached that goal like it was my job. I got to kiss Jubilee’s lips and found that they were as amazing as I expected they would be. And I woke up pretty rested… I wasn’t chasing these men all over town, just all over the mansion and fantasy suite… a lot fewer steps than I usually get at night. Mostly, I probably gained an ego-beating last night that ended up being soothed by morning. So, the jury is still out. I’ll try it again tonight and see…

#DreamCatcher #TheJuryIsStillOut #Jubilee #PillowLips

I think most moms will understand what I mean when I say that I am pretty good at taking care of everyone else but fail miserably at taking care of myself most days. I’m always making sure every one’s stuff is clean and accessible even if it means I realized at the 11th hour and then was in a mad rush to get it together. What ends up happening is we get where we are going and the boys look great and I’m standing there realizing I haven’t even looked in the mirror yet, let alone brushed my hair. Or we get to one of the boys’ games and they have all their gear and I have the team snacks, but I didn’t have a chance to grab sunglasses or sunscreen for myself, which means I’ll be squinting and burning for the next 1 1/2 hours. It’s just another day when the boys arrive at a birthday party ready to have a great time while I stand there sweating from the mad rush to get the boys ready and get there by 11am and then feel faint because I haven’t eaten yet. So suffice it to say that over the weekend I’m often so focused on getting all the boys’ copious amounts of laundry finished that I usually don’t have time to do any of mine. Then, until I finally get a few minutes to get a load going when I know I’ll also have time to get it out before it all rots in the washing machine for days on end, I’m scrambling every single day to find something to wear… if not clean, then clean-enough… cleanish.

Today was one of those days when I needed to put on something for my physical therapy appointment, but all of my yoga, stretch, or running pants were in a pile needing to be washed. So I had to go to my closet and pull out one of my ill-fitting pairs that I save for these occasions. The pair I put on were on a pair I’d found on clearance for $5 a couple years ago, and it only took me wearing them the first time to realize why… they just don’t fit right in the hip or pelvic region. I usually just wear long tanks with it, but I’m low on clean tanks too. I was forced to grab a longish tank that BARELY covers a sufficient amount of the top portion of my pants, and off I went to PT, tugging my shirt down every time I sat and then stood back up.

Wouldn’t you know it, my physical therapist decided to add another exercise for me today since I’m “doing so well!”, and, after an ultrasound treatment for my neuritis and a cupping treatment to loosen some scar tissue from the back of my leg where the tendon was operated on, there I was getting handed off to the newer therapist who’s younger than my daughter and likes to stand very close while I’m doing my exercises. “Lie down here,” she says, “and put your feet in this furry sling.” I do as she says and realize that of all the days I could’ve worn these pants and now anyone walking into the room is getting an eye full of lumpy crotch. “Let it go, Gina. Not everyone notices crotches like you do.” I tell myself. 

“Ok, Gina, now you’re going to do pelvic lifts, and you’re going to pull your butt off the table and lift all the way up until your belly and hips make a straight line with your thighs; you’re going to hold the position, hold onto this bar with your hands, pull the bar down to your belly and hip area, lift your arms back up to the starting position, and then lower your butt and back down to the table again. You’ll do that 10 times. You’re going to do it very slowly and hold it at the top each time. Ready? Go.”

So I lift, lift, lift, and I hold it while I bring the bar down with my hands. I cannot bring myself to look at her, because she is super close to me, she is about 3 inches taller than the shelf I’m making with my body, and she is standing at my hip area, and with these pants on doing this exercise, I have got the most obnoxious camel toe that might be found anywhere in existence. My $5 nightmare is pulling up, up, up, as I stretch my back, and there Ms. Camel Toe sits at the top just elevated and on display. It’s like there are 3 of us in the room. Me, the PT, and… HER.  I feel like I should make some sort of introduction, “Have you met…?” Or an apology… “I’m sorry I brought her with me today…?” I don’t know. I just close my eyes, wondering why the PT is still standing there so closely, wondering if she has also lost count, wondering if it’s like driving past a terrible car accident from which you can’t look away. I can’t look at her or it, but I know what she sees. I gasped and cringed the first time I saw a reflection of myself wearing these pants and realized the horrific sight. I would have thrown them out immediately if not for how SOFT they are and how I can wear long tanks to hide the problem… When I have clean laundry, that is. Somehow I survived the 10 reps and spent the next hour hoping we could somehow forget what just happened. She handed me off a little while later to someone else, and I couldn’t be more relieved.

In keeping with my life’s destiny to run into the quirkiest, most interesting individuals, I found myself now getting some lessons on the pilates machine (that is to be part of my recovery from leg & foot surgery) from a 70 year old man who’s been practicing and teaching pilates for over 30 years. He looks 20 years younger and is clearly a nerd of his field… meaning someone who is so intensely interested in their field that they quite easily wade into the most tedious details without trying all due to their habit of naturally segueing into educating others about something they consider to be a little known fascinating fact. I work with engineers every day as part of my career, and, within a small margin of error, I can immediately determine their particular expertise almost at first glance… electrical, mechanical, structural, etc… they each give off a “thing”, and they can go on forever about their topics. I imagine this is true for most people in their individual fields, and I, for one, have a real appreciation for what I affectionately consider to be nerd-speak. Even Jose, who is one of the worst things I can imagine being - an Accountant, gets sexier to me every time he talks spreadsheets.

It was somewhere between my Fountain-of-Youth-Pilates-Therapist 1) showing me which 5 points I should be focusing on in my movements for each set on the pilates equipment and 2) using my own hand to press into various areas of my core to ensure I was engaging the correct muscles when I included a kegel at each full extension of the set that SOMEHOW we ended up on the topic of the difference in a woman’s kegel and a man’s kegel. I hadn’t previously been aware that men did kegels too; I will admit that in my ignorance I thought this was strictly at female thing. I made the mistake of admitting as much, and I found myself following him down the bunny trail of describing with hems, haws, winks, whispers, awkward facial expressions and hand gestures as he tried to describe two different ways of releasing bad bacteria from a man’s prostate… yes, that was another segue… from activating correct core muscles during MY kegel to how a man activates HIS muscles during a kegel, to how one of the ways you can get inside a man’s prostate is by… me… ahh… um… assisting… him… (wink wink, *clears throat* bug eyes and head nod, etc) and the other way was when hyperbaric pressure creates an opening which then allows something to happen that I don’t remember because all I saw was his hands demonstrating something that looked a lot like he was really enjoying massaging someone’s balls… shoulders up, quieter, higher pitched voice, looking both ways and then back at me, *clears throat*… So, yeah.

Now before anyone reading this thinks, “Oh, the horror! Oh, how inappropriate! Oh, he was clearly perverted and should have known this was an uncomfortable topic!” Let me say to you that in actuality this was all just nerd-speak from a 70 year old who LOVES his field and found in me someone who would entertain his chattering on about a topic he realized through my own volunteering of information that I did not know. He was not a man talking to a woman but rather one nerd talking to another, less-informed-on-the-topic nerd, and we could have been sitting over coffee with medical charts for reference… except that I was lying down on the pilates machine looking up at him in ill-fitting pants waiting for him to have me start the next exercise sequence… so, yeah, a little awkward, BUT… I will still just take it as a compliment that I seemed open to the information he had to share and that we had an interesting conversation I never thought I’d have at a physical therapy appointment for my leg and foot. 

Either that or it was just conversation inspired by the forefoot of a camel in the room.

 So yesterday I had a full day that included a trip to Arlington to drop off some connectors. 

​I had a dermatologist appointment before heading to Arlington, and it was determined while I was there that a mole next to my lip needed to be removed. So I left the appointment with a numb bottom lip and a bandaid on it. Decision time - do I visit my customer with a distracting bandaid below my lip or take it off and instead show off what looks very similar to a fever blister? The bandaid stays.


Before I could head to Arlington, my stomach started bothering me, so I weighed some options and decided, given my situation with the scooter I'm using post leg/foot surgery, it was best for me to stop back at my house first. By the time I arrived, I knew for sure that was the best decision; however, sitting there having hot flashes and sweating and knowing I can’t just run inside to the bathroom presented me with another situation to think through. I decided I didn’t have any options. I clenched, tried to compartmentalize, and hopped to the back door of the car to wrangle the scooter. There’s no easy or quick way to get in the house, because I either have to go down a step to go in the hard-to-open front door, or I have to go up an awkward step and tricky angle through the garage door. Mind over matter I think and in to the garage I go... 


...Where the scooter wheel grabbed something and I didn’t go up the step squarely enough.  Next thing I know, I’m tipping over to the left side, my casted foot slides off, and I land squarely on that foot, pain shoots up my leg and through my foot and calf... that gnarly sort of pain that you imagine the guy in the movie running from zombies with his leg mangled must feel. Meanwhile,  I’m just sort of suspended, because I can’t move in either direction without falling. Finally after many seconds, I managed to pull myself to my right side without falling on any sharp objects (thank you, yoga). I pick the scooter back up, get it up the step while balancing on my right foot, and I lay my left leg back on the scooter seat, and I stand there holding my breath, eyes stinging, and the sort of shaking that happens when you’re in so much pain that you lost control of your muscles everywhere else. BUT!...


I still haven’t crapped my pants, so it’s not all bad news. (So I have that going for me...)


I somehow make it into the house, around all the corners, missing the soccer cleats my boys didn’t put away, cats' tails that lie there unconcerned and entitled, a dog sniffing my butt the whole way... he knows precisely what I'm about to do... and I make it to the bathroom in time to sit, deal my business, and send a request for sympathy via text to my husband and sister. I felt all kinds of relief, including the choice to come home for this. I didn’t even want to think about what I would have had to do if I’d waited and kept driving.


I wait around a bit until the pain in my foot and leg subside. Then I head back out to my car.


About the car...


I exchanged my company car the evening before for a new one, and I felt so fancy having a car with a backup camera, Apple Play, an engine start button, and a smooth ride that doesn't jerk back and forth periodically due to an undiagnosed transmission problem. I was less excited to realize they gave it to me with very little gas and I needed to fill it up as soon as I left my house for Arlington... after an already exhausting and slightly traumatizing beginning to my day. I was even less thrilled when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to just hop a short distance on one foot to fill up, because for the first time in my life I have a car with the gas tank filler neck on the passenger side - amazing timing, right? So to get gas I needed to wrangle the scooter out of the backseat... ah well... I have a new car and a good job... is this a real complaint? No... just a tiring inconvenience. Still, though, it’s only 10am, and I’m already sort of DONE at this point. 


I wish I could say the rest of the day was smooth sailing, but I did end up ripping my dress later and smiled sheepishly at a small crowd who learned from my 7 year old that I may or may not be wearing underwear, and I did also realize later that I had forgotten to brush my hair all day... add this to the fact that I am recovering from an eyelid infection and have no eyelashes on my left eye, and I’m just the prettiest thing you ever did see.

Today is gonna act right. I just know it.

We are on vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama, and​I’ve discovered how enjoyable it is to ride around the lazy river on an inner tube and have an ice cold beer handy. I’m not a big drinker, but I do enjoy it at certain times and places. It’s hard for me to relax in even the best of circumstances, and so I know once I get in the tube, I’ll feel anxious for a bit and have to constantly remind myself to let go of the muscles in my body that I will be automatically clenching without realizing. It will take me a while to stop catching myself tensing up and to be able to stay in a completely relaxed state. But I will eventually, and I’ll sip on my cold beer and feel so grateful for the experiences my boys are having and knowing that they don’t need anything from me for a while. We have been waiting many years to get to a place where family vacations are actually somewhat relaxing, and this feels really good.

Before I get in the water, I volunteer to go up to our condo to retrieve the frozen tumblers and beer and leave Jose at the pool with the boys. I get to our condo on the 4th floor, and I just try to remember to live in every single moment. There’s no rush, there are no emails to worry about, no phone calls I have to make or answer, no reason to hurry. I tell myself to look around the room and memorize the details of it so later I can still picture it and not wonder things like “Were there curtains? What color were they? What was the dinner table made of and how many chairs were there? Did all the living room chairs have cushions and how were they coordinated? What color paint is on the walls? Are the rooms painted different colors?” I do this, because I know if I don’t make a point of practicing, I will find a way to make even grabbing a drink on vacation a busy and hurried moment. I really do have to continuously remind myself to. slow. down.

I’m holding the tumblers and am ready to head back down to the pool, forcing myself to slow my pace, and take leisurely steps. I already know from years of practice that my face rarely gives away the stress going on inside. I show it in the quick pace of my walk. I have a natural ability to appear easy and breezy if I'm standing still. And, to some extent, I am that person. I just have a constant battle waging within between my easy, breezy, beachbum soul and the one that feels she has to run the order of the universe every second of every day… the one that carries the weight of guilt, stress, anxiety, not feeling good enough, wanting to be better… the overachieving side of me that wears me down but doesn’t allow me to admit it without feelings of failure. 

I walk towards the elevators and I see these young men - maybe they’re in their late teens or maybe they’re in the early 20’s. They’re the guys that I - 25 years ago - would have been excited to get in the elevators with, to see if they were interested in me and if we would start talking and make plans to hang out by the pool together later… I have a friend, I’ll bring her. Ok, that sounds great… see you in a bit. I would walk out of the elevator and feel their eyes watching me go; they would be interested. But here I am now, I am a mom to boys and I look at these guys as someone’s babies not desirable young men. I am now 44 years old; I’m the mom that I would see in the elevators when I was their age. I remember I would look at the moms as being old people that somehow lacked the feelings that younger people have. I didn’t see her as just a person like me really but rather an authority figure who didn’t know how to have fun and was ready to scold anyone that seemed to be having a good time. I assume I’m that person now to these young guys and they don’t look at me as a young, vibrant, sexual woman but instead see me as an old person, a mom, someone their mom would hang out with and do mom-things with. Some younger guys do give us moms this feeling that they have an interest in us… the “I love women your age” type of young guys who don’t realize they’re not exactly complimenting you the way they think they are… these two aren’t those kind of guys. These guys have the young gals on the brain… I saw them at the pool earlier and I know which one likes which one.  Anyway, it’s funny how all of this happens and you realize how much you didn’t know you didn’t know at a younger age. It makes me laugh a little inside. And as I walk into the elevator with them, I smile and say hello. They smile and say hi back to me. I take a sip of my beer from my tumbler only to realize once it was too late that the hole was on the side and not in front of my lips as I’d thought. And now there’s beer running up my nose, down my face, and onto my shoulder and chest, dripping loudly to the floor. Yep, I’ve clearly managed to keep a tight hold on my youthful swagger. They try not to laugh, and I just make a “whoops” face, because what else can I do? I think to myself, “Well, this is new.” I am that caracature in the movies, you see, that trips and runs into poles and spills things… luckily I’m married to someone who sees the endearing part of those things that make me ME. These guys are too young to be impressed by this, and I’m too old to be truly embarrassed.  I’m cool, but they don’t know how cool I am. I’m ok with that. 

I get back down to the lazy river, and we have a grand ol’ time. I go on the water slide with the boys a few times - realizing that I’m not nearly as graceful doing that as I use to be either. The first time I ingest a significant amount of water up my nose and down my throat when I fly into the pool at the end of the slide after whizzing around this curve and that curve and getting a little bit confused about which end is up. When I finally manage to get my feet to the bottom of the pool and stand up out of the water, there’s Jose standing on the other side of the pool looking at me with a wrinkled eyebrow and smirk, shaking his head at me. I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed for me or just realizing that he doesn’t know everything about me after all. The boys think I’m the coolest mom ever, though, and I’ll take it. Plus, I'll pay for it later when my back is aching, but that was fun!

Every day we took some time in the afternoon to rest in our condo. I looked forward to napping on the patio, listening to the waves, wind, seagulls, and kids playing in the pool down below. For the most part, there was less stress on this vacation, although with 4 little boys, there’s always a certain amount of anxiety involved in constantly counting to 4 everywhere you go, especially when you’re in an unfamiliar place with lots of people and lots of water. One such event happened when we were heading back to our condo to grab some lunch; everyone was starving and couldn’t wait to get back to our room. We got into the elevator and pressed “4” for our floor and a guy with his toddler daughter came in behind us and pressed “17” for their floor. The dad was carrying fast food bags that filled the elevator with smells of chicken and burgers. Javi, being Mr. Chatty McChatterson, decided to chat him up about where the food came from, what they specifically ordered from the restaurant, whether there were fries in the bag, etc. etc. All the while, we have reached our floor, the doors have opened, I am shuttling 4 kids out of the elevator, but Javi will not move from his place until he finishes getting answers. So I’m starting to panic because I need to stop Santi from going around the corner where I can’t see him, and I also know the elevator door is not going to stay open much longer. Did I mention that there are 20-something floors in this building?? I know this guy is going to the 17th floor and who knows who will get in and push buttons on the way up. I yell at Santi to come back, and I rush back to the elevator to snatch Javi out when the little girl is now pushing buttons like it’s her job, the dad is begging her to stop, and the doors close right as I get back to them. “Great!” 

So I and my other 3 boys stand there in front of the elevator for many sweaty minutes while my mind goes all over the place trying to figure out what I’m going to do if Javi doesn’t show back up here very soon and how long I should wait before coming up with a plan. Finally the elevator doors open and a lady is standing there with Javi, smiling at me and sending him out to me. I can only assume she is either the wife of the guy with all the fast food bags or someone who got on the elevator on another floor and promised to return him to the 4th floor.  I tell her thank you so much and then Javi and I make eye contact again, him looking at me sheepishly, waiting on the lecture. I just look at him and tell him that from now on we don’t carry on long conversations in the elevator. I’m honestly too tired to say anything else at this point. The whole way back to our room, all I can think of is, “Well, this was a new one.”  I can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure I went straight to the patio and fell asleep when we got back to our room. 

I was really fortunate on this trip that Jose did most of the cooking and without any complaints that I didn’t contribute a lot in this department like I do at home. I woke up from a nap one day about midway through the week to find him chopping jalapeños, cutting corn from the cob, and cooking it all up. We had stopped at a local seafood shop earlier and brought back blue crab, shrimp, and salmon to eat for dinner, so when we sat down to eat, we had quite a spread.  After dinner, Jose took a bottle of wine and 2 glasses to the patio while the boys relaxed in front of the tv just inside the condo from us.  We took in the views, talked, enjoyed the breeze, and had a glass or two of wine before heading back inside to watch tv with the boys for a while before bed time. Once we finally got them to bed and got settled in ourselves, we learned that you can spend 17 years with someone and still not have experienced every type of scenario during sexy time. 

I can tell you that, with hindsight, I’m shocked this has never happened before considering the amount of chile Jose has handled in our years together, and I also realize there is a higher risk of this happening when you’re with a chile-eating man who likes to cook… how we have gone this long without me experiencing… is there a such thing as 4th degree burns?… in my nether regions is actually a bit of a mystery and quite the accomplishment… and one that shall not be repeated, let me add. He says to me with a pained expression, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how this happened. I swear I washed my hands multiple times!” But we all know that you can’t just get jalapeños off your hands when you’ve chopped and handled them. One of my favorite habits is to suck on my fingers after making chile rellenos, because I like the heat that comes off of my cuticles in my mouth. So of course neither of us should have been surprised when I suddenly realized I was on fire and needed to immediately go sit on an ice pack. This was the first night of my life where I slept with a frozen washcloth between my legs. And, once again, I found myself thinking, “Well, this is a new one.” As I sit here and type this 2 weeks after the fact, I am just now completely recovered from that incident. Consider this your PSA.

During our weeklong vacation, we had an eventful and eventless time, simultaneously. We packed a lot in while also making a point to keep it simple and low key. It was definitely what I personally needed, and I think it did us all some good to just slow down. It did prove to me once and for all, however, that even when you plan for as stress-free of a trip as possible, you just can’t foresee everything that’s going to happen. You are going to have those “Well, this is a new one” moments every day. Well, at least we did and will continue to for our whole lives. Because we can’t seem to have a boring experience no matter how hard we try. 

In my most recent blog, I wrote about a recent experience I had with a cleanse. I have received so many unexpected emails, texts, messenger texts and phone calls, people seeing me and pulling me aside to chat about their own experiences, that I have decided to post something I wrote about what led me to finally have the, honest, raw, and thorough Come to Jesus conversation with my doctor. If you haven’t read it yet, you can still read this one first and then go and read that one if the subject matter interests you.
So, here goes...

I have been dealing with something for a long time and to the nth degree these past couple years now that, but for my (often inappropriate) sense of humor, might have pushed me towards the brink of depression. Sparing what could easily become countless pages of details, I’ll just say that spending years trying to self-diagnose and push through something I assumed was temporary and related to something I was doing wrong didn’t work, and, in hindsight, it slowed down my healing. 

It wasn’t until this past winter that I sat in front my doctor for my annual exam and started to list off things that “just weren’t right” with me, and, while it had never previously occurred to me before that the vast amount of symptoms I was having could be related - and even how vast that list had become, in recent months as I started to keep a list in the notes of my phone of all the random things that were bothering me. I saw the length of the list and knew something big was wrong. I started tracking which ones had worsened or evolved into something else or something more. And - I had begun to suspect that there really was one big thing behind it all that was causing collateral damage, essentially making me feel like I was slowly dying. 
I know how dramatic those words must seem, but it’s frankly the only way that really expresses what an honest look back at the previous years felt like. Where, for instance, I had originally been having headaches gradually and mildly, I began having them during certain parts of the day, and then I began having them during other parts of the day, and then they were occurring every day, and then the time on each side of the episodes was expanding until I had a good hour in the morning and a good hour in the evening, and then… I just had a headache around the clock. 

At that point, the severity of my headaches began to change… worse during parts of the day, not as bad during other parts, and then the worse became more often than the not as bad until I had an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening where they weren’t awful. And then, yes… I just had a bad headache all the time.  

There are several dozen other symptoms that I could go through to explain how they changed similarly… sleep problems, hair loss (including the sides of my eyebrows!), sores and cysts appearing all over me and in my mouth, other skin issues, exhaustion and just complete and utter fatigue, brain fog and confusion, dizziness, tingly, irritability, anxiety, heart palpitations, shakiness, fumbling to find words when I spoke, feeling like my tongue was too big for my mouth, spasms in my face where my muscles would freeze giving me a strange expression for 10-30 seconds (it didn’t hurt - just bizarre), I felt moments of sheer overwhelmedness, sensitive to bright lights and sounds, hitting a metaphoric wall and having a desperate need to lie down suddenly, not being able to remember directions, instructions, or even routines that I had followed without a thought for years, later finding unnatural typos and just straight up WRONG WORDS in my written messages that I’d go back to review (not natural for this grammar nazi and 1st place county spelling bee winner), etc etc… etc. 
More than once I got a confused side-eye from Jose when he’d see me doing something I wasn’t realizing, but he wasn’t around often enough to see that this was becoming my new normal. I have spent my life practicing perseverance and an external facade that I’m ok even when I’m not, so how could he have really known? I hate complaining, I feel awkward admitting that something is hard for me… I have internal conversations with myself all the time trying to reconcile fighting a battle with the sense of failure I feel sometimes. There is a never-ending war being waged inside me between what I want to do and the fact that there is a challenge in front of me that I can’t just blow off. I say all of that to say that I didn’t actually even admit to my own husband that something was wrong with me until I had made the decision to lay it all out there at my dr appointment. Until that point, I was still working out my own action plan and wasn’t really ready for outside opinions; I needed to check off all of my own action items first. This - if I’m honest - is how I have always done life. 

For better or worse, I have to sort through my own stuff before I let others help me. This was even true when my first marriage was ending. I suffered alone for an entire year before I was ready to talk about the affair between my husband and my friend and how we were divorcing. By then, I had come to terms with it and then it was a shock to everyone else who then had to deal with their own emotions about our split. This way of dealing with personal trauma, pain, and adversity is vastly different from those that deal with their own battles with their loved ones by their sides or who find solace in the listening ear of strangers. I find that I am that person for others, and it helps heal me in other ways to know I am trusted by others who are in a vulnerable state. I don’t know why I can’t seek that out for myself. I just don’t know how to do it, I guess.  And maybe that’s just me, and maybe there’s nothing wrong with it. But it has definitely slowed down my conversations with my doctor… it caused me to just say, “Oh, I’m fine. I’m exhausted and not feeling my best, but I’m working on some things and not ready to try what you might suggest.” How stubborn is that??    

Finally, when I had a dr appt coming up for my annual exam (for insurance discounts), I decided I would say that my experiment in my own self-healing was - not over, really, but - I was officially ready to open up my notes and get some help with a potential diagnosis… Actually, I was desperate for it. "Please fix me. I’m convinced I am dying." 


To be continued…

I’m not ready to go into some of the history needed to really build the framework for this story, but, in short, for about 8 months now I have been trying to tackle some problems I’ve been having for several years that seem to have multiple causes. Some things I know, and some things have been ruled out. I have a stubborn case of hypothyroidism that was diagnosed this past December, for instance, and I suspect it has been a problem for a lot longer that I realize and just got tangled up in pregnancies, breast feeding, and sleep deprivation; something I’ve now learned firsthand is that your thyroid affects EVERYTHING. I had no idea how awful it can be before it became a problem for me. Something else I’ve learned is that I am nowhere near menopause, so I cannot blame any “changes”. I have a tendency to have low levels of iron and vit D and am on supplements for those, but all of my other numbers look good. I have arthritis in my lower spine, and I have unexplained back pain in the lower half that causes me to get up and down slowly and to avoid picking up things from the floor as often as possible, evidenced by my bathroom and closet floors and the floor on my side of the bed. If you need any further evidence of this, just call my husband, and he will be happy to confirm. I get terrible abdominal spasms when I sit up or turn a certain way that feel like a charlie horse in my stomach, and this is something that, surprisingly, surgery for an umbilical hernia did not correct.

For the first time in my life, snoring has become a norm for me, anxiety is also a thing, and so has mustering any energy whatsoever for anything that isn’t on the absolutely necessary list. There’s more to it than all of this… much more. But for now, I’ll just leave it at this: I have been on the most significant personal mission I have ever been on - meaning that I am, for the first time in my life, focused on seeking out the root causes of my problems and addressing them by any means necessary. This has meant that I spend a lot of time in the evenings and mornings before work and during any lunches I take alone researching an endless number of topics. It means I email my doctors all the time asking, “What about…?” and “Am I right…?” “Can we…?” and “What have you…?” I have sat with my general doctor, with my obgyn, with a neurologist, with my chiropractor, and with a kinesiologist, and I have ugly cried in front of all of them trying to talk through things that I’m experiencing and things I’ve learned, things I’m uncertain about, and asking for things they think we can check, etc.  

Wherever I can tackle problems naturally, I do. For my thyroid condition, I am taking a prescription, the dosage for which continues to be increased while I wait - and hope - for improved results. I use essential oils, and I continue my life-long interest in learning as much as I can about the mind-body connection and the stomach-brain connection.  We are very food conscious at our house, and, while we do eat out and can’t always be sure what is in that food, at our home we keep it on the up and up. We are believers in quality probiotics, whole foods, collagen, grass fed / wild caught, and drinking lots of water. I've also added digestive enzymes to my daily regimen. One of the treatment plans I’m currently following also involves some eastern medicine… clay packs and such. I’m seeing a chiropractor, I’m getting acupuncture and… Additionally, I’m in the midst of a parasite cleanse. If I wasn’t already a fairly humble person, this process would no doubt have made me get over myself pretty quickly.  You can only be so cool and glamorous when you’re constantly swallowing some tincture or caplets and paying close attention to the clock and to the locations of restrooms every where you go. 

Here’s the thing…

I have this huge, full life. There are 6 people in my home, 7 cats (one geriatric and on medicine twice per day and a special diet), a dog (who takes allergy medicine twice per day), 6 of originally 7 hermit crabs (RIP Rachel), 2 of us working full time, a house that is never straightened up for more than a few hours at a time, laundry, yard work, 3 vehicles - one of which is on its last leg, one kid who still demands a butt wiping several times per day (for another 1 year, 9 months, and 38 days anyway), four kids who get tummy aches, bug bites, cuts & scrapes, banged noggins, fat lips, can’t sleep, etc etc. 

I work and I take care of everyone else. The one thing I do for myself is I journal. I don’t watch much tv, I listen to books and podcasts while I drive, and so when I’m sitting anywhere… on the toilet, on my back patio at night, in my bed while I can’t sleep, during lunch time when I’m by myself, etc… I am usually typing away in my journal. I’m a pretty good listener to myself, and for someone who spends a great deal of my work day by myself or in meetings with different people every day, journaling is my way of meaningful banter or conversation. I don’t go to the same office every day and converse in the break room or in someone’s cubicle. I don’t get a lot of personal time with friends. I barely see my own husband without kids piled on us. So this is basically my non-G-Rated social life… writing.  It helps me clear my mind and work through stress. 

When I first considered that I may have parasites (how about that segue??), I felt some relief in knowing that I may start feeling better in a couple months time. But then I felt very anxious and worried about fitting in the die-off symptoms with… LIFE (see the above truncated summary). I don’t even have time to do the things I have to find time to do, so how was I going to add this very intense process into it? The answer was simply that I didn’t have a choice. And at the end of it, I knew that I may be able to cross something off of my list that contributes to getting myself back to… well, myself.  

So what goes into a parasite cleanse? Well, you swallow things, some of which taste pretty awful. And you do this several times per day and then you tip toe through life with your stomach rumbling and suspicious gassy feelings - do I or don’t I? The answer is DON’T. Don’t ever. But you will, and then it’ll be your reminder to Never. Trust. Again. If you’re like me, you start using the flashlight app on your phone every time you go to the bathroom, bending over to examine everything more closely.  It becomes almost an obsession. And you think more than once, “Omg what I have become?”

Then you get to the part where you’re ordering the case of enemas from Amazon. You put that up on a shelf in your closet and you think to yourself, “This is what it’s come to.” But don’t get all caught up in that thought yet, because what it’s really come to hasn’t even happened yet. 

It’s not even when… You’re face down & ass up in the only bathroom with a trustworthy lock on it and enough space for you to crouch down in that position in front of the toilet in the first place. You’ve inserted the enema and are awaiting the impending emergency when your 7 year old comes to the door to “talk” and then, hearing you answer near the floor, lies down on the floor outside the bathroom door and asks you to hold his hand under the door. You’re holding his hand and sweating profusely, and then he wants to know why you’re so close to the bottom of the door anyway and all you can say is, “It’s because I’m leaning over. And, um, I’m tall, so… yeah.” You finally convince him that you need a few minutes and he should wait in the living room for you, and then you lie your face back down on the hand towel you brought in to use as a pillow and you feel something hitting your head. You realize a cat is on the other side of the door and is slapping your head. And now he’s pulling your hair with his teeth. You might be thinking “THIS is what it’s come to!” but you’d still be a little premature in uttering this phrase, however tempting. 

It’s not even when the emergency happens and you’re up on the toilet that you can truly say you’ve hit rock bottom. It’s actually on any given day during this cleanse that you use the bathroom right after you’ve eaten, you get up, pull up your pants, flush the toilet, and feel a satisfying fart coming as you walk out of the bathroom and you give in knowing you just finished going to the bathroom and there was nothing left. Oh, but what you didn’t account for was that your body is still making more… and there’s always more when you’re doing a cleanse… and you’ve just shit your pants standing up 2 feet from the toilet with your pants on. And now your 7 year old is standing there again and wants a hug and wants to ask questions about dinner, about frogs, about a character in his favorite tv show, about, you know, just life in general. Oh, and he wants to show you how well he can still do the Floss. And you’re sweating again and trying to look composed and breezy while backing into the stall again; you’re trying to close the door while he is very confused. And you think to yourself, “He has no idea what’s going on here. I mean when in my entire childhood when I was bothering my mom or grandma or aunts while they were going to the bathroom did it ever occur to me that they had just shit their pants? It didn’t. It wouldn’t have. And yet, here we are. So now I’m standing there contemplating whether I should ask any of them if they’d ever crapped their pants as adults or if it’s just me that does this.

And NOW I’m sitting back down, peeling my pants off, taking a deep breath while I grab the box of wet wipes, and I think, “THIS is what it’s come to. This. Right. Here.”

To be continued…


#hypothyroidism #parasitecleanse #workinonmyself

If you ask me to describe myself with 5 words or less, I would not normally think to include “vain” in my list of adjectives. In fact, I think I lack vanity almost to a fault since the twins came along and I only floated further away from that description with each kid thereafter. It’s not because I don’t WANT to have a certain amount of vain-ness; I actually think it’s a nice quality to have in reasonable doses, and I envy (just a little bit) people who can pull it off effortlessly.  I see you in my social media newsfeed, and I think to myself, “God, you're gorgeous. I didn’t even take a shower today…” as I shake my can of dry shampoo pleading with the universe to let there be enough to cover me for just one more dirty-headed day and then I SWEAR I will wash this mop. There’s enough… butterflies… relief… YES! This is my day!

The truth is that I just don’t have enough bandwidth for the level of vanity that I desire, because other things fall in line in front of it. I realize I could reorganize my priorities and pull it closer to the front just like others do, but, I’m not that good; I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Sometimes I think about how I would never have left the house without looking presentable in my pre-kid days, and now entire weekend or vacation days can go by without me even having looked in the mirror until I pass by one later in the evening with a laundry basket in hand and sweaty hair sticking to my neck and, ohp, yep… those are sweat drops above my lip too. My poor husband and kids… the way they must picture me in their heads is not the way I picture myself, I’m quite sure of it. In my mind, I’m almost always me on my best days. To them, I’m probably most always the me I think of on my worst days… the sweaty one carrying laundry and maybe mindlessly displaying some side boob sneaking out of one of my favorite, hole-y t-shirts… You know, the me that would never open the front door for you. I’d be pushing my husband to the door and sneaking behind him to the bathroom to put on a bra (damn you, visitor! Don’t you text??).

Then today comes…

Once in a while, something happens in your day to remind you that you do still have some modicum of a quality you thought you didn’t you possessed any longer. Today, I was reminded that I am more vain that I realized. Today I had to leave the house with a cold sore the size of small planet on my face. And I cared BIGTIME.  I seem to get over people seeing my messy hair and yesterday’s mascara quite breezily, but having a sore next to my mouth makes me want to crawl into bed and not come out for 7-10 days. And God forbid I have to meet someone for the first time on a day when I have a cold sore, because I’m convinced that’s how they’ll always see me. “Oh, yeah, the Rendon boys’ mom? Yeah, I met her last year… tall, blonde, herpes on her face?  It was disgusting. I couldn’t even eat my lunch. Anyway, yeah, she’ll be here later (shivers abruptly).”

Let me tell you when you have reached a new level of self-awareness: it’s when you are behind a group of cars that slam on their brakes and a car behind you nearly rear ends you, and your first thought - YOUR LITERAL FIRST THOUGHT - is “Oh God, don’t let me die out here today with this thing on my face. What if I need CPR and no one wants to help me? What if I’m lying on the table in the morgue and everyone is talking about my disgusting fever blister and putting on an extra set of gloves, wincing as they touch me, or they’re calling in the interns, and when they arrive and ask which one, they point at me and say, “That one with the herpes simplex.”? What if they send in my loved ones one last time to visit with me before they take me off to the cremation facility and they can’t even soak in their love for me and wallow in their “I’m going to miss her so much” feelings because they can’t stop looking at this thing on my face? What if my mom takes FRICKEN PICTURES of me and sends them to everyone??!” SHIT!!! GET OUT OF MY WAY, EVERYONE!! This is NOT my day to DIE! And off to the shoulder I go. Safe and sound and a little less humiliated than I otherwise could have been.

So, yeah, vanity may not be in my top 5, but I’m guessing it’s at least #6 after all.

#sweat #sideboob #selfawareness #vanity

Today was a day for ALLL of my senses to be ruffled in one way or another, and yet it was one of those uneventful days in the whole scheme of things. I started the day off feeling heart palpitations over all the work I needed to get caught up on and simultaneously feeling a deep calming from hearing hard rain out my window as I worked. Ahhhh a nice reprieve… it’s all about balance.

I missed breakfast and was nearly sick when I arrived to a lunch meeting where I had the most delicious meal, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t speak a word throughout… I’m a great listener in these situations. Later, as I drove down the highway, I realized I’d left the house without my water or ice tea, and I found myself so thirsty I was almost in a panic when I got to the front of the drive through line… what. is. taking. so. long?? I was hoping I hadn’t made a mistake trying the strawberry infused iced green tea instead of my usual plain iced green tea, but at this point I was so thirsty I didn’t care. The window slid open, and I was anticipating that long, cold drink when I heard, “oops! I didn’t see it sitting there. Hey, you guys! I didn’t know the unsweetened strawberry iced green tea was sitting here, and I knocked it over. I need another one!” Luckily, I have an excellent poker face, years in the making and now nearly impossible to crack, so, instead of showing my desperation, my horror, my inner turmoil, my P - A - I - N when he looked at me apologetically, I just gave him the warmest smile I could muster and said, “That’s ok. It happens.” 

Not long afterwards and clearly before I straight up DIED of dehydration (close call), I had my drink, and I sucked down about half of it before I took another breath. It tasted like soapy water… so much for the potential for a strawberry infused green ice tea habit… not happening. But I drank every bit of that soapy water and was glad for it. When I got home later, I drank 2 whole glasses of water… like Dickey cup sized, not your standard 16oz glass. I’m guessing that delicious lunch I had was SUPER HIGH in sodium. But I lived to tell about it. Would I do it again? Oh, it was totally worth it. Note to self - don’t forget your water bottle next time. And maybe a banana. And some cabbage. And a back up water bottle.

I made a mid-afternoon pit stop that ended up giving me pause. It’s a bad thing when the drive thru people at the ice cream shop smile at you like they were expecting you, right? Like when one in the background looks in your direction too and nods at you like, “Yeah, I knew you’d be here for your Choco Roco today.”  I need to give this further consideration. It felt like I should be embarrassed and maybe even… apologize?

As the work day drew to an end, the rain had cleared and the sun was out, and I decided it was time to clear out the flower cemetery on our front patio and walk way. I stopped at a gardening center near the house. One of my most favorite things in the world is to walk up and down aisles of flowers, plants, vines, shrubs, trees, taking in the fresh smell in the air, reading about plants I’m not familiar with, smelling everything that has a petal on it, and daydreaming about beautiful landscapes. As I was putting plants and flowers in my shopping cart, I found myself behind this guy who was deciding on some creeping vines, and I kid you not I was suddenly bombarded by a fart that smelled like it came from someone who recently ate french fries… does anyone know what I’m talking about here, or am I the only one who has run into this species of fart multiple times in my lifetime? I found myself trying to back out of the aisle since I couldn’t go around him when I realized a store employee had pulled in behind me with a cart full of shrubs. So there I stood trapped in this rancid cloud of old fast food grease. I would not be surprised to see that my bad cholesterol has spiked the next time I get a physical just from exposure alone. I blame that turd in front of me that tried to pretend that he didn’t know that I knew that he knew that I knew that he knew… (that I knew?)… that he gassed me.

After surviving Agent Brownish-Green, I left and headed home. By this time it was sunny and very humid, and I was sweating like… well, I won’t get political… but fill in the blank… we have lots of options as of late. I got just about everything planted and thought I’d do some laundry too. Then I came inside and sat down. And then laundry didn’t happen.

What did happen is that, after a quick bath and changing into a comfy dress I’ve worn more times than I should admit this week, a bunch of little boys piled on me, and we snuggled for a bit, each of them arguing over who was telling me something first. After that exhausting exchange and dinner prepared by our very own superhero, we started our Friday tradition with a movie while I went to the kitchen to heat the pot I use to make popcorn. I looked at the counter and remembered that Javi had asked me to read this book about Pearl Harbor that he’d read so that we could talk about it afterwards… this boy is straight from my heart! “Of course, I’ll read this book, baby!”, I said.  And now that it’s Friday night, maybe I finally will read more than a page before I pass out into a comatose sleep.  Sorry, school library… I’m pretty sure this book is late. Neverless, my heart swelled again as I thought about how precious to me this topic is… I see lots of book reading and comparing notes ahead for us. 

Before I finished making the last batch of popcorn and I was still thinking about how anxious I was to read Javi’s book selection, Alice jumped up the inside of my dress the way he always does when I wear anything flowy. Now if you have never experienced the swatting between your legs by a cats’ paws who is overdue for another application of soft claws, let me tell you… it’s just charming. :<  Of course, there’s a big difference between sharp claws actually puncturing your toot and just grazing it, but you are still forced to fearfully imagine what *could* have happened.. cue the cringing and shortness of breath I experienced. So I seasoned the popcorn while holding my dress between my legs in the front and the back so as to prevent any swaying that may have tempted Alice beyond his ability to control himself, and I then penguin-walked the bowls into the living room.

My dear husband poured me a delicious beer of some bavarian sort. I took a sip and heard a package hit the doorstep. Woohoo my Amazon package arrived, and I could now give Max his allergy pills and with a pill pocket instead of messing with the jar of peanut butter (winning!).  I mistook the smell of poop all over the kitchen for the opened bag of pill pockets… this was after sniffing everything around me including my own shoulder, arms, and then… oh yes… it’s my fingers…  from touching the pill pockets… and then I felt the best kind of relief a tired mom can feel short of a near miss of catastrophic events… it’s not poop! whew.

And now I sit here typing away while my husband watches a hockey game and my boys watch Peter Rabbit. Today I experienced anxiety, calm, hunger, delicious food, embarrassed that I have a whole crew of close friends at the ice cream shop who use to be strangers, near fatal dehydration, annoyance, rehydration with soapy water tea, inspiration and wonderful smells, nausea from french fry farts, the satisfaction of making our patio look nice, and the relaxing bath afterwards, a headache from my kids arguing, and warm fuzzies from our cuddle time, dinner made by someone else, gratefulness, the comfort of our tradition of making popcorn and starting a movie on Friday nights, the sweetness of a request from an 8 year old who loves to read like I do, a close call that could have ended up with stitches in my nether regions and utter gratefulness that I wouldn’t have to do the starfish for a doctor wielding metal objects too close for comfort, the initial fear of hidden poop followed by the relief of knowing it wasn’t, sitting here with my family and it’s Friday night.  

So, yes, this has been a wonderfully, uneventful day in the whole scheme of things.

Reasons I did not go to medical school: I cannot be around blood. I cannot be around poop. I cannot be around snot. I cannot be around vomit. But I became a mom?? Hmmm...

Dominic has been a little congested with the weather shifting gears on us constantly, and it took some rough play yesterday to jog it loose, I guess. He and Javi were wrestling and spinning each other around, and a deep laugh pushed it allll out at once. ALLL of it out.  At ONCE.  All I originally knew was that I heard expressions of disgust coming from the next room, and I looked over cautiously to make sure I didn’t see something I couldn’t unseen… I didn’t want to take in whatever happened in 4D and full color, that much I knew. As I caught a glimpse of the lower half of Dominic’s face completely covered in snot, I looked away quickly and ordered him to the bathroom, instructing him not to touch anything on the way.  I looked over at Javi who was a little green. He and I were both just trying to get that image out of our heads, I think, but I wondered how he could have been so close to it without upchucking. It was one of the most disgusting things I’d ever seen. I started to evaluate whether I was entitled to hang onto my official mom card when I couldn’t even help my own kid clean up his face. But, little did I know, that was just the beginning.

Less than a minute later, I was walking into the kitchen when I heard gagging behind me. I turned in time to see Javi, losing his battle with his aversion to Dominic’s excessive display of mucous, projectile vomiting all over the kitchen floor. I reached for some paper towels to hand him and was going to go get the disinfecting wipes and mop when I saw him heaving again a little further over from his original spot. I mean, he obviously didn’t want to step in anything, so, of course, he needed to throw up somewhere clean. There he went again, splattering it further. He went from spot to spot throwing up like a cat does when it makes its way through the house convulsing and jerking forward leaving piles of vomit everywhere for an unsuspecting person to step in later. Meanwhile, I’m frantically ordering him outside even as I’m trying to grab a bucket or bowl or ANYTHING to cover his face with… I mean hold in front of him.  The smell of vomit started permeating the air, and I found myself swallowing hard, dry heaving, trying to focus and find a neutral place in my head. Javi headed towards the door just in time for another round of vomit and sprayed it all over the door. And wall. And window. 

YEP.

I just stood there for a second with my cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, holding my breath, wondering how this was my life… this kitchen that was clean a minute ago now completely sprayed in vomit… all within 3 minutes of Jose conveniently leaving to go to Home Depot. And now Dominic was back and was now gagging at Javier’s mess. I immediately sent him outside though the garage door since the kitchen door was now a HAZMAT situation and was now looking out the window at both of them leaning over with their faces parallel to the ground, heaving onto the grass, saliva streaming from their mouths and swinging in the air.

I went to the bathroom to compose myself, wash my face, and brace myself for the task ahead. 

As I walked towards the kitchen, I heard licking sounds and found Max acting like he was at brunch at his favorite buffet spot. I didn’t want to, I knew it was disgusting, but I went back to the bathroom and washed my face again, looked for shiny white hairs that I could pull, evaluating whether I still had 2 separate eyebrows, and examining a new set of age spots on my face, chest, and hands. A little while later, I left the bathroom and went to the garage to get the Wetjet mop, loaded it with a clean pad and the disinfecting floor cleaner, and I headed back towards the kitchen as Max was walking out, licking his lips, completely satisfied… but wait, as he passed by the wall that caught some of the vomit spray, he stopped, sniffed, walked over to it and proceeded to clean it up, as well.  I reminded myself to stay far away from his mouth for the rest of the day, gave him a breath treat, and went about mopping the floor and wiping down the door and walls, trying to forget how gross dogs are and what it said about me that I allowed him to clean it up in the first place.

An hour later, with any evidence of what had occurred obliterated, the house smelling of cleaning products, and a pleasant waft of lavender smelling air coming from the kitchen, kids recovered and playing happily in the backyard, my husband walks back in from Home Depot without any clue whatsoever. 

And this, my friends, is motherhood. I’ve decided I shall continue to be a card carrying member. Medical school is still not in my future.

I didn't think I was ready for a remake of Cranberries' Zombie, but Bad Wolves really nailed it. As I was listening to it yesterday with an ache in my heart thinking of how relevant it still is today... I was thinking back to how the Bosnian War was happening when I was first listening to that Cranberries cd back in 1994. 



Back in 1994, I was living in Germany, and, by 1995, my original neighbors had moved out, and my apartment was then downstairs from a refugee family from Bosnia. That experience shaped so much of my world view... a little girl and her younger brother so timid the first time I met them were, in the weeks and months to come, running to my car when they would see me pull up, excited to tell me all of their new English words they'd learned at their new school. Little Salma was yelling out "one, two, three, four, five!!!" before I even pulled into the driveway. Smiling faces asking me sheepishly, "Eis, bitte?" They had already learned that I kept icy pops in my freezer for them... but only once their mom and dad approved. This family, through their limited understanding of German and English, and my broken German, shared dinners of various types of sausages with me, over time opening up to me about seeing their family members murdered and losing everyone and everything before being brought to this apartment in Gochsheim, Germany. They wore so many emotions in their eyes, on their faces and their postures... exhaustion, hope, relief, fear, ambition, trauma, excitement, strain... so many more things that not I nor anyone who has not lived their experience can even identify. I think about that sweet family all the time... it's been over 20 years, and I still see their eyes, the smiles that eventually spread wider across their faces as they found their new place and some sense of security and safety for their family knowing that everything - despite their emotional wounds and losses - just might be ok... at least for their precious children, the resilience of whom continues to inspire me today. Those two beautiful kids who would come pet my cats and anticipate the "eis" I would get from my freezer.

Look, I share some of my emotions about topics of refugees and about caring about people experiencing things we are so fortunate not to have to experience. I talk about how important it is that we help where we can and not turn a blind eye. Something that gets under my skin is people who talk all day about living in Jesus's image and then find some sort of biblical justification for doing the exact opposite of Jesus's teachings and example, turning the word "refugee" into something it doesn't mean... shadowing it with undertones of somehow bad, sneaky people who want to do us harm and take all of our money and resources without anything in return. It hurts my heart. 

This experience with my neighbors in Germany is what inspired our volunteering with IRC when we moved to Dallas. I felt I could finally do something to tangibly help someone who just wanted a chance for their family to live. This cause is so near and dear to my heart. What I can say is this...

My opinions are not out of naivety and not out of a liberal bleeding heart or whatever someone wants to call it. It is out of legitimate experience, out of stepping out of my protective walls of being a really lucky American and allowing myself to feel the pain of others and see myself in them, see them the way they could be in my shoes... shoes that walked in their own painful path but which seems like a dream to someone who had to flee everything they knew just to survive. A lot of the way I approach life is just who I always was going to be, some I'm sure I owe to the inspirational words I listed to from Pastor Bill Rudd at my church growing up about how to love people, so much is from my own life experiences, living in a lot of different kinds of places, befriending many different sorts of people, reading so much, and opening myself up to others' experiences who differed from my own. I have learned and evolved, and so often I wish I could go back to those dinners with my Bosnian neighbors knowing what I know now and see it through my more experienced eyes, knowing I still wouldn't know the half of it.

So I'm driving along listening to Bad Wolves' version of Zombie and realize they replaced the lyrics "it's the same old thing since 1916" with "it's the same old thing in 2018". Yes, exactly. The Syrian refugees that some in our country want to reject came to mind. And in my heart and mind I'm back at the table with my Bosnian neighbors not knowing how to explain something like this. My heart just aches for the indifference and for the families that could have been sitting across from a new friend in a new country last year, safe from what was trying to murder their family, feeling hope for the future. Those people are dead.

But there will be others. There are others. And all of their lives matter. And we as Americans have a chance to do the right thing now as we will again and again. 

Will we, though?

#RefugeesOfWar #LoveThyNeighbor #BlessedBeTheWeary #Cranberries #BadWolves #Zombie

Today I was THAT person. That one that forgets there are others coming from other directions and moves backwards with my shopping cart without looking first. I usually have a good sense about the presence of others around me even if I can't see them... I feel them there.  Maybe this comes with being use to having a large family and having so many people around me all the time…? More than that, without directly trying, I often know what's around me because my peripheral vision is insanely good. Well, today Jose and I were in Target, and we decided to backtrack to another aisle. I forgot myself and inadvertently started to back up and almost immediately stopped abruptly, feeling someone coming around my right side. Before I could even turn my head to see who I was about to collide with, I could tell she was mad... I felt her anger. As I was turning, I immediately apologized. Usually when something like this happens, people tell each other, "Oh don't worry. It's ok. I'm sorry too.”… these are all the things I say when the roles are reversed even when I know the other person was in the wrong. In the scope of things, this stuff just doesn't matter enough to get upset about... this is coming from someone who has had entire drinks spilled down my shirt at events before they even began and had to sit in my wet clothes for many hours and then fell over myself to console the other person, who I knew felt terribly, to make sure they didn't feel any worse than they already did. "Accidents happen because they're not on purpose" as Jose always says. And sometimes people need our grace instead of our anger even when we feel it and even when we are the one wronged or inconvenienced in some way. 


Well, today in Target, instead of finding an emotionally disarmed person accepting my apology, I felt her tension before I saw her, and, without even being capable of making eye contact with me, I saw her completely stop, purse her lips and grit her teeth, stare straight ahead of her, and seemingly trying not to explode at me while clearly wanting me to just move out of her way. I saw a woman seething, near her breaking point, hanging by a thread. And without thinking, I reached my hand out to her arm and apologized again, and I heard my voice sound concerned about her. And I was. It did occur to me later that touching her probably wasn't the smartest thing I could have done, but I hadn't thought about it; I just did it reflexively. When she still wouldn't look at me and continued to stand there frozen, I backed away and kept watching her, hoping she would look at me. She didn't. Instead she started pushing her cart again and continued on, all of her tension following along like a fog surrounding her.  This entire situation lasted seconds. I am still thinking about her over 4 hours later.

I'm not sure what it is about her that made me feel empathy instead of annoyance at her overreaction or why she is still on my mind now. But I know that I have had moments where I was not out to be a jerk to anyone but found myself clinging to what little patience I had left, and I too needed someone's grace... someone to just let me slide this once and I'll go back to being a better human tomorrow. I know I have felt bad about it even as it was happening but was just unable to cope any better in that moment. That is a person who is stretched very thin, who is very tightly wound, someone who is carrying a very hard and heavy load. It is possibly someone who is just a jerk in life too, but I had this feeling about her that this was a fragile moment for her. Jose and I both stopped and waited for her to go as I apologized one more time. And I looked at him and said, "She's about to break." His expression told me he knew what I meant. Did I mention that I have not stopped thinking about her since?

Situations like this are the reason I feel that some misunderstandings happen and then even worse things as a consequence. I could have been mad at her because of how she acted. I could have said something sarcastic to her or told her to chill out, I could have made a scene. None of those things would have helped the situation. There's that saying that you can't control how other people behave, you can only control how you respond. There's also a saying that you don't know what other people are dealing with in their own lives. If today reminded me of anything it's that it's not so important how this lady behaved towards me today - I actually applaud her for holding her shit together when I could see she felt like blowing - it's more important that when we see someone struggling that we don't contribute to worsening that moment for them.

This is not about removing responsibility from people and their individual behavior.  Also, I will never advocate for being anyone’s door mat. This IS about the human connection, though, and channeling our best perceptive skills and noticing when someone is struggling, and it IS about leaving a person better than you found them... or at least trying.  I hope she is now sitting in a calm space decompressing a bit as I know I have needed to many times myself. 

I wonder if she is thinking about me too.

I just got the best massage. It was by Javier Bardem. Well, it was in my head anyway. In reality, I had my eyes closed from the time I laid down before the masseuse came into the room, and, by the time I opened them again, he was gone. But it was definitely a man with strong hands, he definitely worked hard on my knots, and he definitely got a little winded in the process. In my mind, Mr. Bardem was sweating over me, wanting nothing in return. Grossed out yet? Keep reading…

You know what I love? Like L-O-V-E? I love it when I don’t tell a masseuse anything about my troubles, and they find them on their own. There are tell tale signs that they know what you need when they strum those guitar strings deep inside between your neck and shoulder a few times and then roll up their sleeves and dig in without glossing over them. In addition to my tight shoulders and neck that I’m convinced plague every mother on the planet with the load we all carry, I also have arthritis in my lower spine and persistent pain up to about the middle of my back. Mr. Bardem got right in there using all facilities available to him: elbows, fingers, hands, the base of his hands… I floated between reality and a happy place. Well, I could have done without the karate chops to the butt. I can get that at home for free just lying in the middle of wherever the kids are playing. But still…

Speaking of butts, you know what else I love? I love it when the masseuse just gets ALL UP IN MY butt. There are places in the nooks and crannies that really get to the problem areas caused by my spine trouble, and Mr. Bardem did not disappoint. There were a few moments where I was a little concerned about the momentum caused by my butt jiggle, but I think Mr. Bardem found a use for that also. It was around this time that I heard the heavy breathing, but man did he have perseverance, I mean, just straight up tenacity. I was holding my breath and screaming all kinds of profanities in my head, and then… relief… I was a tough piece of steak that had survived the tenderizer, and now there were relaxing massages again, (and then some karate chops that I blocked out), and then more deep, soothing massages, and then… then it was over and he softly thanked me and told me to take my time. I felt myself pouting a little bit before fixing my face and sitting up.

I didn’t dare open my eyes before he left, because I didn’t want to mess up the image I had of my personal masseuse. Also, I stopped myself from asking him to cuddle me while I took a nap. Something told me that might make it weird. But I left feeling like what people must feel like when they say they want a cigarette…? Or maybe not since I’ve never actually wanted a cigarette… but I wanted something… oh yeah, I wanted Javier Bardem to cuddle me. But I would have settled for a nap. Instead, I made what seemed like a giddy, walk of shame across the parking lot, followed by a raw appreciation for the light drizzle and the warm breeze on my face along the way, and… hmmm I want something to eat. So, yeah, cigarettes aren’t my thing, but an afterwards-snack is right up my alley.

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