My Kitchen Marquee Sign

1.29.2015 -

The supplies to make these marquee letters sat in my office for over a month before I actually got them made and hung on my kitchen wall. But ah it was worth the wait. I'm in love with them! I was able to make all 3 letters for less than $60! Compared to the $150+ per letter I had been finding them for shopping across the internet. Uh yeah...I'll take it! :)

I Choose What I Do With It

1.28.2015 -
You never know when a trigger will hit you. It’s gets easier. The triggers start to disperse with time. The more you face them the more you heal. It stops being an all day constant where there is a trigger at every step. The triggers stop effecting you for days, weeks, on end and you can deal with them quickly. But you never know when another one will come to smack you upside the head. It could be a person that looks a certain way, a smell, a sign, the way someone says hello or shakes your hand or a song.

Today it was a song. We were waiting in the doctors office and the music overhead was just a tuned out part of the atmosphere until that song came on. It was the song my father got his “nickname” for me from and a song many tramatic memories are attached too. The music was no longer tuned out. I nearly came out of my chair, my heart pounding. At first I thought it was my phone alerting me with his, once was his ringtone, that he was calling me. And then my brain realizing of course he would never call me now and I moved on to frantically scanning the room and out the windows of the waiting room my initial expectations of seeing the looming figure of my perpetrator standing by his head now hanging, hands shoved in his pockets like an ‘innocent weak humble man of god’ he was able to hide behind. It didn’t take but even a minute for me to realize it was just a trigger and calm my panicking heart from imediatly putting myself back into those days long ago.

I went about the rest of my day without letting the trigger affect me. But yet it was still haunting in the shadows of my mind the rest of the day as well. As I get into bed tonight the memories are crawling along the borderlines of my brain looking for cracks to seep through and haunt my sleep. It gets easier. But it never goes away. It is something I will face until the day I die. But it will not have power over me. Not now. Not anymore. Because it lost power over me the day I stood up and said they could not longer HAVE power over me. It looses power over me more with each day. The memories will always haunt. But they will not destroy. I no longer let them. I now defeat them with good, with true with beauty. My memories are my fuel to own what has happened to me that I could not control, to own my story. To come to terms with the fact this is the one I was given to write and to live and to do what magic I can with it for my myself, for my kids, for my siblings, for the world. I can not change any of it. But I can choose what I do with it.

Angry

1.23.2015 -
I woke up this morning so angry. It’s not an angry that makes me want to yell and throw things. It’s not an anger from pain. It’s something I can never remember feeling like before. Something from deep inside. I feel physically hot. Like an inferno is welling up from deep inside my soul. It feels like I’m going to bust wide open. The tears have been running down my face for almost a hour but I’m not crying. There is no sadness. I feel no mental pain. And I have no idea what to do with it.

Everything is rushing through my head like a million pairs of feet running a marathon. Their footsteps pounding the pavement, their heavy breathing laced with purpose, drive and emotion. Their bodies sweating with exhaustion and strength.

The questions all flooding back. How could they. Why did they. Why are they. Why are others still supporting them. Why is evil so desquised as good. How can people sympathize with narcissistic borderline sycopathical so called “christian” people.

I sat yesterday for two hours in the therapy session. Biting my tongue and clinching my fists until the nails digging in my flesh screamed at me to stop. I watched the pain come busting out of her soul. I saw her heart physically breaking. I listened to her talk about all the times she had tried to kill herself at the “mad house” and all the times she took a knife to skin to feel temporarily better. I listened to her repeat her mothers words that she grew up on that were still on repeat in her brain. ‘You are worthless. No one comes around us anymore because you are annoying and drive people crazy. I don’t know why God gave you to me. You are a selfish bitch. You are stupid and you will never get anywhere in life. You could never make it out there without us.’ I watched her body heave from the pain of reliving what your mother taught her to be love. I listened to her retelling her nightmare of her father sneaking into her room. Of the darkness and the fear. The terror of what he was going to do next. I saw the fear on her face just to voice the things in a room where she knew she was safe. And my body withered with anger like I have never felt for even myself.

I am angry that there are people like our parents everywhere in this world. I am angry how people can still not see right through them. I am angry that there are people who actually feel sorry for them and want to help them. I am angry how people can so easily hide behind religion and the face of a perfect godly family. Who molested their children in the darkness of the night. Who verbally stripped their children of any self worth, good, hope, dreams, beauty. Who prayed in from of their children asking God why he gave them the kids he did. Who physically abused their children for not pray outloud at prayer time or for being too loud in the house or for not understanding their schooling. Who taught their children fear and hate. I am angry at those who still declare they are our parents no matter what they have done to us. If the family is worth fighting for then that means them too.
I watch my baby brother and sister carry around semi trailers full of pain and baggage, depression, self worthlessness and lies. I watch them fight to care about themselves at all. I watch my sister go through her day trying to focus on anyone and everyone and anything and everything but herself because herself she believes is ugly. Is never good enough. Is trash. Is unworthy. Is broken. And my heart aches and screams.

The tears streaming down my face are angry tears. Strong tears. I am angry. Very angry. And I know I have every right to be angry.

I Let It All Be

1.20.2015 -
I stood under the water, as hot as it would go, pouring down the aches and sores. The drops ran down thd scars and the blemishes. The beauty and the pain of being human. The heat carased and soothed the knots and the tiredness. Kissed the stretch marks, battle marks and the muscles. I felt the moisture sink in deep into my body, deep into my aching soul, and listened to the sound of water bouncing off the tiles of the shower. I let the tears flow and mix with the drops of water streaming down my face. Down my neck. I let the emotions overwhelm me. The good and the bad. The ones I didn’t know what they were. The ones I had been avoiding. The ones I was scared of. The ones that wrapped my heart in warmth. I felt the hurt and I felt the joy. I didn’t run for any exits. I let it all be. I let it be until the water began to turn cold.
Emotionally beat again. The end of my day. 10:30 pm. Tummies had been feed, kisses had been given, hugs given liberally. Laughter and snuggles and crazy bedtime stories. Listening and loving and understanding and fighting and planning and listening some more. I booked 3 weddings today while the kids were in school and a senior shoot and possibly two boudoir sessions. Had talked to my sister on the phone for 2 hours, which brought about a whole other realm of stress and emotions and had even managed to start my day eating breakfast even though I didn’t get my workout in.

It was another one of the good days. Of waking up not wanting to get up and fighting to get started with the depression screamed at me from the warmth of the bedsheets to come lie back down with him again. My stomach was aching and I felt the dull ache of a headache but I got up, took some tylenol, made the bed and yanked away from the claws grasping at me to pull me back in, took the boys to school and got dressed and started plowing through my day with as much passion as my feeble self possibly could.
Damn it was it hard but damn it was it worth it.

Caiden & Conner Turn 6

1.12.2015 -
"Life will never be the same because there had never been anyone like you ever in the whole wide world."











"Do a looney dance across the kitchen floor. Put some silly in the world that ain't been there before."

A New Year - 2015

1.04.2015 -

New year. New feels. New breaths. New chances. Same dreams, fresh start. 

It was a rough go this new years. Things kept happening to bring the spirits down lower. One thing after another after another, as the day went on they seemed to get worse. It was a disappointment to the beginning go a new year and a blowing reminder of life and the balance of coping, happiness, hard, poker facing through sometimes, laughing through others, being in some, taking into consideration others while trying to take care of yourself and then letting the tears come and heart break behind the closed doors. Gosh dang it is it a challenge. But as the first two days of the new year past I have come to see it is just another chance for me to prove to myself I am strong and I will not let things keep me down for long. That I refuse for things to stay miserable even if it is incredibly hard to fight out of the misery. That I will always fight for the better. 

After the clock past midnight into January 1st I was standing at the bar in the dark kitchen quietly spilling with a caring friend when she looked me in the eyes and said, this year is going to be better. I just know it. I feel it. This last year has been hard, full of change and adjusting. You have had to fight some of the hardest battles and face more 'I can't even imagine' painful things. But things are settling. Slowly but they are. The fights are getting a little easier. What you have been doing, what you are doing, is an amazing thing. A good thing. A thing not everyone would do or could do. You have sacrificed so much yet you are not loosing yourself or your hope for the future or dreams. This next year, it is going to be lighter. It's going to be a breath of fresh air after this last year. It is going to get better. 
She has no idea how deeply those words settled in my soul. How it gave a sliver of hope to help turn the funky start to another new year around.  
So on the still fresh dawn of a new year... I do not believe in resolutions. That word is actually a trigger word for me. But I do believe in goals, in betterment, in trying to push yourself out of more comfort zones. In fresh starts and new hope. In still holding onto the dreams. In desire and action to take two steps forward and letting it be okay when you have to take one step back. 
I think I need to have the outlook and freshness I have at the start of a new year at the dawning of every week. How much more life giving, hopeful and motivating that would be as the days pass away through the year.  



"I dare you to believe in yourself. Learn to love the fact as you go throughout the world that there is no one else like you. Be uncommon. Do the thing you are afraid of. Live only as you can. And then I know somewhere in the next year you will surprise yourself."