Sometimes you just have to write. To remember a time in life. To be able to look back to a moment in time and sit in the words and feel them. To sink into a moment where you felt good. Things aren’t perfect, matter of fact there is so many cards up in the air right now most days I feel dizzy from the chaos, but in the midst of all that chaos? I feel like there is finally good on my horizon. Like I can look ahead and see no obvious road blocks. Like I honestly some days have anxiety because there isn’t much to have anxiety over so I stew over everything. Or I stew over nothing? Imagine that! Mostly I write to get my feelings out on paper. There was a time I was in such shock that I don’t even remember writing. Then there were bouts of sadness where I wrote to remember a time I was sadder than I currently was. Also I have often been, too sad to even write at all. I feel happy and I feel scared all at once but such is life with anxiety. So anyway. Just a quick check in.

I met two angels recently. I met a wonderful woman who is loving as she is strong. Reminds me of my mom, and mostly my grammie. Or maybe what my mom would have been like if I ever got to know her in her late 60s. Weird to think that I’ll never see my mom old and gray. However, I met her and she talks to me and she listens to me and she’s helping me in ways nobody should have to. She’s teaching me how to help myself and find the answers within me. She’s teaching me that the word no is very powerful and quite the healthy word to have in your vocabulary when used with love. She’s taught me that if I can’t retrieve a memory, it’s because it doesn’t exist. She’s taught me about the difference between sympathy and empathy. She’s taught me I have a cave I’m allowed to safely sit in when my emotions become more than I can handle. She’s teaching me things about me, and she’s teaching Dan things about me too. She’s magnificent and I simply adore her. She’s angel #1.

Angel #2 is your modern day hippy doctor. She’s kind and beautiful and she told me the space we were sharing was a safe place for me. She spent 52 uninterrupted minutes with me and she’s exactly who my babies need to help me raise them well. I drove all of 40 minutes through these windy roads on a very hot and sunny day in May, and I was convincing myself I’d never drive back there because driving this far for a doctor is crazy when my other pediatrician was less than a mile from my house. How could I make sense of driving this far in the winter? Once I met this angel doctor, I realized I would drive to the ends of the earth to meet with her again. She let me feel vulnerable and she let me cry. She searched my face and sat down on my level and listened to me. She told me I’m crazy, and told me she’s crazy too. Angel number 2 quieted my mind, my fears, and fed me the very words I needed to feel nourished, to feel understood.

I’m not sure why it’s all happening now, while I’m in the very depth of my grief. Why my therapist, my doctor, and, (not coincidental at all) my husband initiated the beginning of a new endeavor that has opened up his eyes, ears and mind to this amazing world of positivity, are all crossing our paths and also some very sacred lines, all at this very special time, but they are working with us, and for us. I’m being reborn in a way, reborn into a positive peaceful place. Where my brain is learning how to produce thoughts that produce words that produce action. The stars in my sky are actually lining up and my brain is working with my heart to become a better, more positive person.

I also downloaded a book recently called “unfuck yourself” and I gotta tell ya, it goes hand in hand with everything else I’m telling you about. How the power of positive thoughts can legitimately change what actually happens out loud. There’s a new path for me. And I don’t know why some things have happened the way they have. And I may NEVER understand it, but as for now I am in a state of finding myself and making that version the best rendition of me I possibly can inside this lifetime. I’m in this new headspace where a light has been shed. A switch has been flipped. And a corner is being turned. I am willing and I am able to manifest whatever I want and it all begins inside a very broken heart. A heart that is mending beautifully and in due time. And these angels I’m meeting along the way? They are teachers with real, valuable, life altering lessons and I’ve never been more ready to learn. My goal is to look at a risk, instead, as an opportunity and to look at a challenge as an adventure. I certainly cannot change the past but I can make my future worth the pain I’ve endured. If for nobody else, for my Maverick. For my Ace. And for the most loyal man I’ve ever known. I’m ready for the sunshine and to show my heart to the same world that showed me the greatest darkness I’ve ever seen.

** some food for thought, my brain blurbs **

The people placed on your path carry with them, lessons. They will continue walking against you until your lesson is received. Once the lesson is LEARNED they will either leave you be, or walk with you.

To be self-ful is to take care of yourself without being selfish.

No is a strong and powerful word when used with love.

You can choose to grow a positive brain or a negative one. Be mindful of your choice, as there is scientific evidence that your brain can grow actual hardware to then help navigate every day instances. It can be the difference between life or death. Happy children and angry children. Good memories and bad.

The lack of love from a parent can rumble through the darkest corners of your heart, don’t be afraid to be loved by those you still physically have.

It feels damn good to be vulnerable.

At the very bottom of your grief, you teeter on an itty bitty fine line of falling to the depths of depression. It’s ok to sit there for a little while, as long as you come out, even for a little while, even if it’s on auto pilot. Eventually, you will climb your way out, up to the other side. Blood. Sweat. And tears.

Sympathy is sitting in a cave of emotions with someone and soaking their sadness up like a sponge, wallowing in it and becoming stagnant there. Empathy is going down to the cave, touching it, seeing it, saying ‘hey, I feel for you, over there in your cave, so I want you to know I love you and I’m here for you but I’m gonna stay out of that cave of yours!’

There are about 50,000 thoughts that run through the average persons brain in one day. Our self talk even while we brush our teeth is important. Be willing to start the journey to happiness. After all happiness is a journey, not a destination 💙

I was told soon after my mom died, that all I have to do is ask her for a sign when I need her the most. To say, out loud a shape or a color or an object and she’ll deliver exactly that. On Mother’s Day Eve I asked my mom for a bright lime green sign that everything’s gonna be ok. 3 days came and went but tonight, on my way home from getting the boys, Mav asked me to keep driving and singing the songs I was singing to them… so I did. Somehow I got totally lost and even got a little nervous at one point because the road I was on felt a little eerie with the fog and the rain. I passed a church with a saying I didn’t quite get to read, and once I gained my surroundings, I felt a pull to turn back around to read what it said. Turns out, I wasn’t lost at all 💚💚💚 thanks Mama. You are truly magnificent ✨

I remember when you came into my life. It wasn’t the first time I had met you, or seen you, it wasn’t even the first time I gave you my number. But this time it was different. It was my second time out since I had broken away from an abusive relationship. I was petrified to even be out let alone have fun. I was new and I was broken. But the stars aligned that night and somehow we wound up at the same place at the same time. Friends of yours were trying to hook you up with my best friend, who was out with me and friends of ours. Somehow we wound up standing at the corner of a very crowded bar and we were kissing like we were the only ones in that place.

I remember falling in love with you. It was easy. It happened fast. You were unlike any man I had ever met, and that was a good thing. I can remember the first night you came to pick me up. My mom poured me a shot and said “please have fun.” I took the shot, and you came to pick me up 5 minutes later. I remember where we went and that my ex was blowing my phone up but somehow the anxiety subsided when I was around you. I remember the first time you met my entire family, and they loved you. I remember thinking that night, at my aunt’s fundraiser, that you were a real life angel, sent to save me.

I remember everyone telling us to take it slow. I remember loving to hear what your mom said about me. I remember loving the way you pulled me into your lap in front of anyone, you didn’t care, you wanted the world to know you loved me, that I was your girl.

I remember breaking up. We had gone too fast and we hadn’t healed from the past we had endured. We didn’t listen to our mothers, or our uncles or your pop. We loved each other and we went full steam ahead, until the train went off the tracks a few times and it was necessary for us to part ways.

We found our way back to each other less than a year later. It was apologies and acceptance again into both our families. It was a promise to treat this relationship like it was a brand new one. We talked much less about our exes, and we still don’t really go there. We loved more. We were honest and sometimes that hurt. We moved in together, fell in love over and over, got engaged, and then, married.

It wasn’t soon after we found out that we were pregnant. I remember never loving you more. I remember wanting to spend every waking moment with you and feeling like life was so good I was scared something bad was always on the verge. But nothing bad ever happened. We welcomed our first baby. He made us parents and we were figuring it out together. It was late nights on google and early mornings getting peed on, sleeping in shifts and then somewhere along the way it became a little easier.

Life for you was never a shiny lucky penny heads up. But you had a lot of love in your heart, and you had braveness in your heart, and the fight in you STILL is as loyal as it gets. Now I’m beginning to realize, what it’s like when life isn’t a shiny lucky penny. Where you were raised kind of operating on survival mode, I always had a rather cushy life. Now we witness our life together unfolding. You do better than me with obstacles, you’re a survivor. Your parents raised you, loved you, helped you, pushed you, shaped you, and wanted you to have dreams and hopes and wanted you to always know that family comes first. Now that I’m in a hard season of my life, I’m realizing I’m lacking some tools and I rely on you and only you to help me figure it all out.

I know the immense pressure you’re under. I know it because I can feel it. I’m sorry my father never taught me how to be better at handling money and soon after my beloved mother died, he threw me away. Me, Allie and Chris. I’m sorry that he threw you away and our kids too. I’m sorry this even burdens your big heart, you’re the last one to deserve it. I remember asking you to love me a little more these last two years. You’ve spread yourself so thin and so wide and have provided love and SO MUCH MORE to me and to Allie it’s supernatural what you do for us.

So I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I wasn’t raised to know what’s really important. I know loyalty and love and I know happiness and I never went without, but right now I am trying to fix myself so you don’t fall out of love with me and the life we built over the last 9 years.

I have daddy issues. And they are rearing their ugly head. My dad used to call me fat, my entire childhood. And he would yell like a maniac. He would hit my brother and just the abuse sometimes, and still, it’s disturbing. He’d bounce up and down when he got really mad. He was always dramatic and only after he reached this scary breaking point did he ever feel sorry. And really it was always self pity.

I thank you for rarely breaking. I’m sorry that I am the reason you break. I thank you for being strong and steady. I’m happy you can find a way to love me even when I can’t picture what Love is anymore. They don’t tell you how ugly death is, and all the wicked tricks it plays on you long after you witness someone’s soul leave their body. They don’t explain to you that who you are as a child shapes your entire adult life. They don’t tell you how disturbing life on earth can be. But what they don’t KNOW is. I still have a real life angel. And it’s you. It’s you and it’s Maverick and it’s Ace, my brother my sister, your entire family who surrounds me with love.

I don’t want to be vicious. Or vulgar. I want to be soft and hard in all the right ways. I want to be loved but I want to love you more. And provide you with a soft place to land on your hardest days.

I am sorry. I’m sorry that the pain in my heart has ripped through our life together like a tornado while we’re trying to build it from the ground up. Please have faith in me, and be strong for me a little while longer while I begin, just begin, to pick up all the shattered pieces of my heart. Please have patience with me while I find the girl you married. Please forgive me for being angry and taking it all out on you. I have a lot of work to do on myself and clearly that’s why I stay busy picking you apart. I don’t like who I am right now and if for no one else, I want to become better for you, to you, and for our sweet angel babies. You and them are why my heart has stayed beating these last two years. I’d be dead without you three.