Category: suicide prevention

Love After Abuse

In high school I was raped by my boyfriend. When I finally had the nerve to dump him, I easily trusted another boy with my heart. We broke up because of my mom and I began to date a young man from my church. He wanted to be a youth pastor.

He was a charmer. Everybody loved and trusted him. He was hired as a youth pastor and an administrator at a Christian school. He was the “perfect” man. He had charisma, he was a great speaker, he knew how to talk to people and make them feel comfortable in any situation. If someone was upset, he knew how to make them feel better. He was trusted with kids by church staff, school staff and parents.

I saw some of who he really was, beneath the facade, but only some. He ended up being much worse than even I was aware of. He was hiding a monster beneath his smooth exterior.

He started out building me up, telling me how pretty and smart I was and what a strong Christian I was. He used 1 Corinthians 13, the “Love Chapter” in the Bible, to explain his love for me. I had a broken heart and he seemed capable of putting it back together. I gave it to him. I trusted him.

We dated for a long time and over that time he began to change towards me. He was the same with everyone else, so I thought it was me that caused the change.

I thought it was my fault that he started to make comments about how I looked.

I thought it was my fault that he reprimanded me about the way I talked with my friends or at work.

I thought it was my fault that he didn’t like my friends or want me to hang out with them.

Instead of seeing his mistreatment of me as his problem, I believed it was mine. I believed that if I could just act right, talk right, work right, be right, he would go back to treating me right.

Then he asked me to marry him. If we were married, he’d have to treat me right, right?

So wrong. Things got worse. He didn’t support me getting a college degree. He told me he regretted marrying me. By the end of the marriage we were no more than roommates who never spoke to each other.

He got arrested for the double life he was leading. Everyone who knew him, including me, were absolutely shocked. I knew he was not who he pretended to be, but not just how evil and twisted he truly was.

I was devastated. I swore I’d never love again. How could I ever trust anyone again? How could I trust myself to pick a good guy? Two of the three loves of my young life abused me, that’s not a great track record for my choice in boys.

I learned a lot about love in the midst of my devastation. I learned that the two boys who abused me, one sexually and the other emotionally, didn’t love me. They loved the idea of me and what I provided for them. I was an object to them to be used as they desired.

I learned that I badly wanted  to be loved that I dealt with the abuse.

I learned that I needed to stop looking for somebody else to love me and love myself.

I learned that I was valuable and worth being loved by others.

I learned that I was lovable.

I learned that I didn’t need anybody else to love me in order to survive, I only needed to love myself.

In learning to live myself, I also learned to trust myself.

I learned to take care of myself.

I learned what I enjoyed and what I wanted in life.

I met a man. He looked just like Owen Wilson. He was nice. He was quiet.

It took him a month to ask me out in a date.

I was cautious. I talked to my trusted friends and counselor about him. About love after abuse.

I fell in love with him, but I moved to San Diego. I wasn’t going to let a man keep me from my plans, my dreams like I had in the past.

Four and half months after our first date he asked me to marry him. I said yes. I transferred to a college closer to home to be near him, but I kept pursuing my dream. He supported and encouraged my dream.

We’ve been married for seventeen years now and have two kids. It’s not always easy, marriage is hard work, but I love him and he loves me.

In 1999, I never thought I’d live again, but I’ve spent the past seventeen years loving and being loved right back.

Love after abuse is possible.

Breaking Up With Anxiety

In November, I felt as though my head was barely above water. I was overwhelmed with all that was going on in my head and found it difficult just to get through each day.

Since then, I have taken steps to try to break up with anxiety. Nothing too drastic at one time, but step by step.

I started by practicing yoga every morning and using relaxation techniques throughout the day when I began to feel overwhelmed.

Because I need sleep, my yoga routine only takes about 15-20 minutes in the morning before I go to work. It has made a tremendous difference in how I feel starting my day. I’m relaxed and focused on how my body feels and aware of changes in my posture or muscles that indicate raised anxiety levels.

During the day, because of the increased awareness in my body, I know when to take deep breaths to calm down. I can also go through different muscle groups and make sure I’m relaxed. Then I can focus on the task at hand rather than trying to do it all at once and failing miserably.

Now that those tools have become second nature, I have spent the past two months slowly cutting out junk food. I started by cutting out fast food, then slowly limiting the amount of processed foods we eat at home. I will never be able to get rid of all processed foods, but I try to get minimally processed food at home.

I didn’t really notice a huge change with the foods until this past week when, for the sake of time, I stopped at a fast food place for chicken strips and fries (one of my favorite choices). I felt horrible after eating it. My stomach hurt, my head hurt, and I felt like I had no energy. I also didn’t sleep so good that night.

I have also started walking or cycling most days. I have to do this outside, no gym for me, I need the fresh air. My son and I have both noticed how much better we feel exercising everyday and how tired we are on the days we skip the walk or ride.

I like this new, healthier lifestyle. My family likes our new healthier lifestyle. We’re going to continue to find ways to be healthier and make healthier choices when we do wind up at a restaurant. It’s not always easy, but it’s so worth it.

I have learned ways to keep anxiety away and not allow it to dragging me down. Even if I slip and fall, I will get up and do what I know I can to break up with anxiety and stress, because I know I can.

I will not quit being healthy.

I will always work towards becoming even healthier, both physically and mentally.

This Is Me

I just saw The Greatest Showman, and I must say it was incredible. It definitely lived up to the hype for me.

One song struck me and I’m going to share it with you here:

 

Enjoy your weekend!

Teach Kids to NOT Bully

Recently there was a viral video of a young boy who was upset after being bullied. It was heart wrenching to listen to this intelligent young man cry into the camera and wonder why people are bullies. Wonder why people can’t just appreciate others for who they are.

The website, stopbullying.com, states that 49% of students in grades 4-12 report being bullied in the month before the study was done. They go on to report that according to the study 30.8% reported bullying others during that same time period.

That’s half of our students, being bullied by one-third of our students while the other twenty percent watch in silent complicity or ignorance.

This week, I once again, listened to my son, relay a story of bullying that he endured by one of his classmates, a boy that has joined us in celebrating my son’s birthday in the past. A boy my son once considered a friend.

I have taught my kids to be sure of themselves and to exude confidence so that they don’t become the target of bullies.

Yet here we are, having the conversation again about how to get over being bullied. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve had to have this same conversation with them. It gets old.

I taught my kids to not be bullies, why can’t other parents do the same?

Most schools try to teach anti-bullying lessons, but it’s just one more item added to a never ending list of curriculum and life skills that teachers are expected to magically implant into every student’s brain and life.

Then they go home. We have no idea what the home lives of students are. Maybe they see parents, guardians or other caregivers with an imbalance of power in the relationship. Maybe, their caregivers bully them into compliance verbally or physically. Maybe the student feels powerless, worthless and hopeless at home and wants to feel powerful when they can.

When that is what is lived at home it takes a while lot more than a few minutes of lessons to change that behavior. It will take serious effort to change the negative impact that has on their life.

No matter what the effort is though, we as teachers, parents and society need to try to stop the prevalence of bullying. It extends beyond the school to the workplace, politics and society as a whole.

Bullying must be stopped and education in appropriate behavior is the key.

Let’s teach people how to not be bullies.

 

Barely Above the Surface

This is a picture I drew to try to make sense of what I’m currently feeling. With all the worries on my mind and actual responsibilities, I’m barely keeping my head above water, feeling like I might be pushed under the surface by the next demand on me.

I’m doubting my abilities in teaching, parenting, cooking, writing, speaking, wife-ing, driving, trusting… Pretty much absolutely everything in my life.

My mind is a swirling mess of questions that can’t be answered by my anxious mind. Moving too quickly from one to the next, never even waiting to be answered, just moving in to something else, more terrible until I’m tangled in the mess of questions struggling to keep my head above water.

I’m exhausted both mentally and physically.

My body hurts. I feel the anxiety in my head, neck, shoulders, stomach, hips, heart, and lungs. It takes all my energy to make it through the day without showing the world how my anxiety is affecting me.

Migraines and headaches seem to be my new, unwanted best friend. They are with me everyday in all I do. I try to sleep them off, but I’m even anxious in my dreams and wake up still in pain, still tired.

I want to get better. I don’t want to feel this anymore, but it’s so hard. I take my medicine everyday and it helps. I know I’ve had periods of anxiety without meds and they are far worse than what I’m experiencing now.

I know it will eventually pass, but I want it to end now.

I know I can exercise and eat right and talk to someone, but all of that takes energy that I just don’t have right now.

I do my best to take care of my kids and meet their needs and I know that I need to take care of me too, to meet my needs or soon I won’t be able to take care of them. I will be a lump in my bed, unable to function at all.

Knowing that I can do something to make this better and not having the energy to do it just adds to the anxiety. It’s a vicious circle.

I’m tired. I’m overwhelmed. I want to go to sleep and hide from the world.

At the same time, I don’t want to get pushed beneath the surface by life’s demands.

I want to get to the other side.

 

Thought Spirals

Within the last two weeks I have read two incredible books about OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). One was a memoir titled, Obsessed, by Allison Britz and the other book was a fiction novel, Turtles All the Way Down, by John Green.

Neither of these books were about anxiety, but they helped me understand my anxiety a little bit better. OCD, is an anxiety disorder, after all, so it makes sense that I could relate to the thought patterns expressed in both books.

One thing about mental illness is that there are no words to describe how you feel. For body illnesses we have a ton of words, nauseous, dizzy, headache, shooting pain, dull ache, shortness of breath and tingling sensation to name a few.

The best way to describe how we feel suffering from mental illnesses is to use metaphors. In the book, Obsessed, the author describes her thoughts as angry bees buzzing in her head. John Green calls them “thought spirals.” In another part of John Green’s book, he has the therapist say something like; thoughts are like cars driving by. We can just let them go or we can get in with them and see where they take us.

I try to explain how my anxious thoughts form a coil inside of me, pulling me in tighter and tighter until the thoughts can’t get any tighter and the coil is going to spring loose and hurt me and everybody around me when it does.

The coil in me is metal, so when it springs loose it is dangerous. It will hurt. I try to avoid hurting anyone else by isolating myself from others, then I’m the only one getting hurt by it.

I appreciate language. I appreciate that we have so many words, but sometimes our language falls short. We need words to describe how mental illness feels without requiring people to become experts in metaphors to be able to explain their pain.

Mental pain is real and we need words to express it.

Thank you John Green for giving us the phrase “Thought Spirals!”

Why?

Simon Sinek is a business speaker and I had the opportunity to see a clip of a Ted talk he did about the “Golden Circle” and starting with the question, “why?”

He was talking about business and that successful businesses know why they do what they do, not just what and how, but it can relate to being a teacher, a parent, a friend, writer, speaker, a significant other… the list can go on to include anything that we do.

I was asked why I teach. I always joke and say that it’s for all the time off, and that is a part of why I teach. I thought it would be a great way to have a career and a family. I would be able to be home when my kids were home and spend time with them. I always knew that I would never be able to be a stay-at-home mom so it was the best of both worlds in my opinion.

But the real answer to why I am a teacher is a little sadder than that. When I was in high school I was one of the “weird” kids. I didn’t fit in with any group. It was hard to go to school. Senior year I found a small group of other misfits and we fit together, making that year much easier than it could have been.

People made fun of me for being a Christian, for being too skinny, for looking so young, for being short, for having a boyfriend, for breaking up with a boyfriend, for getting good grades, for not getting good grades, for having a beat up old car, for having a house that looked like a barn… you get the idea. I was picked on.

As a teacher I want to find those marginalized students and let them know that someone at school cares about them. That someone knows that they are there and that they make a difference in my class. I want them to know that my world would not be the same without them in my classroom. I want them to feel accepted and that they belong somewhere. I want them to know that they matter.

That led me to think about writing. What I do is write. How I do it is with creativity, a computer/phone, on the internet and by making time. But why do I do it?

That answer is easy with my first book, Worthless No More. I want people to know that they are not alone in their struggles and that there are people they can talk to who will understand and will help them.

But what about my next book, a fiction novel about a female serial killer? Why am I writing that one? Or the next fiction one that will be about a high school student being sexually assaulted at a party?Why do I want to write that one? And the sequel to Worthless No More?

As I thought about why I want to write these other books, I realized that it’s all the same reason that I wrote Worthless No More. I want people to realize that no matter what their struggle is, there is help and there is hope for them. That their lives don’t have to be defined by what has happened to them or the bad choices they’ve made. We always have a chance to start over.

 

It’s Okay to Not Be Okay

 

According to the fictional character, House; everybody lies.

He’s probably right. I know I like every day. Did you hear that? I lie every, single day. I’ve probably even lied to you.

Want to know what my most common lie is?

“How are you?” People ask.

“I’m fine.” I reply with a smile.

The smile is the icing on the cake. If I’m smiling then surely I must truly be fine. If I wasn’t fine, I’d tell you, right?

Not necessarily.

People ask this question as a way of being polite, not because they have the desire or concern or time to know how you are. It’s more out of habit like, “wow, this weather sure is something, isn’t it?”

It’s a space filler. So instead of saying how I really feel, I tell people that I’m fine.

Besides, if you say how you really feel, some people don’t know how to react.

I once decided to tell people the truth for an entire day when they asked how I was. When I told them that my mind was racing and I couldn’t sleep at night because of the bad dreams they looked at me as though I had just told them I was planning a horrific crime. Like something was wrong with me.

Here’s the thing though, there is nothing more wrong with me than a person who has to wear glasses or take insulin or any other medication.

A part of my body doesn’t function properly. There are chemicals that get out of whack and cause me to not be okay…

And that’s okay.

I don’t need people to feel bad for me, or tell me how my life is better than so many others. I need people to let me know ow that it’s okay to not be okay.

Ask me what I do to feel better and if I’ve been practicing those things.

Ask me what you can do to help.

Would you tell a diabetic to just get over it? That it’s not okay to be diabetic?

No way!

Would you tell someone who needs contacts or glasses to just stop wearing them so they don’t become dependent on them?

Absolutely not!

Anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses are exactly the same as other illnesses. It’s not our fault that we have them and that a part of our body, our brain, doesn’t seem to work as well as it should.

We should never be embarrassed of our mental health issues. Everyone needs to quit stigmatizing people who have mental health issues.

I want everyone to know that it’s okay to not be okay!

I’m Nercited

Yes, that title has a made up word, that I stole from one of my daughter’s friends. Sometimes writers can’t express themselves in real words though, so they make some up.

Nercited describes how I’m feeling today to a tee.

I am excited beyond belief that my dream of becoming an author has come true and I am doing an author event at a bookstore.

I have 3 hours to get people to like my book, buy it, sign a few copies and hope that their lives are changed by what they read.

My words are in print (and digital) form and people are reading them. Talk about a dream come true. I have wanted this since I was seven years old and I wrote my first story about a jack-o’-lantern.

I’m also nervous and anxious. I usually have no problem getting in front of people and speaking. I don’t know what’s going on with me.

I actually had a dream last night in which I had an anxiety attack. In the dream I was talking myself down and doing deep breathing exercises to calm myself down. When I woke up, my heart was racing, I was shaky and my breaths we’re shallow.

I’ve been on the verge of an anxiety attack all day.

Then, this afternoon I realized I didn’t have any swag to give away tomorrow or anything to decorate with. That almost sent me into the abyss. Again, I had to talk myself down, away from the edge.

After school I went to the store, got some things I can make into swag, (if you want to know what it is, you’ll have to come see me at Barnes and Noble in Stockton from 1-4.) I also picked up a few things to decorate a table.

I’m looking forward to the author event.

I’m blessed beyond measure that God has allowed me this opportunity to help others going through tough times.

I know that the nerves and anxiety is just the darkness trying to pull me into it’s grip. I won’t let it.

I will be a light in the world.

Baby Steps to Ease Anxiety at School

My family has been back to school for two weeks now and it has been the easiest transition to a new school year that we have had in years.

My daughter has some social anxiety and is an extreme introvert, however she has made a few new “friends” at school. You know, the kind she can work in class with, maybe eat lunch with, but that’s enough for her.

To be honest, that’s huge for her. I’m extremely proud of her for overcoming that anxiety.

My son has inherited my general anxiety about pretty much everything and my ability to jump to the worst possible conclusion in a single bound.

To prepare for fifth grade he and I talked some about what he expected class to be like and how it would most likely be. Luckily I’ve had experience with his teacher so I knew some of what​ he could expect. He’s lucky to have gotten an incredible teacher this year.

One of his issues is that if someone is doing something that is particularly annoying to him, he can’t focus on anything besides the annoying behavior. Pencil drumming, pen clicking, to tapping, whatever it is keeps him from being able to focus on school and learning.

He recognized that was happening  this week and asked me to help him work out a new seating arrangement with his teacher. I’m exceptionally proud of him recognizing a problem and vocalizing a solution.

Now my start to the school year. My anxiety was knocking when I had to report back for professional development the week before students started.

The first morning my heart was racing, my hands were shaking and I couldn’t catch my breath.

Each thought quickly led to another until my thoughts were a jumbled mess I couldn’t figure out.

There wasn’t any one thing I could pick out that I was anxious about, it was just an overwhelming feeling of sinking in shallow water knowing the bottom was close, but unable to get my feet down to save myself.

Luckily, a friend asked me how I was doing. I told her I felt like I was drowning. She asked me why and I couldn’t explain. So she helped me focus on the good stuff in my life. I smiled thinking about my kids, husband, house, you know all the good things.

Her question, her concern, saved me from drowning in another bout of anxiety. Her caring, reminded me that I am not my anxiety and I have so much more in my life than that darkness that so often threatens to pull me under.

So, we all took positive baby steps I dealing with our anxiety to make this new school year a little easier for ourselves. Now we just need to keep baby-stepping forward to keep anxiety at bay as the year progresses.

Together I think we can handle it. Baby steps.