Category: Uncategorized

A Much Needed Hero

Let me start this post by stating that I am talking about specific people in this post related to the USA gymnastics scandal and a story from my own teenage years, please don’t assume I am talking about anyone other than those.

I have been watching the Larry Nassar case for the past few weeks, I thought everyone was. When I said something about it at work, not one person that I was talking to knew what I was talking about. It shocked me that more people weren’t concerned that a well-respected doctor had been allowed and enabled to molest girls for decades.

I said what I wanted to say in the work conversation and they moved on as if it wasn’t that big a deal, but it is.

This women’s lives were forever changed when that monster touched them. Then, as icing on the cake, the few who founs the courage to tell what happened to them weren’t believed.

When I was 15 years old, I was raped by my boyfriend. He pinned me down on a couch and forced himself on me.

Iwas humiliated, violated and devastated.

I didn’t tell.

Anyone.

I stayed with him. Out of fear. Out of embarrassment.

Because he stole my value, my worth.

I had been taught my whole life that as a female, my worth was tied into my virginity, and he stole that.

Months later, I broke down and confided in a friend who believed me and understood.  That gave me courage to eventually tell my mom. She told me that I needed to marry the guy since I’d had sex with him.

That messed me up and I talked to a school counselor, she had to report it to the police. The officer who took my statement told me that since I stayed with my abuser, they wouldn’t be forwarding the case for prosecution.

So many people let me down when I was raped, but I had a few heroes, a few people who gave me hope.

I will forever be grateful for those #HopeGivers who stood up in my life and became my hero.

In the Larry Nassar case, so many people let down these amazing women by not believing them, but finally, an incredible judge let them tell their story during the sentencing hearing through their impact statement.

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina gave almost 150 women, survivors, heroes, a voice.

It was incredible to watch as survivor after survivor read how their life had been impacted by Nassar.

I am thankful for all the heroes who listen and do something for victims, allowing them to regain, a piece of themselves that had been taken…

Their voice.

 

Family

I love my family!

It’s been a while since I posted, does that mean this is no longer a weekly blog? I’m back on track now, I promise a new blog every Friday (or maybe Saturday, depending on my kids’ schedules.)

The past few weeks have been a great time for my family. The week after New year’s we went camping for a week, both kids tried new things and enjoyed their experiences, while I was sick with a cold and spent most of the time sleeping and coughing.

Then we came back to reality and had to get into the groove of school and work again.

My son convinced me to audition for a play in December and I got a part. He’s on tech crew so it has been a blast rehearsing with him there to critique me.

Soccer has been slow for my daughter, but it’s been fun to watch her train.

I have been enjoying my life again. Everything doesn’t feel like a chore right now. I don’t feel as though my head is barely above water, I’m on the shore, hanging out with my family, having fun.

I wish I could feel like this all the time, unfortunately I don’t know how long it will last. Anxiety and depression are on a vacation right now. They can stay gone forever, in my opinion.

I love my family and I always want them to know that I have fun with and enjoy spending time with them. I want them to know that taking care of them isn’t a chore to me.

I will always tell them how much they mean to me and how happy I am with them.

I pray that anxiety and depression stay away and I can always feel this good about my family and everything else.

My family is awesome!

I Survived!

I survived the holiday season!!!! The holiday season can be a stress and anxiety inducing time of year for many people. I am one of those.

Most years, at best, I end up in tears one or two times. At worst, I wind up with a full blown bout of anxiety complete with panic attacks, thinking everyone hates me and that I’m not good enough and nothing I do will ever be good enough.

This year though I had a plan. I shared it with you on December 2, in a post titled, “Relieve Holiday Stress.” To remind you what it was there were 5 things we can do to relieve Holiday Stress: don’t do it all, indulge without​ guilt, give useful, practical gifts, plan downtime and remember the reason for the season.

That plan has helped me this season. I’ll have to remember it again next year.

For me the most important reminder is the reason for the season, which is to celebrate Jesus’ birth and spend time with family.

It’s easy for me to remember that it’s all about Jesus. Being a Christian is a huge part of my life.

I realized though that when I stress and experience anxiety, I’m not there for my kids. And what do they really want? Do they want all the gifts that they’ll use for a few weeks at best, before they lie forgotten in the back of a closet or under the bed? Or do they want memories with family over meals shared together, shopping for others together, special holiday outings and good, old-fashioned quality family time?

I have enjoyed the quality time with them.

Christmas is in two days, and I survived!

Getting Pantsed: Practical Joke or Sexual Assault?

I had this conversation with several people this week: is pantsing a harmless prank or sexual harrassment?

I had a training with my school district earlier this week and a high school administrator told a story about having to deal with a boy who got pantsed by another boy in PE class. He thought it was just a nuisance.

In shock, I replied, “That’s sexual harrassment!”

Laughing, he replied, “I wouldn’t call it that, it’s just boys being stupid and immature.”

“If my kid were the one whose pants got pulled down, I can tell you that I wouldn’t be okay with that. Not only is a kids pants being pulled down without his consent, what if his underwear come down, or they aren’t wearing any? What if someone else sees?”

The leader of the meeting started speaking again and the conversation ended. Guess what my daughter told me that afternoon?

She started the conversation with a question. “Is pantsing someone like sexual harrassment?”

What? I kept my cool and asked, “Why? What happened?”

She informed me that a boy in her PE class had been pantsed at the end of class and she saw him in his underwear and felt bad for him and embarrassed for having seen him that way.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Is it sexual harrassment?”

“I think so because he didn’t want his pants pulled down and I didn’t want to see him in his underwear.” She replied

“Then it is.” I agreed.

I reported it to her school and they assured me it would be dealt with. I hope they take it seriously before it escalates.

I read a report this week that sexual harrassment is the most prevalent form of bullying on middle and high school campuses.

A few days after that conversation, a student of mine informed me that she had lost faith in humanity. Of course I asked her to elaborate, which she did.

A boy she has known for awhile and lives near her gave her a ride home the day before. While driving he asked her if there was any chance she’d make out with him. She said no. The next morning, he asked if she needed a ride again. She said she did, and he asked if she’d be upset if he tried something with her. She told him she’d be mad. He refused to give her a ride and called her a name.

She was in shock that he would even ask her that after she told him no the first time.

I’m not shocked.

We see in the media how many men think that their aggressive, sexual behavior should be accepted by any woman they choose. (Of course it can go the other way too. Women can be the agressors, but thats statistically less likely to happen.)

My daughter told me once that instead if teaching people how to avoid getting assaulted, we should teach them not to​ assault others.

It’s too true.

Sexual harrassment needs to be stopped!

How to Help Anxiety

My last post was two weeks ago and it was difficult to write, but I needed to get what I was feeling out of my head and into writing. Thank you to all who read it and thank you to all who prayed for me or sent positive thoughts into the universe. God got them all and answered them for me.

I feel better.

I’m still overwhelmed by all that is happening in my life, but I have found the energy to begin taking care of me.

I have exercised, mostly yoga stretches to get rid of the neck and shoulder tension, for 9 of the past 14 days. It has helped tremendously. I haven’t had a headache in 2 weeks. I also have been doing stretches to help alleviate the pain I experience from a pinched nerve in the front of my hip. That has helped too.

I have begun to eat better, healthier foods instead of running to fast food because I don’t have the energy to cook. I’m still tired most of the time, but not as exhausted as I have been.

Living with anxiety is not fun or for the weak. It takes more strength and energy to get through a day than it should. Fighting the negative thoughts that are always there and pushing back the unnecessary stresses just to function is exhausting.

I still have bad dreams though, so sleeping isn’t really restful for me. My husband says I toss and turn all night long. Some nights are better than others and I don’t usually remember the dreams after waking up. St least the dreams don’t add to by daytime stress.

The biggest anxiety relief for me though, is writing. Writing it down here in my blog, and getting my feelings into words takes some of their power away and gives me my power back.

I’m at my weakest against anxiety when I hold it in and try to make others believe that everything is fine. I need to remember that I have friends and family beside me, willing to help me.

I’m not alone!

Thank you all for that.

How To Escape Whatever You Need To Get Away From

Our lives are busy. There is too much going on. We have jobs, family, friends, homes, sports, responsibilities and many other things that overwhelm us. Sometimes we just need a way to escape.

My preferred means of escape is sitting on a beach, listening to waves lapping peacefully on the shore, feeling a warm breeze under a shady palapa.

Or maybe a weekend in a cozy mountain cabin, with the sound of a babbling brook floating through the windows on a cool breeze.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a budget that supports that kind of travel as often as I need. Statistically, neither do most of us. We have to work to pay the bills.

So how can you escape?

Books! Books can take you to amazing places and they’re easy on your budget.

Libraries let you borrow books for free, so do friends and family. Kindle and Nook allow you to download books onto their devices and maybe even onto your phone.

Then, there are magical places called bookstores that will happily take your money in exchange for books.

If you don’t like sitting down to read, or don’t have the time, there are audiobooks. You can listen to a book while you take care of your responsibilities! How amazing is that?

Books can take you farther than vacations which keep you trapped in this world in this time. Books can take you to Narnia, the Wizarding World, into the future or into the past. They can take you to alternate dimensions or different worlds.

Books are an incredible, cost-effective, escape strategy and there is an incredible opportunity to stock up on books for people in California’s Central Valley.

I will be there selling my book, Worthless No More, along side about a hundred other authors selling their books.

You will be able to purchase some great escape opportunities and meet the authors that wrote them.

Hope to see you there!

It’s Working!

Let me start with a big THANK YOU!!! To the 18 amazing people who subscribed to my blog last week. You are awesome!

Next I want to let everyone know:

It’s working!

“What exactly is working?” You may ask. We’ll, let me tell you.

My book is working.

There were two main reasons I wrote my story: 1) to help myself deal with some issues from my past once and for all and 2) to let others know that they are valuable and lovable and worth finding people who love them for real not for what they can get from them.

It was successful, the book worked, both of my goals have been achieved.

First, it helped me tremendously to write my story. There were things that I brought up in the story that I had never even told my husband. I wasn’t trying to hide them from him, but I didn’t want to deal with those things. Writing about them helped he and I to have good conversations and strengthen our relationship. Writing those things also helped me seek a counselor to talk through some of the more severe emotions.

Secondly, I wanted people to know they are valuable and lovable. During summer school there was a student who I was lead to give one of my books to. She came to me a few days later and told me that she realized some things about herself that she wanted to change and would be working on those things.

Then when school started this week, she found me and let me know that she had passed the book to her mom and a cousin. Her mom realized that she had been going from guy to guy to fix herself and decided she needed to fix herself and not rely on anybody else to do that and has gotten herself into a program to heal. Then she shared a similar story about her cousin.

When I was afraid of publishing my story and having people read things about me that I’ve never shared I decided that if one person could be helped it would be worth it. I have had others tell me how the book  has helped them. Then this week I found out that two more people were helped because of my story.

I’m amazed.

I’m in awe.

I’m humbled.

I’m thankful.

My story is working.

I wish everyone who needed to could read it. So far about 180 copies have been sold or downloaded. That’s a lot of people reading my story.

Please share it. Either loan out your copy or point them to this website or Amazon to purchase Worthless No More.

Oh, yeah… If you haven’t subscribed yet, please do.

If you have subscribed please share with a friend and encourage them to subscribe too.

  1. Love to all of you!!!!

We All Have a Story to Tell

I didn’t write a blog yesterday because I had an extremely busy day, that ended with a Book Release Celebration. I was surrounded by family and friends and friends who have become family as I celebrated, my lifelong dream of becoming an author.

For those of you who were unable to make it to the celebration, I will share with you here, what I shared with them last night:

“I was encouraged to write my story for several reasons, but mostly so people will know that they aren’t alone in their struggles. Students continuously tell me things that are going on in their lives, thinking that they are the only one who has a parent who belittles them, or a significant other that mistreats them or a friend that isn’t a real friend or whatever their struggle is.

I also want people to know that your worth, your value isn’t based on how other people see you or treat you. Each person is a valuable human being because we are made in the image of the Creator. When somebody hurts us, it is a reflection of them, not us. Our value isn’t changed by the pain and hurt we endure.
Worthless No More tells part of my story, from age 14 to 26. My story isn’t over yet and neither is yours. Our stories are being written day by day through our experiences. We can allow the story to be written for us, and believe what is written about us, or we can make the conscious choice to write our own story, by how we choose to respond to things and what we believe about ourselves.
When I was younger I believed I was worthless because that’s how I was treated. I just wanted to be loved and accepted and many of my decisions were based on those desires. Because of my family, I mistakenly believed that love and pain went together and allowed my high school boyfriend to mistreat me because I though he loved me. I had learned that you accept the pain to have the love.
I eventually got out of that relationship, and right into another one. He treated me well, but my mom didn’t like him, so to earn her love, I broke up with him and began dating a good Christian boy who wanted to be a youth pastor. The problem was, he didn’t love me, he loved controlling me. I still wanted to be loved though, so I put up with it and married him.
When the marriage ended so did the life I had worked so hard to create for myself. I could no longer live my life looking for love from others when I didn’t even love myself. It was the lowest I had ever felt. I was completely empty and broken. I believed all that I had been told about myself, I was worthless.
That’s when some incredible friends of mine, Kim and Jeff, tricked me into seeing a counselor. That was the best thing that happened in my life up to that point. In counseling I learned that we don’t have to believe the words that people say about us. We can replace our negative self -mage with a positive one. I also learned that the only way to find true love and acceptance from others is to love and accept yourself first.
Each one of us has a story to tell. We’ve all had struggles to survive. When we have the courage to face our stories that’s when we begin to heal from the past and create a new story, page by page, day by day. As we live our stories we learn that every moment passes, the good and the bad. We try to hold on to the good memories and forget the bad, however the bad memories, the struggles, the pain we endure are the moments that help us grow and show us the strength we never knew we had.
Remember when we were kids and we experienced growing pains? That was our bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons growing and stretching to help us become stronger and taller. That’s what the bad moments are for our character, the pain makes our emotions grow and stretch until we are able to handle and heal from things we never thought possible.
Good times pass as well and we remember them, take pictures and celebrate them. Those are the memories that give us hope in the bad moments; that let us know that even in the midst of the struggle we can know that moments pass and good will come again.
We all have a story to tell, I published mine, that doesn’t make it any more important than yours or more difficult than yours. Every story is important. Each person has their own personal story that helped them grow and become strong and amazing. When we know that we are not alone in our struggles, that we each have a story that is being written day by day, we can be there to remind each other that the bad moments pass and that we can learn from them.
Being a part of other’s stories allows us to be there to help people celebrate the good moments, because they will also pass. Thank you all for the part you’ve had in my story and helping me celebrate this dream come true of becoming a published author.”

What a Week!

My first book was released this week on my website and also as an eBook on Kindle. I’ve been busy selling, packaging and shipping  books. It’s been crazy!

Some of my students have purchased my book. I overheard some of them talking about it yesterday. It was surreal knowing that they were discussing a book that I wrote. Then I remembered it’s not just my book, it’s my life they’re reading about.

I’ve wanted to be an author since I was in first grade. I used to tell my mom that I would make millions telling stories about our family, but I never believed  I’d actually write about my life.

It was hard to sit down and write Worthless No More because I had to think about my past and relive some of it in order to adequately write the details. It was scary when I thought about putting it out there and getting it published. Did I really want people to know some of the details of my life that I had kept hidden for so long?

The answer is “no”.

I don’t want people to know the details of my life. I am generally a private person and don’t reveal a whole lot about myself to others.

I do want others to be able to tell there story though and to know they can be better. I want the readers of my book to know there is hope for a better life. I want everyone to know that they are a valuable person, worth being treated well.

I want people to know that no matter how their story is going now, the rest is still unwritten and they have the power to write their own story of healing, wholeness and hope.

It has been one of the best and scariest weeks for me. I’m still in awe that there is a book out there with my name as the author. I’m scared about what people will think about me after reading my story, I just have to remember who I am.

I am no longer the scared, little girl who allowed people to hurt her in the name of love. I am no longer the worthless young adult making bad decisions so that people will love me.

I am priceless.

I am loved.

I am valuable.

I am strong.

I am brave.

I am worthless no more!

My Book Is Here!!!!!!

My book has finally arrived and it’s available for you to buy.  Just click on the “books” tab and use the PayPal link. If you don’t have a PayPal account, contact me and we’ll work it out.

Thank you for all your support!