1. One small candle holder that says Sanda and Dean’s Jack and Jill
2. A picture frame from Nick and Beth’s Wedding
3. A small black guitar pick.
4. A chip on one of my front teeth.
5. A small scar above my left eye
The items I could throw out, I didn’t, and the scars on my person are reminders I’ll never be able to get rid of.
Filed under Growth, Healing, Life Lessons, Love, relationships
I have been writing pretty irregularly this week because I’ve been going to a lot of doctor’s appointments. One of my concerns happens to be a lump in my throat. Every time I swallow I can feel it. I told the doctor a little bit about when I started to notice it.
Around the time I broke up with the guy who almost killed me, I began having trouble breathing. It would only happen when I was driving alone in my car and when there was nothing in the car for me to drink. At first my throat would become dry and I’d begin to choke.Then I wouldn’t be able to breath. I’d begin to panic, and inevitably my breathing would come back, except for one time, where no matter what I did I could not breath. I became terrified and gasped for air as I choked on nothing.
A friend pointed out that it was interesting that I was having panic attacks in which I was unable to breath because when my ex-boyfriend almost killed, it was through suffocation.
I ran into a friend yesterday, a cancer survivor. Talking about her illness and surviving stage three cancer, she spoke these poignant words, “You just never think it is going to happen to you.” This is how I felt about almost being murdered by my ex-boyfriend and ending up in a domestic violence situation in general. Like an unexpected diagnosis, no one ever thinks it will happen to them.
Filed under Heart, Life Lessons, Love
In Tucson, the avocados are less than a dollar each and much larger than the ones they sell back East, in Connecticut, where I’m from. In New England they charge over three dollars a piece for these puny little shriveled up things. Upon holding one of these so-called avocados in your hand, you will see that it has the texture and appearance of large peach pit. These avocados do not even come close to the firm fresh quality of the avocados sold in Arizona. Avocados are climacentric, therefore commercial growers must pick them off the trees early in order to allow enough travel time for them to make it back East before rotting. This practice also attributes to the stunted, unripened quality obtained from these almost foreign fruits from afar.
When I lived in Tucson I found the most delicious avocados everywhere, even at the local Safeway. I utilized their luscious green flesh to make the most tantalizing guacamole. The recipe is simple. It calls for three avocados, the juice from two limes, a large tomato, a small red onion, and a pinch of kosher salt. I would fill a huge Tupper Ware container with the mixture and eat only guacamole for the following two to three days,depending. I always long for it, but making it the right way is actually a very expensive and complicated four-part recipe.
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Filed under Life Lessons, Writing
I remember a while back when one of my friends broke up with his girlfriend. He was really upset. At the time I had just broke up with some one as well. I told him to think about how he was feeling -right at that moment- and to embrace all the pain, because that is what it is to be human. I told him to think about how human he felt at that moment and acknowledge those negative emotions. Feeling the feelings and consciously processing them would inevitably allow him to move past them rather than if he ignored them or refused to face them.
Once we have surrendered ourself to acceptance of failure- that there is no getting (or getting back) what we want, all we are left with is feelings of pain and disappointment. This is what many self-help writers refer to as “growing pains.” During our biggest disappointments and our most painful moments we are provided with unlimited potential for the growth and strengthening of our spirit. On the other hand, some people view failure and pain as the only lens through which we would be able to appreciate the good things in our life; that we wouldn’t appreciate the good if we didn’t have the bad.
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Filed under Friendship, Growth, Healing, Heart, Inspirational, Life Lessons
I came across this headline the other day “Why Did Kat Von D Tattoo Jesse James’ Face on Her Body?” Wow, good question! You would think that someone who makes their living as a tattoo artist would know that tattooing someone’s name or face on your body is considered bad luck. Tattooing someone’s PII on your person is never a good idea. As a child, I couldn’t help but wonder why my uncle had “Nancy” tattooed across his arm when he was married to my Aunt Helen…
After I was done rolling my eyes at the headline, I was compelled to read the article, why would a talented and well-known tattoo artist like Kat Von D walk right into this well-known curse?
Filed under Life Lessons, News, relationships
I find a lot of times in the Blogosphere people are passing around a lot of Haterade. Though most of the comments left on my articles are positive and encouraging, I do get some nasty ones, every so often. Under my most recent article, “Confronting My Rapist,” one person wrote the following:
“This is a tremendous step in your life, and I applaud you for it. But lady, your grammar is horrible. Pronoun-an tecedent agreement errors, run-ons. You get paid to write? I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”
There are so many things that are wrong here. First of all, there is the insensitivity factor. I wrote an article about confronting someone who raped me and this person has such little respect for people in general that he feels that a post about confronting my rapist is an appropriate place to air his grievances about my grammar. Obviously, he is trying to knock a survivor of rape, whom he has never met down a few pegs. (In case you were wondering) he didn’t succeed. I actually just rolled my eyes because people have said worse to me and I know that these types of comments are often the nature of the Blogosphere due to the blanket of anonymity one can easily hide behind.
What truly struck me about this was the insult itself. What he said is absolutely correct. I have horrible grammar. I cannot spell to save my life, and to be honest with you, I’m not even sure what an antecedent is. The run-ons, however, I consider my signature. He ends his small rant with, “I wish I could write this poorly and get paid for it.”
I don’t know what this individual does for a living or if he is successful or even happy. I do know that he is missing the point. Before I dropped out of art school, I had the most awful professor you could possibly imagine. He was a graduate student who was just out of college. He was extremely full of himself and a total jerk. One day he instructed our class to go out and “spend our parent’s money” on the most expensive paint brushes we could get our hands on— the ones that cost $18 each.
Filed under Art, Heart, Life Lessons, Sexual Assault, Writing
My life truly began to change when I started to be completely honest. I started to write about and confront the things that I ignored for years. Publicly I published articles about dealing with sexual assault and healing on the web. The first time my article appeared on online, I felt naked. I started to cry and wondered if I had made a huge mistake. With each consecutive article, I felt equally exposed. This went on for about six months. Each time an article came out, I would cry. My boyfriend at the time asked me why I even bother to do it. He said that maybe I should just stop writing if it was this difficult for me to handle. Though it was difficult, I never considered stopping or quitting. Too many people wrote back to me saying that they felt very alone in their experience before reading my articles. Truth is before reading their comments, I felt very alone in the experience of surviving sexual assault as well.
For years I hid the truth about my life from everyone. I dodged reality and instead hid behind poor relationships, drinking, and substance abuse. No one understood why I was so messed up and always involved in something reckless. The addictions numbed the pain of rape. They also came to the forefront and caused immediate drama and issues that couldn’t be ignored. Perhaps they were the armor I hid the truth behind. With so much negativity going on because of my behavior, I had enough to worry about without delving into and exploring my past. Eventually I found out that you cannot hide the truth from others without also hiding it from yourself.
Denial can kill people. Until I spoke my truth and seeked professional help, the road I went down only got progressively worse. Addictions will kill you eventually. Suppressing trauma can cause unhappiness, depression, and serious illnesses.
Filed under Healing, Life Lessons, Sexual Assault
If you haven’t yet checked out my post, “Confronting My Rapist,” please follow the link and check it out on HuffPo. This is a must-read piece that I’m extremely proud of! I hope you appreciate it!
It takes a strong person to confront their rapist. Sometimes it is unavoidable. In cases of rape between family members or friends, you will undoubtedly see this person again. Other times people are forced to confront their rapists in the court of law in order to get the justice they seek. The majority of rapes go unreported (95% of sexual assault victims do not report the crime to the proper authorities).
I was so young when I was raped I thought I would be the one who got in trouble if I reported it. So I didn’t get the courage to speak up for a decade. By that time, any physical evidence that was left had faded. I spoke to police and counselors about reporting it but they told me it wouldn’t be an easy case to prove with only circumstantial evidence. Since there were two rapists involved, I thought maybe it was possible that one would rat the other out to save their own butts. It was a possibility, but nothing was for certain.
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Filed under Healing, Life Lessons, Sexual Assault
If you haven’t already, please check out my article, “Are You Your Own Worst Critic?”
Many of us consider ourselves to be our own worst critics and I used to think so, too. I was always so hard on myself to the point of perfectionism. Then one day I began to see things differently. I started to realize that other people’s opinions of me and what they thought I should be doing were so imbedded into my mind that their expectations became stronger than my own wants and needs. I inevitably realized that the self criticism that tortured my mind for years was not in response to my voice. In actuality, it was self-criticism and self-punishment for not living up to expectations of others. Slowly I began to eliminate their opinions.
If you have felt this type of guilt and thought this way, the truth is, you’re not really disappointing anyone through your actions. These people are only disappointed in you (when your actions differ from their vision of what you should be doing) because they are losing control of you. These are not friends, nor are they people you should be taking advice from.
Think back to the things you always beat yourself up over. Do you beat yourself up over failures that caused you disappointment or are you being hard on yourself for not living up to other people’s desires for who you are and who you should be? I guarantee that the majority of failures and things you hold against yourself belong to the latter category.
Read the rest at The Huffington Post feel free to share and comment!!
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Filed under Life Lessons, News
Many of us consider ourselves our own worst critics, and I used to think so, too. I was always so hard on myself to the point of perfectionism. Then one day I smoked salvia, no joke, and began to see things differently. I started to realize that other people’s opinions of me and what they thought I should be doing were so imbedded into my mind that their expectations became stronger than my own wants and needs. I inevitably realized that the self criticism which tortured my mind for years was not in response to my voice, but in actuality was self-criticism and self-punishment for not living up to expectations of others. Slowly I began to eliminate their opinions.
If you have felt this type of guilt, and thought this way, the truth is, you’re not really disappointing anyone through your actions. These people are only disappointed in you (when your actions differ from their vision of what you should be doing) because they are losing control of you. These are not friends, nor are they people you should be taking advice from.
Think back to the things you always beat yourself up over. Do you beat yourself up over failures that caused you disappointment or are you being hard on yourself for not living up to other people’s desires for who you are and who you should be? I guarantee that the majority of failures and things you hold against yourself belong to the latter category.
You know who you truly are and who you want to be. Don’t let other people muddle your thoughts. Speak your truth and people of substance will appreciate your wisdom. We are not on this Earth to regurgitate what others expect us to regurgitate. When we do this, we lose our identity and certainly cheat everyone out of what we truly have to offer.
“Why die a copy when you were born an original?”
Filed under Inspirational, Life Lessons, Passion
