LOL SLOWLY! It started in high school, where I was starting to feel like I had dual personalities, one at home to not make anyone mad, and one anywhere else. I made a choice to find my own happiness. I asked my mother, for counseling, which, because I was under 18, the counselor told her everything, which they used against me, to shame me, and I wasn’t allowed to go because they didn’t like what I was saying about them. It wasn’t all for nothing though, because it was the start of sorting things out, and seeing that my life wasn’t ‘normal’. My decision to make my own happiness eventually caught up with me, and I was thrown out of my house, by my mother’s boyfriend, threatening to murder anyone who tried to help me, so no one did. I ended up in a battered woman’s shelter, just after turning 18, a senior in high school. That year was huge for me… I became acutely aware I was a mess. I knew I wanted a better life. I lived about 6 months in that shelter, which is against their rules, but I was a top student and I had no where else to go. I eventually moved in with a family and became their live-in nanny, which is a stretch because I didn’t do 1/2 for them of what they did for me. The woman even sewed my prom dress so I could go, from material someone donated. Over the years I’ve had different types of counseling and dealt with different parts of my childhood. 

I got married young, wanting to create the family I never had to give me the love I never got, fill the gaping hole in my soul. The challenge was I was a mess making the best choices I could with the tools I had at the time. When my son was born, it all changed for me because I had never known love like I came to know it then. I didn’t want him to experience what I had. I knew I had to get better. He was born with a serious disease that took about a year to diagnose and we were told he was dying. 

What I didn’t understand then, was that there are repeating patterns in your life, that until you fix those, you’re going to relive the same experience. I married a man I thought was a family man, loving and kind, but I was wrong. He never hit me, but he was narcissistic, verbally and mentally abusive, and triggered my long engrained pattern of not wanting to make anyone mad. Every part of me that I had built up from my childhood, he was tearing down. After almost 10 years of marriage, I divorced him, and started rebuilding again.  This time it was also for my son, who was starting to sound more like his father every day, and I knew that was not the life I wanted for us. I had not come this far, to have my son repeat this insanity. I found a man that would help me break that cycle and after a few years we married. My son had the Dad he’d always needed and wanted, and I was breaking the cycle again. 

The biggest thing I did, was give myself permission to try. It was all trial and error, trying different ways of looking at things, considering things from other’s perspectives, lots of counseling which I continue today, reading, connecting with others and understanding their experiences, and having people in my life that support a healthy life. Recreating myself hasn’t been glamorous or perfect, it’s been painful, slower than I wanted it to be, raw, and caused me to be honest with myself about things I’d rather not even look at. I had also worked my way up professionally, so I was working long hours. I didn’t make myself the priority and there were other big life events that attracted my time and attention but I kept on pushing forward. I got a divorce, I left behind relationships that didn’t serve me, I learned to say no, I learned to love myself, I left a job that made me unhappy, I created the life I wanted. I keep learning every day, how to deepen my self love, how to see things differently, how to foster healthy relationships, and how to forgive myself. 

After high school I had a full scholarship to college, but school was the last thing on my mind. This was my chance to feel loved. I went to work and started building my family, got married to my high school sweetheart, got a job, and over the years, I worked my way up, to a six-figure salary holding the title of Area and Regional Director. I had done it! I had it all! With the support of my second husband, I had achieved what I never thought possible. We had international vacations, nice cars, a big house, all distant from that one room cabin with mattresses on the floor and an outhouse I had had as a child, but I didn’t feel like I was making a difference; it still all felt empty. And then it happened, a kid came into my life, needing all the tools I had learned over the years. And then it kept happening, kids would come into my life, and I was making a real difference in their lives. It hit me.. this is what I’m supposed to be doing. With my husband’s love and support, we sold our house, made some drastic changes to our life style, went down to one income, and with a bit of money started this business to help bring tools to young people who were struggling just like I was. Not because I have all the answers or I’m perfect, but because I get it, I am not judging, and I do have tools to provide insight you might not have. I look back at all that I had endured, feeling like I didn’t belong because there was no one, I thought, who understood me. I decided I have the opportunity to help others by just helping them know they aren’t alone, when all seems lost, it isn’t, when it seems like no one cares, I do!