A Letter to a Younger Me

Dear 18-year-old me,


The whole world is in front of you. I am so proud of the person you will become. You are stronger and braver than you know. Eventually, the world will catch up to your way of thinking.


You were never meant to be in a small pond, so be courageous enough to be a small fish in the big sea.


First, you will someday want to be the weight you were when you thought you were fat.


I know how much you wanted to travel, throw everything in your car and drive. That the fear of leaving your mother forced you to stay. I know that you feel that you are your mother’s keeper. You are not responsible for her choices or her wounds; she can survive without you. Although, It will take another 18 years for you to learn that. It never should have been your responsibility to heal her.


Your sister will always struggle with her addiction. Your relationship will only be close as long as she can use you. Her addiction is not your fault, no matter how much she will try to blame you.


Your dad’s other daughter will try to connect with you out of a sense of “family.” You will never be able to undo her mother’s stories about your existence. She will always believe she is better than you. She is not and will not bring you closer to your father.


You will get married young and become a mother too young. You will get stretchmarks, and hate being pregnant. You will feel like a failure many times. Motherhood is not a job for the faint of hearts. You will want to give up and feel unbelievable guilt.

Your children will be just as unique as you are and become amazing people.


You will make it to college and discover yourself in that process.


You will stay married for your kids longer than you should have, but you will, with grace, end that marriage.


The grace you carry will help you negative the shitty family members you choose in this lifetime. This is your superpower!


Unfortunately, you will be attracted to the same characteristic of your uncles and mom. Do not be horrified. What did you expect? They are your role models. Go to therapy and learn to deal with this.


Set boundaries.

Take adventures.

Lean into fear is not as scarier as it is in your head.


Spend more time with the family you do like, as some of them will die way too soon, and you wish you had done more.


Stop protecting everyone’s feelings at the expense of your own.

Stand your ground and stick to your boundaries; it’s not selfish.


Have sex a lot of it; it doesn’t make you a slut or a whore. Fuck anyone who will say that it does!

Your strength and independence will attract many men who will try to break you.

Yes, one or two will.

Reminder: Do NOT ever date a Republican, a Farmer, or a hunter.

You don’t deserve to be treated as if you are less than others because you are a woman; give those men a reason to fear you, not the other way around.

Keep picking yourself up; all the mistakes, missteps, and setbacks will make you wiser.

Most of all, be kind to yourself; you are loveable.

Love from your 42 year old self.

Walmart Rant

I arrived at Walmart at 3:39PM and I left there at 5:20  

Dumb! 

I remember back in the day when Wal-Mart’s motto was American-made products. I remember when Wal-Mart simply sold household goods and not groceries. It was health care, clothing, toys, and lawn care. You know the basic stuff.  

Now, I despise Walmart.  

It’s this void of space where I lose hours of my life and spend hundreds of dollars. I couldn’t tell you the last time I actually walked out of Walmart without spending less than $50, and probably only bought four items and probably not even that many. 

Now I try to make my trip to Walmart once a month and I stick to a list because it’s so easy to be like, oh, I need this. It’s not like I maybe really need it right then, but at the moment, I remembered I didn’t have it and I should buy it.  

Boom, I already spent over my budget. I can’t just go to Walmart to get groceries. Their meat sucks and when I leave, I feel like all I bought was junk.  

I needed to go to the grocery store, right? So why not go to Hy-vee? 

Well, I also needed household goods like toilet paper, paper towels, and laundry soap, all things that are higher priced elsewhere. So Walmart it is, I figured I’d get at least get the bulk of my groceries.  

I dread this trip to Walmart. I know I’m going to spend a ton of money and it’s all either all going to end up in the trash or the toilet. 

Two carts and $491 later. I have picked out my groceries, and stood in line, not a human-operated, but a self-check. 

I loathe self-check. However, the only human checkout line had seven people in line.  

Fine, I put half my first cart onto the conveyor belt and proceeded to scan and bag my own groceries. Then I have to leave the line to get another cart to put the bagged groceries in. Repeat until the carts are empty. Then I had to wait for a human to come to check my ID for the beer I was purchasing.  

I had now checked myself out, bagged my groceries, and was on my way to load them into my car.  

The front door greeter asked for my receipt, and I looked at her and said, 

“No, I just checked out my own groceries, bagged my own groceries, and paid $491. If you want to make sure that I did my job, you need to hire more checkers.” And processed towards the door.  

She was kind, she said, “OK, thank you, ma’am. Have a nice day.” And I wished her a nice day and proceeded back into the 102-degree weather to now load my groceries into my car. 

I grew up with Walmart. I have watched it change. Walmart is where I shop, or at least it used to be. I primarily did all of my shopping there until recently. Until the demons of self-check took over Walmart and they currently only have one or two live checkers.  

Well, guess what, Walmart?  

You are now making millions of more dollars and we’re paying way more for our groceries than ever before.  

Now you want us to check out ourselves? So, you can profit more! 

Well, here’s my suggestion to the American people. If we boycotted Wal-Mart for one day just one day.  The only demand is that they then offer us a 10% discount, calling it customer loyalty. 

I don’t really care what you call it. 

If Wal-Mart were to employ those 20 cashiers at any given Walmart, with the pay rate of $20 an hour working a 40 hour a week and including $10,000 worth of benefits for each employee. Walmart is saving, at just one store, $576,000, which is now a profit. 

I think that Wal-Mart could easily give their customers, especially the ones who have been customers for their entire lives, a 10% discount as an incentive to use self-check.  

10%.  

Wal-Mart is already saving $576,000 per store. That’s money in the CFO’s pocket, the CEO’s pocket, and all of their board members. It is a huge profit sharing that they are receiving by not employing human beings and allowing their customers to do that job. 

I say to the American people, let’s boycott Walmart for one day and demand a 10% discount as an incentive to use self-check. Wal-Mart can continue to not employ human beings and be reminded that they are still selling to human beings.  

One day.  

They’d lose millions. 

Magic words

My life theme has been I will figure it out. You know, one fucked up life lesson at a time.  Emphasis on the “I”.  I’ve heard, “you’ll figure it out, you always do” so many times I want to vomit.

Yes of course I’ll figure it out. Because I have no fucking option. The strong, independent woman that I am.

Fuck, I don’t want to figure it out.

I’m tired of being the strong one.

The one with my shit together.

The semi-responsible one.

I want to not overthink and second-guess. I want to be free to write and paint fucking naked people. I want express sex-positive messages and expand the human thought process.

Successful career. Great kids. A man that loves me. It was all coming together.

Bam! Just kidding.

I am tired of depending on indecisive business owners that claim to want change, yet are afraid of the fallouts that come with change. Not everyone is going to be open to new ideas and policies.

I walked out of that meeting lost and confused. Unsure of what had just happened. My head held high, yet terrified that I had given up a stable job for what I thought was more stability to be told in less than 60 days they changed their minds

On that 23-minute drive home, I ran through several scenarios:

I have failed and I don’t even know what I did wrong.

The breadwinner is failed.

How am I going to pay my bills or buy food? I need milk.

We are going to be homeless. This sucks I like my house.

My boyfriend will leave me, that is what happens when you are a failure.

My son will have to go leave his dad.

My dog and I will have to live in my SUV …. or my mom’s.

Fuck, how I am going to explain this to my boyfriend and my kids when I don’t even understand what the fuck just happened. I have had bosses with anxiety and depression, but not one that let it rule his business decisions.

There were no tears yet I was still in shock. This industry has sucked me dry over the last 10 years. The only plus side was that had been able to flex my writing muscle, but it wasn’t the writing I wanted to do.

Now what… I walked in the garage door that lead into the kitchen. My boyfriend asked why I was home so early. I told him I was let go, and that they have decided they didn’t want an operations manager.

He said what the fuck and I melted. The tears, the “what am I going to do, and the “how am I going to support us.”

He hugged me and said, “We will figure it out.”

I have never heard those words, not in the 14 years I was married nor in the last crapshoot relationship, I was in. No one has ever supported me or let me lean on them even when I desperately needed it.

It’s always been just me. Left to figure it out all on my own.

Here I am unemployed with the man I am so deeply in love with and he was consoling me. He held me and told me that WE will figure it out, as a team.

I am not sure he even gets how deeply those words really meant to me at that moment. What a relief I felt to hear “WE.”

Those words were magic!

Don’t Forget to Celebrate

The primary focus of my blog has always been my dating life and my kids. I rarely celebrate my accomplishments on here. However, about a month ago, my mom had mentioned that through this next transition, I should take a moment to celebrate, reflect, and appreciate how far I have come. Her exact words were, “I know you have a lot to get done, but I hope you take time to celebrate your accomplishment, and I am so proud of you.”

I brushed this off because, of course, my mom is proud of me; that’s her job. RIGHT!

I may have even slightly dismissed the praises I received from my boyfriend and friends, as I wasn’t ready to make this news public, and the to-do list had been started, growing, and was feeling a bit overwhelming.

However, as usual, she is right.

Let’s reflect on the changes I’ve made over the last year.

Who knew this would be temporary?

A year ago today, I interviewed for a manager role in my career. It meant relocating across the state, uprooting my children’s lives, and ending a relationship.  

It meant that A would have to live with his dad while he finished his senior year, and I would no longer be the buffer.

It meant a change in schools for R, who had had the same circle of friends since kindergarten.

It meant selling their childhood home. It meant massive changes for all of us.

Change is good. It provides new experiences and opportunities.

Even though I was slightly terrified, I accepted the new position and put the wheels in motion.

The change has been challenging for me with my new role, my new staff, truly being a single parent without local support to help with rides and events. It meant making new friends at 40 and regaining my passion for art and writing. It meant finding a new place in nature to find my center.

I embraced these changes and the challenges. Although I became work-obsessed and struggled to find a work-home life balance. After six months, I moved out of my temporary house and began to get settled in what I thought was long-term housing. I re-connected with a man I loved, but our time had always been off. I had even established an art studio. Things were falling into place despite being frustrating with certain aspects of my job, the incompetency of those who came before me, and concern with department numbers.

During a meeting, I was told I had 6 months before we would be in the “Red.” I was scared I had uprooted my life and drained my savings to relocate; what if I couldn’t fix it. I created a plan of action and carried on.

Within a day or two of that meeting, another opportunity started to formulate. A recruiter had reached out to me, and through our conversation, I felt that I was the perfect candidate. I expressed my interest in the position, and we moved forward. He sent me the job description, and I met all the qualifications and qualities they had listed. The problem was it meant relocating again.

The process took almost two months and after multiple meetings and conversations. I accepted the job offer.

I was making another big move physically, emotionally, and career-wise. It’s a great move career-wise and a no brain to expect the position as it’s the top of the ladder in my career, and they had given me everything I asked for.

Paralyzing myself with self-doubt and worry. FEAR had been holding me back.

My boyfriend was thrilled with this opportunity for me and fully invested in making this move with me.

This only added to my concerns, what if I can’t depend on him? What if he leaves. What if R doesn’t like the school I pick. The what-ifs began to pile up.

As the days went on, we have traveled a few times to the new location, looking at houses and deciding what area we wanted to live in. The night before, I put in my notice at work. We were sitting in the garage smoking, and my love asked me what was wrong.

I auto responded with nothing.

He said he knew that wasn’t true and that I needed to talk to him.

So, I rattled off the what-if list:

what if I… pick the wrong house

               … select the wrong school for R

               … the relocation cost more than I planned

               … fail

               … you bail

He hugged me reassured me that he wasn’t going to go anywhere. Reminded me that I am very good at my job, that R would adjust, and that we had time to find the right house, our house.

That’s what I need to hear. We found a house shortly after that. I put in my notice, which went better than I planned.

I started to check things off my to-do list.

We are 10 days away from our big move, and it’s all falling into place. I have never had a partner for these kinds of things, one that helps me keep on track and is supportive of my successes. He doesn’t try to outshine me but celebrates them with me.

I had wrapped the things on my work to-do list and feel that I am leaving this company in a better place than when I started. I have three small things left on my list with 10 days before the big move.  

I will begin my new journey feeling accomplished and excited!

Dirty, Flirty, and Honesty

I know you and your quest for validation, as you secretly cultivate a seemly innocent relationship through texts. I am you and you are me, as we both have such similar needs.

The difference is that I cut off those strangers and friends. I told them that I was in a committed relationship. That I felt it was a betrayal to continue the texting, the exchange of dirty messages, as the only person I wanted that with is you. I understand that is me. That I shouldn’t carry the same expectations of you.

That they are innocent-ish and 9 times out of 10 they are only free porn, a false sense of validation that you are attracted and wanted.

I want to know why now that we are together you no longer text me “get naked” or “send me a pic.” I have no problems asking you. It’s hot and I love the playfulness. I never had a problem sneaking somewhere private to send you a peak-a-boob photo.

I understand that our past is sorted. That perhaps you are so used to things not working out that you need to keep another woman on the hook, as backup. However, this sets you up to fail in the current relationship, the trust goes away.

This is not that. I still trust you, maybe foolishly because you have had my heart and soul wrapped around yours for so long. That I fell in love with who you are and know this is part of that. Honesty about it what I am asking for, what types of conversation are you having. Does she/they know about me? Are telling her/them that you live with your mom or me?

Some women, as you know don’t mind being the texting budding or the side chick, but hurt feelings arise when things about your life are omitted. That’s when you have scorned women, which doesn’t usually end well.

You are not as careful as you think you are. I see them pop up on your phone occasionally. I want to have an open, honest conversation about it. I want to know the why’s. I want to understand it.

You promised no games, so keep that promise and let’s try to have a conversation about it.

May be an image of one or more people and text that says "Instagram|@love_vibe_ I want years, Not weeks. I want real, Not fake. want arguments, not secrets. I wanna be held down, not let down"

Lover


No matter how many times I have tried, I couldn’t imagine these kinds of days. The simple acts like laying on the couch with your fingers gently tracing the small of my back while we benign watched a T.V. show.

We have been through so much over the years, both good and bad, as well as together and separate.

I have always pictured my future, with this shadowy figure never quite clear who that person was. Even when I was dating someone else and tried to convince myself he was the one. He didn’t really fit into my plans. His were always somehow grander and more important. He said all the right things but didn’t have the actions to back up the sweet nothings he would whisper, text, and post.


It was you that I would think of when songs came on the radio long after the fact. I even switched genres for hoping I could get you out of my head.

I had moved on because, according to society, it was time.

Because I wanted the more.

Because others told me it was time.

However, that relationship was more a reminder of all the things I didn’t want. I got lost in his presentence and doubted my worth.

I rarely did that with you. You had always encouraged and embrace who I was. Never making me feel like I wasn’t enough. I wish I could say that you were a storm that blew in and out of my life quickly, but you were like the moon and cycled in month after month, year after year. Always making me feel like I painted the sky. Everyone told me that you had been playing a game with my heart, and I would argue that wasn’t true because your eyes told me a different story.

Your guides told me differently. We need that separation. We need to know that this wasn’t a whim of sexual energy.

When that man informed me, he thought I was a miserable person who was uncomfortable in my own skin; it was you who I needed to tell me I wasn’t broken. Suddenly, as if the haze had cleared it, that shadowy figure was you. It was you who knew me best and the reassurance I had longed for.

I didn’t always understand what we had, why we couldn’t seem to walk away from each other, or why even after we had “ended things,” you still seemed to slip into my dreams and thoughts.

After I reached out to you, I knew that I had to let go of defining us, that I chose to surrender to the unknown.

No matter what happens, we will always have a connection on a cosmic level that isn’t meant to be understood. I am not concerned about the “what ifs.”

I know this is real after all these years, and I am willing to just live in the present moment with you. I no longer have the need to define what this is or where this is going.

I choose you to sit in our energy, relishing what we have for as long as the universe has planned.

Un-processed

It’s the little things in life that make life so meaningful.

I had forgotten while being consumed with work and a relationship that was both spiraling out of control. 

It’s been no secret that I haven’t been writing as much as I used to. The “Whys” many times I have tried to dive into the why’s. 

  • What changed in my life? 
  • Why am I so afraid of my words?

Writing for me is the way I process things, have ah-ha moments. 

It’s as if the spirits in my life force me to see things and deal with my emotions through my writing and art. For two years in a relationship, I tried to find the feelings I had lost when my muse and I fell away from each other. I have a stack of incompleted paintings and writings. 

I had creatively tried to force it but couldn’t because I felt like I was missing something. I didn’t know what it was. I knew that my life had changed; the people had changed; I had changed. 

But can a single “muse” actually have this much impact on my creative process? 

Could a job and a relationship really stifle my creativity so much that I couldn’t fully dive into my rabbit hole? 

I had spent 6 years after my divorce learning how to sit with my emotions healthily. I didn’t need to avoid them or find ways to be numb. I had figured out how to find my voice and was no longer concerned if I was misunderstood. 

I was like love me, like me, or don’t.  

At some point during the relationship and job, I lost who I was. I was afraid of my words and thoughts, and I couldn’t shake this disapproving feeling from my current peers and boyfriend. 

“Don’t tell people that stuff.” he would say. 

“Why do you write about that.” 

I started having panic attacks and felt sick. I would try to write about other things, and it felt empty. 

After 23 months, I left that tonic relationship and job; relocated, yet I knew I couldn’t move on really without healing what I had just been through, so I began to writing slowly. When the writing got “real,” sometimes I would stop. I am a Sagitarus/Aquirous. I only want to deal with the blissful feelings and/or analyze the other emotions as they affect the collective. 

I didn’t want to sit with them. I didn’t want to admit that I had made choices that got me here. That I had allowed myself to let go of the progress I had made. I had become numb again. I had become fearful. I had gone back to therapy. 

Therapy has been a tool I have used for years to help me. I think everyone should have a good therapist on standby. She helped me leave both my job and my relationship. She asked me questions to this day about my job and love that will stick with me forever. 

Through these writings, I discover a few things. 

  • I lost myself in a relationship 
  • I suddenly fell into domestic roles that were outdated
  • I felt shame around my own sexual desires and thoughts. 
  • I wasn’t crazy, and despite my past, I didn’t actually deserve what I put myself through
  • I know what real love feels like, and that wasn’t it. 
  • TRAUMA is a real thing. 

Home

Full Moon May 2021

Goddess, help me!
When I saw him in real-time for the first time after two years of being apart, I fucking melted. He climbed into my SVU and said, “Hey you,” in that voice that makes my heart and vagina tingle.
The sound of his voice is like music to my ears, a frequency where all things become aligned. We drove to the hotel smoking our cigarettes with the music turned down, and I listened to his talks about his most recent travels.
I have always envied those men who could seamlessly detach from societal expectations and do what they want. Abandon responsibility without public and self-defecation.
No fucks given.
Women generally care more about the expectation that is ingrained in them from birth. Women are just expected to want to procreate and service as if it’s the only thing we were made to do. Mothers don’t “abandon their responsibilities. Fathers do. Now I am not saying that women don’t shuck responsibilities. It’s just not the norm.
For women to be able to travel for a job, see the world without feeling quality about not being there to support the ever-changing whims of our offspring and/or lovers.
I had recently relocated across the state only taking my youngest child as the rest are now young adults, which resulted in me ending a two-year relationship.
He told me that I looked happy. I told him I was delighted; the move had been good for me, and getting out of the tonic relationship I had been in helped a lot. “You are the sun and don’t deserve that kind of man. You need some who see how amazing you are.”
I laughed and said, “I suppose you think your that man.”
“I’m trying,” he said.
We parked and finished the joint I had pre-rolled before heading into the hotel and to our room. Man, we had come a long way from the roach motel that was down the street from my old house. We used to meet there late at night after my boys had gone to bed, so we could fuck loud and proud without the interruption of my impressable children.
We got into the room, he kissed, and I softened with his touch. He slowly undressed me then laid me on the bed. His lips touched every part of me, and his breath was warm. He went slow as if he was rediscovering a land he had lost.
God, I had missed him, his touch, his eyes, and his scent. He feels like home.