The No Holds Barred Version of My Story

If you are reading this, I’m guessing you’re ready for the down-and-dirty details that brought me to this point.

Although this does explain quite a bit, we’re talking about my whole life story here. Most of the things I briefly speak of here will end up in future blog posts in more detail at some point. After all this whole Blog idea came about because I struggled to complete writing a book about my life. So here we are, short stories it is! (Although, fair warning, this one is a little on the long side.)

I had what most would consider an amazing childhood, growing up in a loving family. And I would agree. I honestly wouldn’t change my childhood if I could. It’s what shaped me into who I am today.

What I have learned on my journey is that trauma looks different for all of us. The things that happened in my life would seem insignificant to someone who experienced abuse, homelessness, or going without as a child. But that doesn’t make my experiences any less significant or impactful in MY life.

I’ll be honest. I was spoiled rotten. I was loved on and praised. I was taken on extravagant shopping sprees with my Grandparents. I always felt like my family was proud of me.

But I was held to very high standards by those Grandparents, which I later realized was the cause of my perfectionism. It caused me to be highly critical of my appearance, behavior, and how others perceived me. This is something I still work on to his day.

One particular memory that sticks out in my head was a day like any normal day. I was fairly young; I’d say less than 10. My Grandma and I were sitting in her kitchen at the table playing cards and eating lunch. This was a regular pastime with my Grandma that I cherished dearly. We loved laughing and being silly but for some reason on this particular day I must have laughed weirdly or something because she said to me “That’s a terrible laugh, Hunny, you can’t go around laughing like that, it’s embarrassing.”

It has only been in the last couple of years that I have come to realize the impact that statement had on my entire life. Just one simple comment. Since that moment in time, I have forever been self-conscious of my laugh. And that one insecurity trickles down to so many more.

There were plenty of things that were not ideal in my early childhood. Alcoholism, arguing, parents divorcing. Like most upbringings, I can think of plenty of not-good memories to mix in with the good ones. But all in all, I would consider myself blessed.

I was born with a more rebellious spirit than I’d like to admit. My motto has always been that rules were meant to be broken, and as a teenager, if my parents told me no, that was a sure sign I was going to proceed.

When I was 13 I shaved the back of my head and passed out drunk on the recliner with my hair in a bun on top of my head, and a huge hickey on my neck. That’s how my mom came home from work and found me that day.

In my teenage years, my window was nailed shut and my dad would regularly drive to my known hang-out spots and drag me out of house parties.

The day of the Columbine shooting I had ditched school and was high as a kite sitting on my living room floor eating Oreo cookies with my friend Chad when the breaking news came on.

I started heavily partying when I was just 13 years old.

My partying stopped for a short time when I was 17 and I found out I was pregnant. I left my dad a note on his pillow to tell him. At that time in my life, the guy who got me pregnant was my “weekend boyfriend.” I had moved from Riverside with my mom, to Torrance with my dad, and all through high school, no matter who we each dated, when I went home to my mom’s on the weekends, we were together again. Ultimately my dad kicked me out when I refused to have an abortion. I knew I couldn’t do it… I already had once when I was 15.

Becoming a Momma when I was just a kid myself.

And so, I began my life as an adult. I moved back to Riverside with my now steady boyfriend’s family, and we started to make plans for our future. I will say this; because of my rebellious spirit, when my dad told me that this would never work, that I’d end up being a single teenage mom, I’d never finish high school and my unborn baby’s dad would never marry me… that cemented in stone that I WOULD accomplish all of that and more.

(Quick side note here… I have since apologized to my dad for being a pain in the ass and thanked him for being a hard ass. The way he handled the situation was exactly the way I needed him to, I just didn’t know it at the time.)

Anyhow, I DID finish high school. I DID get married. And I did end up with several pretty successful jobs over my lifetime.

But the partying quickly resumed after my first son was born and intensified as we aged. Two more baby boys were born, and one who wasn’t. Life dealt a few really hard blows (as life does), and before I knew it, we were in way over our heads.

What had seemed to be the best-case scenario for a teenage love affair rapidly went all to hell because of drugs and alcohol. Ultimately, the issue was numbing, and it came in more forms than substances. Instead of dealing with the issues that arose in our lives, we would just become numb to them. The problems worsened, nothing was ever resolved.

I can remember pretty vividly when I realized there were some serious issues. My husband was working out of town almost nonstop and when he was home it was stressful. We had our hands full with three boys, I was running an in-home daycare, and all three boys were playing baseball. On the weekend we would throw parties that lasted well into the next morning, a lot of times ending in fights or injuries. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

I felt alone, like I was doing everything to raise our boys and run the household. My husband thought that bringing home the paycheck was his contribution to the family and that I should love him more for it.

I was the team mom for all three boys’ teams, the team mom coordinator, and the yearbook coordinator for our Little League. All while running an in-home daycare, sometimes toting the children I watched with me to the field. And I loved every minute of it.

That’s about when I started going back to church and leaning on God for guidance. I joke that I have always been a Christian, certain my grandfather prayed over me in the womb. Some of my earliest memories with him are of him telling me about God and how Jesus died to save each of us. I grew up going to Sunday School, summer camps, and church functions. I even attended church a bit during high school. But the busyness of life got the best of me, and I drifted.

Around this time my mom was living in Prescott, AZ and we would make the drive to visit her for Thanksgiving every year. The boys were pretty young and loved being in Arizona where they could run wild and free, play in the dirt, make forts, and play with BB guns and slingshots.

One year we were headed back home and as we drove through downtown Prescott, right before hitting Whiskey Row, I remember looking up at he building to my right and saying out loud, “We should move here.” My husband worked for a company that is worldwide which meant that essentially we could move anywhere, as long as he was within a certain distance to a company office.

As we made our way back into our town at the time which we affectionately referred to as “Harbor Shitty” (rather than Harbor City,) we had to stop and get the boys new shoes because they completely destroyed theirs playing in the dirt and had school the next day. I remember having a discussion about how ghetto it was compared to what we just came from in Prescott.

It didn’t take long, at the end of the school year we were packing up and making our way to Arizona. I went into detail on this story because at the time I had NO IDEA how meaningful that exact moment that I looked out the window in downtown Prescott was, not until many years later. That was no doubt a distinct sign from God, for me to make that statement at that exact moment, while I was looking at that exact building. Be on the lookout for a blog on this story very soon and I will link it here once it is up. This was an extremely pivotal moment in my life.

Playing with slingshots and hiking during our first year in Prescott, AZ.

This is the moment that changed our lives forever and brought me to where I am today.

The years preceding our move are a blur. The first “friends” we made we the owners of a Pub and the regular patrons of the Pub. Our lives quickly revolved around going to the pub, literally daily for so many years. It makes me sick to think about the amount of money we threw into that place. Our bill was close to $100 every single time we went in, sometimes more. It was impossible for us to just stop in for a beer or two. We would just never go home, drinking until we were blacked out.

The purpose of our move was for our boys to get out of the city. My husband was looking forward to teaching the boys to hunt, ride dirt bikes, and live the outdoor-sey life you can’t live in the city.

It still makes me sad today to think that after 10 years of living there, they never once went hunting or dirt bike riding with their dad. We did hike a lot and to this day that has been my saving grace. Learning to hike on my own was a huge step in my recovery.

Our lives quickly spun out of control. I went back to work full time for the first time in 10 years and with that came unexpected troubles. Jealousy, overwhelm, and contention at home are the ones that stand out the most. My husband was working out of town more and more and heavily drinking while gone. I’d receive panicked phone calls late at night from him, lost, walking on the streets in some unknown town, unsure of how to find his hotel. Or no call at all leaving me wondering if he was even alive or dead on the side of the road somewhere. Eventually, we got a tracking app, until I started finding him parked in front of random houses all night long. There were bar fights, fights with other employees in hotel rooms, and even a stabbing. I was living a nightmare every time he went out of town, and I knew things had gone too far.

I could no longer deny the signs of infidelity. There were random texts from other women. He would even text them while we were out together on supposed date nights. Couple that with the fact that we brought my best friend into our relationship… until they fell in love with each other and decided to have their own private relationship behind my back. Our marriage was quickly dissolving before my eyes.

I stopped caring for a while. Started going out on my own when he was out of town, being inappropriate, and making some really terrible decisions of my own.

An everyday occurrence.

I was so very alone. The shame of what my life had become kept me from telling anyone how bad it truly was. My real best friends, the ones I had since childhood, I had pushed away because they were honest with me and told me straight up to wake the f*uck up. I couldn’t look them in the face. I hid everything from my family, allowing them to believe we were doing great. After all, we both were successful at work and were managing to provide for our household and raise 3 boys. To any outsider looking in, we were doing good. But that was so far from the truth it was scary.

I had hit my rock bottom; I couldn’t do it anymore. This is when I decided to take my life back. I had no idea how. Just that everything HAD to change!

Ironically, joining an MLM is initially what got me going on my journey. My upline and mentor recommended a few self-help books that were sure to help me become successful. She had no idea what these books would end up doing for my life as a whole.

As I do with most things, I dove head-first into the personal development world. It opened my eyes to the possibility of true happiness. It was still very far off in the distance, but I suddenly had hope again. I decided to do a 90-day challenge beginning October 1, 2019. The challenge was for the last 90 days of the year, you committed to doing all of the things you would do as a New Year’s resolution. In the challenge, you had to give up one thing that was no longer serving you. I chose alcohol. At this point, there was no denying it was a major problem in our lives. My husband had no interest in joining me in this challenge, even though it was a major problem for him as well. So, I committed to doing it alone.

For the next 90 days, I focused on becoming the best version of myself. It was HARD. Walking this journey alone while living in complete chaos was a challenge all of its own. At this point in my life, I was bigger and heavier than I had even thought possible. I stopped weighing myself at 250 and am convinced I got up to at least 265. It is crazy for me to even type that, but it was my reality. Initially, when I first stopped drinking, I had to find something to replace the habit with. I chose walking. Every single time I had the desire to pick up a drink, I would just walk straight out my front door, praying every step of the way, “God, please remove my desire to drink.” On repeat, every single step I took until the desire passed. Then I would allow myself to walk home. As you can imagine, I was walking several times a day. My husband was still drinking, there was a lot of arguing and negativity in my home, and it would have felt so good to just have that drink, become numb, and not feel any of it. But I couldn’t hide from my problems anymore, so I stuck it out.

The 90 days came and went, and I had no intention of ever drinking again. I still have not to this day. But I still had a lot of work to do in every other aspect of my life. Thankfully the walking kickstarted my health journey. But this was about the time when my true healing began.

I was still living in constant chaos in my home. And I knew I needed help. I finally reached out to my real friends and told them everything. I called my parents and told them details that no parent ever wants to hear from their child. I was honest with the facts of my life for the first time ever. I surrendered. I cried out to God and asked for help. From Him, from my family, from those who truly loved me. I could no longer fight this battle on my own. I needed to fix everything, every single aspect of my life.

This is when the real work started. Things get really ugly when you first decide to heal. I had to literally relearn how to deal with life on a day-to-day basis. My old ways were no longer going to work. I needed new habits, I needed to carry myself differently, and I needed to show up for my kids in a way that I hadn’t been since we arrived in Arizona.

I can remember sitting my boys down and having my first real, honest conversation with them. They were 12, 13, and 18 at the time. The evidence of the damage we had caused as their parents was all over them and nothing broke my heart more than that. I told them I was sorry, really truly sorry. And that although I cannot go back and change anything that had been done in the past, I could show them moving forward, how to live life differently. And that from that moment forward, they could count on me to always be there for them and to love and support them through their own healing journey.

This became my purpose. To show my boys that it is possible to change. That just because you had been shown one way to live all of your life, it was possible to decide to change that and live a life radically different. I promised them that I would show up for them as the best version of their mother that I possibly could. I would still make mistakes, but I would be honest with them about it all and always tell them the truth about every situation, even when it was hard to hear.

And boy were there plenty of hard conversations after that. But I am SO thankful I had the courage to have those conversations. From that moment forward they knew they could trust me and come to me in times of need. That moment drastically changed all of our relationships and was the building block for how close we are to this day.

And so, the journey began, to radically change every aspect of my life.

There were many, many hard conversations after this initial one. The decision to leave my marriage was not an easy one, but one made together with my boys. You may not agree with that decision, but I know deep down to my core it was the right one. I wasn’t doing it for me. I did it for us, for all of us.

(I have intentionally left out the details of the years leading up to my divorce. It’s just too much to include here and there were a lot of really, really hard things to overcome. I’ll be sharing bits and pieces as they pertain to other stories.)

I had to relearn everything I knew about coping with life. That journey is what prompted me to start writing and ultimately helping others. You see, once I had started this journey, everyone around me noticed. The changes I was making on the inside, were radiating through to the outside. I had people asking me “How did you do it?”

I no longer was walking around with this heavy weight on my shoulders. I had been freed from the chaos, from unhealthy habits that were no longer serving me or my family, and from the literal 100 pounds that I lost in the process!

There is a 3-year difference between these pictures.

Making progress

When I look in the mirror now, I still hardly recognize myself. I have made such drastic changes in my life that I still sometimes deal with bouts of imposter syndrome. It doesn’t feel real at times. But the way I feel on the INSIDE tells me that it IS real. That the transformation you can see on the outside took place on the inside first. That true healing is possible. Sure, I still struggle with things. The journey of internal work is never truly complete. Because when you overcome one hurdle, your brain automatically goes, “OK, what’s next?”

The beauty is that every time you overcome something, it gets easier and easier. And it is a whole lot easier when you have someone to show you the way. I would be honored to guide you on your journey. Through my own experiences, I will guide you in learning how to develop new habits and routines that support your physical, mental, and emotional health.

If you’ve struggled with healthy habits, weight loss, self-limiting beliefs, addiction, toxic relationships or environments, or to achieve your goals… then you are in the right place. I’ve overcome all of that and then some and would love to show you how I did it.

I am here to guide you on your journey to thrive, not just survive, this one wild and precious life.

Present Times…

So, who am I today?

I am a lover of life! I find joy in everything I do and in everyday mundane tasks. Even when faced with hardship, I am optimistic and look at it as a lesson to learn, and can easily move on without being too hard on myself.

I am a dream chaser! I have always wanted to travel the world, so naturally, I became a Flight Attendant! When I am not flying at 35,000 feet in the air, I am serving my few online VA clients or working on my Mentorship Program, writing, or door-dashing cause let’s be real, 1st-year flight attendants don’t make shit for money! BUT, anything is possible if you are brave enough to dream it, and so I do!

I regularly seek to engage in activities that fill my cup. Sometimes that looks like playing with my best friend Gunner on Dog Beach. Sometimes it looks like exploring a newfound city on a la layover. Or roller skating down the beach just to breathe in the scent of the ocean while feeling the wind blow through my hair.

I love HARD. Anyone in my life knows without a doubt that I love them, I support them, and I would do anything for them. With boundaries of course, because once you find them it’s hard to let them go. My most common response when a family member is going through something hard is, “OK, what are you going to do about it?” After I show them some love of course.

I have a positive outlook! For almost a year straight I wrote in my journal “I do not speak negatively” and do you know what? It worked! I have a knack for changing almost every situation into a positive one and refuse to sit in self-pity. I allow myself to feel sad, angry, or mad, and then let the feeling pass and move on to more important things in life.

I live life out loud! My very dear ex-sister-in-law-sis-bestie (I have yet to come up with the best way to describe our relationship), she saw the changes in me early on and said to me, “Why the heck aren’t you shouting this from the rooftop?!?!” Watching the effects that sharing my journey had on her is the sole reason I share like I do today. Because if I can help even just one person, it makes it ALL worth it.

I engage in healthy activities that help me progress in life. Like daily healthy habits, eating healthy meals but ALSO eating the damn ice cream. Moving my body because that’s what keeps me feeling good. Constantly learning by reading, listening to podcasts, and following the example of others who have gone before me.

Living a spiritual life. Praying, meditating, looking to God in times of need and times of gratitude. Listening to the Holy Spirit who lives within in, guiding me through life, even when I have to be smacked upside the head to receive the message (this happens often). Not leaning on my own understanding but looking to my high power to lead me in the direction I should go.

Life looks much different these days, and I couldn’t be happier to say so. 💛

Me and my boys today enjoying our time together.

If anything within this story resonated with you, if you can see yourself in any part of my story and wish you could figure a way out, I am here to hold your hand friend. Please reach out.

And if you know someone who you think would enjoy reading my blog, please share it with them. Thank you!