I AM - BECAUSE YOU ARE

In June of 2017, after running Creating My Monster for a decade, I wrote my first “Last Post” to close that lengthy chapter of my life, the end of an era! At the time my daughter was 1.5 years old, and I felt that her story, and mine, needed a fresh start. And, so became I Am – Because You Are. But, with that said, it is no longer up to me to share her story. While lovingly referred to all this time as my LO (little one), she is no longer little. At 6 years old, she has very strong opinions, she already tells me what I can and cannot share with others (especially when it comes to her photo), and she has an absolute right to privacy. I protect her on all other social media platforms and, starting now, I will do the same here. While the audience for IABYA is far less than CMM’s, mainly because it is no longer affiliated with any blogging communities and I rarely promote products or apply for partnerships anymore, it does reach wider than I am comfortable with. I have shared less and les...

On this day, 6 years ago, I never thought that I could love my baby girl more than I did that very first moment that she was in my arms. But with every day that passes, my love for her continues to grow, endlessly.  Her smile is infectious, her laugh is contagious, her love is unconditional, and she wears her heart on her sleeve. She is strong, independent, brave, and beautiful - both inside and out. She is my heart, my soul, my sun, my moon, and all of my stars. She is my world and she will always be the absolute best thing that has ever happened to me.  I love you with all my heart. Happy 6th birthday. 

With her 6th birthday just around the corner, and her first ever report card expected tonight, I have been thinking a lot about what comes next. Daycare was a bubble, it was safe, familiar, and protective. It gave us everything we needed when we needed it the most. And while our transition to kindergarten has not been seamless, it has been far better than I had originally anticipated.  So, clearly, she’s a big kid now; it’s time for change and she is more than ready for the challenge. I need to encourage her to try new things, allow her to discover whether she can step out of her comfort zone and learn to overcome her fears and uncertainties. I need to take a step back and let her learn to solve more problems on her own, let her experiment and let her learn from her mistakes. I need her to know that, even though she might not like it, failure IS an option and it's completely normal and one of the best ways to learn. I want to build her self confidence and self-esteem, make her beli...

An unexpected email, with 2 very simple questions: What’s been your biggest win of the back-to-school season? What’s your biggest struggle? Let’s start with the first since it’s an easy one. She loves school! She loves taking the bus to school. She loves going to daycare after school. She loves the Breakfast Club. She loves the hot lunches. She loves her teacher. She loved her first Ped Day. Honestly, there isn’t one thing about the whole school experience that I would say she doesn’t love, except that she never gets homework so she sometimes gives some to herself – but that will wear off quickly once she hits Grade 1 I’m sure! SO, all in all, it’s a huge win! However, as the parent, I do see an emerging struggle that she is blissfully unaware of for the time being. And so, advocating for my child has taken precedence once again. There is no such thing as a “bad kid” - just angry, hurt, tired, scared, confused, impulsive ones expressing their feelings & needs the only way they know...

Happy Birthday to me! 42 laps around the sun; some waaaaayyyy longer than others, and a few of them far too short for sure. But I made it alive and mostly in 1 piece; minus 100lbs in the last 18 months – woohoo! But now that I’m here, is this really it? "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42" The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , Douglas Adams I’m pretty sure the quote above has become more famous than the novel itself. I mean, how many people have heard the quote but never even read the book? And while geeks around the world have wasted years of their lives trying to put some deep, symbolic, mathematical meaning to the number, the author himself states that there is, in fact, no meaning to it at all. “It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought ‘42 will ...

 

Expansion, by Paige Bradley The Story of Expansion – PAIGE BRADLEY To love someone long-term is to attend a thousand funerals of the people they used to be. The people they’re too exhausted to be any longer. The people they don’t recognize inside themselves anymore. The people they grew out of, the people they never ended up growing into. We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out; to become speedily found when they are lost. But it’s not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It’s our job to travel with them between each version and to honor what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness. – Heidi Priebe  

When I want to chat, I text - a lot. When I want to talk, I call and sometimes talk for hours. When I want to go out somewhere, I invite someone along for company. When there is something to celebrate. we get together and celebrate! This is who I am. I am social and I crave interaction. I spend quality time with people that I love! But not everyone is like me. Some are the complete opposite so I try to slow my roll. I remind myself that not everyone is “available”. I can text, but they won’t answer. I could call, but if they answer I’d feel like I would be interrupting. I’d offer to hang out, but the answer would almost always be no. And as for a celebration? Well – Covid has that covered for now! A few in my life are the latter. One who I live with. A couple who I cannot see myself living without. Disappearing for months, resurfacing like no time has passed. Only available once in a blue moon, and even then. Never part of a crowd, sometimes one-on-one, but usually not. It’...

 

I seem to be struggling, trying to live more within myself while simultaneously testing the waters around me to be more accepting of who I am to be able to overcome my fears of constantly being judged. I mean, nobody could possibly judge me harder than I judge myself, but my own worst enemy shouldn’t be between my own two ears. I used to think that I could talk through this stuff with friends, but I realize now that it would often just cloud my thoughts and gave me unnecessary uncertainty; so much so that it would cause me to not think for myself. And when things were just too complicated to unravel, or when I couldn’t talk with anyone, I would write; sometimes creatively, other times as an emotional escape. I guess I do the same now, through this blog, in a way. You write so beautifully... the inside of your mind must be a terrible place. Even as a child, I would write for hours and I would put into words all the places I went to in my head to escape my childhood. As I got older my w...

As much as I love the modern-day Disney movies, there is something about the classics that still capture me. Recently, in need of a nostalgic pick-me-up, I decided to sit down and watch the original Alice in Wonderland with mini-me; the animated one, not the one with real people and the creepy Jabberwocky (although that's my favorite). Ever since, without even hearing it, I’ve had the song White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane) stuck in my head. Which, I guess makes sense these days, because I’ve been feeling a bit like Alice; falling down a well and ending up trapped in hallway filled with magical bottles labeled “eat me” and “drink me” with little known about what they will do. I am speaking, of course, about my meds.  In my case, one which makes me feel happy and optimistic, but at the risk of feeling indestructible. Another to shutdown the open tabs in my brain so that I can get a decent night’s sleep, when it works. And the newest one, the moderator of those above and the “stable...

I'm finally coming out of the mental fog that has surrounded me for the last month or so! I have reached out to a few friends after weeks of ghosting them, made plans with a couple of others for when our Covid curfew is lifted next week, and I have even managed to have a couple of tougher conversations with some people without going into a full blown depression as a result! And what has become abundantly clear in those conversations is that I really do not see myself the same way as others see me! In fact, I would probably be much kinder to myself if I could see myself their way. One friend reminded me about how far I’ve come since we first met 18yrs ago, joking that I was finally an adult. Another was saying how brave and strong I was to battle through a decade of fertility issues, and how amazing a mother I have become. And another couldn’t believe her eyes when I sent her some current pictures of me. She said I’ve inspired her to take control of her own poor eating habits ...

Hey! It’s #BellLetsTalk day! So, lets talk about mental health! While I still haven’t been officially diagnosed by my psychiatrist, it’s looking clearer and clearer that Bipolar II will be the end result; so much so that I already started the medication one week ago today after a 5 day long “episode”. And while the diagnosis of being bipolar explains so many things from the past, it poses limitless questions for the future. So, to not get overwhelmed by it all, I am simply trying to live in the now and learn to identify and control my inner turbulence, before projecting it all around me whenever possible. I haven’t been doing so well with that, but I need to give myself a break and take it one day at a time – or at least that’s what I’ve been told 1000 times! Admittedly though, I have found myself putting my guards back up again over the last year. Between weight loss surgery, a pandemic, and now the mental health struggle I simply needed to pull some people back in (that had previou...

At my heaviest, I wore a size 1X/2X max. I had a couple of stores I relied on, and while my options were limited, I was never lacking. But I kept telling myself that I couldn’t wait for the day I could walk into any Winners/Marshall's type store and try on anything I wanted and have it fit – no name brand to big name labels and everything in between. Flash forward to recent weeks, needing to find yet another winter jacket because I can’t handle the cold anymore, and I was nothing but disappointed. I’ve lost just over 70lbs, I wear a size 10-12 pants now, M-L tops and even my feet lost a whole shoe size! But I go and try on some “good” brands and they won’t fit me until I am looking at a size 3X!? Come on! If a size 10 is “perfect” to the rest of us, what the hell size is ideal for these companies? I mean, no wonder their models look anorexic! I found one jacket I fell in love with, almost enough to pay the bloated sticker price too… but just looking at that 3S tag made me sick. The...

I am not sure how this happened, but as my BFF put it, I must have blinked because our LO is not so little anymore! In just a matter of days she is turning 5 years old!!! Ok, so she thinks she is 4 going on 15 most days, but that’s just a part of who she is, and I wouldn’t change her for the world. Strong willed children become adults who change the world, as long as we can hang on for the ride and resist the temptation to “tame” the spirit out of them… She has very clear thoughts and opinions, she is fiercely independent, a leader, strong willed, curious, smart, funny, resilient, kind-hearted, creative and HAPPY. In these last couple of weeks, she has become more articulate than ever and conversing with her is always full of surprises! Now we are going to have to watch what we say around her! She is more than I ever could have asked for and everything I have always wanted all rolled up in one. If I had to weather all those storms just to get to her, then they were worth every single...

This is something I first stumbled upon many moons ago, that I think needs a reminder every now and then... especially now, in my world. So, I thought I would share for anyone else who needs to hear this right now. A Poem About Listening (Ray Houghton, M.D.) Please, just listen. When I ask you to listen to me, and you start giving advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me, and you begin to tell me why I shouldn’t feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings. When I ask you to listen to me, and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem. Listen! All I asked was that you listen, not talk, or do… just hear. Advice is cheap: A dollar twenty-five will get you both dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper, and I can do that myself. I’m not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless. When you do something for me that I can, and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear an...

Fall is here and, once again, Mother Nature is about to show us how lovely it is to simply let things go; shed the dead weight, release the old and make way for the new. And for once I am listening, welcoming a fresh start once and for all! The older I get, the more I realize that I don't want to be around drama, conflict or stress anymore. I just want my house to feel like a home, good (for you) food on the table and to be surrounded by the company of positive, supportive, loyal and happy people. That’s it. That’s all.  The most important work we will ever do is within the walls of our own homes Harold B. Lee Let’s start with my immediate family. As someone who has been surrounded by dysfunctional families her whole life, my own as well as others’ experiences, I can honestly say that the whole “ blood is thicker than water ” quote people freely throw around is complete BS! Just because someone is a blood relative, does not mean that they have an innate ability to provide the lov...

"He said when the seasons changed, I changed. For the first time I think he was right" Mud Vein by Tarryn Fisher Trying to gather my thoughts these days is like trying to wrestle a toddler into a car seat during a temper tantrum – impossible! What I thought was a weeklong depression became a month-long struggle; as the depression pulled me down the anxiety amped up and the emotional storm began. But not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path and turn everything sunny side up. I reached out to my doctors for help and we decided that it was time to try a new antidepressant. What I thought was malabsorption of my old medication, due to my sleeve, was more likely breakthrough depression – a sign that my former antidepressants just weren’t working anymore. I had been on them for the better part of 4 years and even after a recent increase in dose, I simply continued to spiral. Apparently, this can occur naturally for 1/3 of people taking antid...