Since it is February, I figured I would talk about Love. Not the sappy stuff though, I'm talking about the hard stuff. The believe in yourself, stand up for yourself, find your worth kind of love. Can you say that you truly love yourself? Do you find value in who you are and what you bring to the table? You don't have to be perfect to love yourself, heck, some of what makes you the most special are your cracks and wrinkles, your soft spots and your ability to feel things. Being shown love by others can be a wonderful thing, but nobody knows what you need better than you. If you are in a relationship, and you want to feel loved by the other person, you have to speak up and let them know what you need in that relationship to feel loved. If you are not in a relationship, then do things for yourself that make you happy. Actually, even if you are in a relationship, do things for yourself that make you happy. Your happiness does not come from what another person does or doesn't do. It comes from finding joy in the moments.

Jon and I are completely different people. What makes him feel loved and what makes me feel loved are so polar opposite that sometimes giving each other a gift that we know the other one wants actually feels wrong. It feels so opposite of what we believe should make the other one happy. So we have to step outside of our comfort zone and give to the other person based on what they want and need. I just want to come home to a clean house and a meal already made and sit down and watch a show or read a book. He wants to go out and have fun and laugh and be with people and he wants me to show him affection. So we have to work harder to keep our relationship on where we each feel loved and sometimes he has to make a plan to do something that I would be too chicken to try, and once I'm out, we both end up having a great time and he feels good because I tried and stepped out of my comfort zone for him.

I've struggled for years with a fear of being alone. It has been completely paralyzing to me at times to cope with not having friends or loved ones around me, which is strange considering I enjoy reading and quiet time alone. So I do get it when people feel desperate and unable to let go when a relationship ends. I've watched in amazement when people around me are strong enough to walk away from unhealthy relationships. I can't even begin to comprehend how they can take those steps. So I have been nosy and asked them straight out how they can walk away from a person and know that they will never hold them or be close to them again. They all basically say the same things, they couldn't live anymore being unhappy, they were tired of settling, they wanted to feel loved, they wanted to feel alive again. I want those things too, but I'm not willing to walk away from my marriage to get them so a year ago I dug my heels in and decided to make my marriage a place of love and happiness for both of us.

Recently one of my kiddos told me that her ex was threatening to commit suicide, I knew that he was hurting and I also knew that we didn't have the skills to help him. He had discovered that even though he had ended their relationship, he wasn't prepared to find out she had happily moved on a month or so later with someone else. We called 911 and the police picked him up and we didn't hear anything else. We advised her not to contact him anymore or to allow him to contact her and we let her therapist know so that she can work through how this makes her feel. This month, many people, young and old will feel that desperate feeling as they spend Valentine's Day alone or see their ex on a date with someone else. I have this to say to you, if that is you...I challenge you to find happiness in yourself and to LOVE YOU. Reach out to someone who can help you get through these feelings. Don't make a permanent decision based on temporary feelings. Life really does get better and worse and better and worse, it's a roller coaster, but we have to find the good things in it and hold on to those to get us through the scary parts.


Take time each week to do something today that makes you feel happy and find something that you like about yourself and tell yourself about it. One thing Matti Vann of http://hemosunite.com/ and http://manyminimods.com/ told me was to take a 20 minute walk outside where you can only think good things about yourself. I was really surprised how quickly that turned my day around. Do not let any critical thoughts about yourself in during this walk. Try it. Fall in love with you, if you want to have a good relationship with anyone, you have to have something good to bring to the table, so be the type of person who you want to be with, be happy. Do something fun for yourself, go to a movie, buy yourself a favorite treat or a longed for item, within your budget of course. Don't be let the commercialism of the holiday steal your peace and joy. So many times I have allowed myself to be hurt just because the person I was with didn't do what I thought they should have done on a certain day. If it had been any other day of the week, it would have been a perfectly good day just the way it was. Enjoy life! Love you. XOXO



If you are feeling suicidal, please seek help. Call 911 or The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or check out their website at www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Those Crazy Teen Years

I remember thinking that my parents just didn't have a clue what it was like to be a teen in my day and age. I thought that they couldn't understand what it was like to be in my shoes and that they were making a big deal over nothing all of the time. Now I'm the parent of four teens and I can tell you that I was partly correct, but I was mostly wrong. My kids are going through things that I didn't have to deal with, Social Media being a big one. I had to use the house phone in the kitchen until after high school and then we finally got a cordless phone. My parents didn't have internet until I was married and pregnant with my first child. I was quite sheltered once my mom re-married when I was 14 so I wasn't dealing with drinking or sex in High School. I dealt with some bad stuff in Middle School but nothing too out there in High School. So in some ways, I can't relate to my teens.

That said, I spent a lot of time in Middle School and after High School getting into trouble, figuring out who I was and generally making bad decisions and I'm trying to protect my kids from making some mistakes that either I made or I watched others make. The thing is, I'm not the strictest parent I know by a long shot, but to ask my kids, I'm over protective because I want them to check in and I want to monitor their Social Media presence. Human Trafficking is a big deal, it's happening in my own neighborhood so being blocked my kid and not knowing who is seeing their stuff or what they are posting freaks me out big time. The days of sending your kids out to do whatever they want until the street lights come on are gone when you live in the ghetto and I'm not even in the very bad neighborhoods, but we do hear gunshots regularly and somehow we have become used to hearing the "ghetto bird" flying around searching for criminals.

Now I'm facing a whole new experience of having foster kids in my care who are used to roaming freely day or night and they look at me like I'm an idiot for wanting to keep them safe. I picked one up from a bus stop where a homeless person was sitting with everything they owned. Now this lady might have been completely sane and looking out for my girl, but she could have also been mentally unstable and hurt her if I hadn't picked her up as well. This girl won't speak up and advocate for herself with me to get what she wants or needs but I'm supposed to believe that she will stand up for herself to strangers after dark with nothing to protect herself and she's barely bigger than my nine year old. I think it's definitely important to teach kids to protect themselves. Maybe some self defense classes and a can of pepper spray would make me more comfortable letting them wander around town or ride the bus or take a train. I wish we lived in a nice rural town sometimes so that I could feel safe letting them go out, but even then, that creates a sense of peace and bad things happen everywhere.

When I was 16 we were able to get a license and drive around to and from different places which feels safer somehow. In order to get just one of my teens driving it costs us twice as much as it did to insure my husband and myself and we had hire coverage. So now here we are paying three times as much and we have three other kids who are old enough to learn to drive. They will need to get jobs and pay for their own insurance before they will have that opportunity or the oldest will need to get a job and move out and then the next oldest can have a chance. One thing is for sure they are all able to drive me up the wall faster than anyone ever has been able to. They know exactly which buttons to push to get me upset and they know exactly what to say to get me to give in. Being a teenager these days is more complicated than it was when I was a teen, but I can't really say that it's better or worse. Kids these days have some advantages we didn't have but they also face challenges we didn't have. I'm trying to keep this in mind when I am talking through issues with them but it's like we speak two different languages some days. I'm looking forward to that day when my kids "get it" and thank me for what I've done, but some days I feel like I'm just pushing them further away and they will never see it from my point of view. It sure makes me miss those days of cute baby kisses and words said incorrectly. Either way, I love all of my kids and I just keep trying to do better today than I did yesterday and when I screw today up, I just hope that I will have another chance tomorrow to do better.