Journey Back to Baker Street

"In memory everything seems to happen to music."

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS, The Glass Menagerie

It's amazing the power of a song to strip the years away in a single moment. A song from my childhood came on the radio this morning and the world folded in on itself and thirty years disappeared in a breath.

I was driving my daughter to school  and, just as I put my car into park at the elementary entrance, the song Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty came on the radio. I hugged my daughter goodbye and then sat in my car and let the waves of memory wash over me as I listened to the distinctive notes of the saxophone playing around me.

When I was little, maybe 6 or 7, I was given a tiny portable 45 record player. It was my treasured possession, even though the pink pleather box was cracked and weathered. It came with a single record, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head by BJ Thomas and I played that solitary song over and over and over again until my parents begged for relief. I tucked the record player back into the bottom of my closet and forgot about it for some months.

One day, some months later,  I was commissioned to help a friend of my mom's pack up her apartment to move. While there, I noticed her tossing some records into the trash. I asked if I could have them and she responded that many were scratched but I could have them if I wanted. I remember her shrugging and frowning as though perplexed at my elation over scratched 45s.  The only one of the handful of records that I recognized was Uptown Girl by Billy Joel as it was still being widely played on the radio. I grabbed all of them, recognizable or not, and finished the day of cleaning and packing with a spring in my step.

When I made it home, I pulled out my pink turntable, scooted up onto the bed that I shared with my sister and put record after record on. The woman who had gifted them to me had been right-- many were so scratched that they were unplayable. Two of them, the aforementioned Uptown Girl and Harvest Moon by Neil Young would play all of the way through. Most, however, ended up in my trash can.

I remember sitting there on that bed with my back up against the cold wall of the rickety trailer that we lived in in rural Iowa and placing the last record on the turntable. It too, was very scratched but I was persistently moving the needle around trying to find a spot that would still play. I'm not sure why I was so persistent with this final record, but I was. After a few minutes, I found the sweet spot and the sound of a saxophone solo burst into that tiny, dark bedroom. That sax solo was the only playable part of the record and, only a few seconds of it at that. But, there was something about the energy of those notes that stole my breath away.

I had always been an odd kid-- prone to crying jags, feeling the weight of the world perpetually on my shoulders, struggling with depression as early as kindergarten and with my nose perpetually in a book. It seemed that no one else on earth was like me. I felt lonely every, single day. However, those few notes that played out of my cheap, cracked pink pleather turntable were a revolation  for me. 

Those notes seemed to call out to me and tell me that I wasn't alone, that someone else out there felt the world as deeply as I did. I felt immediately less alone in the world. For the next weeks, until the record would become completely unusable, I would place the needle onto the record's single, sacred, unscratched section and cry with relief as the sounds of melancholy saxophone whispered into my lonely life and filled a hole that had never before been filled.

That broken record began a love affair with music that has since rivaled my voracious need for books. I had found the escapism and human connection of art. A tiny piece of my heart was healed that day and, if judging by my emotional reaction at hearing those same notes again today, the healing continues to this day. I am thankful for that single, broken record that was gifted to me at the time that I most needed it. I am grateful for the magic of music.

To Sexual Assault Survivors They Are Not "Just Words"

Last year, after twenty years of silence, I came forward as a survivor of sexual assault. It was one of the hardest things that I have ever done. You can read my original post here.

Last week, I was paralyzed by the comments made by the Republican candidate for president. He was bragging about sexually assaulting women.

I waited for his followers to be horrified.

And, then waited some more.

And then realized,in horror, that they were defending this man and coming forward in droves stating that this was "just words" and "just locker room talk" and that, they too, have said such things and heard such things and as Scott Baio said-- we should just "grow up".

Why was I surprised? After all 1/3 women in this country have been sexually assaulted and 1/6 men have, as well.( I think these numbers are actually low- nearly every women that I know has been assaulted) The abusers, so infrequently prosecuted, must be out there somewhere- everywhere. Here the abusers and their protectors now were, out in the light. I suddenly felt more unsafe that I have in years, scared moment-to-moment for my daughters, for all of us.

Still, frozen in my grief which now felt fresh again with the painful things being said everywhere about sexual assault, I chose not to write about it.

When Kelly Oxford wrote a tweet calling for people to join in with their sexual assault stories, I cried as I read the MILLIONS of tweets. I realized for the first time that I am not only a rape survivor but that I had a list, a fucking LIST, of times that my body had been violated and that I had been told to keep quiet about it. Still, I was too frozen to write here, even after I joined in the chorus on Kelly's Twitter wall.

However yesterday, a member of my own family posted a meme stating that the words spoken by the Republican candidate for presidency were "just words". This person, knowing that I nearly took my life in my pain and grief after being raped, decided that it was okay to post such a thing knowing that I would read it. It felt as small as an ant, easily crushed under the weight of the words on the meme and every like that was posted underneath it.

Today, I speak. 

When I was a girl, maybe 7 or 8, a friend's father would always hug me uncomfortably close and lay his hands on my chest or bottom, sometimes even underneath my dress. We had just watched a Berenstein Bears video about inappropriate touching and I knew to tell an adult. I did. Three adults in fact. All of them said that I was just being "dramatic" and that Mr. --- was a nice man and I must have misunderstood. I kept being sent over to play with his children. That man would later be convicted of molesting dozens of children.

When I was 16, I was involved in a serious car accident. I was strapped to a spinal board, immobilized  with an oxygen mask over my face so that no one could hear what I was saying. In the back of the ambulance was my dad and a volunteer medic. My dad sat at the end of the ambulance, calling family members over the rush of the road noise and the beeping of the equipment. The volunteer sat on a bench next to me, his knees pressed against me. He first tentatively pressed his hands against my breasts as we rode over bumps and I thought that it was unintentional. Then, he became more brave, eventually slipping his hands under my shirt and fondling me while watching my dad to be sure he wasn't caught. I kept asking what he was doing and tried to wiggle away, but was strapped down and he pretended not to hear me. He stopped when my dad put his phone away. When I arrived to the hospital I shared my experience with the ER nurse, who told me that I must have misunderstood. I later heard her talking in the hallway with other nurses saying that several patients had similar complaints about this man. The nurses seemed very upset but I am unsure if any action was ever taken against him. I was learning that I did not have a voice against men who touched me. I learned that I was "dramatic" and prone to "misunderstanding".

When I was 17, I was brutally raped. In the aftermath, doctors, nurses and police officers would ask me questions over and over again like "what were you wearing?", "why were you drinking", "were you a virgin" and "did I try to turn him on". I chose not to press charges, an action that will haunt me for the rest of my days. A police officer assured me that a young women who had been drinking would be torn to shreds in court and that he would never be convicted. I learned that a young women drinking while underage was considered more of an offense to many than being a rapist was. I hid the  experience of that rape for twenty years, the shame of it becoming heavier with each passing year.

These occurrences, particularly the rape, have colored everything in my life since. I became a nurse and a writer to help others crawl out of the blackness that I lived in for years. I cannot separate myself from the sexual assault survivor inside of me.  Every cell of my being has been permeated with those violent acts. This is who I am now, who we-- the millions of sexual assault survivors-- are now. We get to have a voice, too. 

Every time that you minimize the braggart's words when he is so proud of his sexual assaults as "just words", you are telling us that our experiences-- our assaults and rapes-- do not matter.

Every time that you tell us, the survivors, to "stop being so dramatic" in our horror of the words being said, you are telling us that our feelings and horror and revictimization do not matter.

Every time that you tell us to "grow up", you are telling us that being offended by sexual assault and the bragging of it is childish and we should be seen and not heard as good children are told. We are told that we cannot be vocal as women, as survivors...that we should simply shut up in order to make you more comfortable.

Every time that we are told that we should dismiss this as "locker room talk", we are frightened. Are men everywhere bragging about sexual assault casually as they dress for a workout? We already know firsthand that the perpetrators are out there, but now our world seems terrifyingly full of them.

Every time that you deflect others' attention away from these words with your "but, but, but... so and so did THIS and that is so much worse", you are reminding us of why victims do not come forward and why the attackers are not persecuted and jailed often; because we live in a society where rape, even violent rape,  is viewed as a minor crime and is just "boys being boys".

I am a single sexual assault survivor who is standing here before you and begging you to take a second look at your words before you repost a meme or make a status about how bragging about sexual assault is "just words" or tell a survivor that she is being "dramatic" or to "grow up" because we are rightfully emotional. I am a lone sexual assault survivor who is standing up for the many that are too afraid to stand publicly, knowing that we are still a society who will shame and demean us. I am one sexual assault survivor that knows that there is an endless sea of others standing, loudly or quietly, beside me. 

Words matter. They always have and always will. Choose wisely. Someone out there is feeling every word in the most painful and personal way. As you think about the people on your friends list, remember always that many of them are survivors of brutality that you may not even be able to imagine. Reach down inside and have some compassion and understanding for us, too. You've so easily been able to find compassion for a man who is proud of being a sexual abuser... I hope that you have some compassion left for the survivors, too. 

If you are a sexual abuse survivor and are struggling, please reach out. RAINN provides online chats and phone support 24 hours per day. You are not alone, Loves. You matter and you are needed here. You can find RAINN here. 

Unraveling Our Shame Stories: What We Teach Young Girls About Sex

I know that I am not alone in the fact that shame about sex is interwoven into my childhood memories. Many of us, particularly women, were taught to feel great shame around our sexuality.

I grew up in a Catholic household. Sex was a taboo subject and was not something that we spoke about. It seemed to be a great secret and, as a curious child, anything that was kept a secret was even more interesting to me than something that we would talk about freely.

I remember as a 5th grader finding a book in the public library that had a sex scene within it. It made me more curious than ever. There was just enough detail to make me more curious but left me with more questions than answers. As sex wasn't talked about in my home, my only prospect for answers seemed to be my friends. So, I brought the book to school and, while outside at recess, opened the book(a V.C. Andrews book, if memory serves me) to the carefully marked section with the sex scene and we huddled together carefully at the edge of the playground and read it together. One of my friends tried to gently explain to me what she knew of sex(which was very little) and we all sat around rather quizzically, feeling frustrated that we didn't know the answers to this topic even though we all felt, with our budding breasts and sudden interest in boys, that we were quiet grown-up, indeed.

Unfortunately, our huddle got the attention of the teacher, who broke us up and confiscated the book. I was pulled into the principal's office by my arm while being berated the entire way and called a pervert by the sour-faced teacher. I was horrified. I was a straight A student and had been reading adult books for years. My fervent reading had always been praised by teachers-- I had taught myself to read at age 3 and by the middle of grade school, testing showed that I was reading at a college level. The librarian would order in adult books especially for me. It was a source of joy and pride for me. These adult books would occasionally mention sex in a casual way. I had always been rewarded for my curiosity and reading and now, that same curiosity made me a pervert. I didn't want to be a pervert. When my father picked me up and told me that I was an embarrassment to the family, I was so ashamed that I couldn't eat for days. I was full of shame and confusion. I was further confused when I saw the confiscated book on my mother's nightstand with a bookmark in it. Was my Mom a pervert, too or was it just me?

The next year at church, while I was volunteering, I overheard the priest talking to a young high school couple. I recognized them--they were quite popular and well-liked at church and at school. I gleaned from the bits that I overheard that they had admitted to having sex. I was shocked. My only "sex talk" had been the firm advice to "never have sex before marriage". I worried that they would go to Hell and felt my heart racing in my chest. The priest was berating only the girl as the boy sat by quietly, with his head down. I could hear him pounding on his bible as he said words such as "whore" and "beg for forgiveness" while the sounds of her weeping leaked out into the hallway. When they left, the girl walked out of the church with her parents who all were walking as though covered in shame, heads down as they walked the silent hallway. The boy, still in the office with the priest, was now getting peppered with questions about the football team. When he left, the priest clapped him on the back and wished him a good game. The boy left with his shoulders held high, quite the opposite of what I had just seen with his girlfriend. I was left with a sick realization in my stomach that if one had sex, it was the woman's fault and was shameful to the woman alone. I wondered if girls were inherently evil.

I remember a lesson that the priest once gave my Sunday school class. It was about the prostitute that was being stoned when Jesus intervened. Someone raised their hand to ask what a prostitute was. The priest replied simply that it was a woman that had sex with men. I remember us all looking around in confusion. We had recently watched the film at school that was played for all students when  puberty reared it's ugly head(a 1960's reel with video of swimming sperm that so terrified me that I couldn't eat the popcorn that the teacher had so kindly given us as though we were watching something delightful at the theater) and we had realized that our parents must have had sex(after marriage only, of course) to conceive us. I wondered then if sex was always a sin and if women were the only gender that it was a sin for. I was grateful that in the story, that the woman had not been stoned. I wondered what the punishment would be for me in modern day times. I was too frightened to ask.

In high school, I spent a year at a Catholic school. I sat through a dress code orientation led by a nun whose entire body was covered head-to-toe. As she explained that we should wear skirts that "swept the floor" and that "no part of your bosom should ever show", I felt scared. I felt as though she was looking straight at me for much of the presentation and I wanted to hide under a rock. As a naturally very busty and curvy person, I showed some cleavage in nearly every shirt that I wore short of a turtleneck. I imagined my curves disappearing and turning into a tall, lithe woman that could easily cover her curves and her sexuality. The nun completed the presentation by reminding us that "boys will be boys" and it was our job as good Catholic girls to "not encourage them". I had no idea what she meant. When we went to the pep rallies(which were mandatory) and to the football games(football was this school's second God) and cheered for the boys, weren't we encouraging them? Which encouragement was right and which was wrong? Again, I was far too terrified to ask these questions, so I instead gazed at the altar of Mary, the virgin mother.

When I was seventeen, I was raped. Everything that I had learned about sexuality had taught me that I had asked for this and I, not the man who raped me, should repent. I was dripping in shame so heavy that I could no longer put one foot in front of the other. I was certain that I was evil and was deserving of this Hell on Earth and the Hell that surely awaited me in the afterlife. When the symptoms of PTSD began to emerge, I believed that I was going crazy(this was far before PTSD was known to the public). I believed that the vivid flashbacks that I was having of the rape were a punishment from God. I could not bear it. I decided that it was best to take my own life and tried desperately to kill myself. I did not succeed. I lived on and so did the shame.

When I became engaged in my early twenties, I couldn't wait to plan all of the details of the wedding.  When I went dress shopping, the saleswoman at one store asked me if I was a virgin. I was horrified and froze there, standing next to my mother and sister. In response to my silence, the elderly woman pursed her lips and gestured to the rack of gowns that were not bright white, but instead were more buttery, yellow shades of white. She referred to that rack as the "dirty white" gowns and nodded her head with fervency as she told me that only virgins could wear "pure white" on their wedding day. I allowed her to help me as I tried on the "dirty white" gowns, feeling quite dirty myself. At a different shop I later found the perfect gown, which happened to be bright white. As I pulled it on the morning of my wedding, I wondered if just the wearing of it was a sin and if I would be standing in front of my family and friends as an impostor of purity, when underneath I was so dirty.

When I became a mother, I remember watching other mothers with a fervency to fit in. I noticed that most of the stay at home moms were very conservative and wore twin sets and khaki pants many days. I rushed out and bought two piece sweater sets in bland colors and khaki pants that hid every one of my curves. It seemed that hiding my sexuality was the key to being a good mother. The key seemed to be to look like people that would never, ever have sex(which belied the fact that, as mothers, of course we had experienced sex).

It was when the first of my two daughters were born that truly began to unravel my shame around sex. I knew as soon as I held my beautiful daughter in my arms that I would teach her of her beauty and how deserving she is of love and acceptance, not shame for who she inherently is, not shame for the gender of which she was born. I will not embed within my daughters shame of who they are. It is intensely toxic. I will teach them about what a beautiful thing sexuality can be. I will teach them that no action, no outfit could ever entice someone to rape them- that rape is never the fault of the victim. I will teach my son the same lessons and teach him to honor women. I am pushing the pause button on the shame tape that's played itself out since the beginning of time.

I am nearing the end of my thirties. My shame around sex and my sexuality continue to unravel. Old memories sometimes pop up in my mind and, with the clarity of age, I am putting together more pieces of how this shame was built and how it has colored my life. In hundreds of tiny ways, I was taught that my body is shameful, that sex is shameful and that women are dirty. It is one of the most toxic beliefs that one can hold.

I am pushing back the shame in the most powerful way that I can imagine-- by raising daughters that are proud of their bodies, that will learn about sex in a kind and gentle way(with NO shame) and will, hopefully, not carry the weight of this burden. I am releasing the burden of this shame and I feel so much Goddamned lighter without it. It was never my true story, it was simply the fictional story that others felt to smother me with.

Someday, I will be free of this shame. I hope that my girls will fly high without every having to carry it. For, shame is not their birthright-- freedom is.

The Woman Beneath the Mother

In the years after my three children were born, I lost myself. Slowly and then all at once, the parts of me that I had always held sacred began to slip away.

We aren’t supposed to talk about this loss though, are we? Mothers are to be blissed out in Motherhood, sacrificing all willingly in order to serve our brethren. And, I am blissed out, sometimes. I am grateful to be a mother to the best children on the planet. However, underneath the love and gratitude, aside the constant stream of needs of my three children and husband, and beneath the expectations of what a modern-day mother should be, I was losing myself piece-by-piece. Losing myself so slowly that I did not realize it until the woman that I once was inside was completely gone.

A few years ago I found myself inside a deep depression and was lost for hours each day inside the darkness of contemplation of my life. I realized that I had slowly let go of all of my friendships, so shamed to spend any time away from my children to maintain any semblance of even a solid acquaintanceship with anyone other than those whose circles intersected with my children’s school or other activities. I had stopped writing a decade before and the words that used to spill out of my fingers without heed were now stoppered up somewhere out of my reach. Every moment of my day was about my children, my husband, my patients in my work as a nurse. I was lost inside the rote and rusty movements of service of others, in a pattern so familiar that I no longer had to think much about anything. I felt much like an empty vessel and did not know how to fill myself up again.

At the same time that I was realizing how deeply I was immersed in a sadness and emptiness beyond my own help, a co-worker noted my writing in a presentation that I had given. She asked if I wrote professionally. I had not written more than a professional document in more than ten years. The poetry, short stories and essays that used to spill from my hands unto the page had stopped so long ago that I no longer considered writing to be one of my strengths- my strengths now were all tied up into helping others in a non-creative way. That simple question, however, made me wonder if the words—the words that I used to string together that brought me untold joy—were still somewhere deep inside.

I began to write again, the words rusty and unwieldy at first but slowly coming out of my fingers again like the constant, easy stream that I once remembered. I found myself again on the page. I found that the more I wrote, the freer I felt—unburdened, lighter. I was redeemed slowly, letter-by-letter. With this newfound freedom, I found myself reconnecting with others and burgeoning friendships abounded in my writer’s group and with those that reached out after reading my published work.

My greatest worry—that I would be less of a mother if I spent time away from my children doing things that I love but that did not involve them—were greatly unfounded. On the contrary, I now connect with my children in a more authentic way then ever. I now communicate with them as myself, not the shell of a woman intent on martyrdom of motherhood.

I’m certainly not saying that writing regularly has made motherhood or life simpler in any way. In fact, it is another item that I must find a way to cram into my already frantic schedule. It has not made life perfect in anyway. My children sometimes grumble about me typing away desperately on my computer instead of spending those minutes with them. They also know that Mommy has a passion for writing, a passion for something outside of them.

I am whole again. I no longer feel empty and void of any purpose outside of my work as a nurse and my work as a mother. I am more that any one title that society has slapped on me. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a nurse. I am a writer. I am so many more things than just these labels.

In my actions—in the late night tapping of my keyboard that lulls them to sleep after I have tucked them in, in following my heart, my passions and my dreams—I am reminding myself with each keystroke of who I am and am, hopefully, inspiring my children to live their lives as who they are not as the one dimensional being that society may expect them to be if they choose to be parents themselves. I will always be Mommy first—always. However, I choose be everything else that I am too. I choose to be me.

I am an Unattractive Mother Raising Beautiful Daughters

I'm not society's idea of beautiful. I own that. I'm not seeking compliments or for anyone to disagree, I just know that a perpetually chubby, often disheveled woman with strong features and a large nose isn't society's idea of beauty. As I get older, I'm becoming much more okay with this fact, even as there is lingering pain over such memories as no one telling me that I was beautiful on my wedding day.  I have so many other things about me that are beautiful and, frankly, I have better things to worry my mind about. 

I also happen to have two beautiful daughters(and one handsome son). Watching the world react to my daughters has been an education in itself for me. The world at large treats attractive females differently, in both ways good and bad. I have a unique vantage point as their mother, who tends in her plainness to blend into the woodwork and not be noticed(a plus, actually, for this introvert Mama). My daughters, unlike me, are noticed everywhere we go. They are complimented on their hair, their fashion sense, their bright blue eyes. Yet, no one asks them about the books they are reading or their school work or what things they might love outside of their own appearance. They are so much more than their pretty faces but the older woman at the grocery store, the mailman dropping off packages and the secretary at the doctor's office don't know that my daughters are talented dancers, love reading and have a wicked sense of humor among many other things. What they do know is that my daughters are beautiful and that fact sometimes seems to overshadow everything else. 

 When I was growing up the attention always went first to my little sister. She was a petite blond-haired beauty. The compliments would go to her first- "so pretty!", "what a cute dress!" and so on. Then they would stumble onto me, stammering over what to say.  They would ask about school(straight a's), what book I was reading(I carried books with me everywhere) or something similar. My lack of beauty in many ways allowed me to pursue my intellectual pursuits and receive positive attention over the things that I loved to do, not the way my exterior looked. In that way, it was a great blessing and made me who I am today. 

I want my daughters to be encouraged in the same ways. I want them to embrace their physical beauty but I want so much more for them. I want them to know that beauty fades but the time that they spend on what is inside will never leave them. I want them to have a chance to be whatever they were meant to be without society pigeonholing them into tiny beautiful pegs.

 I am coming to terms with my own looks, in part as I see myself reflected in their beautiful faces- my nose(yes, the large one!) on my youngest daughter's gorgeous face, my hair and eyes on my middle daughter. The features that I once loathed now seem so lovely on their precious faces. I am also recognizing that my appearance, the mediocrity of it, was just as much a gift as my daughters' beauty is to them. My plainness gave me wings to fly beyond those mired in outwardness. Now I must be sure that my daughters are given the chance to own their beauty AND fly towards their forever purpose. Now that, my friends, would be truly beautiful.

 

We Cannot Always Choose Happy

I’m one of those people that always have positive quotes posted around me. I struggle with anxiety and depression and having inspiration posted around me helps me to keep my mind straight. My cubicle at work, my car, my home, my coffee mugs-- they are all covered in positive quotes, memes and photos. Yes—I’m THAT person.

Recently, however, I have been struggling with a bout of sadness. I have found myself raw with feeling as I navigate working through the mourning of being a victim of a violent crime twenty years ago and finally working through the mess of my feelings that comes with that. I’ve found myself struck with tears at the most inopportune of times and suffering through the nervousness and jumpiness that comes with having my fight or flight system ‘on’ twenty-four hours per day. I am a bundle of uncomfortable emotions, just barely held together enough to continue with my day-to-day life.

I’ve found that in this raw state that I cannot tolerate the false cheerfulness of quotes pasted over a bright sunshine or motivational talks to let go of my sadness and smile. It just doesn’t ring true to me where I am right now, in this place of darkness. I am exhausted by false cheer. There are some days that I must sink into the melancholy of life. 

I have a friend on social media that is always posting the words ‘Choose happy’. She is a lovely person that lives her life trying to help others. However, I had to temporarily hide her posts. I believe that there are times that we can, indeed, choose happy. There are also times that we must feel the shitty emotions-- the pain, the sadness, the grieving-- and not doing so is detrimental to our souls. I cannot at this time in my life deny these emotions that I have denied for twenty years.

This time has been a great lesson to me. In my personal life and in my work as a nurse I have spent many hours cheering people up. I hope to continue to do so. However, I must also allow those suffering to truly feel their emotions and not encourage them to paste a false smile over their raw emotions-- doing so is a toxic mistake.

We have become a society that has forgotten the value of our ‘negative’ emotions. We hide behind pretty selfies and cheerful social media posts when inside we are reeling. We have forgotten how to allow ourselves permission to have bad days and to experience the heavy emotions that can come with life.

I will choose happy another day. However, for today I will feel the crushing sadness, the grief and the anger. I will ignore the cheerful quotes and pretty pictures and instead immerse myself inside the pain. I will allow myself to burn inside the fire that been kindling in my heart for twenty years and has been denied the chance to flame. I will emerge from the fire stronger than ever before. I will be lighter without this burden and instead of pasting on a false smile over my pain; my smile on the other side of this will be true and real.

There is nothing wrong with honoring all of your emotions. I get to choose. You get to choose. There is no shame in not choosing happy for today. Happiness will still be waiting for you tomorrow. True happiness is not the smile pasted over your tears, it is the happiness that shines through after you’ve worked through all of the shit that weighs your heart down. It’s often not an easy journey—I hope you choose to take it anyway.

You Are Perfect Just as You Are

I've never been society's idea of beautiful. I've always had a propensity to be a bit chubby and have strong facial features. 

When I was a child everyone would see my sister, blonde and lithe, and them me, chubby and awkward, standing at her side and would compliment her on how pretty she was. Then, as an afterthought, would compliment me on my intelligence.

I wanted so badly to be pretty. I spent years dieting, dyeing my hair and trying different makeup techniques to make my nose appear smaller. However, I could never change the image in the mirror much.

It wasn't long before I stopped focusing my energy on my outsides and began trying to refine my insides. I've spent much of my life focusing all of my time reading, learning, working and volunteering to make myself, and hopefully the world, better.

My intelligence and kindness have opened many doors for me. As an introvert, I spend many hours inside my head and quietly reading and those hours of thoughts make me continually into a more mindful person. My goals of weight-loss and outer perfection have been replaced with a single boas-- to be a better person with each and every year that passes. 

I still struggle with self-worth and avoid looking at myself in the mirror at times.  But, I'm pretty confident about the person that I am inside-- kind, compassionate, well-read, always learning. I hope that I continue to grow-- I know that I still have much inner work to do. 

So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm grateful for not being born physically beautiful. It has made me a better person. I need to remind myself of this when I scoff at my image in the mirror.

You were born perfectly and exactly the way the you were meant to be, Loves. I'm so glad that I was made the way I am and that you were made the way that you are. 

Shine your light, the world only has one you.