Life Stuff (I'm not so good at coming up with titles...)

The last year has been hard. Really hard. Yet, it’s also been needed on so many levels. I left Phoenix a little over a year ago, and moved to an area that I was completely unfamiliar with and where I literally knew one person. By the way, the one person that I knew was best friends with my baby sister and she had just moved out to Portland a few months before me. We didn’t really have much of an established friendship, and had kind of gotten off to a rocky start.  

I left Phoenix for my job. Or at least that’s what I told everyone. My job was moving me out to Portland for a year, so that I could take care of the three big customers that we had up here. It was an easy way to leave. I needed to leave. My heart had been torn apart during the last few years that I was there.

I was in a relationship with a man that I never should have been. I let him so far into my world, and when it came time to face the music about our relationship I was left to face the music on my own. We both had consequences, there’s no doubt, but I’m the one that was ridiculed and blamed very openly. Everyone had an opinion about how I should handle moving forward, with very little sensitivity to the fact that in the midst of all of this I’d single-handedly destroyed my self-esteem, my reputation and shattered my heart. I literally felt like a piece of my soul had been removed from me.

I felt like too many people had a microscope on my life. There were people who used to be kind to me, and they just weren’t anymore. People that didn’t know me that thought I was an awful human being. People that looked at my like my choice defined everything about me. People that had been in a very similar situation that told me how horrible and messed up I was for getting in that situation, and yet clearly had a hard time looking in the mirror. There were also people who hugged me, loved me, and stood beside me in my darkest moments. There’s something about experiencing that level of shame that can expose the realest things about the friendships you have with people.

The weeks and months following I did everything I could to move forward. I cried, a lot. I was taking care of the most perfect little girl at the time and there were days when I couldn’t make it a few minutes before the tears took over again. I don’t know how I would have gotten through that part of my life without having her unconditional love every day. I had the greatest friends that a person could ask for, and even when I’m sure they were tired of hearing about how badly it hurt, they stood beside me and wiped the tears from my face.

 A new job would lead me to different customers in the Phoenix area, and there were customers that had locations close to him. There were days when I’d go to visit those customers and I’d spend twenty minutes talking myself into getting out of my car. I’d have to figure out how to breathe, because I felt like my lungs were going to collapse. I’d eventually get the tears to stop falling, clean myself up and then slowly get out of the car. I always rushed these appointments because I had a desperate need to get out of his neighborhood as quickly as possible. I never really thought I’d run into him, but I didn’t really know what I’d do if I did. I was constantly terrified.

For a long time I plastered a smile on my face, and did my best to fake it until I felt like I was making it. I still have days when I cry myself to sleep. Like the day that I found out he was getting married. I felt like my earth had shattered around me. Not because I wanted to be married to him, or that I wanted to be with him in any way, but because I was so pissed that he could so easily move forward while I still spent so much time punishing myself.

Everyone has a different way of dealing with the hard knocks of life. My way of dealing with life is to eat myself happy. Well, the other consequence of dealing with life this way, is that I also ate myself fat. Which is so fitting, considering that I decided a long time ago that if I was fat I wasn’t lovable. I found other ways to abuse and punish myself, and I have kept it up for three years. I will have moments where I’ve decided to get back on track, but it doesn’t take long before I’ve found reasons to hurt myself all over again. 

I had a friend ask how I was doing with the move after I’d been up here for a few months, and I revealed to her at that time how I’d realized how much I genuinely disliked my own company. I hated being alone, because then it was just me with my thoughts. The thoughts that constantly reminded me that I’m an awful person and that I didn’t deserve to experience what I’ve longed to experience my whole life: a man that genuinely loves me and a family. (Disclaimer: Just to be clear I am in no way declaring that I'm desperate for that to happen. It's simply one of the things that I've always wanted. My life has never been defined by having a man in my life or not, and if I am to get in to a relationship...I want it to be with someone who enhances my life, just as I would want to enhance theirs.)

Mistakes happen, and I get that. Yet, I’ve spent so much of my life and my energy ensuring that I did everything I could to keep people happy. That I lived up to their standards and that they were completely aware of how good my heart was, and one choice changed a lot of that. The biggest change was how I viewed my own heart though. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years that I am the only person who can genuinely determine what kind of heart I have. People are going to have opinions no matter what I do, and yet the only power those opinions have is the power I give them.

I’ve been focused on mastering self-love for the last few months. It’s hard. Really freaking hard. Some days I look in the mirror and I fall crazy in love with myself, and then the very next day I look at myself and find every single flaw. The greatest gift of working on this, and spending more energy with the idea of self-love, is that I’ve allowed myself to be more open to the idea of other people actually loving me. The craziest part…is that there have been people in my life for forever that have loved me all along. I have had moments when I’m really honest with myself, and I know that it’s because of WHO I am that I have so many people in my life that love me in ways that I never thought possible.

Forgiveness is necessary. I get to forgive others and more importantly I get to forgive myself. After all, I’m just a human being. I was bound to make mistakes, and if I choose, I get to be an even stronger woman having had those experiences.

I am worthy. I am enough. I am LOVE!

Broken Open

I've been contemplating writing this post for a long time. Then there have been more and more events that have encouraged the need to get this out, to write about it, to publish it, to get it out of my head and then let it all go. However, I always follow that up with the fact that it leaves me super vulnerable and with people knowing too much about me, but I also know that there really aren't a ton of people that read this…so then who cares.

I don't know if one really needs to know the beginning in order to understand where I am at this moment, and details really don't matter. Or maybe they do. It's hard to say. As you can tell the thoughts are still jumbled, and attempting to get them to come out of my brain in a clear way may be a struggle.

I have recently remembered, in vivid detail, an experience I had when I was pretty young. My dad's cousin, Jerry, was like a second dad to me. He adored the three of us kids, and I'm almost positive he thought we all walked on water. I remember the last time I saw him. This moment would become a much bigger moment than one could have anticipated at the time. I was 7 or 8 years old at the time. So young. And considering that this happened well over twenty years ago, you would think that I would have been able to let it all go. Nope. It's still there. Hanging in the very back of my mind. Maybe buried behind some other events and dusty. Very dusty.

Jerry came to visit us. I ran out and jumped on him, hugging him with the excitement of a child. He gave me a stuffed animal during this visit, a cat, and this would come to be the only cat that I would ever really love - seriously. He had a long chat with my dad during his visit, and I don't really remember any of the specifics. The thing that sticks out clearly in my head is that my dad kept saying, "Don't do anything stupid, Jerry." I also remember making him promise to come back to me. I made him promise more than once. Jerry never came back that was it. Him leaving that day was our final goodbye. Our last hug. The last time he told me he loved me. The last time I heard his voice. Because the next morning he chose to put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

At the time I didn't know or fully comprehend the impact this would have on me. To this day when I talk about him and how much he loved me…I can literally feel his love for me. I know how valuable I was to him. I know how much he treasured and adored me. Yet, at the time I know I decided a lot of things about me. I know that these decisions were completely subconscious. My adult self is very aware of that intellectually. The aftermath of that event would be one that would take me years to really wrap my adult head around though. I decided that I wasn't lovable. That if I had been more that he would have made a better choice. That people that love me leave me. And…if all of those aren't a big enough kick in the ass….that men lie. Even if they love you, they lie.

Other experiences, not just the one I described above, have convinced me that those beliefs are definitely true. When I was growing up I was never really enough for my dad. I wasn’t skinny enough – and if my clothes showed exactly how fat I was he made it clear that it was gross and no one would ever want to see that. My grades weren’t high enough. I didn’t do many things as he believed I should. My brother got away with a lot of shit and I decided that was because he was the oldest and because he was a boy. And my little sister was an angel (and I can’t argue with him there, because she really is.) He was very vocal with me and very clear on how he viewed me, and it wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t as easy to love as my siblings. I remember distinctly how I used to pick at the skin on my neck whenever he’d yell at me, just so I could keep myself from crying. Because honestly, if I cried it got worse and it was already bad enough.

I’ve spent years working through the process of forgiving my dad. I have a great relationship with him now. I don’t want there to be any judgment on him because I chose to share this story. My dad was doing the best he could with what he had at the time. He was a product of his childhood. I know this. I’m very familiar with this and I don’t doubt this at all. My dad loves me more than anything in this world. My dad thinks I’m one of the greatest women on this planet, and I know this because he tells me this and the way he expresses this speaks volumes. We’ve repaired a very broken relationship. I’ve forgiven my dad completely. He is a good man. He is a great dad. I would go to battle for this man, and love him with my whole heart. And genuinely hope that someday he forgives himself, because he absolutely deserves to.

I don’t believe for one second that I thought that this is what life would become. I never thought it would become a series of choices, moments, and relationships that would allow me to recreate the same outcome every time. I never thought I'd spend a good portion of my time and energy doing everything I can to be perfect for everyone else. Well, who at any age, knows that they are making such deep rooted decisions about who they are and the rest of their life. It was a moment. That has since defined so much of my life. There has been so much pain and heartache that has come with each choice that has lead me to those paths that have recreated those exact same feelings.

I have found myself in many relationships with men that are the kind of men that would allow me to be right about all of the things that I decided about myself at 7 years old. I will never be enough for them…even if I do everything they ask me to do. I can contort myself into some version of myself that I no longer recognize, and it would never be enough. They lie. They leave. And if I was just a bit more lovable, or just more of everything I’m not, then none of that would have happened. It’s always my fault. Always. Regardless of how awful the man is. And I have been with some pretty awful men. When a good man approaches me or seems interested in me, there is no way to convince me that it’s actually possible. I’ve literally had them say, "You must know I'm crazy about you!" And I never got it at the time. I’ve always worried that any man that ended up with me would feel like he got the short end of the stick. So painful to admit, and yet it's always there in the back of my mind.

Recently, I’ve come to realize a few things about those beliefs. They are complete and total lies. Yet, as long as I believe them nothing about my life will change and I’ll keep getting the same results that I’ve always gotten. I’ve spent so many years worried that I’m going to mess it all up, so I’m terrified to make decisions because I’m fearful that I’ll make the wrong one. There’s something so beautiful about making a decision though…there’s no way to make the wrong one. No way. There really is no way to mess it all up. You choose something today and if you don’t like where that choice is leading you, then you make a new choice tomorrow. Every day is a new day to choose. So, lately I’ve been making different choices. I choose to be enough. I choose to look in the mirror and love what I see. I choose to believe that there are great, honest men in the world. I choose to know that I can be loved just as I am, and that I'm worthy of great love. I choose forgiveness. Forgiveness for those that have done me wrong and, more importantly, I choose to forgive me. There’s so much power in choice, and I’m choosing to be a very powerful woman.

Friends, when a child grows up believing they are awful, they will carry that for a very long time. I know this from experience. When you are interacting with children – show them love. Tell them they are the greatest and that they can do anything they decide to do. Tell them that they are perfect as they are, and please, tell them that they are enough. Show them what it means to love their mind and body, their eyes, their hands, their sense of humor…show them what it means to love themselves. It’s hard work, but as an adult that has struggled with this…it’s so much harder when you have over twenty years of repairs to mend.

I’m not broken, though, I’m perfectly imperfect.

Exposed...Kinda. Ha!

I was challenged by a good friend of mine to post some pictures on Facebook that I had taken of me, and while that may have sounded like a good idea...I on the other hand thought it was a terrible idea. Mainly because I was genuinely concerned that I would offend someone or bug one of my 'friends' on there. Then I decided to blog about it, because I’d have an easy topic to write about! So…two birds, one stone!

My whole life I have struggled with my weight. I’ve been up and down since my senior year in HS and I’m going to say that’s because for the first time in my life I was down. I have a love/hate relationship with food and when I get sad I have this habit of eating my feelings. And sometimes…I have A LOT of feelings. The summer before my senior year I worked two full-time retail jobs in Colorado, and got small enough that people that had known me my whole life didn’t recognize me when I moved back to Kansas.

(That's me on the left)

Then my grandpa died. And I healed myself through food and lots of alcohol. The only way I could sleep after he died, and not have dreams about him, was to go to bed drunk. After about 8 months of that I gained around 40 pounds. Then the ultimate struggle began, because even though I had quit drinking I couldn’t seem to get rid of the weight. That’s when I started trying every fad diet I could think of and failing miserably as I lost weight and then gained it again.

Last year I decided I was going to do something different and worked really hard to get to the smallest that I’ve been in my teen/adult life. I was working out with a trainer, was super careful about what I ate, and drank a ton of water. I did all of the things that you’re supposed to do in order to see results, and I did. No fad diets, no starving myself, and no working out in the gym 4 hours a day. This was the result.

As I was doing all of this, I was playing a 90 day game and my coach (Melissa Tucker) challenged me to have some boudoir photos taken. Well, for anyone that knows me…I’m a pretty modest person. I prefer to keep as much covered as possible, at all times. I accepted the challenge, although, I did my version of boudoir photos, still modest and yet still a little more revealing than normal for me.

I’ve never been comfortable in my own skin, but when I look at these pictures I am reminded that I am a beautiful woman. I don’t have a perfect body, and after a few months of eating my feelings at the beginning of this year I have some progress to make up for, but I am still beautiful. I don’t have to be perfect, and I don't have to be the size that I have decided is necessary to be loved. I am loved and enough just the way I am. So, here you go. Here are some of the pictures that I had taken, and surprisingly enough...I actually like most of the pictures that were sent back to me. (Photos compliments of Shay Nuttall.)

 

 

 

 

Heart + Head = Miscommunication

Sometimes the communication between our head and our hearts gets lost in translation. I have come to believe that they have to be in complete alignment for things to really work out. Yes, many of you probably already knew this, and maybe I am just a little slow on picking up certain things. Anyway, I’ve learned this the hard way. Being in a situation where my heart was completely invested, I wanted to do everything I could to pursue it. However, what if you’re in a situation where every issue that comes up can’t be sorted through. What if, logically, the best thing I could have done for my heart was to run as fast as I could in the opposite direction? 

I think there is a reason why our heart and our head aren’t always in alignment, and it’s always in our best interest to pay attention to that. The stars don’t align every single day. Sometimes prayers aren’t answered for a reason, and when this happens if we let go and move forward…maybe, just maybe, what’s ultimately better for us is waiting just around the corner. And you know, maybe not. However, we will never know if we keep holding on to the things that don’t make sense. I don’t think it takes a lot for the stars to align, but they definitely won’t align if we hold on to stuff that is inherently wrong for us. 

If you have a vision, a goal, or a dream…take a look at your current situation and relationships and identify if they are serving you in a way that will allow you to pursue that vision, goal or dream. If not, then let go and move on. In the meantime, do all that you can to heal and forgive you and others involved in a situation. It allows you more freedom as you go in the direction you’re meant to go. I’ve learned a lot of this the hard way. I’ve learned how painful I make letting go, and how if I just surrendered I’d enjoy this journey a lot more. 

People and experiences come into our lives to help us become whatever it is that we want to become. The good, the bad, and the ugly…we need it all. We need it because those things happen FOR us…so we can grow, become stronger, get clarity on what we really want, and most of all, fulfill our purpose. I know all about adversity. I know all about the pain and sorrow of life. But even more than that, I know about all of the happiness, beauty, and goodness that comes on the other side, and sometimes right in the middle, of the pain and sorrow. 

I guess you can say that I’m grateful for those moments when I ignored the logic, because I’ve learned so much by doing that. Although, I will admit that I have every intention of paying closer attention to what’s out of alignment in the future, so I can get to the good stuff quicker. Because I deserve the good stuff and this was definitely a reminder that I deserve that, even though it didn't turn out as I had hoped.

Live Without Regrets

**The name has been changed to protect the innocent. ;)

I have this friend, who is quite possibly one of my favorite people, and she definitely understands me on levels that make life easier when we talk. I talk to her about some of the most painful experiences I’ve ever had, and share with her my most exciting moments. Ever since we met at work five years ago, I have called her mom, and I can tell her anything. Lately, we’ve become a lot closer and she’s the woman who is inspiring this post. 

This woman is almost 60 years old and has a passion for life that is so fun to be a part of. She has been married twice. Divorced once and widowed the second time after over 30 years of marriage. She is a pillar of strength. She stands in her truth. She loves completely and is constantly taking care of everyone else. She has this incredible infectious laugh. She has many people in her life that love and adore her, and I’m willing to guess the number of admirers is far greater than she knows.

She has never had that infamous list that people tend to have of all the things they’d like to do some day. She’s always lived for everyone else. Something is different now, and for the first time in her life, she is living completely for herself. She finally has started creating and acting upon that infamous list. Some of the things on the list may seem so silly, however, they are things that she has never experienced and she’s definitely marking things off. 

Last week we were out and she ordered her first shot ever. No, this isn’t her first alcoholic drink, but she had never had a shot. We laughed as she had this experience for the first time, and commemorated the moment with a picture.  She had never been on the back of a Harley, and a good friend of hers honored her request of marking this one off her list. She wants to get a tattoo in honor of her husband. She also wants to experience Wrigley Field, however that has to happen. I, personally, would love to see her go skydiving. Maybe even go on a crazy, fun international trip to some dream destination.  

So many people have asked where the old Anastasia went, as no one knows who she is right now. I stand by the fact that this Anastasia has always existed and she was more concerned with taking care of everyone else and never focused on the things she wanted. Regardless of how big or small those dreams were. She isn’t a different person because she wants to have some of these experiences. I believe she’s a more complete person. She’s operating more fully from her truth. She wants to live the next 30 years with no regrets and without holding back. 

My challenge for my friends is to start living your next 30 years now. There is no need to wait until you are 60 years old to start living for you. I believe that when we take care of ourselves and honor our dreams, regardless of what those are, we become more complete and can give ourselves more completely to those around us. Life is about discovering who you are and being that person, even in the absence of acceptance from those that you love.

I recently heard a man say, “There is nothing right that you can say to the wrong person, and there is nothing wrong you can say to the right person.” I think this is just living in general. There is no way that one can live authentically and damage their relationships (as long as it doesn’t harm or hurt someone else). As we become more aware of who we are and as we stand for that, those around us will come to love and appreciate us even more. Live in your truth.

I have spent many hours with Anastasia talking about life, crying, laughing, and sharing wisdom. (Yes, I may be a bit younger, but I do have some wisdom to impart.) We are 100% authentic with each other, and I appreciate the space provided to be who I am. She doesn’t judge me, she doesn’t wish me to be a different person, and she encourages all of my crazy ideas. What would have been different if she would have had that in her life?

So, what’s on your list? What have you always wanted to do and you haven’t found the courage to do it yet? What keeps you from living on the edge? Don’t wait. Start now. Find your passion and then go after it…make today the kind of good old days that you’ll be excited to share. Your grandkids will thank you for it.