Graduating from school at 8th grade, the future looked extremely dark. All I could see was that there would now be no escape from my parents

And I keep hearing my dad's voice "It's just all in your head!" A phrase I often heard when I wasn't feeling well....

If anger consisted of gooey globs, I'd be flinging it at quite a number of people right now. And...I guess I wasn't expecting to receive s

Two things have been coming to mind lately: 1. I have been copying recipes off Pinterest to fill my recipe box with healthy recipes so that I can hopefully combat the overwhelm when it comes to cooking and trying to find a recipe for which I have all the ingredients. As I was writing I kept remembering a time when I was still quite young and looking at recipes in old Country Women magazines and thinking about how good some of them look and I can still hear my dad saying that

Pretty gruesome, isn't it? I don't know what color pain is but I know how it feels. It is heavy. It hurts. Sometimes...

Where does this pressure come from? From people's good intentions. Friends implying their opinions. My own internal dialogue from...

Aggression dressed up in a pretty package is like poison in a relationship. We may be unaware of our passive aggression but we are still...

Be brave. Be strong. Be courageous. Fight for yourself. You are worth it.

When you trust someone and they "flip" on you as in saying one thing and then changing it later it undermines and cripples your trust...

...because she wasn't sure He would actually show up and help her in her pain and need.

What she is trying to do is protect me from more pain, more heartache, more invalidation by those close to her that she dares to share her c

Today is one of those days that are really out of sorts. It could be triggered by any number of things. Two of the culprits may be the dreams I had the last 2 days. The third one be a conversation I had with a friend last night...and there could be more that I'm not aware of... Yesterday morning my dream was schoolwork related. From what I can remember it started with me helping a mom who lost connection with her young school age daughter as I worked as a maid for her. Part w

See this beautiful young girl? Her name is Careful Protector. She is feeling shy and would rather be hiding amongst the trees instead of out in the open where she can be seen. She was willing to let me paint her picture even though it was hard for her to be so vulnerable. I met her last night in therapy session with my IFS therapist friend. Now that I finally got to meet her, I realize I've seen her so often. I just didn't know who she was and her actions often frustrated me.

I have a friend. She is a police officer in the city where I live. I told her she is welcome to stop if she is nearby and has a few minutes to chat. Today she stopped by and we had a nice chat. It made my day to see her and to chat with her. I had been working on updating addresses and phone numbers in various aspects of my online life since having just moved and changed my phone number and I was stressed. My budgeting has piled up several months too and I had shoved it all

This kinda depicts my feelings of today...moving out of state and some of the things that happened leading up to it and after make me feel like I have indeed escaped the claws of the enemy... One day out of the blue I got a letter from an older Mennonite lady in another state saying that I shall write her back that she'd like to get back in touch again. About 14+ years ago this lady would sit in on my sessions while her husband "counseled" me. She had taught me how to do macr

It is rather bewildering and heartbreaking to be dreaming of a new friend and an old friend who betrayed you shows up and acts like nothing ever happened...the one who told me that because we became friends through church therefore since I don't go to church (her church) we cant be friends anymore, implying I'm not a good christian because I don't go to church... She used to be my best friend a few short months ago. We used to go hiking together several times a month. We did

Tonight I am furiously angry at the injustices done to me by the institutions and unlicensed counseling places run by the plain people. Some of those things are illegal as well. Just knowing that, makes the wrong done to me seem even more violent. Even though they never hit me... The times I spent in those places are shrouded in the fog of disassociation but there are some things I do remember. And some of those things have done lots of damage, some of which I'm still trying

Tonight I was on my way home from horse therapy and since I'm now living at my friend's house I decided to find a closer way home than I normally go, but I was not expecting where it would take me... As I came off the exit ramp and started down the road I all of a sudden realized where I was...an area where I used to go hiking with an older lady from my last church...I didn't think much about it and kept following my GPS...and wouldn't you know it, it took me the same directi

On my mind tonight.... Sometimes...well, often, I find myself being so hard on myself for being so scared of the lady downstairs. Like, I should just get over it, right? When someone is anxious or scared about something, there's usually a reason underneath...and so I have discovered this for myself... I've been dreading letting the landlord know that I'm moving because I've been afraid that when the lady downstairs finds out she will bother me to no end...and ask questions...

What do you do when you get a phone call from someone who treated you horribly? I don't answer. I let it go to voice mail. I listened to it. She said she wants to spend time with me. I remember how she was the only friend I felt I had at one point. She let me stay at her house so I didn't have to move back into my parent's house after I had taught school in another community as an escape from my parents house. She was the one who helped me move to the state I now live in. She