Author: ballrebecca03@gmail.com

I had another night of zero sleep, so I made my way to the basement and started going through some boxes from our old house that Mom lived in before I got married. Inside a box was a small photo album wrapped in a Wal-mart bag. I opened it and was taken right back to Middle school. I was back in the eighth grade.

There it was-

A picture of me standing in a strapless black dress, my hair all done in classic nineties style-teased and curled. Big. My make-up was done just right by my cousin who I thought was the prettiest girl in the world. But when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t really see myself.

Myself at that time had wild naturally curly hair that I would brush often to try and straighten. It would be wavy on the sides and wild in the back. It was uncontrollably curly in humid or rainy weather. I couldn’t ever do anything with it so I always looked a little like I was just electrocuted. I knew absolutely nothing about fashion. I had a couple of friends but I was not at all social outside of that group of girls. I didn’t really see anything exceptional or special about me. I was just kind of there. I was basic, at best.

The girls I went to school with, the “in” crowd were beautiful. I used to be so envious of them. They would have their nails done just right at the local salon, had perfect hair that never moved or got messed up, and they wore make-up that made them look like a model. They looked like real life Barbies. And I was always in the corner. Always quiet. Always…Basic.

But there I was, standing in a black dress, with my arm on my escort waiting to walk into the gym one Friday night in front of my peers. I don’t even remember what this event was called or why exactly I was a part of it. But I know I felt like I had something to prove. What that was, I have no idea.

Time is healing. My “basic” is back and I find that my messy bun suits me far more than a hairstyle that needed a bottle of hair spray a day to hold. My make-up is barely worn and truth be told it probably is never done right. I remember that night. I remember wanting to feel and be anyone else. It’s kind of a comfort to know now that that fourteen year old kid then, turned out to be a pretty cool adult. It’s odd how something that was so important to me then is such a teeny memory to me now. But when it does cross my mind, I can giggle and say “You silly girl,” under my breath. I think that’s called growth.

10 years ago when I was thirty-five, I was in a state of depression that I would like to deny. But denial isn’t honest and it isn’t a part of my story that would ever help anybody. This isn’t my proudest story, and I’m ashamed it was ever a part of my life.

In February of 2015, I wasn’t the person you would meet today. I was sullen and Melancholy. I remember, very clearly, leaving work and driving to a photographers house to pick up the newborn pictures of my youngest daughter. She was a month old. My oldest daughter was seven. And I was crying, hysterically, in my car.

I had two daughters, both out of wedlock, both by different men. My relationship was unstable and we were friends, at best. I had a decent education and was doing a job that I loved but wasn’t making any money at. My credit was crap and I was renting a house that came with a garbage landlord because I couldn’t buy a house. My mother who I had been a caretaker of was in a nursing home for physical health rehab. And I felt like the biggest failure in the world.

I had all the pieces there but couldn’t put the puzzle together. And for the very first time in my life, I felt like there was no purpose for me to be here. I felt like my youngest daughter’s dad would be a great parent to both of my kids, my Mom would be better with someone more qualified than me to care for her, my work could find a qualified replacement, and my consistent feeling of drowning would be over. I’d have peace.

The truth is I felt like I was doing everything half-assed. I had taken on the role of “superwoman” long enough that I was beat down. I was tired. I felt like I gave one thousand percent to everything I was doing, and to everyone in my circle, but in reality that was an impossibility.

I called my friend from work and cried to her for twenty minutes. I assume she probably couldn’t understand most of what I said, but I said enough for her to know I wasn’t in a good place. And as much as she loves me she would never tell me this, but I’m sure that call scared her.

Later, I learned it was postpartum depression, but back then I just felt crazy. Literally crazy. I never experienced anything like this before and I haven’t since. But it lit a fire under me to go back to school and my degree to do therapy. I had known for years that would be my career path, but I didn’t wait long to go back to school and get my degree. As a matter of fact I enrolled in classes not long after.

I am forever thankful that I didn’t let the bad feelings from that day get the best of me. A decade later I can tell you I have two of the happiest kids in the world. They are spoiled rotten and tremendously loved. They are crazy about their Momma who is just as crazy about them in return. My youngest daughter’s dad, Cory, is in fact a great dad to both the girls and we are wonderful friends. I went to school and graduated with my Master’s and work as a mental health therapist, and a good one at that. We moved out of that old house into our house now that we share with my husband. My mother passed two years later, in 2017, and surprisingly I am so happy knowing that she is living in the arms of my Lord and savior.

None of these things could have happened if I would have taken that “there is no reason to be here” thought and acted on it. It goes to show you that having a hard day is not the same as having a hard life. I am in love with living, learning and having experiences. I am thrilled to watch my kids hit milestones. I am excited to see where they are going to take their lives and more excited to see the different ways they are going to leave their mark on the world.

I would have missed out on so much if I would’ve taken the off ramp before it was my time. All the hang ups I had were doing nothing but setting me up for bigger blessings that I just couldn’t see then. This is why having faith in your future and believing that God has you in his hands is important. And all of it was in the works ten years ago, when I was thirty-five.

I am not foreign to them. I have been on the receiving end of many, and the cause of a few.

I was fifteen when my heart was first shattered. I was in Ohio babysitting one summer and was very happily smitten with a senior that I met mid way through my freshman year. It was mid-August and the eighteenth birthday of Jason Perry, the best guy I had known thus far in my young life. I wanted to call him, but was driven to my brother’s house where I found my Mother and her boyfriend at the time who had come up from Kentucky. I was given the news that he had been killed in a car accident three days prior. I cried hysterically for hours and then experienced something I had only read about in teen romance books at that time. I had no more tears. I couldn’t cry anymore but had never felt more empty. This was the first I had ever known of grief and I didn’t think I would ever recover from it.

I was a senior in high school before I dated again. I was convinced then I wouldn’t ever date anyone else when I met him. Jeffery Wayne was who I was certain he would be my forever guy. We were together for years. And for the most part, everything about that relationship was bliss, until it wasn’t. We got engaged. We loved hard. We would also fight hard. I hurt to this day knowing how much we hurt each other by the end. My heart was broken not just because I was hurt in some arguments, but because in the end I wasn’t a person who he could have loved anymore. I wasn’t even a person I liked then. Thankfully, time heals all wounds and I’m proud to hear his stories of his life now, his marriage, his kiddo. He’s my pal. I can be proud of that.

Then there was the one ridiculous, insane, blinding relationship in my twenties. The decade where so many important lessons are learned. We’ll call him Shane. The guy that took my heart and ran over it, repeatedly. He was almost twelve years older than me and I thought he was the best thing that ever happened to the planet, let alone me. I was the relationship he had after he divorced. He had been single for a long time, so I thought his heart was healed and could be filled again. I was wrong. To this day, I can hear his response of, “I know you do” to my first “I love you.” He took me to the ocean, for the first time, when I was twenty-three. I was sure he planned this trip to tell me he loved me too. He didn’t. He is a fantastic physical therapist now. He moved away to get his degree. I offered to move with him. He didn’t want that, he needed to focus on school, there wouldn’t be anyone else, and he’d come back every weekend to see me. And every weekend, I’d get dressed up and wait for a call that never came. Years later I saw his wedding announcement in the paper. I was so upset I left work early. To this day that relationship is the only one where I didn’t do anything wrong. I gave him more of myself than I thought I could give anyone. I didn’t know why it wasn’t enough. And I continued not to know why I wasn’t enough for him, until I met his son. The son he could’ve only had with her.

Paul was the guy I wanted to feel everything for and couldn’t. I had no doubts then, or even now, that he would have treated me like royalty. He was my favorite guy to watch sports with, to argue my love of the Reds against his love of the Cubs with, to travel with, to go to concerts with….he was my friend. And I would sit across from him and watch him look at me in the exact way every girl wants a guy to look at her, and I’d feel uncomfortable. He was the guy I wish I could have given everything to, but sadly I couldn’t give him anything but friendship. Sadder still, that friendship has gone by the wayside after his move back to his hometown.

And then we have relationships that happen to us to complete a family, but not necessarily each other. Cory came into my life when my oldest was three. He has been her dad since then. Together we had another daughter. It was the only relationship I have ever had where it wasn’t that I screwed him over and he didn’t do anything bad to me either. We just outgrew one another in that “romantic” regard. As weird as it sounds, without our kids, it would be hard to remember us being in a romantic relationship of any kind. He’s like my unbiological brother. He’s my good friend, he’s my husband’s pal, and he is a world class dad. He completed a family I wanted, in a way I didn’t realize I needed.

When I got married I reached out to people I dated and apologized. I said I was sorry for leading on some people that thought they had a future with me when I knew there wasn’t really anything there. I told others I was sorry for not being able to give them the real version of me when I was with them….because the truth was I had no clue who I was for a long time, even when I thought I did. There were other relationships that ended before they could start. Many unspoken feelings for those people we wish we could have had closure from.

The list of relationships I have found myself in, is longer than I’d ever expected or wanted it to be. But I guess life works itself out in the time frame God has for us, not the one we have made for ourselves. I don’t regret an ounce of this twisted journey I have been on. If I’d made one decision differently, I wouldn’t have finally figured out who I was. I wouldn’t have the three greatest loves of my life to share my home with. So for those people, each of them, I am forever grateful.

Most of us had this assignment in High School-Make a list of things you’d like to do, places you’d like to see, or goals you’d set for yourself that you’d like to see come to fruition.

Most of them included things like get married, graduating college, travel the world,or start a family. Mine was always very literal. In high school it was hard for me to dream outside of high school. I remember mine read more like, graduating high school, finding a job I liked, looking into classes I wanted to take for college, spend more time in Ohio with my siblings, get more comfortable driving in longer distances.

Then in college, which I started much later after I graduated high school, we had the assignment again-with stipulations. You couldn’t write if you wanted to travel to Paris, China and Guam. It would be listed as travel. You couldn’t write in graduate college with my associate degree, bachelor degree, Master’s Degree, or pH.D It would be listed at complete college. There was no ‘padding’ for this assignment and I love those assignments. Because I like challenging myself to know what my goals really were. I remember a lot of what was on this list because thankfully I completed most of them. I wanted to complete college, I wanted to do work with children in therapy at school, at home, on telehealth. I wanted to be a versatile mental health provider so a person could do adequate therapy if they couldn’t get into an office. I wanted to have kids. A husband at this time was not on my agenda. But later, falling in love, was. I wanted to have a loving relationship with the Lord and I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be the person that my Mother who was struggling with stage 4 COPD at the time, needed. I felt the calling to be a wonder woman, and didn’t slink away from that responsibility. It sounded easy in theory, but as I feel those goals are completed now, I work on those things each day to nurture them and care for them.

Now I make my own “goal lists” to keep me on track when life becomes hectic and I feel unmotivated to do more than I have done to this point. This includes caring for my health, sometimes even with the most unrealistic expectations. Be an ongoing cheerleader for my daughters. Have grandchildren that I can help love and care for. Nurturing my marriage. Continue to paint, take pictures and write to be able to use every avenue possible to be expressive and artistic. Continue to learn everything I can because as cliche as it sounds, I feel like education is the greatest thing we can have. Continue growing closer in my faith and in my personal relationship with the Lord. Helping out those who are less fortunate. Continuing to do good and solid work in environments where I can keep people safe and protected from less than favorable living environments like my siblings and I had. If my life had a logo line I would want it to read, “Making a positive difference in this world.”

My husband asked me once why I wasn’t content in my life exactly where it is now. But I am. I am content with things that I have done in my existence, And it’s not that the foundation my life is on isn’t enough, but I will always want to do more. I want to help people. I want to find new ways I I can contribute to society. I want to grow and explore and learn. Those parts of me will never be stopped because I don’t want them to be.

Something I realized in my lifetime is that we are all on a time line. We are all guaranteed to have a birth date and a death date. And the mark that separates those two dates is the time we have to live. And a lot of people do not do that at all, which I find unfortunate. Live your life and make it count.

There is something about the ocean. It’s always been a spiritual thing for me, not just a pretty place to take a vacation. When I am there, I wonder how people can see places like this…and not believe in a higher power? I feel God there. And I always have.

My Momma always wanted to see the ocean. But with her health problems, a long trip like this wasn’t something that we could do. But ever since my first trip to the beach at twenty-three, I felt the ocean connected us. Especially now that she is in Heaven–I can picture her walking alongside the waves that crash on the shore.

And the palm trees that I love so, so much are the perfect accessory to Earth’s most beautiful outfit.

-Love and Light

I never in all of my life thought the word “vain” would fall under the long list of things that I am. Unfortunately, there it is.

When I was younger, I didn’t understand people who had cosmetic surgery, did Botox, spent hundred of on hair and make-up, or got their nails done every week. I actually saw people like that and thought, “yuck!” It was sinful in my opinion, when I would hear about people getting tummy tucks just because they had enough money to do it Who needed a savings account when they could get a butt lift at twenty-five percent off?

I am not vain to this point. But now I have changed my point of view to, hey if you have the resources and it makes you feel better about yourself, do it. No judgement. Personally, I have thought about Botox only once, and that was to try and prevent migraines. I’m not thrilled about these lines in my face, but I have earned every one of them. And I am lucky to report that the deepest ones are laugh lines.

I do some things to change little parts of myself. Gray hairs want to visit me, then I have BOXES of hair dye under my bathroom sink. I have some nails that I may put on for a few days if I have a meeting or something that I need to dress up for, but as a therapist those have to come off soon so I can actually type. Sun spots? No ma’am, my dermatologist already knows those can’t live with or on me. Gym time is nuts sometimes because I go too hard on my legs (my thighs are not my pals) and my tummy (Thank you again, steroids). And make-up lives in my home for the days that I need it.

People have often said that I worry too much about my appearance because I want to make my husband happy and I want him to be attracted to me and be proud when we are seen out in public. All that is true. But he isn’t the main reason. I want to be proud when I am out with anyone. I want my children to think they have a pretty mama. Mostly I want to look in the mirror and say to myself, “looking good, girl.” It’s been a very long time since I have been able to do that.

So, as I have gotten older I no longer pass judgement on those people that choose to live in a salon or opt to get cosmetic surgery. I have decided after years of consideration that just isn’t for me. I have decided to grow older gracefully, and proudly because a lot of people don’t make it to the age I am now. Yes, my health makes me a little chubby (again, steroids….grrrr), life makes my hair have silver streaks (thank you again, Revlon) and having a life filled with laughter caused a few wrinkles, but I will cherish those. And As I continue to save money, the tummy tucks could come. But then I think I’ll just keep that money in savings to make more memories that will cause deeper laugh lines in the future.

-Love and Light

Hi! My name is Rebecca and I am sick. You’d never believe it (most days) if I didn’t tell you, but I have an autoimmune disease. I know the unspoken thing is, that the millions of us in this community want to be heard and we need compassion. As confused as you may be looking at us from the outside, we are just as equally confused on the inside. We don’t understand why our bodies went crazy….we just know that they did.

For those of you who don’t know what the term autoimmune is, it basically means that our bodies fight against us by way of attacking its healthy tissues and organs. Sounds fun, right? I’m actually quite lucky in my diagnosis because I really do mean that most days you’d never know I was struggling with something if I didn’t tell you. Only on my worst flare up days, would I ever dare to let you know that I was in any pain.

In my early twenties I was in a car accident. A very bad wreck where it was nothing but God that kept me alive. In fact I walked away from it….to an ambulance who insisted I get checked out. I had bruising, a small fracture in my knee, and a mild concussion. My friend with me at the time walked away with only some bruising and a few burn marks from the air bag.

A few years from that accident I was still having pain in my leg. A doctor told me he believed that my knee didn’t heal properly, and that was causing the pain. That didn’t seem to make sense considering the pain wasn’t consistent and sometimes it would tingle like when a person’s foot goes to sleep. But, I wasn’t a medical professional so I said, “Okay,” and would continue on my way to a second opinion.

Seven years of testing and being made to feel like an absolute lunatic, an eye doctor told me, “I see something in your optic nerve.” Never would I have thought that my discharge papers would have read: Diagnosis-Multiple Sclerosis. I was thirty-five, I had a seven year old and a ten month old daughter, and my life felt like it got flipped upside down.

Over the course of the next couple of years I still fought with this diagnosis. If it was there, fine, we’ll deal with it, but some doctors said, “lesions are located in the wrong places on my c-spine and in my brain for that dignosis.” I second opinioned myself long enough and I needed treatment no matter the issue. Lesions are now “in the right places” but I’m fortunate that I don’t have many considering that everybody has some.

In 2017 I had two of disks in my cervical spine removed because I had a nerve that was compressed. A year later, I was in pain again. I tried to be active in the gym or by going for walks and or going on hikes, but I couldn’t kick the pain. Nothing was really getting rid of it, there were just days that were better than others. Very recently, within the last ninety days, I found out that the pain I had been having stemmed from my second autoimmune disease: Ankylosing Spondylitis.

With that being said, these are not a death sentence for me. My MS is not the progressive kind, and frankly I’ll likely have more of an issue with AS because my back isn’t in great shape. Steroids are a part of my life now, which makes me a little chubbier, red and puffier than I’d like to be, but considering how bad it could be, that’s a bee sting. When I do have pain, I have pain. It can get severe, it has brought me to tears, and can last for days sometimes. But I also know this community. Many use walkers, wheelchairs, or need on pain medication everyday, and don’t have the best prognosis. I have bad days, but I have a pretty great life.

Remember that a lot of people have issues you might not know anything about. Mental health issues, physical health issues, etc. We don’t all wear advertisement signs telling the world our issues. So always be kind, try to be listen and be understanding, and maybe sprinkle some compassion when it’s needed.

-Peace and Love

This is a grounding techinque to help reduce anxiety in the present moment and in your immediate environment. I often try to add deep breathing in with this as well. Here’s what you can try when you start feeling anxious.-

*List five things you can see. Say them out loud and describe them.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List four thing you can touch. Focus on the sensation of touch; how does the fabric feel of your clothes, the chair your sitting on, etc

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List three things you can hear. Quiet your mind and focus. Try to notice the small noises you don;t usually pay attention to.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List two things you can smell.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

*List one thing you can taste. Maybe you can taste something from breakfast or your toothpaste.

Take a deep breath, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

This works because you are actively training your brain to pull focus from what was upsetting you and focus on the task at hand. This can be repeated as often as needed.

-Love and Light

Five ways to tell if you may have high functioning anxiiety-

1. You super likeable, in fact most people love you. But you tend to people please too much. You find it incredibly difficult to say no.
2. You often obsess over trival things that most people wpildn’t give a second thought about.
3. You beat yourself up over every single mistake you make. When you make a mistake you fear that you’ll continue to make it over and over.
4. You are fully capable to do anything you want. You are able to reach for and achieve your goals. But you often don’t try because you don’t believe in yourself.
5. Your thoughts are consumed, almost always, with the worst case scenario.

It’s awfully hard to have a happy and healthy life with these things weighing you down. Try to work on that. Need tips on how to deal with anxiety? Stay tuned. ..

As a therapist I hear things like, “It’s too late to do XYZ now,” or “If I were younger this is what I’d change in my life,” pretty often. As a human, the thoughts of, “I’m running out of time” scare me to death. Well, I suppose what really scares me is that I’m at the point where my life is half over and that I’ve already lived more days than I have left. Of course there is no way to know this, but let’s assume I live to what the life expectancy is for most people. That’s a hard reality. So I run, as fast as I can, to live as much life as possible until I can’t anymore.

The beautiful thing is that every day that God wakes you up, you have a new opportunity to do XYZ. This gives me motivation to do things that bring me happiness, even if I am doing some of them alone. Life has value and I don’t intend to miss any beautiful moments because I feel “too old” to have them.

I had planned on going to college directly out of high school, but it turned out that I needed to work for awhile before I could enroll. So at twenty-three when most people were graduating, I was starting. After getting my associate degree, I needed to leave school and work and did so until I started my BA program which I didn’t graduate from until I was thirty-one. After I got my Bachelor degree I was right back to work. And it took until I was thirty-nine to earn my M.Ed.

Childern was always in my plan. If everything else in my life fell apart, I knew I wanted kids and I knew I’d be an amazing mother. My upbringing taught me exactly what not to do, so I felt like I’d been in training for children all my life. I had my first daughter at twenty-eight. and my second at thirty-five. I had been told I was a high risk pregnancy with my second because of being in an “advanced age.” At thirty-five, people I graduated with were grandparents or had adult children.

And despite being previously engaged and in a couple of long term relationships, I was forty-one before I ever got married. Most people I knew had been married and divorced at least twice and still wasn’t living happily. That was something you could never deny about me; I didn’t do things I didn’t want to do and I took my time to make sure I was making a good solid decision at the time.

The point is to not allow time to work against you but for you. If you’re not on the same track as everyone else, who cares? Every day, every hour, and each minute that you are alive you have opportunities to create the life you want. It’s not too late, and when it is, you won’t wake up in the morning. Stop complaining about what you don’t have right now and get your butt in motion to work toward what you want.

“How time passes depends on how you move.” Albert Einstein