A new blog… with the same title..

This blog has been sitting for quite a while without any new content. I miss writing terribly. It was my passion. Unfortunately, my life has been a series of events that transported me to a position where I felt depressed and anxious and didn’t feel like writing. Then, the problem became that I was just too busy with work and being a single mom (I’ll get to that in a few minutes). I was living on my own with a teenage boy and then two teenage boys, trying to work, and keep up everything on my own. Now, life is settling a bit and there is finally some predictability again.

I started this blog a couple of years ago, trying to decrease the stigma associated with mental illness. I tried writing educational information about the basic neurochemistry of different mental illnesses. Although potentially interesting, it may not be appealing except when you want to read something factual. I decided my blog should talk about things that matter. Topics that are personal and can teach us something profound about ourselves and God no matter how small or large the moment may be. Those are the things that change people’s lives and hearts. My goal is still to decrease the stigma associated with mental illness but in a more personal way.

Those previous posts are listed under education at the top of the main blog page, so if anyone wants to read about a specific illness or topic, they can. That was too much work and research to get rid of those posts! Whew! So, in honor of being personal and starting the personal nature of this blog, let me give you a little update on what’s been happening since 2020. So, here’s the brief version:

Our family had gone through some horrendous trauma beginning in 2014. That’s a story for another day, and I promise we’ll get there, but for now, I’m actually going to begin at the end.  In October 2020, my husband at the time, dropped a bombshell on me. The bombshell wasn’t like dropping a small missile out of a plane, but it was like a nuclear bomb or MOAB or something really big that destroys everything in its way and ripples out to other areas. Without going into a lot of gory details, he told me he wanted to transition to become female. We separated in January 2021 but lived in the same house. When I finally decided after almost two years that I couldn’t make it work, I moved out and got an apartment. I lived in Salem and one son came with me. The next son followed a couple of months later. The rest of the short story is, I met and married my now husband, Chris. We have so many awesome adventures together and I’m grateful we were brought together.

I wish I could say that I have my spiritual life all figured out in light of the horrible things that have happened to me over the last ten years, but I don’t. I’m still trying to figure out what I know about God through all of this. I go through times where I doubt or I’m mad. It’s not easy for me to write this. To become public. At first, it was horribly embarrassing after he disclosed the information to me, but now I realized it has nothing to do with me. I wish I could tell you that I’m all healed up from the pain and loss of my 22-year marriage, but I can’t. I’m a different person now and that’s not all bad.