Tag: love

  • thankful

    Arapaho National Forest

    I am aware that most of the time in writing at least, I am the bringer of doom-and-gloom.

    Today, though, I am grateful.

    I have a gratitude practice that I do most days in my journal app. I just don’t publish it because most of the time it has things that I wouldn’t necessarily want the world to know.

    Here’s today’s gratitude list:

    1. I am grateful for Jared.
    2. I am grateful for my marriage to Jared.
    3. I am grateful for Porter.
    4. I am grateful for Liam.
    5. I am grateful for Oliver.
    6. I am grateful for Abby.
    7. I am grateful for Trixie.
    8. I am grateful for Mow.
    9. I am grateful for Nancy.
    10. I am grateful for Bess.
    11. I am grateful for my side of the family.
    12. I am grateful for Jared’s side of the family.
    13. I am grateful Jared has a good job.
    14. I am grateful our kids are getting stellar education.
    15. I am grateful Porter has a safe place to live in Athens.
    16. I am grateful Liam got into UGA.
    17. I am grateful Oliver had such a good time doing the play, “Oliver” at school.
    18. I am grateful that all three of our children are healthy.
    19. I am grateful that we have a home.
    20. I am grateful that we have a nice home.
    21. I am grateful that we have reliable transportation.
    22. I am grateful that Jared and the boys helped me clean up our house yesterday.
    23. I am grateful we are all physically able to clean and do household chores.
    24. I am grateful we have enough to eat.
    25. I am grateful for good friends.
    26. I am grateful for our church family.
    27. I am grateful to be a photographer.
    28. I am grateful to like to write.
    29. I am grateful to be learning to leave the past in the past.
    30. I am grateful we can pay our bills.
    31. I am grateful that I am learning to like living in Carrollton more.
    32. I am grateful Porter and Liam have their driver’s licenses.
    33. I am grateful Porter and Liam are good drivers.
    34. I am grateful to be having Costco deli Mac and cheese for lunch today.
    35. I am grateful to be alive.
    36. I am grateful to be 46 years old.
    37. I am grateful to have learned a lot about caring for my mental health over my adult lifetime.
    38. I am grateful for healing.
    39. I am grateful for time alone to think.
    40. I am grateful to have been married to Jared for 20 years.
    41. I am grateful for good choices.
    42. I am grateful for a good night’s sleep.
    43. I am grateful that my whole family has enough clothes to wear.
    44. I am grateful for my education.
    45. I am grateful for appreciating history: my own, my family’s, and the broader world.
    46. I am grateful I was a religious studies major.
    47. I am grateful it’s not too late.
    48. I am grateful for my life.
    49. I am grateful for love.
    50. I am grateful that today is a good day.

    And with that, I am going to focus on today, today.

    I wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving.

  • protein bar in the bed kind of morning

    I don’t take photos like this very often. But as I draft this post it is 11:18 AM and I am eating my favorite kind of Kirkland protein bar in the bed. Because it is that kind of morning.

    And as it happens, I went to bed in the most awfully despondent kind of mood last night. The kind where I become uber dramatic and morose about the future; I will not repeat what was said.

    It was the kind of morning where I did not set an alarm; Jared woke me up long after he’d woken the boys up, to get me to take my morning medicines. He knew he had to do this because if he did not, I might or might not actually take said medications (note: it was my thyroid meds so the likelihood of me taking them was high. But still).

    And because Jared loves me and spoils me rotten, for breakfast because he knew comfort foods were in order, he brought me a baggie of Cheez-It’s and my favorite Kirkland Chocolate and Peanut Butter Protein Bar.

    And I promptly fell back asleep until after 10 AM.

    Because it’s difficult to maintain hope right now.

    But, I do have two goals for today:

    1. finish the stitching on my newest jute bag’s liner
    2. Get my jewelry collection back in order, because it is in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about it.

    That’s true, actually, about our house and my body, too; both are in the kind of embarrassing state that does not reflect my feelings about either of them.

    Jared told me, as he frequently does, to “be kind to yourself” before he left.

    So that’s today’s goal. Even if today is starting at 11:28 AM.

  • november 12, 1998

    Today is a trauma anniversary from 1998.

    November 12, 1998 was a beautiful day today, just like today, November 12, 2025. It was cooler that morning though, as I recall. 

    I took the photo above, of the railroad tracks, in that morning sunlight on November 12, 1998. 

    And I wrote the following on October 30, 2025, in correspondence with the perpetrator from that day, edited for my own protection: 

    “This will seem out of the blue for you. It is not for me.

    There will be no absolution, no forgiveness. I never actually responded directly to your statements last December imploring me multiple times desperately to “not be mad at you for the things you did.” I simply wanted to see if I was strong enough to face you last December. And then I did the thing I always do in the aftermath: I retreated into myself, doubting myself, deferring to you all these months after. 

    The truth is, it is my literal cross to bear that my beloved alma mater continues to “honor” someone who never probably should have graduated from its halls 25 years ago. 

    It has been my weakness, my own fragile mental illness so very well-documented at this point, that has led me to, time and again, try to befriend you.

    Your character is irredeemable, apparently. Not one thing has changed in 27 years.

    There weren’t mixed signals, as you said, on Monday the 20th. The truth is, you can’t read me anymore because I’m stronger than you. The trauma bond is broken, thank God.

    Goodbye,_____.”

    Today is that person’s birthday. He committed a trauma so vile that I won’t write it here. 

    And I withdrew with hardship due to my psychosis less than a month later, and managed to get that withdrawal the week of finals. 

    And my psychiatrist of the time who documented all then, was astounded to hear the complete story when I went back to him in 2022, about how it all played out. He said then that so much more made sense about that time, to hear what I had to say. 

    And last December that same perpetrator, when I wanted to see if I could face him, committed an equally vile trauma, I believe on purpose.

    In both cases, Jared says he is an opportunist.

    And on October 20, 2025, that person made professional missteps that really kind of shocked me, except that I knew even in the moment that he was making a severely miscalculated power play. 

    And that day, too, unprompted, he went on and on about how his program at our school was the most stressful time of his life. As if it was some sort of excuse for his behavior back in the day. 

    I wrote the following on Facebook earlier in the day today, with links to a song from Elton John’s “Love Songs” album and the “Sleepless in Seattle” soundtrack. These were the soundtracks that he played over and over in 1999 and 2000, repeat ad nauseum, as a grooming tactic. 

    “A couple of odes to my 19 year old self who could not defend herself, and also that 19-23 year old self who tried time and again to walk away, and finally did at age 23. These songs do not mean to me what the lyrics would indicate. 

    The first time I wrote this draft I ended the above paragraph with “Maybe someday I will talk about it.”

    Suffice it to say for now that groomers are very smart, and choose their soundtracks very, very very carefully, and repetitively. I cannot listen to these songs (or the soundtracks they are on) for the rest of my life without ever thinking about one specific person.”

    And today November 12, 2025, has been a beautiful day. I got to see my very nice orthopedic PA about my scoliosis, and I got to drive through my very favorite parts of Atlanta, that city I love.

    And it occurred to me, that finally Atlanta is, for me, not the scene of sadness and trauma and despair.

    Atlanta is my city, not his; Atlanta has meant what it means to my family for generations, not his. Atlanta– my very own alma mater– is mine, not his. It is my family that began a relationship with characters from that alma mater probably the decade he was born.

    That man has no claim to anything he can’t buy. He knows nothing of love, of loyalty, of kindness, of simply doing the right thing.

    I’m ready to talk about it.

  • laundry day is probably going to be four days long

    The title says it all.

    On Sunday evening, October 19, I threw in a load of laundry. I knew I’d be busy on dedicated laundry day, Monday the 20th, so I was trying to get ahead so my whole routine wouldn’t be blown to smithereens.

    I was fooling myself. Not because the premise of the idea wasn’t good, but because Monday the 20th threw me into a whirlwind of emotions I can only tangentially talk about at the moment. Mostly self-destructive despair and self-loathing.

    I think I actually did a load of laundry on the 20th, or I actually switched the laundry, early that morning.

    And, maybe three loads of laundry have gotten done since then. Maybe four.

    Monday is still laundry day. But, I am starting laundry day today, on Saturday, so that maybe laundry day will be done by Tuesday or early Wednesday– we have that much laundry. If I finish it on Monday, all the better but I am not holding my breath.

    Dana K. White from A Slob Comes Clean was the first person who I listened to about laundry day. My aunt said years ago she tried to tell me once it would be easier to just have a laundry day when the boys were little, but I have no memory of that.

    But, Dana says that a first laundry day, in no way, is likely to be only one day if you have an actual family you are doing laundry for.

    And in my experience, she’s 100% right.

    So, here I am, it’s 12:46 PM on Saturday November 8, 2025, and I am started Monday’s the 10th’s laundry day at 11:30 this morning.

    Because I was doing pretty good before the 20th. And I feel pretty good this morning, aside from feeling like my routine is gone to crap.

    And, this afternoon, there is a maternity session and it is exclusively a Cinelux lens maternity session. I am taking along the Minolta lens just in case I need it, but I don’t anticipate needing it. A former bride approached me about maternity photos several months ago, about the time I was shutting down the business and sold the bulk of my lenses, and I turned them down. But I reached out later and showed her some of the photos with the lenses and told her it wouldn’t be a typical session but that I was willing to do it for free if I could use these lenses and use them for my portfolio, and she agreed. So here we are, and it is a beautiful day with perfect weather, and I get to have a Cinelux session.

    The idea was that if the photos turned out, I might decide to take on limited Cinelux sessions in the future.

    I already used this lens once in a session, a few years ago now. I just chickened out and got complacent with my autofocus lenses.

    I forgot to slow down and enjoy photography.

    And, for the occasion, I downloaded again the UnScripted app, my posing Bible I used for so very long. I am very excited about the poses I found.

    Eight years in, I no longer feel any shame whatsoever in the fact that coming up with natural poses on my own is no, in fact, natural for me.

    But, I found the UnScripted app when it was first barely out of beta, brand new, years ago and it has served me very well. I paid for a lifetime membership around 2020 in fact, when it was dirt cheap– definitely not what it is now. It was probably 1/5 of what it is now — at $499– or else I wouldn’t have paid for it at all.

    Looking back on this week: there were nerves about the potential health scare. There was leftover fallout from meeting with someone I shouldn’t have on October 20. There was fallout from having told that person exactly what I think of them in writing since apparently I am incapable of doing so to their face though at least I can, indeed, face them. But, also: the time change hit me really, really hard, really, really suddenly.

    I do not do well with limited daylight hours. Which is why I use a light therapy lamp to begin with.