Category: family dysfunction

Letters Of Healing #2 – Letting It Out Is Important Too

I have a bad habit, I’ve acquired over the past few years: I bottle things up so people don’t leave me. Hi, I’m Magz and I have a problem. A two-prong issue, actually, I am not processing my feelings, and I am irrationally concerned about rejection. It’s not good. I was taught to believe by family and society that it was because of divorce, specifically placing the blame on my dad, and to be honest, I believed that for a long time. But that answer leaves all of us who have experienced that or who fear rejection in this weird pseudo-reality of things being out of our control, which doesn’t help. It turns the intensity up all while limiting personal growth. How can you move on if this is baked into your personality, right? I mean, everyone who knows your story will instantly know your flaws – your parent or parents “didn’t love you enough” to stick around. Yeah, this is a toxic bunch of nonsense.

So what has helped me get more clarity on this, honestly, is learning about what makes my mind tick and how I can work with myself to be healthier. For me specifically, learning about neurodivergence, and specifically the possibility of undiagnosed autism or adhd, has helped me understand that there might be more to my penchant for brutal honesty than just being an off-putting person or a bad person. It might be that my brain simply processes differently, yet because I want to fit in – masking, I fall into people-pleasing patterns to “fit in” with those around me. Similar to learning about high-masking autism in females, with adhd, there is a sensitivity to rejection and difficulty with emotional regulation that makes processing the rejection more difficult. I can see these in the ways I have interacted with people throughout my life, especially family members.

I get stuck in these camps of either feeling the need to be brutally honest, especially if I feel an emotional meltdown coming on from bottling everything up, or I clam up and shove it down, no matter how much it hurts to “please” the person. All this does is create a cycle of emotional repression, overwhelm, and meltdown behind the scenes. Loneliness, anger, bitterness, shame, fear of rejection, and pain. This is not what a healthy person looks like.

For too long, I’ve mistaken being “tough” with being healthy. It’s been the one-two punch of finding Elena Carroll’s reflective essays and watching Scrubs for these to start clicking in my brain. I find myself pinballing between being like Dr. Dorian, who lets people like Elliott walk all over him, and Dr. Cox, who shoves it all down and sinks into a pit of loneliness behind the shadows because dealing with my problems makes me feel uncomfortable.

My constant dysfunctional relationship, which gets more unhinged every year, my relationship with my mom is the place where I see all these problematic habits come to the surface. I will bottle something up for a decade, afraid of the confrontation, and then one day I will just explode about something else. To be fair, when I do blow up, it’s usually after my mom has contributed to my anger with a gem of guilt or a little nugget of criticism on some part of my personality. Like recently, I was told she was intentionally withholding her health updates after two concerning ER visits, because I am too “sensitive” to handle anything after I told her it has been scary thinking of being sick because I love her. Yep, I see where I have learned to shove everything down – you can’t be weak and express emotions, that’s for losers.

So where does that leave me? Well, I can either choose Option #1 – be honest about my frustrations and stand up for myself, which comes with consequences, Option #2 – bottle it up and fake a smile, all while my shoulders knit themselves into a stress knot and my jaw clenches like a bear trap, Option #3 – I avoid the relationship for months at a time and pretend like nothing happened. Lately, I’ve been thinking, why can’t I just be honest as it comes, instead of bottling up to the point where I am furious? I don’t live there anymore, there are no consequences for being honest gently, and in the moment that I disagree? That would be healthier, and somehow, over all these years, I forgot how to do this. Because adulthood is lonely. Grief is lonely. Sometimes that fear of rejection and people pleasing is all that you crave just to keep a relationship with a loved one steady, because you miss how easy it was when you were a kid.

I think health, though, might be more important than the illusion of peace, because I have not been managing stress well over the last ten years. My mental health took a toll, and so did my physical health. I’ve stored so much stress in my body, pretending I was happy about things that hurt me because I didn’t want to hear how I was different, not enough like my mom’s family, or weak for being sensitive, or a bad person for getting angry sometimes. I’ve had the same knot at the base of my neck for 5 years, which is not healthy at all. So what am I doing with all these revelations about who I am and what is healthy and what is not? I am slowly shifting through it. I’m taking space and a break from some of my more trying family relationships to get this stress worked out of my body and find my calm again. My husband, friends, and my beloved bun deserve better than for me to let things out of my control take a toll on my mental and physical health. Especially when they are the ones who pick up the pieces when I fall apart.

How do you manage stress? Do you struggle with people pleasing or bottling up emotions? Have people ever told you to change who you are to fit their standards?

Unmasking is Hard

The term “unmasking” was new to me when I first learned of my neurodivergence. I saw it on Pinterest and Instagram, displayed in captions and little relatable memes, but what did it mean?

I felt the full experience of what it means a few nights ago when I was invaded once again by rising anxiety, flooding through my mind, and this pressure, invisible yet firm, closing in on me. I knew deep down that I was close to having a meltdown, from environmental things that a neurotypical would brush off. I also knew that I couldn’t melt down; it wasn’t safe to be me. I couldn’t stim, that would be looked down upon with pity. I had to put on that mask, the normal-brained facade I’ve studied my whole life to become invisible and just blend into the sea of normies.

I feel this pressure to mask the most when I am interacting with my family. My mom and her side, for a brief time, my dad and his side. It’s a quagmire, being the offspring of two very domineering, neurotypical, narcissistic humans.

It’s a lot of work. Why am I sharing this? Because if you feel this way, you are not alone. I see you. I support you. I am rallying for you and I to make it through these moments holding space for us to be as we are, and to feel like we are enough. We don’t need to be fixed, we need to cope with this wild world that doesn’t understand us.

Like an ill-fitting garment, the clothes are the problem not your body. Your brain is not the problem, the world favors one way of doing things and that doesn’t make it right. Being louder doesn’t make your point more correct. There is nothing wrong with who you are and who you were created to be.

I hope wherever you are, this finds you well. That you are safe, loved, valued, and being kind to yourself. The world needs more kindness. Know that I love you and support you. Take the mask off, breathe, stim, and find peace.

Until next time ❤

Phone Calls in the Smartphone Era

As a Zillennial, on the cusp of both Gen Z and Millennials, my generation(s) have been stereotyped by the older folks as being afraid of phone calls, preferring a text to a voice on the other end of the line. And for a while, I’d say, yeah, I fell into this place of preferring a text as a teenager or chatting online, in my moody, insecure teenagedom, but then the phone call became this novelty of a thing. Calling someone seemed so serious, I became apprehensive if my question or answer was “serious” enough to warrant a call.

I didn’t want to be a burden, which is such a strange upside-down world from childhood, when the phone was the only way to contact your friends. I remember in the days of late elementary school, email being another exciting tool to communicate, like letters, but now email has become an intrusive contact on my smartphone. And maybe, that’s because email felt like real mail, when you could only check it on your window of computer time on the shared family computer. There was a boundary between online and offline. My mind has been marinating on this since watching a Theresa Yea video called, Why the Internet Will Never Be Cool Again.

I’m currently stuck in an endless game of phone tag, which is quite common when I am talking regularly to one of my parents. With my dad, it was a long game of waiting for that perfect window of nothingness. His layover in a city he found boring, I’d keep him company as he complained about life. Entertaining him and supporting him in his time of boredom, because if he were home, he was on the go every single moment. If I needed him, he would usually call me back on a drive home with a small set window for his attention span or horrible service.

My mom, in a similar fashion, gets stuck in these loops going non-stop. Except she answers the phone in loud restaurants, in the car, or at events, just to tell me that she is not available. She will even talk to other people around her, making me wait, or will pass the phone to the people she is with, as if I want to say hi to them when I really just wanted to converse with her about something important.

There is nothing like being on the brink of a panic attack and having your mom pass you to an acquaintance to say hi instead of listening to your crisis. Especially when you called because you thought they were home and available, but really, your loved one is always on the go. Not emotionally available. I hate calling and being met with passive-aggressive pressure to stop talking and let her go, even though she chose to answer the phone and enter into conversation like she was available at first, only to break that illusion as soon as you answer “how you are doing”. Read the room, kid, but honestly, how can I? This is particularly confusing when my parents both let me know how they would prefer me to live closer so I would be more available, but would it matter?

The video call and the text have become two of the most intrusive manners of communication, because a text should be responded to promptly and a video call, in her mind is perfectly normal to answer in a public setting like a restaurant or car without letting me know before I speak, what I believe I am saying in private to a person who is available to talk, to be swiftly gotcha-ed by the fact that I am not alone, and my privacy is not respected. The video call is like a two-edged sword; it is nice to connect with friends and family over long distances, but it is also a tool that hinders connection. It drops in unannounced and forces conversations that should be private to be open to the room.

I crave the dedicated correspondence of my grandma’s era, when she moved to another town, which meant that calling her mom would be categorized as long distance, and so she and her mom wrote letters to each other every day. I haven’t had that kind of connection with my mom since she got remarried, and I miss that feeling of connection, of being heard. It’s something that carried through my Grandma and my Aunt Florence’s generation, my phone calls with them being so intentional and full of connection. It was a visit, a catch-up, and was treated with hard boundaries. The common thread here is the lack of a smartphone.

Phones were still seen as tools to converse, not mini-computers full of distractions. I find this intentionality coming back to conversations I have with my friends; there are boundaries and moments set aside to converse without distractions. We have planned phone calls or dedicated pauses to set aside other tasks to write longer messages, like letters, through messaging apps. It has improved our communication and respect for each other’s time, in a way that I wish I could have with my parents. I just want to connect and not be connected. I want to converse and not call. I want to correspond and not text.

It is all a pipe dream, because this is never going to happen, they are just too enamoured with technology and the endless possibilities of their boomer generation, and the financial leg up that their generation has to be on the go and do things nearly constantly. We live in two different worlds, and that makes me sad.

Editing My Manuscript from 2017

Yes, I finally did it. I found the manuscript and shifted through the 250+ pages to wrangle this story of years past down to a neat 187 single-spaced. It was a mental challenge to revive these characters I knew so well and remember who they were and why they were important to me. More important to me than I think I gave them credit in years past. Saoirse, Kinvara, and Biorn were characters I felt connected to because they were just as lost as I was. They had life toss them about, treading water for meaning in the dramatic family civil war they found themselves in. It mirrored life. It foreshadowed the losses I knew were to come and helped me sort out the mysteries of my own life in an imagined Viking Age Ireland full of shifting alliances and invaders.

After all this time, why now? I have two other novel ideas I want to explore yet I felt unable to write again until Udal Cuain was laid to rest. The leviathan of the past which helped me forward when I was stuck. I believe I needed creative closure. It was a manuscript without an ending. I revised and revised the story in 2018, taking it into darker waters. It became too dark for me to continue as my life was moving from darkness towards the light once again, there were things from history and Irish Celtic culture, as well as Norse culture I was unwilling to interact with anymore.

When I was first working on this project, I was steeped in historical research from my independent study about Early Medieval Ireland and fresh from watching the television show Vikings. It was a time when I was hiding behind a shell, numb from unresolved trauma that I was a shell of myself. Hidden away from my true self, masking and unhealthy. The violence of this show and the research on Irish pagan rituals were something I ignored, even though I cannot think of them without shuttering now. These were things, details I needed to remove from my own writing to find my own peace. Not to censor it but instead to be authentic to who I am. If you want to learn more, this novel will just be a stepping stone for more research because I cannot in good conscience tell a story with such evil and bring that evil to you the reader.

The bulk of my revisions were just that, removing things I no longer felt comfortable with to have the story reflect who I am now.

Being in the present, and seeing through the time how I have found peace in my personal life since writing Udal Cuain in 2017, allowed me to give it an ending. I didn’t know where to leave my characters when I was walking through a season of confusion. I see now that I had to read more of my own story before I could write their story.

Why am I sharing this novel on my blog instead of shopping it around to publish or publishing it as an E-book? I don’t know if this novel is something at this time that I am pleased with as a representation of who I am as a writer. It was a story that I needed to write for myself but not something I felt like it was a story I wanted to have out there for people to rip apart. I don’t feel ready to put it to market so I am sharing it on this blog for you the reader to read if you would like to do so.

Analyzing how I wrote the story and talking through the novel planning process has been more rewarding than seeing it as a published book. It was a process that gave me meaning then and still rewards me now for the things I learned through trying something new. When I started jotting down ideas for Udal Cuain I was a non-fiction writer, preferring essays and historical research as a medium to write, as well as a creative expression like poetry. World building? Not a thing I thought I could do, nor did I think that creating characters and crafting dialogue would be as fun as I thought. If you have an idea, go for it! You will surprise yourself by what the discipline of writing and creating will do for your mind. It’s challenging, confidence-building, and relaxing to escape into a world of your imagination. I believe you can do it!

Thank you, reader, for supporting me and viewing those Udal Cuain novel writing posts. It gave me the encouragement to go back and finish what I started many years ago.

A Shy Girl Goes To The DMV

I’d say this photo, featured above accurately represents how I feel in situations like going to the DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) to renew my driver’s license. It’s a blur of moments, faces, government jargon, and touch screens. The big stack of papers signed and passed along in the process of closing on a house is more etched in my brain than the 20 minutes at my local DMV location. There is something about the dull, harsh lighting and bland walls covered in bulletins, electronic screens, and directions. It’s overstimulating and yet underwhelming. It is not a place I feel comfortable in.

This feeling began many years ago during the driver’s permit test process, in a different DMV, equally dull and filled with too many signs and screens. There was always one piece of information I was missing. A document my mom and I forgot, or a process out of order. The test was deceptively easy to study and terrifyingly tricky when taken, and I almost missed too many answers due to the sheer amount of distraction of the dull yet harsh environment.

This time, was one of those such times. Renewing in 2017 was easy, it was a new DMV with friendly people. Renewing in 2021 was an absolute breeze because there was no need to go in for the photo, just click and pay at home. It spoiled me. Renewing this time in 2025 was one of those DMV experiences fraught with tricky trip-ups.

Not surprising for me, it’s been a place I have been thwarted for years, from nervously failing the parallel park portion because I was afraid of my test proctor and his gruff demeanor or forgetting to keep my permit up-to-date and having to renew to test to wait four months for another testing time. The government process is nothing if not inefficient and a war of attrition.

The gauntlet was thrown down. Waiting for Christmas and New Year to pass, I renewed my license online and got stuck in a loop of changing my address. I then could not reach the process to renew anymore, because it was updating my address. So I mailed my renewal and waited. I then received two separate address updates for the license set to expire, but no update on my renewal.

Two weeks passed and I began to anxiously check the internet for a timeline – usually within 15 business days. Oh no, business days…I sent it in the mail on Jan 2, how many days would spend in the USPS system? Then a former president passed, delaying mail service. Was renewing it a month in advance not enough?! We then checked online, showing it had been renewed. Phew! But, when? I received another piece of mail, updating my voter registration automatically, but no temporary license or camera card.

Each day as the mail came, I ran to check it like Ralphie waiting for his Little Orphan Annie secret decoder pen. I began to worry, was my license going to expire waiting for it to show? Was it all going to unravel because of the sluggish pace of the government institution? How was I going to follow behind in my car when my husband’s car went for inspection in February? Was it back to walking for me?

Then one beautiful day I heard the mailbox close with a slam (it’s a very old cast iron mailbox), I scurried from my work room and descended the stairs with the promise of the future in my eyes. My delight was palpable as my hand pulled a DMV envelope from the mailbox. The envelope tore with ease, revealing the temporary license and camera card in my hands. All was saved!

On the next good weather weekend (it’s been a winter of snow squalls) we made our way to the DMV for the last battle left, the camera portion. Now as a shy person, this is the part that still makes me want to recoil. I never liked picture day at school. When a camera is pointed at me I can’t smile normally. I feel like a spotlight bears down upon me, filling me with dread. My smile looks unnatural, sometimes like a grimace if I smile with teeth. If I smile with a closed mouth like I did throughout my braces era, it looks uncomfortable, my shyness written across my face.

Filled with shyness, I sallied forth, pulling my ticket in preparation for a long wait. To my surprise, my number was called immediately and I had to go to a completely separate area, by myself. Something I dread in unfamiliar places. So in a flurry of adrenaline, I went into the photo room and unbeknownst to me went to the wrong side of the table to sit down. The DMV lady shouted at me, my face immediately turning red. Embarrassed and ashamed at my accident, my apologies flowed forth. She continued to scold me in front of the other citizens there to get their photo. It was incredibly awkward.

She was sweet to the other people and continued to speak to me with contempt, even though I continued to apologize for my mistake. I was flustered. Ripping my paperwork and not knowing where to go. Soon the others in front of me were served. It was my time to smile but to be honest, I was so embarrassed and concerned they were going to remove me as a security threat, I knew that wasn’t going to be possible.

Then the weirdest thing happened the lady switched from harsh to calm, saying she needed to yell at me for the camera on the ceiling or she would face consequences. (What? That’s bizarre.) It was tough to trust the nice demeanor, was she going to snap at me again if I made another mistake?

At that point, I was introvert drained from the drama, and wanted to hide. My posture could not hide my internal feelings as I sat down in front of the camera. Flash, the first picture snapped displaying a red-faced blank expression. She offered me a retake and snap, and a turtle-necked miserable-looking photo appeared on screen. I believe she offered me another retake but my mind was far away.

I continued to make mistakes, including selecting Arabic on my screen to fill out a few more things for completion. As she handed me my card, she apologized finally for scaring me, which I appreciated and I wished her a good day. I looked at my ID card and was horrified, the person doesn’t even look like me. The bottom half of the image is stretched out, compared to my photo from 2017 it looks like I aged and let myself go from how distorted the image is from what I saw on the screen.

It was the cherry bomb on top of the 2025 battle: DMV vs. Shy Girl.

I’ve tried to remind myself that what is important is that I did it, I didn’t cry when shouted at, and I didn’t give into my anxiety and bail. I did it and persevered, the bad picture happened but it doesn’t reflect what I actually look like and no one is really going to see it. But dang, what an awful experience! I think why the new picture feels like such a jump scare is it is all my fears wrapped up into one – aging and looking ugly and fat. My culture is obsessed with thinness and beauty. Plastic surgery is becoming normalized and it is sickening how vain we all are becoming. I forgot to do my hair, I didn’t wear foundation just a little eyeliner, and I forgot to gua sha.

The picture was just me and things out of my control like getting scolded, bad lighting, and a stretched image created something without beauty, because beauty is not the goal for the DMV, it is clinical and for the process of identification. It is a stark contrast to the world of filters, good lighting, and curated perfection fed to us in this current age. Seeing that ugly image, rocked my confidence because even though I find my worth in Christ, I still live in this fallen world that equates beauty and youth with virtue and worth. So what happens when life happens and time passes? We become older, we gain weight and no longer look like the size 2 self from our teen years?

Is everything past that point worthless? I realized, as I looked at the image of my expired license and the new one that having the same picture for two renewals, warped my view of how I am aging. The younger version also was far more curated as a coping mechanism. I used to be a stickler for straightening my hair, wearing makeup, jewelry, and food restriction to be in the beauty standard to blend in, like an outer shell. Protective, candy-coated.

But the younger version of myself would have been unable to cope with a stranger yelling at me without crying and shutting down. Any picture of myself I saw as ugly, I had no confidence even at my skinniest. All the things that have happened since 2017 – loss of loved ones, getting shunned by family members, reconnecting with my dad and his family only to get hurt again, losing my place to live, having nowhere to live, and crashing in people’s guest rooms for a few weeks, moving to Georgia and back, subsequent moves out of sketchy landlord situations, my first job, my first layoff in a global pandemic, etc.

It’s been a lot and through that process, I grew character and began to unmask. So what if I don’t look the same as I did in 2017? I thought I looked ugly and fat in my 2017 ID photo and was ashamed. It’s just a photo on a driver’s license card. I like the person God has shaped me to be more now in 2024, than the person who was lost and far from God in 2017. Cheers to growth!

Can It End With You and Them?

I think the most shocking thing for me from the aftermath of the ‘It Ends With Us’ film and subsequent press tour has not been Blake Lively’s seemingly out-of-touch behavior by promoting her brands alongside this movie nor the disturbing allegations detailed in the 80-page lawsuit filed by Lively against Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, but it is that this movie and novel which at their core are about domestic violence continue to skate around the subject matter instead of using this project to help bring real change to our culture.

After looking at the PDF of the lawsuit, I question all motive behind any of the money Baldoni’s company donated to the charity No More, because the details in this lawsuit are too specific to be made out of thin air, in my opinion. There are cell phone screenshots and bizarre accounts from the set of behavior that is straight up inappropriate for any work place. So many that I’m not sure one person could manage that many levels of lies. If Blake Lively was able to pull this out of thin air, she needs to start writing books, because dang it is layered and disturbing.

George Constanza said it best when he explained how to con people, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.” That seems to be what the production held as their mantra because a movie about domestic violence with unsafe work environment screams delusion and narcissist behavior. Things that the internet is still giving Baldoni a pass on and heralding Lively as a crazy woman for reporting in her lawasuit. It’s very strange to me. How can we forget the ‘Me Too’ movement so rashly? What about Harvey Weinstein and Prince Andrew? The infamous Epstein list? Or the unfolding case of Diddy? Like Prohibition in the United States was installed to stem the tide of domestice violence, in my state of Pennsylvania, during the 2020 lockdown, alcohol sales were limited by the Governor to get ahead of the problem. On Live on Patrol, the Ramsey County sheriff department can attest to how the rate of domestic violence corresponds to the weather, with winter being the time they get the most reports of violence at home. It’s a well documented problem in America. So why would it not be possible on this film set at the hands of a handsome guy claiming he wants to help women? Just think about it. Do all bad people look like bad people?

There is a rampant evil that has pervaded every corner of our world, so I fully believe everything in that 80-page lawsuit could be proven true in court. Power is an influence that corrupts. Hollywood is powerful and has a long standing history of unsafe conditions going all the way back to the golden age, when doctors prescribed uppers and downers to keep stars working, making the studio money, instead of caring for the actor’s wellbeing. This happened to Judy Garland on the set of the Wizard of Oz when she was only 17. Now do I believe all film companies are bad and everyone is just there to use and abuse people to make millions? No, not at all. I think there are good people and bad people everywhere, in every industry.

I also think two things can be true at once. I think that Lively can be a victim worthy of our compassion and can also be a self-absorbed human that made questionable decisions, when she marketed her products during a movie that called for wisdom and tact. But I think we should all be given grace. Yes internet, give her a break. I also think we should held accountable for our actions in order to grow, and I don’t think Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and the others named in the lawsuit have been held accountable by society. I think Lively has because Lively is rich, she pretty, she has played some mean girl roles and I think those roles stick in our minds more than we realize. If the actress who played Blair Waldorf, Leighton Meister, was in this movie I think society may have a different view because Blair was a more sympathetic character. The Weekend faced similar backlash to Lively, after his character in ‘The Idol’ because we as humans blur the lines between performance and real life. I find it weird that Baldoni is not facing the same backlash as The Weekend when they both portrayed abusive men, why is Baldoni special?

Simply, I believe because we don’t know these people and so our imaginations fill in the blanks. I think as humans we get jealous of successful, beautiful people and enjoy tearing them down. Baldoni has the novelty of being more unknown and can shape shift, if that’s what he is doing.

I’m trying to keep an open mind, and respect the fact that these are allegations but it is hard to not question all his motives when he separated himself from the group during the press tour and so eloquently spoke about ending domestic violence. It was an excellent opportunity to build a case against Lively and discredit her. I’ve personally experienced this from men and women in my life, they entrap you before you realize it and then scapegoat your reputation to cover their own bad behavior. It’s bizarre to me that the film production of this story, ‘It Ends With Us’ was filled with so many cross overs to the subject matter. In some ways it appears, in my opinion, that Wayfarer and Baldoni, have such a hero complex that they are unaware of the darkness in their actions and the hubris of hurting women on a set that was portraying the story of a woman who is abused.

It’s like how Colleen Hoover writes these books that have such dark and triggering subject matter, and some people still think its a romance novel, or in Hoover’s case, that trigger warnings aren’t needed for her books. It’s such a bizarre universe that makes me question what is the point of the art?

For Hoover, is it to educate and bring awareness to domestic violence? Is it to sell books because violence and violence against women sell? Hollywood would seem to prove this point with how violent and disrespectful they are two female characters with the stories that are greenlit. For Baldoni, why did he choose to adapt this film? Was it to tell a story to reach his fellow men to change their hearts or is he a dangerous narcissist that thrives on this kind of treatment of women? For Lively, why did she choose this project? Was it to inspire hope for women who are survivors and tell their story or was it for her personal brand, to boost her product sales? I don’t know.

I think in advertently this movie and the drama surrounding it, including the public opinions swirling around the internet, show that I don’t think we as a society are taking this seriously enough. Even myself, who although I experienced the trauma of having an abusive biological father, I was quick to fall for Baldoni’s interviews and found myself disgusted with Lively because of how little she seemed to care about a subject that was so important. I may have fallen for the lies, again. I don’t think this issue is a problem that can be tackled through movies or books to create real change. With every book and movie I question, where the does the line blur into glorification? And why, when so many people experience domestic violence and abuse, do we have to read it replayed in books or portrayed on screen? I think we are fully aware of the problem and are giving the evil acts too much room to live rent-free in our imaginations.

Domestic violence, narcissists, sociopaths, and abuse are woven well into the fabric of society so well that it is hard to unravel it completely. The cycles of trauma carry down through generations. It’s a ripple on a lake, fanning out farther and farther.

I hope that whatever comes out of this unfolding lawsuit, that the real evil is exposed and that it creates real conversations for change so that we keep our eyes and ears open to those in our midst that are suffering silently from dangerous people lurking in their homes, their families, and the workplace. I also hope that the actors involved, on both sides, the studio, and the author will think more about the victims of domestic violence and get involved. They have money, influence, and could do some good in our communities if they would think outside the bubbles they are in. I also hope as a society we begin to consider the kind of content we consume, so that tales of abuse can never again be marketed as a romance story, cause that’s sick and wrong, in my opinion.

#66 – Pies, C-PTSD, and Learning How To Move Forward

It’s been a complicated week. I had plans to start blogging every day, to clean my house in one day not over several to prepare for hosting Thanksgiving. I also thought my pie crust would roll out with ease. Nothing went to plan.

It started with the couch breaking. One evening we noticed the leg fell off the mid-support but instead of buying a new one (Have you seen the price of couches lately? Yikes. Dubious quality to boot.) we opted to fix it. Improve it really. That was a bump in the road, the couch is stronger, and we have storage, but then we hit a pothole.

It’s like our rescue rabbit Mia unbonded to us. She became irritable and aggressive and would thrash around her room. She bites at us, growls at us, and won’t let us do normal things like sweep out her area. This whole situation is discouraging because how will we be able to properly care for her if she won’t let us? I never experienced this with my previous rabbit, Midnight, or with my family dog, Sully.

I was thrown into a murky mental pool. I have some deep memories from childhood of my dad that terrify me when loud outbursts happen. How could this happen? This rabbit I was so excited to adopt and give a loving home, was suddenly a source of triggering panic.

Cleaning ground to a halt. Kyle’s woodworking is uncertain. Walking through the office and living room tense, uncertain, scary, as the furball held us in her grip of territorial fury. She began to destroy the floor filling me with despair.

Every little part of preparing for the holiday felt treacherous as the C-PTSD clouded me from the reality of the tasks in front of me to the mountains of my mind. The craggy, inhospitable rock that has been too high to climb. I didn’t expect this random experience to cause such pain and confusion in my mind.

But the clock kept moving forward and things still needed to be done. This holiday we looked toward with joy could not become a thing we wanted to run from. It was our first holiday here.

Living as a human can be so tough. We are all broken and have hidden scars that can be reopened in the blink of an eye. What has been the most challenging part of this week has been where I find my pauses to take a breath. Finding opportunities in the chaos to recenter instead of giving up.

Making those pies was one of those moments of joy in the center of the storm. Cutting the Crisco into the flour is rhythmic. Feeling the sand become dough, stimming. Rolling out the crust and having it fall apart, is tragic! Finding the inspiration to make the difficult crust mold into the pie tin anyway, is a victory!

Seeing the smiles the pumpkin and apple pie brought to my family filled me with warmth. Yesterday, was a wonderful day. Yes because the food was delicious, but more so for the reminder that what makes the day special is being next to my loved ones and reflecting on the year and what blessings we received despite the chaos of life.

I hope you know that you are loved, dear reader and that you remember not to give up!

I Tried Watching Nana

Aside from Haikyuu and One Piece, Nana was the most recommended Anime I have watched. It was mainly recommended in fashion discourse in the TikTok fashion sphere and on YouTube for its spin on street style, punk, 90s fashion, and accessorizing with elaborate detail.

These fans praise creator Ai Yazawa’s Nana for its Vivienne Westwood references and innovative looks. As I expected, the fashion was inspiring. It captures the 90s and early 2000s Japanese fashion in a way that makes my heart warm because that’s how I first got into fashion—watching ANTM’s Cycle 3 and their finale trip to Tokyo. But there was one hiccup—I can’t get into the story.

Nana is a Work of Art

Now before Nana stans click out, I can explain why I am not a fan but can appreciate the artistic duality of the storytelling, while critiquing the worldview of the narrative.

I’ve previously mentioned that I’m not an anime fan, that I had watched Fruits Basket and some Trigun and it was enjoyable but did not grip me the same way a Kdrama can. Since then I have started watching Haikyuu and fell in love with the anime style and its storytelling in Haikyuu’s seasons. Going into Nana, I was excited to watch a new anime style. The artwork is different, older, and grittier like a film noir.

The storytelling was unique, and non-linear at the beginning, and featured two storylines of Nana O. and Nana K, a duality that Ai Yazawa put a lot of thought into. Her passion is clear from the art style, the complicated characters, and the darkness of human life that she explores. I appreciate the inner monologues of the characters, and the way that they feel real because they are flawed, and downright annoying sometimes, but I couldn’t find myself rooting for any character and walked away from the series after two attempts to watch through.

Struggles with the Story

Misogyny and the age of consent, are two things I was not expecting to be major storylines in this tale but there it was. It was hard to watch the disrespect and absolutely dangerous decision-making of Nana K in 2024 as an American with some of the headlines we have had of assault on college campuses and by powerful people in the culture. Me Too changed things and made this normality of the 1990s and 2000s a thing that was no longer going to be passively tolerated. For that, I am thankful to be living on this side of the 2010s and its cultural upheaval because when I encounter stories where the female characters are not being respected and accepting this toxic masculinity and normal, as the viewer it is outrageous.

My standard is now the ladies of Brooklyn Nine-Nine who demand respect and get it because the male characters on the squad are respectful. The characters of Gina Linetti, Rosa Diaz, and Amy Santiago have ambition, and desire love, but understand they are enough and don’t need guys to make them whole. I didn’t see that in my watch of the Nana show. They also support each other with maturity, and Nana K is simply not mature and despite Nana O’s heart, it can’t make up for the deficit, in my opinion. I know that their friendship is hailed for its feminism but I think the best friendships in storytelling have two mature people who have grown and developed into characters that have depth and true, selfless love for each other.

This show felt triggering for its realistic depiction of toxic relationships in both friendships and romantic relationships, which dug up memories from my teens and twenties of feeling lonely by the cloud of darkness bad relationships held me in. Like Skins UK, I could feel the pain, the emptiness, and the struggle in my veins by how emotionally charged the story is. But as Effie can send me into a depressed spiral, I felt the same from Nana. Art should make you feel, but not harm efforts to have good mental health, so as I made the decision to stop to protect my peace, I encourage you to have healthy boundaries with shows that can trigger you, dear reader. It doesn’t mean you are a wimp or that the show is bad, just that it isn’t a good fit for you because it is damaging your calm, to quote Jayne Cobb, from Firefly.

Girlhood, Dark Romance, and the Pick Me Girl

Something that may be holding me back from embracing Nana could be my culture and similar western media I have already grown up with which taught me the same lessons through their stories. As I mentioned before I see many parallels between Skins UK and Nana. They are both edgy, the characters are working through their own pain and finding their own solutions like by dulling the pain with alcohol or love. There is the female friendship in Nana like Meredith and Cristina in Grey’s Anatomy and the toxic relationships in Gossip Girl with the complicated friendship of Blair and Serena.

I found Grey’s Anatomy and Gossip Girl during the end of high school and watched both into college, a time that is full of turbulence. Something that Nana nailed, and I think if I had found Nana first it maybe the coming of age guidebook for me that Grey’s Anatomy and Gossip Girl were during those weird years. I think that both Gossip Girl and Grey’s Anatomy have more character arcs for their female protagonists than Nana, with Serena Van Der Woodsen being the only one I’d say didn’t grow much at all. Blair, Meredith, and Cristina all show tremendous growth by the end of their stories. (Yes, I know Grey’s Anatomy carries on but Sandra Oh left the show in 2014 and I personally stopped watching in 2019 so Grey’s has an end to me.)

Meredith Grey grows from a pick-me girl who lets her romantic relationships determine her fate with self-destructive bend to a healthy, open, confident woman who has family that support her emotionally and professionally at Seattle Grace. Cristina Yang realizes she needs people, that life is not about being an island. She balances her professional ambition with a new compassionate bedside manner and learns how to be vulnerable while being an incredibly strong person.

Blair Waldorf begins the show as a girl who is scheming, afraid to be herself, and afraid to fail and ends the show as a confident woman who knows what she wants and is willing to stand up for herself, support others, and create community in her world instead of tearing others down to make herself feel better. She may love Chuck Bass, but she is willing to walk away from him when he treats her as less than human. I wanted to see this from Nana, and I didn’t.

What I did see was a similar dark romance trope that permeates Twilight, toxic relationships that are abusive, not romantic, and not something women need to endure for love. A good cultural discussion that came out of the It Ends With Us press tour was producer, Justin Baldoni’s commitment to the message of abuse and making sure no interview was complete without raising awareness for an evil that persists in our world. It was in stark contrast to Blake Lively’s cheeky glamorization of this movie, refusing to go there and talk about the serious issues.

That’s what I wanted from Nana, there to be some force that would stop the mistreatment of these women and bring some hope to the story for these women to truly thrive.

The Scarcity Mindset of Red vs Blue

It’s been a wild ride here in the United States, as everyone around the world has probably followed. As a U.S. resident the opinions, the reactions, and the culture have been like nothing I have seen before. Truly surprising. What has surprised me the most has been the personal ethics and scarecity mindsets I have observed, from my fellow Americans sharing on social media.

The Roar of Social Media

For a land of opportunity and abundance, there are certainly a lot of conflicting opinions on that statement. Some people are quite in touch with the struggles of inflation and the economy and others are participating in conspicuous consumption. Some are lamenting in blue and some are gloating in red, others are calling for retrospection and unity, but one thing has been the common thread – it’s a bigger knot of problems than I ever expected, and untangling this is going to take more time than I think most people are willing to give it.

There is impatience and aggression. A celebration of nastiness on every level that I am shocked by. How long has this nasty edge been living under the surface waiting for us to notice its venom? How does the simple act of Patrick Ta’s eyeshadow being priced at $42 become a hotbed of elitism and premeditated nastiness towards complete strangers on the internet? It’s bizarre and I can only guess it has nothing to do with eyeshadow and more with a deep level of dissatisfaction in our current world.

Loss of Gentleness

I saw increasing pressure from political ads this year to be afraid of what lurks in the blue and the red. The election is over yet I am still getting ads targeting this fear and exploiting our peace for the sake of agenda. It is maddening and disheartening to me that we are allowing our peace to be stolen. Especially the peace of those most vulnerable in society.

I’m observing responses from people I follow who are letting their fear isolate them. I saw a call to clear out friends lists “to control what you can” like burning bridges is healthy advice for all situations. It can be, but it can also lead to a lot of pain and loneliness. Acting on emotions is a shifting sand. When your emotions change how can your choices be healthy and stable in the long run? There is more chance of self-sabotage than true desire.

I have been a bridge burner and when I look back at what fueled my decisions, it was not a healthy mindset. It was one deep in crisis allowing the self-destructive nature to keep me from moving forward. I’m also not writing this to judge anyone. I’m writing this from a place of concern to keep others from making the same mistakes as me. Mistakes that I wish I could take back.

One thing I have taken from these last few weeks is the importance of gentleness and patience. We are fully capable of living in a community with others who disagree with us if we choose to be gracious to one another and respect healthy boundaries. Not playing on each others’ fear or looking for fights. That’s just plain mean and not how you maintain relationships. That has been the number one thing I have noticed through this 2024 election cycle, is the lack of focus on America being one community and learning how to work with each other in our differences.

Truth and Realignment

I’m not saying my culture needs to let bullies keep bullying or evil take root for the sake of peace. I think we need to kick bad out and leave room for the good and the truth to flourish. What I am saying is that I think we need to pause, take a breath, and be willing to try reconciling. If it’s bad and causes more pain, okay, then we stop and reevaluate, but I don’t think it would be.

I think my fellow citizens are weary and lonely. We need each other to embrace our differences to see that we have more common ground than we have let agendas tell us we do.

Thinking purple instead of red and blue would be a good start. Abandoning the scarcity mindset would also be a healthy move toward letting go of fear. Especially as believers, there is nothing to fear if we fully surrender to God.

This has just been on my heart lately, dear reader, and I hope I haven’t offended you. I’ve been feeling creatively off from the sheer amount of negativity being spread. It is draining as an HSP neurodivergent introvert who seeks to spread kindness and love yet can’t fix the pain of people in my community. I wish I could and maybe this post is at least a safe space to ponder and start new conversations? I’m trying to focus on the positive.

We will also be back to our regularly scheduled programming of sewing, knitting, art, Bible Study, and K-pop content soon. This just felt too important to ignore.

Thank you for taking time with me today. I hope you know that you are loved and worthy. Until next time 🫶

Reclaiming the Calm

As I mentioned in The Rewards and Scars of Setting Healthy Boundaries, I am on a journey to let go of the cortisol and tension I have unknowingly stored in my body. I didn’t realize I was doing this, possibly for decades now, because I don’t feel my feelings I bury them, which I’m working on. The only time I think I wasn’t doing this was during my sophomore and junior years in college when I was doing yoga practice, deep breathing, and trying to get to know myself. Which sounds odd, but was a great way to get through a broken heart.

Emotional Unintelligence

The hows and whys of the broken heart are a bit complicated but I was muddling through the after-effects of a situation ship. Why a situation ship? Well, I believe I was doing anything and everything to feel something, because I buried the heartbreak I felt at the end of high school, realizing my dad had missed my entire childhood and turning 18 meant that child support, the only string connecting us was severed. I didn’t know where he was and if I would see him again. It turns out I did see him again and would be moving to the same town as him five years later, another story for another day. Life is wild.

Anyways, coming out of high school the weight of that broken heart was so much I didn’t know what to do with it. There was so much emotion, so much tension and confusion, in my mind and body that I didn’t understand so my brain freaked out and gave me my first taste of anxiety, depression, and panic. It was a lot. During this time I also lost my ability to cry. I went totally numb which was unnerving, but at the time I was happy at least I wasn’t overwhelmed by my emotions anymore. The downside was that I felt nothing.

I’m Chuck Bass

I didn’t like that. I’m a highly sensitive person, an artistic soul, and feeling is how I understand the world around me. I wanted to feel like myself again. Here’s where the mess began – I decided to go into dating in college in this incredibly unhealthy mindset. These casual relationships were doomed from the start. It couldn’t grow into something real because I wasn’t emotionally available. Which opened the door for the worst relationship type in my opinion the situationship. It was the exact opposite of what my personality needs or wants but hey, I couldn’t feel anything so how hurt could I get?

Blown Up Life

Yeah, this blew up in my face. Once I came out of this situationship and this time of emotional numbness, I realized that I had completely blown up my life. Close relationships that I had from high school were not there. I had not invested in good friendships and community in my college life either by not seeking it out or ditching out on friends who could have been healthy supportive people, because I was scared of these friendships. It was a mess. I was so lonely. I had to get to know myself because there was no one else. I also didn’t know myself anymore. Who was this numb person I had been? Who is this new person who feels, but also feels lost and lonely?

There was so much I needed to understand about myself before I could be a good friend again or try dating once more. I didn’t know where I was going, or who I wanted to be as an adult. There was so much change in a short time. It was time to pause, slow down, and spend time doing the work to find this new person within the closed-off shell.

Meeting A Healthier Me

During this time I became independent for the time. I started going to the coffee shop by myself and learned to be okay on my own, which was wild. This is a skill I’ve forgotten how to do. I let myself be alone with my thoughts, it was a rough road to get there. This time alone started with a season of insomnia, where there was no choice but to be by myself, and now I realize spent time alone with God even though I wasn’t focused on this at the time. I discovered new shows like Fruits Basket, Trigun, Firefly, and Vikings. I also began thinking seriously about what I wanted in life with this new scenario. I didn’t end up going to fashion school or doing the Fashion Business major I was supposed to create with my advisor. I found myself drawn to fashion history through the creative sandbox of one cool professor who gave us the freedom to explore our interests.

I also started doing yoga and learning to train my mind and my breathing to keep going when my body and mind were tangled up in knots from the stress and trauma of life. It was the first time I think I was doing exercise for exercise itself not for a job like paint crew or campus mail delivery for the mailroom, which were both pretty physical. My campus was old and full of hills and stairs, so many stairs.

2020s Version of Numb

As life goes on, things repeat. Life changed again and I got busy. I stopped practicing these healthy habits into post-grad and getting married which was dumb on my part. I got healthier but I don’t think I got wiser. So I find myself now relearning how to find healthy balance and healthy habits to rid myself of the tension and wild mind that has trapped me in a prison of my own making.

How do I find my way out? My plan is to reflect and discuss that process here as I go through this journey of self-discovery again because I think this is something we all face and I wish I had known more about emotional health when I was younger. There are a lot of things that kept that from being something I understood. We don’t always have the most emotionally mature parents and I think it’s hard to talk about. I hope you’ll join me on this little adventure.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑