A year of fasting

 Hey Everyone I hope all is well with you,

Yesterday was a good but weird day. I have been interviewing with one of my favorite companies and my third interview was at 1 yesterday. I contemplated waiting to go to the gym before the interview and normally wait on when Craig wakes up when he is off.  He got up early so we were at the gym by 9ish. I ended up eating right before which is something I had not done in a year. 

For the past year, I have been intermittent fasting and got very motivated by a former coworker and friend that is an omad. If you don't know what that is it is a person who fasts and eats one meal daily. I used to think that was crazy, but when I researched fasting the science was compelling. My friend did not lose any weight but her overall health improved. When I started my keto journey almost a year ago I had every intention to lose weight because it is a proven diet that has such a success rate keeping the weight off. 

I am fit and back into smalls and extra smalls can start to see my abs and am getting shredded. Anyway back to fasting if you do not take anything from my story but fasting please do it and start tomorrow. I ate before around 9 am and was not hungry just ate because I wanted to before the gym. It was horrible and I was on the struggle bus at the gym working my back. I know that everyone is raised differently and there are some cultures and religions that fast and I listened to Dr Berg https://www.drberg.com/  talk about how there is virtually no cancer in the middle east. One of the main factors was fasting; I firmly believe in it. I am the proof at 50 years I look like I did in my mid-thirties. It has not just been keto I am at the gym getting it done.

Now I am changing my diet a bit which will go from fat first to protein first while maintaining a low-carb lifestyle. I am not missing any carbs anymore and feel great. As great as I can at my age. My recovery time is so much longer and I am trying to learn tennis. Which has been very hard for me because I have 0 hand-eye coordination. My poor husband is beyond patient in teaching me, and I do not plan to stop learning and growing. When I first started I pulled my left hamstring and tweaked my right knee. Almost every day something hurts especially after I am done working out so I started upping my collagen with every cup of coffee.

After a year of fasting, I plan to keep it going God willing for the rest of my life.  I have been through the hard part of starting my journey and it works for me. It may not work for you but as I said before my goal is to encourage you to do something to improve your health. So many people including my own family tell me they could not ditch the carbs. That is because they are not satiating, addictive, and added to so many foods. Just like anything else in life, it is a choice that if you wanted to be completely ignorant about what goes in your body and just continue eating whatever you want then your body will reflect it. Maybe not today but at some point those bad food decisions will catch up to you. If your definition of a quality of life being fat and sick is ok then this blog may not be for you. 

However, if you want to be inspired by an old lady that is reversing the bad choices made in the past stay tuned because I am just getting started. This last half of my life is going to be the fittest and best years to come so stay tuned and be blessed.

Taking things for granted

 Hi Guys I hope you are staying cool this summer. It has been brutally hot and I don't use that word lightly. Last Monday I had a job interview and I didn't eat prior so I had my interview and then a snack until I realized that Floki and Bruiser we outside. This is so hard to share but we called for our dogs and only Bruiser came so we knew something was way off. We went deeper into the dog run and Floki was on the ground panting and unconscious.

Cambria brought him inside where we put him in the bath and proceeded to cool him down. I had to hold his head because he was unconscious and I was so scared. Cambria and I bathed him in cool water until he became conscious. I held him and explained everything to Craig when he got home from work. I hate to admit this but this is the third time we have done this but the longest and hottest time. Floki was recovering that Monday night and even made it to Tuesday. Cambria and I shed so many tears and said so many prayers.

Craig and I had to be in Porter texas the next morning to pick up a table so Cambria stayed with him and he started to convulse. When we got back we took him to the vet and the story was not good. Poor Floki was septic and developed pneumonia so the vet kept him until 6. I really struggled with guilt and shame because our only other pug Frodo died from heat exhaustion at age 8. Sitting in the vet's office knowing that if your dog dies is very hard, Cambria and I asked Floki for forgiveness at least a hundred times. Our vet is amazing and called Craig to let him know that our baby was responding well to the antibiotics and breathing treatments. That night I took Cambria to swim practice and Craig took Floki to the nighttime pet hospital because our vet recommended for him to be monitored at night.

So when we got back Craig informed me that there wasn't a Dr at that hospital and would not show up until 10. That should have been our first red flag because when we did show up at 10 there was no sense of urgency for these people until they collected our money. They took Floki and put him in an oxygen chamber and after an hour the dr came in and told us basically everything we already knew. After another 45 minutes, they came in and gave us a 2800 dollar estimate and our vet did all the heavy lifting that day for 1500 dollars. Craig and I decided that we should not go with this at all. We decided to take our dog and they were telling us that they were going to remove his catheter. I was so tired emotionally and physically and that was my last straw. Floki came in with the catheter and he was going to leave with it and that is what I told them. They had initially taken an 850-dollar deposit when we got there and were trying to scare us into staying there and paying the money. They were not happy with having to give us the difference, and what is sad is that these people cared nothing for my dog because When we got our baby back he had a temp of 103 and was convulsing again. I was so angry at those people because they still charged us 500 dollars and did absolutely nothing for Floki. 

But I totally trust in Craig's ability, so at 1 am we ran to Craig's job to get more iv fluids for our baby and medicine. That night Craig gave him more fluids plus Tylenol to bring down his fever and help with the pain. I sat on the floor holding an oxygen mask to his face until he fell asleep. That was a long and hard day and I prayed again that he would make it because he was going to the vet at 8 am. I was so grateful that Floki made it to the next day that when I spoke to our vet again that I told her I had nothing positive to say about the emergency vet and focused on what Craig did to treat our baby.

Thank God he made it to Wednesday morning and on top of all of it Craig had to work. Let me just convey how much I love and respect my husband. He does not come up with excuses for anything he got maybe 2 hours of sleep and still went to work. I took Floki in and he was going to be there all day for treatment.  I called at lunch and spoke to Dr Marceaux who said that Floki was doing very well and that I could come and pick him up at 5. When they brought him out he jumped into my arms then pulled an RKelly and peed on me for about 5 minutes non-stop. I didn't care because he was recovering. 

He had some blood work done on Thursday and got sent home with a bunch of meds. He has been recovering and getting back to normal and I am so grateful that today we took him back and he is almost completely recovered. As you all know by my blogs I am a Christian and not the kind of person that has jewelry or bumper stickers or t-shirts to represent. Although I used to be pretty in your face about it I am not. My life should demonstrate my beliefs and if you knew me even a couple of years ago I am not the same person. All of that being said I don't believe in luck, or coincidences. When Floki was in his darkest battles there were so many spiritual elements that God used to encourage us and has forgiven us. Floki has not left my side since then and is going to make a full recovery and I know he forgives us too because he gives me a heads-up every time he sees me.

I want to thank our friends that checked on us during this time. We are so grateful for so many things and until the next blog my friends......

Perspective

 Hey yall, I hope you all are doing well,

I have not been I caught some kind of cold over the past several days and it has been horrible. I think the last time I got sick this back was before covid. I am grateful that Craig takes care of me because it was pretty rough. I am on the mend but I am pretty sure Cambria now has it. I went to the gym the entire time and she has been hitting her evening practices. I have been feeling down for the past couple of weeks and it is a combination of things like being sick and being a female. 

Yesterday we decided that we wanted to go to Houston and visit a museum. Craig picked the Holocaust Museum and it could not have been more fitting. Cambria just got done reading Anne Frank's diary and we finished watching a small light. World War 2 has a lot of significance to me because I lived in Germany for almost 3 years and there are not a lot of reminders of the war, especially the Holocaust. I was having a conversation with my sister about living in another country. I was talking about how I feel the USA is the best country in the world. She somewhat agreed and even though we do not share the exact feelings, I respect her opinion and admit I had mixed thoughts because some of America's biggest critics are people who have never served in our military or lived in another country.

I have been blessed enough to do both at the same time. When I lived in Germany soldiers had to go through training on how to be a German citizen for a month. We learned the language, customs, and culture. By the time I arrived in Munster, I had lived in Darmstadt for a month. There were fellow soldiers who embraced living in another country and those that didn't. I was definitely the former because how many people get to live in Germany? If you have never been it is worth visiting for so many reasons but do understand a few things. Do not ever assume everyone knows English and try to learn as much about the culture so that you show immense respect towards it. For example, Germans eat everything with a knife and fork even and especially pizza.

I had made German friends outside of the military and they showed me their country and it was amazing. I do plan to go back one day but what I did notice when I lived there was that there were not l to of world war 2 memorials and although each country is different and ours is younger we do have multiple memorials for each and every war. Although in recent years generations have focused on certain behaviors of individuals in order to disrespect property; those memorials will hopefully stand. They serve the purpose to remind us not just of the bad things people have done but of the good ones as well. When did we get to condemn specific acts without knowledge and comprehension of those before us? One such person was Robert E Lee; for the ignorant (II am referring to those of you who blindly believe everything that is on the internet by the way), he was simply the Confederate war general, but for those of us the read and truly seek out the truth he was much more than that and in the end chose that side because he ultimately wanted to protect his home and family. I think a lot of people would choose to protect their homes. Also, he did so much to lay down the infrastructure of our new nation.

In visiting the museum we learned that Houston became home to some pretty epic Holocaust survivors. I am so grateful they had the courage to share their stories. It is very humbling to understand what they endured and ultimately survived. I am beyond grateful to make sure my daughter is educated about this as well as other things in our history. I am making sure that not only does she have a childhood, but can read,  learn, and use critical thinking skills to understand all elements of history so that all is not forgotten. To me, that is more important than her having a phone and getting swept up in social media land. That time will come soon enough. I know that all time is limited, and am blessed that my husband feels the same way. At the end of the day all we can do is our best, learn from our mistakes, and give each other grace because we all have a perspective.

Getting it together

Well, I started to wring this memorial day weekend. As a veteran and avid history buff, Memorial Day is a sacred place. It gives me an opportunity to think about the soldiers that came before, during, and after my time as a soldier. I remember those remarkable stories about soldiers in every war, yet there are three ladies I am thinking about now. I didn't know them personally but I knew them and each of their deaths makes me humble and grateful that I served and made it through. 

The first one happened during my time at Fort Bragg there was a night jump and a soldier's line got caught in the door. She was caught and they could not free her. I can't even imagine the guilt that the jump masters had because they tried and tried to free her. At that time how the army worked was that after the whole landed every one had to go back up to jump. I was there at the landing zone and all of the 82nd airborne was there. All I knew about her was that she was very similar to me in age, size, and background. That was over 20 years ago. I still think of her and pray for her family. The second one was a former coworker's sister. Both of these ladies served our country and were involved in Iraqi battles. My coworker was really sad one day and when I asked her she informed me that her sister committed suicide. My heart still hurts about the situation and it was years ago. The last one was only a few years ago and it was a young Latina girl from Houston that went missing. When I think of her mom's pleas to find her daughter and the outcome still breaks my heart  I thought of my own experience in the military she was just like me. 

I had just turned 18 and could not wait to leave the house. The only people that I was going to miss were my sister and my little brother. I was the oldest in the house at the time and it was so dysfunctional and there was still the disconnect from my dad. I know that he had to make a living but that was always his excuse. I later adopted that methodology for myself and believe it is a generational curse I even see it in my oldest. I ended up addressing it in my personal healing, no matter what challenges have come this way and there have by God's grace I have been able to overcome them. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for me in the past year especially has been alcohol. I have run the gamut with it from being a wine connoisseur to learning how to drink on keto. I have been putting this off pretty much all year telling myself that it is acceptable to have a nightcap every night because I am not working. The truth is that I am not a very nice person when I drink and one nightcap can turn into two and I am feeling it the next day. 

I wish that  I could say that I was wise enough to just stop at the beginning of the year but I wasn't. As usual, it took a wake-up call for me to stop me in my tracks. I was so broken because I hurt the one constant person in my life. This is so unacceptable to me that I am done. So far I have been true to my word and plan to stay that way. So now I have cut the carbs, sugar, and alcohol. Some of you might be thinking if life is worth living? I would say that yes it is because I don't miss any of them at this point and am starting to get the physique of my dreams at 50 years old. All of which has been such an emotional roller coaster of insecurity and confidence rolled into one. Now that I am getting more confident I need to remember that I am an example to my 13-year-old daughter. I wore a top that was inappropriate in her eyes, and even though I am proud of my accomplishments I am still her mother. Thank God I am raising a modest young lady because they are few and far between these days. Thank you for taking the time to read and I hope you have a great day. 

Half century reflections

 Hi There,

In my previous posts you have seen we took a very special trip to Moab and Zion to celebrate my 50th birthday. Until now our 2021 Yellowstone and Grand Teton were my favorite mountain memories, and I really will cherish those for the rest of my life. This trip was very symbolic for me because of Angels Landing I knew that it was on Craig's bucket list but was it really on mine? This trip was a compromise because I really wanted to visit Moab and Craig really wanted to Visit Zion.  The selfish and narcissistic part of me was thinking but it's my birthday it should be all about me......

Well here is what I know about being in a relationship for 27 years and being married for close to 25 is that it is not all about me. As a matter of fact, I would say that the past 5 to 6 years have been about me shifting from a narcissistic nature to living a life with minimal strife where I am not the center of my world. It really started when I was eliminated from the longest job I had. I knew that I was very good at what I did for a living and had always been results oriented by nature. When I went into my next job I had an entitled attitude and everything had to be about me. When your focus is on you here are the behavior you exhibit:

• Conversations, interactions, and all communication ends up about you no matter what is going on with others
• You're defensive, live by your emotions, and are easily upset when things don't go your way
• You're never satisfied or accountable for your actions
• You surround yourself with people that don't challenge or inspire you to be better, you put down, judge people that intimidate you, and you talk badly about those people 
• Your all "talk and no action" In fact you continually justify your talking

Those are just some of the "awesome" qualities that I had and the first thing that life threw at me to humble me was our oldest daughter moving out. It is a part of life and it is bound to happen, but this didn't happen the way we had planned or expected. When our daughter moved out it was when I was at work, and my husband was asleep from working all night.  There have been a lot of things in my life that hurt me, but that hit me hard for so many reasons and I was very angry at her for abandoning us. There is a lot more to this that is inappropriate for me to get into, and my focus is on how that shaped me not shifting blame. Shifting blame used to be my favorite thing to hold over somebody. Well, how do you hold that over someone when they're gone? You don't. I had to understand what I did wrong in the relationship, learn from that, forgive her and myself, and do better. 

Shortly after that, I ended up switching jobs which is another thing that I used to be judgemental about until I had to switch jobs myself. Things in life happen businesses get sold or companies decide that they want to lay off people. It really is not beneficial for me to even get upset about that because I learned so many lessons from all of those experiences. That also helped me understand that I was living by my emotions and had something to learn. Craig and I had an epiphany at the end of 2019 which I believe is a God thing to get out of debt and learn to live on one income. Before that, a budget was a four-letter word to me. It was very hard but we learned to live on one income when we had one or when we had two. I had people cut me out when I decided to stop being a negative gossip, but frugal living was the nail in the coffin. 

I was never satisfied and always had someone around which meant I was funding a lot of those interactions. When I simply stopped certain people did what I used to do which was gossip about me. Especially those that I invested the most in; what happens when you don't get a return on your investment? I had to overcome, heal, evaluate, and ultimately forgive everyone. To do this I had to go way back to my very first memories even to my childhood, that really wasn't fun and still makes me sad, but I can't sit there and focus on the bad things that happened or who did what. We all have baggage every last one of us. 

What I learned was that I had developed a hard defensive perimeter that was formed by the abuse of an older sister, the loss of my mother, the complete emotional disconnect of a father, an angry confused stepmother, and a male chauvinistic environment. No wonder I was so messed up inside. My job used to be my escape but I was in between jobs so I had to deal with it and there were some very dark emotional times. As I healed I became comforted by food, especially during the pandemic. I didn't pay attention to what I ate and went back to work. I did very low intense workouts and when we went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton we were accompanied by babies and fellow over wight except for Craig and Cambria. There was a lot of hiking but only one semi-intensive one. 

As I mentioned in my last blog I was scared but I ended up going for it which is where I am now. I have completely done the work to be healed mentally, physically, and spiritually. I have no ill feelings toward anyone at all. The other important aspect for me is to live my life without strife so if you embody the traits above chances are that I am going to be keeping my distance. Some people have cut me off and that is ok because we had our season and we have both moved on. I literally want nothing but the best for you, and my prayer for you is many many blessings. I have conquered Angels Landing and am super excited for my next, Be blessed, and until the next blog.

conquering fear & 4 items on my bucket list

Howdy, y'all; the last time I blogged was about my experience returning to my hometown and I had the best time with my siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, and stepmom. I was good and kept my workouts and intermittent fasting and keto. One thing that I have not been doing is weighing myself because I reached my target weight. Will be seeing Dr. Erica around labor day which will be a year for me on Keto then we can do the total BMI.  About a month ago I was weighing 115 with a BMI of 24. I don't care if I weigh a little bit more or less because I can see abs trying to come in so I am losing more inches and gaining even more muscle. I have been training even harder knowing that we were going to attempt to do Angels Landing so I started doing the stair stepper, upping my resistance on the elliptical,  and using the sled with every leg day workout. 

Since then Craig and I have been planning our Utah trip while hashing out plans for our upcoming Lewis family trip too. I am grateful for the Lewis family's proactive approach to planning, especially my sister-in-law, for taking the lead for the family trip so we could focus solely on Utah. Initially, we thought that renting an RV would be the way to go because we knew we would be flying into Las Vegas with plans to visit Moab, & Zion and then head back to Vegas to fly back home.  There were three main goals I wanted to accomplish as my 50th birthday approached. Spend time with my sister, visit Moab dead horse point, and Corona Arch, visit Zion Narrows, and climb Angels Landing including the Spine, and I have never seen Las Vegas before so there was an addition  We thought that renting an RV would be the way to go, but it literally doubled our budget. We had to rethink our approach book 3 different hotels, and a car, coordinate with my sister, & prayed that everything fell into place and it did. 

We flew out of Houston Thursday, May 4, and into Las Vegas where we spent the majority of the day driving to Moab Utah. It was such a beautiful drive especially because we went through Arizona and all of Utah and there is something so magical about driving into Moab because there is one way in and out and there is nothing like it. Our hotel was right in the middle of town and I absolutely love this town. So the game plan for me has been to keep intermittent fasting, only eat when I am hungry, and stay in ketosis by eating less than 20 net carbs per day. I know what I am doing at this point so on Friday we were all up early because of the hour time difference and decided to eat breakfast at the hotel, pack a cooler for lunch then eat dinner back in town. So our first place was canyonlands national park the view was phenomenal and we hiked every trail and even hiked a mountain bike path that was so amazing Cambria named it the green temple it was my second favorite hike of the whole trip.  We went back to the hotel and spent the evening at arches national park which is just amazing we literally hiked for 12 hours and ended up hitting up the Moab Diner. I had a cobb salad and my family was eating a Sunday after their food. I had a bite of ice cream and not only was the sugar cloyingly sweet but it had a nasty cooling taste and was not worth it at all. 

It has been several months since I have had any sugar and my taste buds have definitely been modified. I am ok with that & will not be consuming sugar anymore, monk fruit, allulose, and stevia work for me. There are so many zero-sugar products now because low-carb zero-sugar lifestyles work and are sustainable.  People give alcohol a bad rap but I would contend that sugar is just as bad for the liver and is highly addictive. I have people in my family that are completely addicted to it. It is hard to watch them eat it but it is not my place to judge or condemn them because I really do love them and want nothing but good health for them.  It is their choice in what they put in their body, and I do share information but also love them.  One of my friends is astounded that I have so much energy by eating so little carbs and no sugar. My body is used to burning fat for fuel and Saturday morning was no different as we went to Corona Arch. Man, the first hike is always the hardest and this one was the most challenging so far in the trip. It is moderate and even has a chain section plus it was so busy but worth it. When we left Moab we were so sad, but my sister was leaving Salt Lake so we could meet up in La Verkin Utah so we could get there at the same time. 

The last time we went on a mountain vacation there really weren't a lot of options for restaurants or food stores. There was one restaurant in town and there was an hour-long wait. I am so grateful that my sis was prepared with steak, shrimp, asparagus, tomatoes, and a lot of other things. We went to the grocery store to buy some more food to bulk up the meal but we just warmed the food in our hotel room and hung out by the pool. I have really enjoyed the pool times with the family over the past month. These are great memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life. The night before I stayed up at midnight to pay and enter the lottery for the Angels Landing spine so did Moneka. We did not get the permits for Sunday and were kinda bummed. Shane and Craig were more disappointed than I was and Shane was willing to distract the ranger and sneak us in. I had been looking at youtube videos of the Spine and I am going to be very honest I was afraid it is very scary and people have died on this hike which is why they have the lottery system to only allow between 8-9 hundred people on this climb per day. 90 percent of the people at the hotel were going to Zion and when I talked to some they told me that it was a tough hike just getting up there let alone doing the Spine.

Sunday we met for breakfast and I am going to say that both Comfort Inn and Best Western Plus in Utah were the bomb for breakfast. They had eggs, sausage, bacon, and all the other carbs people like to eat for breakfast. They also had laundry facilities which are very important to me. I love clean clothes and even though I don't like to put them up I can not stand dirty laundry piling up, especially in my suitcase. So we got to Zion, parked, and got on the bus to the Grotto and our first hike was Angels Landing on the way there the bus driver played audio about it too so we got to learn more about it, I absolutely love the divine names in Zion. So our first hike was Angels Landing and it was a doozy just getting to Scouts Lookout. Where we saw the poor ranger that had to check people's permits. Craig and I felt compassion for him and really didn't want to make his life more difficult. So we hiked the Outer Rim which looked higher than The Spine. As it turns out it was higher and we even did a hike that overlooked the Spine. We ate our packed lunch up there and it was amazing when we came down Craig was at The Spine and there was no ranger. My sister stayed with Cambria while I went to Craig and we started the Spine. Shane was behind but I knew he would catch up that dude is  Mountain Beast.

I had been praying about this, training for it, and decided that if there was an opportunity then I was going to go through with it because I felt that God opened the door. I went for it and did not look down at all. I stayed laser focused and although this hike is absolutely no joke I was doing it. All the training paid off because it was hard. There are in my conservative guestimate about 30 climbs with 85% drop-offs mostly on both sides, and even though there are chains they cover about 90% of the climb. That other 10% is sketchy. I was also grateful for my mountain boots and that I had broken them prior to the trip. My husband and my brother-in-law were encouraging me and complete gentlemen. When we made it to the top I let them go and was reserving my strength for the way down and back. For me,  the scariest part was to come because I had no choice but to see everything. Even though this was scary as all get out I am so grateful that I did this hike it is absolutely gorgeous and no words can describe it. We did it and I still am amazed at the experience. It took us a little over an hour to do The Spine and the way down was no joke my toes were so sore and when we got to the bottom to meet the rest of our family they had their feet in the river. Oh, one more shout-out to the mothers, fathers, and people who hike Angels Landing with no shoes. My hats off to you!!

After Angels Landing we went to the Narrows which were closed, so we couldn't hike them. I was on cloud nine and exhausted so we ended up taking the bus to our van. We were all starving and Subway was there and we got food. By the way, just about every sandwich place has a bowl or "unwhich" option, and that is what I had a BMT bowl. I did the hardest hike ever on keto and yes my sandwiches were made with Walmart's keto white bread. It is amazing and my go-to.  My dessert was zero-sugar Twizzlers which taste exactly like the sugar-filled ones. We got back to the hotel got in the hot tub hung out and said bye to Sis and Shane. That Monday we went back to Zion and it was crazy busy so we hiked the Emerald Lakes which was not as intense as Angels Landing but still strenuous. There were so many people but it was still a great hike and ended up having lunch in an amazing place. After lunch, we hiked a bit more and then made our way down. We got coffee at Perks and man did I enjoy that because I have coffee every afternoon and was not able to. 

After coffee and shopping, we made our way to Las Vegas. So by this point, I had taken 3 items off of my bucket list. We got to Vegas and our hotel was close to the airport so we could have an easy route to head out on my birthday the next day. It was dinner time and we wanted to eat at a buffet but a lot of them were closed. But Craig found a conveyor belt sushi place pretty close to us. This is something that I have always wanted to try but never had an opportunity and it was so cool.  The sushi came I ate the fish and gave Cambria the rice we ate 4 appetizers, plus 27 plates of sushi, and I was pretty content.  For me, that is the way to go because I didn't have to special order stuff and we didn't know it but it was happy hour so our sushi was 1/2 price. God opened doors and gave us favor on this trip. That night we went to Vegas to cross off another item on my bucket list. I had been to Vegas once before only in the airport so we got to explore the strip. We drove and the strip was packed to the gills on a Monday night so we decided not to park and walk but just drive through. Man that place is overwhelming to me and I really didn't care for it. There is so much opulence around yet there were homeless people. The people walking around just ignored them as if they weren't even there. It was cool to see some of the buildings but I was ready to get out of there and come home.

Family fun and games

 Hi everyone, I hope you're doing well. This blog is going to be different because it covers another aspect of living a healthy, & positive life. Which is mental health, and to be honest the way that I dealt with a lot of my past was running from it claiming that I am only focused on moving forward. The difference now is that I have done the work to be healed. I dealt with my past by journaling, praying, reading my bible, listening to powerful sermons, and understanding that I have the power to forgive. I literally went through every hurt from my childhood until now forgiving anyone that hurt me and recognizing my part in it.

It is very easy to say and much harder to do. My biggest test is to return home, I used to have such a bad attitude about returning and always focused on the negative. I am the oldest of my siblings and was the first to leave the nest voluntarily. I thought that being out of that environment would improve my life completely, but I had a lot of emotional baggage. I was in the army where the morals and standards that I was raised on went completely out the window. I left Raymondville and went to San Antonio then went to Ft Lenordwood Missouri for processing and basic training. Processing wasn't too bad, but the day came when we piled up in a cattle car with all the positions we owned. 

I couldn't see much and it wasn't a long ride but it was dark and we didn't know what to expect or how long it was going to take us to reach our destination. We were all on edge and when we came to a stop all I could see was a bright light as my eyes adjusted to the 3 people wearing smokey the bear hats stuff got real. There were two men and one woman pulling people out of the car and screaming in our faces. Some people actually got hit, pushed, and pulled from the car. I will never forget that day as long as I live. Now I shake my head because there is a no-hitting rule and cadets have stress cards that they can pull. Please don't get me wrong I don't condone or enjoy physical abuse, but it serves its purpose of toughening our soldiers. Ok, that is my tangent and I am getting back on track now.

Seeing my brother and my cousin triggered those and other memories. It is amazing how seeing someone that you haven't seen in years will make you feel like a kid again. At least that I my experience anyway then we went to my parent's house, where it all comes flooding back. I hadn't seen my dad since 2019, and we are pretty disconnected which is nothing new. I went in with very low expectations and they were validated when I gave him his birthday gift. When I gave it to him he asked me "You know what is wrong with this?" Unfortunately, I made a defensive comment that I am not proud of. But aside from that I didn't get upset, and let that set a negative tone for the rest of the trip. I decided to let it go and keep my distance from him like I always did and will continue to do. It doesn't even make me sad anymore and I am so grateful to be free of that. I will continue to be respectful, but I know that things are not going to change there. The only thing I can control is my attitude, so after that, we hung out with my brother, his beautiful wife, and my amazing cousin. 

The next morning my brother joined me on the elliptical and we got to catch up too which was amazing sharing all our memories. My brother knows everyone in town, and I had spent so much time running from all of those memories that I can't recall them very quickly. Then we met even more family back home. I got to see some familiar and new faces we hung out then we had a huge family late lunch with even more family. I actually stayed on track with my food and enjoyed myself. There was cake but it didn't even phase me, we took a bunch of pictures. Then when we got back to our hotel we had the best time ever; my brother BBQed kabobs which were amazing and my other brother brought karaoke. It was a blast and my daughter also had the best time with her uncles and family.  We will remember that night for years to come.

Sunday morning was bittersweet because I got to connect with my brother again. It is amazing to share memories and learn new things. It was the last day & my sister and I took flowers to my mom's grave. It makes me sad and my sister wanted to know why after 40 years. That is a really good question that I am still trying to answer. Aside from my sister, my mom was the only person in my family with whom I was close. She had a mean streak but she at least spent time with me, and let's face it not having my mom has sucked, When I was young all I wanted was a mom and I got one that came with issues of her own. I never understood or really had compassion for her until my brother shared things with me. A lot has happened and changed since then and I have learned to forgive everything. Being around family brings up a lot of things both negative and positive. Every family has issues and I have worked through my stuff. It has been hard, but I have peace about all of it.

My hope is that we won't let this much time pass before we see each other again some of the other highlights are around spending more time with my sis. We had some deep conversations and so many fun times that I can't wait to see her again in about 2 weeks' time. I am so blessed that we are connected and I love her to the moon and back. I hope you have a great week and until next time friends.