Finding love, light, and hope through adversity

How many mornings did I fear what the day would bring?

Too many days filled with shock, sadness, and grief filled the pages of my calendar leaving me in a constant state of fight or flight. So many years of life events unplanned, upending the dream life I worked so hard to create. There are now years between those traumatic events giving me space to heal and reflect on all of the beauty that found its way onto those pages too.

They were his coping mechanism, and they would be the death of her.
Caught in between it all was a little girl who feared them, yet was taught they were what kept her safe. Guns.
A 22. A Glock. A sawed-off shotgun.

My earliest memory of a gun is staring into the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun. I was too little to get into our jacked up 1974 Ford pickup from the passenger side.

“Are you able to feel joy?” asked my therapist.

“No,” I responded as I wished for tears to pour from my eyes because any emotion would give me the hope that I may return back to the living. At the time, I felt like the walking dead. The world still turned, but I was a ghost only able to observe the living, and I found their ability to smile or cry fascinating.

They made it look so easy.