I'm Back!

After a long hiatus, I decided to start writing again. Five years ago, I entered a new chapter in my life. During these last few years, I had other things to focus on and stopped writing. Years ago, when I started writing it was to help me heal from years of abuse. I have since realized that writing helps ease my anxiety, something I have struggled with since I was a little girl. Writing is something I want to get back to. After hundreds of views on my website, I thought I’d come back to give a little update and insight on my life! Although, I know a lot of people were just nosy (which aren’t we all), I also met a ton of people on my journey that were also struggling with similar situations and still are. That’s another reasons I came back to writing, so I could share more of my story and what helped me through my toughest days. One of my hopes is for others feel even a little bit of encouragement.

To fast forward a little bit, I am now married to the love of my life with a sweet, ambitious little two-year-old. Five years ago, I met the best guy ever, my now husband, Conner. I met him online of all places. It’s funny because his parents owned a lake house by my business and he frequented my businesses multiple times before we even knew each other. For those still looking for love, do not knock the old online dating, sometimes it does work out!

Anyways, my husband is kind, loving, affectionate, PATIENT, extremely intelligent, and he’s by far the hardest working man I’ve ever met. He also has a good sense of humor. He especially thinks so! Most importantly though, Conner and I are a team. We have an equal respect for one another. This is something we have worked on for years and have overcome many obstacles. Our family comes first, meaning the three of us, period! We make decisions together, we don’t do things to one another that we wouldn’t want done to ourselves, we have boundaries, we don’t make plans without checking with one another, we don’t keep secrets from one another, and we work together both at home and at work. This is what I call an equal RESPECT for one another.

Conner and I don’t believe in “traditional roles” or as I like to call it, misogyny, or in better terms, abuse. Now don’t get me wrong some people like traditional type roles, but many also feel stuck in these stereotypical positions. This isn’t the 1950’s people, your partner doesn’t want to go to work and then come home and take care of the kids and clean the house by themselves. I can’t imagine they wanted to do it in the 1950’s either. In addition, I’m going to guess that stay-at-home parents don’t want to do absolutely everything at home all day, every day to have their partner come home from work and be “too tired” or have had “too hard a day” to help for the rest of the night. As a multi business owner who works A LOT of hours in the summer and as a mother, I can confidently say that being a mom is way harder than being a business owner. Work as a team with your significant other because everyone gets tired mentally, emotionally, and physically at some point.

Back on track, Conner and I do not do the “traditional roles.” For example, I don’t enjoy cooking, so Conner does a lot of the cooking because he does enjoy it. I know it’s surprising since I own a food truck and I post our meals to social media. I only started posting to social media though because I was bored. The food truck life story is for another day though. People now keep asking me post our meals to social media to get ideas and I’m still bored in these winter months, so I guess it’s a win, win situation. I like baking though, so I do most of the baking. Conner will throw my breads in the oven though if I’m putting my daughter to bed. When I’m off work in the winter I do a lot of the cooking. Conner is normally still working when dinner time comes around a lot of nights. Believe it or not, Conner loves cleaning, so most days he has the dishes put away and the laundry folded before my daughter and I are even out of bed. I know, it sounds crazy that someone actually loves cleaning, but he really does! I think he gets the vacuum cleaner out at least 5 times a day. I love organizing, which is not his forte, so I do most of the organizing around our home. Although, we have now run out of space in our house making it hard to organize anything!

My husband is a very hands-on dad and we parent very well together. Now don’t get me wrong sometimes his ADHD will get the best of him. Occasionally, he moves onto a different task, like the laundry, while “simultaneously” keeping an eye on our daughter who happens to get hurt and I get upset. He acknowledges that he does it though and he fixes it, something most people do not do because they are too stuck in their ways or don’t like change. I also acknowledge that he’s diagnosed ADHD and sometimes he just cannot help it. That’s what being a team is all about though, you work together and you acknowledge things that can be made better and you change them.

I’m not “lucky” to have a partner like this. I intentionally and actively looked for a partner like this after years of abuse. Coming from a misogynistic family and abusive ex boyfriends I knew what I would not put up with ever again, and I don’t. A lot of people that refer to me as “lucky” for having a person like Conner in my life, come from misogynistic families themselves. Unfortunately, most are too oblivious to the fact or just simply don’t know how to change it and heal. I’ve seen it firsthand. Now don’t get me wrong, I am lucky to have Conner in my life. I am lucky because of the reasons I listed previously, not because he helps with the mess we equally make in our home or helps take care of the child we created together. Conner and I work together to make our relationship flow like it does. That includes mental, emotional, and physical aspects of our relationship that are all very important to us.

Moving on, we now own and operate three food trucks with our fourth one set to be delivered next week. On top of that, Conner is a CPA at a large company. We like to stay busy! Last May, Conner and I got married and my mom, aunts, and myself decided to make all of the decorations for our wedding. I got bored the winter before my wedding and I started researching things to make. I came up with ideas and my mom and aunts helped my vision come to life. My wedding then gave me the crazy idea of starting another business. I now own a business called Rosebud Rental and Designs which I named after my grandma, who I was very close to and lost last year. With my new company, my mom, aunts, and myself make, design, and rent items for parties, showers, and weddings. I wanted a change and it’s a lot more enjoyable than my other business. I have a very type A personality, and I enjoy planning and organizing things, so it’s actually just more fun than anything.

Now to back track a little bit. Two years ago, Conner and I mutually decided to have a baby. Unfortunately, my first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at around six weeks. Shortly after, I got pregnant again with our daughter. She is by far the best thing in mine and Conner’s life. Our daughter was born out of wedlock BY CHOICE and that bothered people, but guess what, it was 2022. That was a them problem, not an us problem. To be quite frank, I really did not give a shit what anyone thought. We were going to do whatever we wanted to regardless of what anyone thought. If this is what’s holding you back from having your children, don’t let it! Let me remind you, many people are married with children and can’t stand each other or live with misogynists, as I mentioned above, and don’t know how to get away. Conner and I respectfully love each other, are a team, are financially secure, and didn’t and don’t live hating each other. When we decided to bring our daughter into this world, we were in a much better place mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially than many people already married having kids. Don’t let marriage be the determining factor for having children and remember people’s opinions on your life are theirs to carry, not yours! Yes, we both wanted to get married, but neither of us felt a rush to do so. When we did decide to get married, we were thankfully financially capable of paying for our wedding without any debt and that’s because we did it on our terms.

We chose to have our daughter before we were married for various reasons which I will personally share. First, I was almost 30 and we knew we wanted more than one child. Second, with the food truck schedule we try and plan for our children to be born in the winter when I’m off work. Lastly, we did not know if I was even going to be able to have children. I have never reread my old blog posts, and don’t really need to, but I believe somewhere in my posts I mentioned that at 26 years old I got cancer. My cancer was found in a mass the size of a softball on my stomach lining. The type of cancer I was diagnosed with had a 94% chance of stemming from one of my organs. That meant there was a 6% chance it was ONLY in the mass and not elsewhere. I had three abdominal surgeries making sure the cancer wasn’t in my liver, pancreas, colon, stomach, or female organs. Those were the main areas it could possibly be coming from. Almost 7 years later, I’m still cancer free and my oncologist’s best educated guess is that my cancer came from my liver, and no I was never a drinker. When dealing with my cancer I was told to start looking into fertility doctors. That was a hard statement to hear. Thankfully, I was able to have my daughter without fertility intervention. Anyways, this was a decision we made as a couple and we are so happy we made the decision when we did!

Conner and I plan to have one more child, but unfortunately last May during my wedding I experienced an ectopic pregnancy. A few days after my wedding I was given medication to dissolve the cells of a non-viable pregnancy back into my body, in medical terms, an “abortion.” I was lucky to not have to lose my fallopian tube like many women do. However, I now have a lot of hormonal issues, but I will save all of that for a different blog post at a later date.

For now, that’s a little update on my life. All in all, the love I receive from Conner is different than any love I’ve received before and I’m so thankful for that. It is said that one of the hardest relationships you will be in is the relationship after a toxic, abusive one, and that’s true. After experiencing years of toxic and unhealthy behaviors, you have to heal and unlearn things that you once knew as the normal. It’s hard, but it’s possible to do and extremely rewarding once you do it. I now have what I wished for, for years, a healthy, happy daughter and a wonderful husband! My next blog post will be more on healing, but for the main part my blogs will be taking a different approach from now on as that part of my life is now past me, so stay tuned!

Ps: To clear up any questions that may be asked; yes, Conner did read this blog post as he’s my human spell check. Yes, he fully supports me. His actual words, “that sounds great.” No, he has not read my old ones as he already knows more than what’s in those posts. Lastly, no, I don’t care who reads any of my blog posts. My grandma can read them for all I care. I’m sure my grandpa already has and he’s one of my number one supporter. If anyone has a problem with what I write they should be asking themselves, why. That is a them problem and not an me problem because I’m over here living peacefully.