Tag: Charmin

The Curse of an Independent Woman

On By charminfothIn Faith, LoveLeave a comment

If you are a fan of my upbeat, inspirational posts, spoiler alert. This will not be that.

The day is closing on my birthday. My first day of year 59. It began with a funeral and ended with a car wreck. Before you fret too much, everyone is okay, and so on with the story.
Today has been an unusual mix of emotions, sweetness, sorrow, excitement, and fear.


As I said earlier, I spent the morning at a military funeral. It wasn’t long ago I was in that very same chapel waiting for the guns to fire, taps to be played and the flag folded and passed. A military funeral is both reverence and history. The lone trumpet playing Taps evokes a sadness that is not just yours, but the sadness of all those who have experienced that pain before you. It is a history of pain, isolation, and mourning. Taps is played every day on a military post to signal the end of the day. When it is played, life on post stops, people get out of their cars, stop doing whatever they are doing, and soldiers face the flag as it comes down for the day and salute. It is signaling soldiers to lay down their burdens and rest. At the end of life, it signals that soldier have completed their earthly mission and can now be at peace. All of this is why Taps brings me to my knees every time. 


After Taps played this morning, I walked away from the chapel, made my way to a now-familiar bench, and had a conversation. To those looking on, it may have seemed one-sided, or that I was a little crazy talking to myself, but to me, it was a conversation with my best friend, who I miss more than words can even begin to express. A feeling of peace settles over me when we talk of life moving on without him here. I told Andy that I understood his time was not my time. I’ve realized that even though things have been challenging and downright scary at times, I wouldn’t change anything. I know that sounds harsh, but it is true.


Years and years ago, Andy and I talked about how we were in a certain place at a certain time for a reason, and we were given a gift at that moment in time. Our friendship superseded everything, we both had past baggage and troubles, some horrific things most would see as obstacles. You see, if you change one single thing, either good or bad, the trajectory of your life shifts and you are no longer in alignment to be in that moment in time to receive a gift you didn’t even know you needed. Andy’s death led me to the next point on my path and whatever that point brings, I know I’m meant to be there and I’m grateful for the gift.


So when I sat on that bench in the sunshine, talking to a man who was no longer here for me, I knew he understood what I meant. Crazy, right? I know things have worked out just as they were supposed to, even though sometimes I wish they were different. The God of the Universe still has plans for me, he keeps pushing me in a direction I can’t yet see, but I know there is a gift when I get there.


I am very blessed to have people who love and care for me. That was never more obvious than today. My brother called to wish me a happy birthday, my sister-in-law texted a big “Happy Birthday,” and hundreds of folks wished me happy birthday on social media. The ladies in my office took me out for lunch. They encouraged me and loved on me. They made a hard morning a better day.


After work another friend wanted to celebrate with me. I met a dear friend for dinner, and jazz afterward. Dinner was wonderful. Sadly, we didn’t make it to the jazz. We left the restaurant and I had to take a call for work, so I was a few minutes behind her. As I made my way to our destination I was stopped due to an accident. When I saw it was my friend, my stomach dropped to my knees. She was hit almost head-on as she pulled out from a light. Luckily, she was ok. She had banged up knees, and a few other aches and pains. The car was totaled. She was so lucky it wasn’t worse. I was thankful I could be there for her, I stayed with her, cleaned out her car, took her home, and got her settled. Let the people she needed to know, know. She kept apologizing for messing up my birthday. I felt terrible she was hurt trying to do something nice for me. I wouldn’t have been anywhere else. If I hadn’t been there, who would’ve? That’s what you do, right?


We are meant to share each other’s burdens when the world becomes heavy. Then why do I feel as if I’m carrying more than my share?


I don’t have all the answers, I am not perfect, but I am authentic. If I care about you and you care about me, that’s community. Community is very important to me. I will go through hell and back with you, help you find what you need, help you carry your burdens. Community is not about doing life alone. 


Yet…that’s where I am. Life alone, who pours into you, lifts you up, hugs away your hurts, lets you cry on their shoulders when you need to, when you no longer have a person? You give, who gives back? I am not perfect. Sometimes I am empty, sometimes I am tired, sometimes I hurt, and sometimes I need someone to be authentic for me, and care for me. I have always been the caregiver, so I struggle with accepting the very thing I need, care.


Is it easy? No. There are things in my soul that I keep bumping up against. This is where it gets dark, where the hard things get too heavy to carry, where life alone becomes unbearable. But what do you do? Carry on.


It doesn’t come all at once, it comes in the quiet moments when I’m alone and it hurts just a little too much. The times when all I want is a person to be MY person, to listen when I share, to care, to spend time with me and enjoy my company as much as I do theirs, someone to call and ask how my day was and I ask them about their day, someone who gets my weird humor and I can laugh alongside, to share stories, people watch, stream videos or just sit in comfortable silence together over a cup of coffee. Today, I realized I miss having a person most of all and it hurt me to my core. I’m crying as I type this. Cherish your people.


Now, does that mean I will do anything to get a person? Absolutely not! I learned a while back, never to do anything out of the fear of being alone. It is not worth it and it leads to self-doubt and self-loathing.

I don’t need to be married, I don’t know that I’ll ever get married again. Only time will tell, I guess. I don’t want to take over someone’s home or them take over mine. I don’t want someone to complete me, or be my first last kiss or any of that other corny crap that people put on dating profiles.

What I long for is a person I can rely on. For me, that person is a man, who is ride or die, hell or high water there for me and me for them. I miss true connection, true friendship, and someone who will be ok if I cry on their shoulder, and I’m there if they need to cry on mine. I’ve got their back if they need me. I miss having MY person, my go-to when the world goes to crap. Someone who makes me feel safe and that I trust. I miss hugs.


I know I sound whiny, and today I guess I am. Retrospect can be that way. Don’t get me wrong, I love my girlfriends, but they can’t do that for me. I’m not alone, but I FEEL alone. I have people. I have a tribe that loves and cares about me. My friends have been sounding boards when I need to process, they have sat in silence with me when I had no words, they have shared laughter when I never thought I’d laugh again, they have sung with me no matter how off-key I am, they have given my heart a song when the music in me was silent. 


All of this is hard for me to admit, I’m not what many people see. I’m not strong. I need someone to give back and to care for me. I need someone who can be all the things I am to others, for me, to pour in what I have poured out. I have taken care of myself for so long that I have forgotten how to ask for help, and how to be vulnerable.

They call it resilience, but that doesn’t make it any easier to carry the weight. Strong independent women seem to have it all together, the perception is that they don’t need anything or anyone. Strong women don’t fall apart when things get tough, they handle tough situations with apparent ease, and they rarely lose control in front of others. You don’t see us screaming into our pillows or crying in the shower so no one sees our tears. Even though the burdens weigh us down, we struggle to our feet and keep going, because we have to. Not because we want to.


I believe this is the curse of a strong independent woman. 

Living Someone Else’s Dream

On By charminfothIn dream building, encouragement, Faith, life coachingLeave a comment

Have you ever been shaken awake and realized you were living someone else’s dream and not your own?

In 2020, in the height of the pandemic, my husband of almost 25 years died from a massive stroke. He was 52 and I was 55. I was shattered into a million pieces. A middle aged woman who felt absolutely invisible. I had to figure out how to go forward alone. How do I do life? I was in shock, going through a lot of emotions and just barely making it a step at a time.

We had 32 acres and a little farm with chickens and goats. We also had a little tiny farmhouse that was almost 100 years old and needed constant work. I was isolated in the country, and felt all alone in the world. During COVID there was not a lot of personal contact, so much so that we had a funeral on zoom. There was one there to hug me when I fell apart.

A month after the funeral was Christmas. My first Christmas alone in a very long time. It would have been Andrew’s 53rd birthday. December felt impossible. Friends knew I was struggling and asked me to come spend Christmas with them. That positive energy felt like a lifeline.

We had a wonderful white Christmas! It rarely snows in Knoxville, Tennessee in December. It snowed almost a foot on Christmas Eve. It was beautiful. Christmas Day was breakfast and presents. We watched Christmas movies and talked girl talk. It was blissful. A wonderful escape from the reality I felt crushing me. I went home feeling energized.

When I drove down the driveway, through the untouched snow, I noticed a river of water running down the drive. I knew a pipe had burst. We had lived on this piece of land for 18 years. I felt completely defeated. In that moment the world stood completely still. I stopped the car, pounded on the steering wheel and screamed at the top of my lungs.

In the quiet that followed I heard the Spirit in my Soul whisper, “You have faithfully served a great love here and have lived someone else’s dream for long enough, it is time to find your own dream now.”

That day, I had clarity. I knew it was time to let go of the farm, despite all the advice not to make any big changes during the grieving process. I had to do what was right for me. I began searching for what my dream would be.

Slowly, one step at a time, I started taking baby steps toward living a life that I love. I began building a vision of what I want my life to be.

After my realization, I found other people had the same type of experience. They had a hard time learning how to dream again.

Most children dream daily, they can see and embrace their dreams. They act them out, they feel the joy in pretending their vision is happening now. As adults, we often lose the ability to just let go and dream. If you have lived through significant trauma you find it even harder to dream. Life seems to limit everything. But what if you could dream a new dream? What would it be?

So I felt a calling to help others live a life they love, to help them remember how to dream, to teach others steps to move forward, even if it is baby steps. You can climb Mount Everest if you continue taking one step forward at a time.

I made a major step in that direction. I invested in myself for the first time ever. I studied, I put in the work on myself. Today, I became a certified Dream Builder Life Coach.

I am so excited about what the futre has for me. And for you too! If you would like to know more, please let me know. In the weeks to come you will notice a new website here and also new Facebook and Instagram pages. I will still share the positive vibes I have always put out, they will just be a bit more focused.

Thanks for being here for me and thanks for reading.

Taking a Fresh Look at Deserving

On By charminfothIn encouragement, Faith, Love3 Comments

You are never promised tomorrow. Life can change in an instant. When it is all said and done what do you long for? In the past four years of rediscovering myself, I’ve found important things and I refuse to settle for less. I think that is growth and deserving rolled into a package.

Deserving is a cringy word for me. You hear, “I deserve this or that”, and “I’m worthy of this or that.” To some, it means entitlement, to me it means grace. Were I to get what I deserved, and what I was worth I wouldn’t be standing here today. Grace changes that landscape and creates a better image inside of us. We are created by an infinite God, in His image, His energy breathes life into us, His spark makes our hearts beat. You don’t have to agree with me or believe like me, I won’t judge you or beat you over the head with my Bible. Whatever you call it, there is energy that surrounds us and creates us, I call that God.

So how do I get to a place of peace with deserving?

I have had to shift my perception to be ready to change. I know change is on the horizon. I can’t see it, but it’s there. Life happens to all of us. The God of the Universe has given us unlimited creative potential. As humans, we constantly try to fit God into a box with our limiting beliefs and perceptions. God doesn’t have limits, but our minds can’t fathom those complexities. I’ve learned I don’t have to understand, I just have to pay attention and take the next step forward.

I have learned to receive support, I’ve learned that I am not an island and I need other people who are in alignment with me. By being willing to receive support, I can turn around and give support to others. Sometimes we all need someone to pour into our cup and not continually drain it dry.

I have learned to perceive myself differently. I am always my own worst critic. Up until now, I have believed I will never be good enough, smart enough, strong enough, pretty enough, thin enough, talented enough, etc. I have to combat negative self-talk daily, but now I try to catch it when it happens and give myself an alternative to what the enemy in my mind wants me to believe. The truth is, what others think of me doesn’t matter. The truth is what I think of myself, matters more than I ever imagined. Not in a vain or conceited way, in a wholistic way. We go where our minds lead.

I have learned that condition-based thinking defeats me. My past, my history, has taught me valuable lessons. We lived it, we survived it, but it does not own us. We have a story, but we are not our story. We have a history, we are not our history. By understanding history we aim to not repeat it. By conditioning ourselves to believe our history is all we are, we never grow past the borders of our past and may even doom ourselves into repeating that history and hoping for a different outcome.

In a recent class, it was explained to me like this…Our sense of deserving does not come from our past, our stories or our conditions, it comes from the infinite potential that God has placed inside us. Accepting and identifying that shifted my perception and has since shifted my life.

I’m learning that I have the power to change my self-image by being conscious of my thoughts and reframing them from negative to positive. I’m changing the channel on negativity. I am learning to respond rather than react. That’s difficult. I have a feeling it will take a constant effort on my part. We are all works in progress, no matter what age. I am worth the work. 🙂

The Sea of Overthinking

On By charminfothIn encouragement, FaithLeave a comment

I think at one time or another we have all been guilty of overthinking. I know I have set sail on the Sea of Overthinking many, many times.

We try to process what a situation, turn of a phrase, or action from another means, and what the intention of another was toward us. Our minds spin with “What did this mean,” or “Why did they say that?”

When I was younger I spent so much of my energy trying to figure out why someone behaved this way or that way toward me. I built up expectations and scenarios in my head that were so far from the truth. I would have whole conversations in my head with people, what I would say if I could, and how they would react. I had everything mapped out in my brain for what I thought it should be. In reality, the conversations never went as I expected. In most cases, it went far better than I ever expected.

It took me years to learn that the energy I was using to overthink things was misguided. Twenty-six years in a relationship with a chronic overthinker taught me so many life lessons. I like to think it made us better people by learning the lessons together. We had both been in a sea of overthought expectations for a long time before we met. We were stuck by how other people had hurt and failed us in one way or another. We both struggled with past trauma. Some hurt was of our own making, some not, and all had anchored in our souls and prevented us from moving forward.

Looking at the course of my life, with all its twists and turns, I am always amazed and grateful that I am here. I believe that God places people in your life for a reason and a season. Not all are meant to be there for life, but the lessons they leave with you during that season are invaluable. It is up to you to be grateful for the lesson or let it eat away at your peace. I choose to be grateful for every lesson life has sent my way.

So for a season, I was sent a man who was as broken as I was, and we helped each other heal. Together, we learned that communication is what guides the boat to the safety of the shore and forgiveness is what pulls up the anchors and sets you free to move forward.

Neither of us liked being unsure of ourselves or feeling insecure, overthinking was a form of fear we hated admitting. So, we struck a bargain (we actually struck up several bargains that first year, but that’s for another time). If we were unsure of what the other meant by something we would ask. It seems so simple but it was so life-changing.

We also agreed to check each other when we would notice the other was overthinking. There were times when I would hear, “Tell me what’s going on?” and I would cringe because I knew we were about to have a conversation I needed to have. I would say, “I’m fine, and he would tell me “Fine is one of the 7 circles of Hell.” “Fine” was never the right answer, so that’s where the conversation would start. You see, I’m a little hard-headed and sometimes I needed someone to just be straight with me, to pull me out of my own headspace.

By the same token, when he was overthinking, he would divert the question and talk about everything except what I had asked him. When that happened, I’d just say “OK, what’s up, let’s talk about it.” It wasn’t always an easy conversation, but it was always a conversation worth having. We learned that we were safe spaces for each other.

This is one of the best lessons, learning it was ok to ask questions. I learned asking questions shows someone you care and you want to better understand them.

I shouldn’t be amazed that God knows what He is doing, yet I always am. You see broken pieces can fit together in ways we never expect and when it happens it is a beautiful thing.

I often think of my life as a mosaic. Little pieces of brightly colored tile or glass, pieced together again and again after every break. Each break is different than the break before, but every time coming together to create a more detailed version than I was the season before. All life’s lessons lead you to where you are at this very moment.

I still overthink things, I’m still hard-headed, and I still need to hear from friends that I’m in my own head. When it happens I’ve learned to get quiet and listen to that still small voice. In the quiet, the chaos falls away. That still small voice deep inside is not one of chaos, it is one of calm and peace, it never berates me or makes me feel less than, it whispers “You are enough.” That voice reminds me to ask questions where and when they are needed for clarity and not operate from a place of doubt and fear. I have learned to welcome discerning questions from those close to me because it shows they want to know more about what’s going on with me.

The practice of asking for clarity doesn’t happen overnight and it can be difficult at times. I believe it is worth it, there is freedom that comes from not overthinking things. You learn to trade expectations for gratitude. What ifs change from a negative thought to a positive thought. The energy you once used spinning in your own mind is replaced by peace, you breathe easier, and you feel lighter.

My prayer for you tonight is that you feel peace.

Thanks for reading.

Being Brave

On By charminfothIn encouragement, Faith, Poetry1 Comment

I have ruminated on this post for quite some time. I have often been told I was brave, but I have never, ever viewed myself as brave. So my question is, what do you consider brave?

Miriam Webster defines bravery as the quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty: the quality or state of being brave: COURAGE.

I feel guilty saying this (and I pray I don’t jinx myself), but my life right now, at this moment, is easier than it has ever been. That is not an exaggeration, it is a blessing from God. I have a nice place to live, a dependable car, a job I love, people who care about me, food on my table, and clean clothes. I am so thankful for all I have been blessed with, I am awed by it.

My life has not been an easy one, but with every trial, there is a testimony. I believe in the power of testimony, I believe my truths help others so they don’t have the same struggles I’ve had. I believe shared wisdom is shared wealth. Not a monetary wealth that can be gone in an instant but a wealth of spirit that money can’t provide.

I’ve never been monetarily wealthy, but I’ve walked along the French Rivera and through the streets of Rome and Barcelona. I’m not famous, but I’ve been on television. I’m not an author, but you are reading my work. I’m not lonely, but in the quiet times, I’m alone.

Just because you don’t have doesn’t mean you will never get. God places things in our path, people, opportunities, experiences, etc. for a reason or a season. If I choose to ignore the possibilities of what’s in front of me because of what is behind me, I stay rooted in fear. So then, am I brave for moving forward?

I wrote a poem about bravery for a local poetry night and I really struggled with sharing it. I felt as if I was opening a door screaming, “Poor me, look what I’ve been through.” That’s not it at all, it’s just me showing my scars and battle wounds, saying, “See, I’ve healed, you can, too.” The scars remind us where we’ve been, and are a testimony to our resilience, but they shouldn’t hold us back, so here’s me showing my scars.

Being Brave

Bravery is not
What I see in me, you see

I was told I was brave
When I was adopted at 4

I was told I was brave
for starting in a new school in a new town

I was told I was brave
telling an adult what happened

I was told I was brave
running away from it happening again

I was told I was brave
standing up for myself

I was told I was brave
standing in front of a judge

I was told I was brave
for art school instead of college

I was told I was brave
leaving a hospital a widow at 19

I was told I was brave 
moving where no one knew me

I was told I was brave
leaving abusive relationships
again, again, and again

I was told I was brave 
transferring jobs 

I was told I was brave
marrying again

I was told I was brave
leaving everything behind

I was told I was brave
seeking help

I was told I was brave
going to therapy and sharing

I was told I was brave
marrying into the military 

I was told I was brave
traveling alone to a strange country

I was told I was brave
teaching a class

I was told I was brave
volunteering my time

I was told I was brave 
changing careers

I was told I was brave
writing 

I was told I was brave
acting

I was told I was brave
leaving another hospital a widow at 55

I was told I was brave
handling it all with grace

I was told I was brave
dating again

I was told I was brave
standing on this stage

I was told I was brave
with purple hair

I was told I was brave
showing my scars 

I was told I was brave
for so many things

I was told I was brave
Surviving

I was told I was brave
but  I'm not

I was told I was brave

Sometimes being brave is just putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. Everyone has troubled times. There is nothing special about me, other than I am a child of God, created to share love and be loved. What else do I need? Life is good. Be brave.

Thanks for reading.