Yes, this is my life

Losing your spouse to suicide makes a person feel pretty much the same as if your spouse went out for a pack of smokes and never came back. All the emotions of being abandoned are there. It's like being dumped but you can never ask why or what you did to cause it. I have never been dumped by a boyfriend before in my life. I married all the boys I dated and I divorced my first husband. I have always said good bye first. ...Mike really got me good on his adios. Burn. He got his last laugh. I never had a frame of reference on being the dumpee. I assumed it was like in movies and tv. They sit around in dumper's old clothing, crying, singing off key along to sappy love songs with mascara running down your face, and eating ice cream. It's not a cliche...I actually did all of those things after Mike died. Saved By The Bell had the breakup depression spot on! Too bad I didn't find out how relatable it was until 20+ years after the show ended. I will never know why. I

We joined in the San Diego TAPS Seminar this month and it was amazing for reasons I didn't even expect. First off, the view from our suite was breath taking. I don't care that I see it regularly...I will never stop gazing at the ocean like a kid in a toy store. I'm in awe every time. The experience is so profound for me. Standing by the ocean you realize just how small you are on this planet and how my problems, although big to me at times...are so small in the big picture. **side note: I do this weird thing while on the beach. I didn't realize until just now that it's a "thing". (By thing I mean a healthy coping mechanism. Lol) as I sit on the beach I watch the waves come in I pick one that is impressive and I "feed" my worries and problems to the wave. I then watch the wave recede and as the ocean pulls back the water out to sea my anxieties/worries fears are pulled further out into the deep open ocean too. If you're looking for a &q

When I was married to an active duty Marine I was never "moto". I never thought we did anything so impressive. We got the comfort of our base housing and regular income while the Marines were off eating sand in an undisclosed location. They were the ones who really sacrificed. Now looking back I know the wives endured their own and unique struggles. I know that each of you are dealing with issues that most can't understand. I appreciate your part in service to our country. You hold the family together faithfully. You have babies alone. You make hard choices with little to no input while your spouse is gone. Communication sucks a lot of the time. You have to worry about matters at home and abroad. You have to learn to juggle parenting, and career, or school alone. We learned to not complain and cried ourselves to sleep at night....if we had time to sleep! We learned what long distance relationships really meant. We were told not to bother our Marines abroad with too many

On Halloween morning my dad was awoken to his neighbor pounding on his door telling him the building was on fire. She had fallen asleep with a candle lit and it somehow caught the entire structure on fire. He made it out with nothing but the pajamas he was wearing. All was lost. He had a stroke 6 years ago and it left him paralyzed. Luckily about 2 weeks before the fire he moved from the second floor of his apartment building to the ground floor. Had he still lived up the steps he would not have been able to escape the blaze. He was able to get out but not without some minor injuries due to his paralysis. He's now staying with my sister...who does not have space but we made it work. I bought him new clothing and my sister replaced his medication and his immediate needs have been met between us. She took him back to his burned building yesterday and he was only concerned and sad about two items lost. My late husband's watch and his father's burial flag. I had forgotten

Since getting into a committed relationship with Sean, the idea of marriage has been on my mind. I mean, we are engaged and are completely content this way. Our relationship has been relaxed and natural. We're not in a rush. We've both been married. Our kids are adults or nearing adulthood. We're together by choice. It's a good place. However, the marriage issue is something that could be a reality on the horizon so I have considered it. And...it's tricky. At first I thought well who would I eventually be buried with? ...but then I remembered I don't even believe that you have to go to a graveside to talk to your dead loved one. I'm concerned about where my soul goes not my body. So, I satisfied that point. Then I thought "when I get to heaven, what then? How do you pick which husband you want to spend eternity with? Does God pick for you?" And that's going to hurt someone. That's no heaven in my eyes. I did think for days abou

https://youtu.be/Kb24RrHIbFk My teenage son introduced me to this song yesterday. I'm sorry that I am not familiar with your other work but this song had me in tears. Why? Four years ago my husband and the father of my children took his life in my presence, as our kids slept just feet away. In the past four years I've become an advocate for suicide prevention. This one song eclipses any work I could ever do in keeping people alive. You've taken a subject so close to our hearts and took a stand. It reminds me of the work of Tupac. You could have sang about anything, but you chose to help and I cannot thank you enough. My son and I were able to talk about his dads suicide, how his head was racing with the same confusion and abandonment anger and pain as the subject in your song. It helped us connect and I'm positive it will help others too. From one human being to another THANK GOD FOR YOU and this song. You will save lives. You may never meet them or know their name

The recent sexual assault awareness campaign #MeToo encourages women to speak out. I've shared my personal story before but will again so other women may be empowered to take the control back from their attackers. Fear and silence only allow them to continue their dominance over your life and possibly others. My story is not about a random attack from a stranger in a dark alley. I knew them. Two were related to me by marriage. One ended up being a long term boyfriend through two years of my teens. The first time I was sexually abused I was about 7. It was my step father's brother, my uncle. In school they told us to tell our parents if anything ever happened. I did. They asked him. He denied it and nothing ever happened. I was forced to see him at family functions and the likes the rest of my childhood and into my 20s. He died 4 years ago. I wasn't sad. I felt relief. I knew he'd molested his own daughter before me and it wasn't until he divorced his wife and sh

Have you ever had a dream so vivid and so terrifying it took a while after you woke up to convince yourself it didn't actually happen? At 4:12 am I woke in a panic. I felt my body for wounds and the moisture I first thought was blood from being shot was actually sweat that had soaked the length of my back. I jumped our of bed to make sure I could still walk. In my dream I was in an open court yard of a structure, Two stories surrounding me. It reminded me of the pool area from the show Melrose Place. A show I watched 20 years ago. Weird but that's what I thought. I was walking toward one side of the apartment or motel...what ever it was... When suddenly a huge commotion came on all side of me. Doors banging open and swat team members coming out of all the dark corners. I looked up to the second floor balcony and literally saw bullets flying through the air. I heard many loud voices screaming "Freeze! HANDS UP!" I knew I had to get myself out of thecross fire. I

Hate crimes are unconstitutional. (As if you needed to refer to the legalities of hate!) The national anthem is a representation of our Constitution and kneeling during the playing is a law abiders method of pointing out that our Constitution is being abused. It is not a reflection of the kneelers disdain for our country or our laws. It's the opposite. A silent protest to lives lost and cruel liberties taken against citizens who live for that constitution. It's a serious epidemic in this country. Comparing the act to servicemembers dying in action or fighting for the county is a bad way to go. They are DOING THE EXACT SAME THING but in different approaches. They are both trying to protect what they know to be true in the only way they know how. More people have died this year on our soil because they were black than because they were American fighting in a war zone. The two should never be compared. Apples and oranges. I'm asked a lot because I'm a widow of a Marine. H

It's so surreal that he didn't even make it to his 40. His entire life was lived in just under 39 short years. I'm lucky enough to say u knew him 20 of those years. We were married for 11 of them. I would love to say I regret nothing but that would be a lie. I wish I had told him more often how proud I was of him, how important he was to me and the kids, how much we admired his sacrifice for his country. I wish I had held my gaze a little bit longer, hugged him a little bit tighter and felt his heart beating when I rested my head on his chest. There are many things I would have liked to do if I had known our time was going to be so brief. Instead I now hold on to the memories of what was. Hoping that he knew how dedicated I was to him, our marriage and our family. I loved him with my whole heart. I wanted more than anything, for him to wake up one morning and realize how sick he was, how much he was hurting us and himself but the day never came. I didn't give up. I

It's officially into September now. I dread this month every year. This year was no exception. In the last days of August I will filled will such anxiety. To make matters more ironic I started my period on September first. So I don't know for sure if my anxiety was due to the natural PMS symptoms or if my period was early because of my heightened stress. It's funny because it's true. Your mind and your body and linked so strongly. I've never been more aware of this than since Mike's suicide. September is a hard month. Harder than most. It's the anniversary of his death and exactly one week later is his birthday. September is also Suicide Awareness and Prevention month. There are such heightened emotions for me in September. Most of the time I can't even process what it is I'm feeling because they change like Missouri weather. I don't know what I feel from one moment to the next. There is great sadness, at times pride, no matter the circumstan

I've been home from Boston for a week now but I'm still collecting my thoughts and processing all I've learned before I dish on the experience as a whole. There is one weird thing I have to share because it's been bugging me. It's not anything major, I guess. It's just that while I was in individual therapy going over the day and aftermath of Mike's suicide I began remembering small details of that night. Conversations that occurred after the gun shot. The feelings and confusion I had immediately after we ran but before I was told he was dead. It took a really long time for SWAT to get set up and to make entry into out homethat night. I remember begging and pleading with the officers to just let me go in to put pressure on his wound. If he shot himself he'd bleed out while they were getting into whatever "formation" planned. I grabbedon officer's arm and desperately begged. I had no fear for my own safety. Regardless of the struggle th

Sundays have always been special in my family. It's the one day each week when we all consciously set aside our personal lives and schedules to gather. It's tradition in my family. One that I held on to since my grandma was living. My mom followed and then myself. We gather. We cook and we laugh. We also prepare for the week ahead. We give thanks. In therapy I realized that I'm still angry with Michael for ruining this day. He took his life on a Sunday night. If you happen to look at my Facebook posts from that exact day you will see I posted a photo of a Fall wreath I'd made for out front door that morning. I sat right in the living room floor and put it together. Mike was sitting on the couch behind me helping Mason with a school report on the mountain lion. Later that afternoon I posted a photo, the one I have here. It was a snap of my stuffed roasting hens in the oven. I said "I'm so domestic today!" It was a good day. Later I have a photo of m

It's really common for Survivors to embellish their dead loved one's lives.  Families sometimes put them on a pedestal and the memory becomes bigger than life. The portrayal of them becomes nowhere similar to who they really were. There are those who also say things like "you can't speak ill of the dead!" That's garbage. When I hear someone speak of their loved one who took their life and they seem perfect, as if there were no indication they were in any way flawed, troubled, at risk...it makes me wonder if they really knew the person. I am very realistic about the man my husband was before he became sick, while he was there and at the end of his life. My pretending everything was great and he had no issues would be a lie and a disservice to others. By sharing the behaviors he exhibited I can help others identify warning signs in their loved ones. And people are good at masking things. If you asked my former in laws if my husband had any at risk behaviors b

The way I connect with others is very personal. People cone to me in their most desperate moments. Either they or someone they love is in a place so dark that suicide seems like a reasonable option out of their misery. In order for me to get on their level I dig deep and put myself back in time to right before Mike's suicide. Then I relive the tragedy and recall the days, months and years after his death. It can be so taxing on me emotionally but it's necessary for them to hear that it didn't benefit us in any way. It may have stopped his pain but it just started ours. So many suicidal people say "If I just die it will be so much easier on my family." And it's so wrong. It couldn't be further from the truth. Nothing was "fixed". It only creates more illness, more problems.  I find it easier to counsel strangers. I can give them the level of support they need without compounding the situation with personal feelings, fears and emotions. Thi

I really believe that every relationship you have in life, positive or negative gives you tools for navigating through life in the future. If you look at the situation this way you cannot hold anger and resentment too long. They gave you a gift. You may not realize it until much later but all interactions have an impact. Maybe you had a boss who made your days absolutely miserable once. This experience prepares you for when you become a leader. You can reflect on what NOT to do. He/she helped you become a better boss just by knowing you. Maybe later in life you encounter a leader in the work place who is similarly difficult, because you've already dealt with such a person the rest of the office is frazzled but you know the personality and have been there before so it's considerably less stressful. You will encounter all personalities in life. Instead of dreading any interaction with some just mentally ask yourself "what is this person going to teach me about myself or oth

Many people don't know that I was briefly married at age 19. That my eldest son was from this marriage... 19 years ago I married TJ'S dad. We were so young and so clueless. We had good intentions. We loved each other and thought it was the right thing to do. The marriage was so brief, just 4 short years. If TJ hadn't come it would be hard to believe it even happened. We learned so much in that short time. We learned what it means to be a spouse and I truly believe that experience made us great husband and wife to our future spouses. I don't regret it. I look back and smile because it was so innocent and honest. I think my ex husband is a good father and husband to his family and that's something not everyone can say. I like him. I appreciate him and the small blink of time we grew and learned together.                            June 20, 1998 I was 19 and he was 21. When I look back I just giggle. How young. How naive. But how beautiful. Life was easy back

I've blogged often about my families experience and sacrifice. You may or may not have read in past posts that my cousin Eddie was killed in action in 2009. He was in the army and a good soldier. When he died he left a young wife and two very small sons. Our family was deeply affected by the loss. Just a few years later my own husband died. My cousins widow and I became close in this time. We were both young military widows with small kids and no real idea what comes next. Together we leaned on the other for support and encouragement. In the past few years we have both made great strides in working through our grief and doing our best to rebuild a life for our kids. As you can imagine in a loss such as our the idea that a man would ever be in the picture seemed nearly comical. How could a man fit into this? What sort of a man would WANT to be a part of this? Somehow, such a strong man came into both our lives. A man that knew he must share his family with the spirit of a

...is that everything changes! I've changed so much in the past few years. Losing your spouse to suicide is quite humbling. I know that many rude "jokes" have been made behind my back. Such as.."If I had a wife like that I'd kill myself too!" (Dont act shocked. You most likely met me before Mike died. I had my moments! And yes, it has been said of me.) I used to see the world in black and white but now there is so much gray area. Nothing is as easy as it first appears. Where I was quick to judge once I find myself putting on their shoes as considering it from all angles. It was much more fun to make snap judgments. It was funnier, at least. Not really caring what the person would say if they heard my "jokes". Some changes I have been forced to make and others were conscious choices made thoughtfully and intentionally. I care more now. Even when I don't want to. I am more observant and kind. I am slower to speak and quicker to act. I am m

A few months ago I was nominated to participate in an intense outpatient therapy program. It's a pilot program that is being offered by TAPS, HomeBase and Massachusetts hospital. It's specifically designed for Survivors with PTSD. Of course I said YES! It's a gift that will not only benefit me but my family as well. I am of the opinion that everyone can benefit from therapy. And this program is all inclusive. From my flight to my lodging all I'm required to do is show up and take it seriously. Which is not at all much to ask. I feel honored to be chosen for such a life changing opportunity. There was a screening process. It took a few months to get through and in the end I was picked. Only ten people from TAPS were nominated for this and I made it to the end. I'm so incredibly grateful for the experience. This week I got my flight confirmation and itinerary for the treatment. It's going to be in Boston. Next month. I will try to update as it goes but, my

There are two things you can tell a woman that are devistating. One is that you're a bad wife and the other is that you're a bad mom. In the past four years I've been told both. When the rumor started that I personally killed my husband I was broken. Last week I got into a huge argument with my former in laws. In the heat of the moment my ex mother in law said "had TJ not come to live with us the state was going to take him away!" It was a lie. It was completely untrue. At no point in his life was he ever at risk of being taken but the words were said. And they hurt. So deeply. I cried for days. The fact that anyone could say that or think that or that my kid was ever told that hurts. It's something that I may never get over. I know they love him. I thought if she said that so casually in the moment who else did she share this story with? Why would she say something so hurtful? I am not perfect. I made mistakes but never, even in the wake of Mikes suicide did

It all started with a phone call last week. A women who claimed to be a recruiter for my son's college called not me but my SISTER and requested that I not accompany him to his college meeting the next week. Because they got his scholarship based on his being solely financially in the care of his grandparents. Also, if I could stop posting to him and about him on social media because it would make her "look like a liar" when they saw he had a mother in his life. My sister bawled when she tried to relay this to me the night before his graduation ceremony. I was so confused. I asked to speak to the recruiter immediately. It turned out it wasn't a recruiter at all. She wasn't even affiliated with the school. She was actually my son's girlfriends mother. I explained to her that his grandparents were NOT solely responsible. He has two employed parents who are. He's in the temporary guardianship of his grandparents while he finished high school. I have joint cu

Any time I ever dream about Mike anymore it's that he was deployed and died in action but that he didn't actually die. Instead he began a life where he was, got engaged and then came home. Only to tell me he was engaged and no longer loved me and painfully points out all the ways I failed him. How I was a bad wife. There is a lot of screaming and crying and throwing things in these dreams. I wake up so exhausted and sad. In a way the rejection and abandonment I feel is no different than being left for another woman except he can't tell me all the ways I failed our marriage. My mind does all that for me. Some days I think this really sucks. I know consciously it's not my fault. In my dreams my heart begs to differ. It make me feel emotional and weepy the whole next day. I'm sensitive and reactionary. I don't like the fragile feeling. I'm far from being fragile. Last night in the dream he told me the relationship he had was done. He broke it off. I didn&#

So many teen/pre-teen suicides are being blamed on bullying these days. Before I even begin I will say bullying is wrong. It is painful and never appropriate. Having said this, I want to explain why it's usually not just due to bullying. Being bullied is usually just another effect in the perfect storm of a suicidal person. What I mean is, although there was clear evidence the girl or boy was being bullied it's probably NOT the only reason they were in that desperate mindset where suicide seemed like a plausible way out. Was it a layer in the shit cake they had, absolutely.  The reality is many many people are bullied. I was bullied. From the age of 11. I even stopped riding the school bus in middle school because an 8th grader on the bus told me, if I got on she was going to beat my ass right off again. Luckily it was toward the end of the year, the weather was not bad and she was going to 9th grade next so I knew I could return to the bus at the beginning of the next year.