Don't fight the change, be the change

I know it's not over yet, but this has been a hell of a year, it's gone by fast and hard. I am left still with so much unfinished business and I need to close this shit.

I have friends again, something I totally took a break from and it feels good. Ppl I talk to daily and share with and love, most of them are forever far away, but I fucking love them and appreciate them. I lost a lot of people when Mike got sick, cool, I get it, to much, than when Aunt Janet died depression finished off the rest. I just quit wanting to be close to people because it fucking hurts. I learned after loosing PA, the only dad I could ever count on and loved me unconditionally that it doesn't matter how hard you try, you can't protect yourself from that kind of hurt and decided to try opening back up. I started being myself again and ppl like me, not all of them but the ones that count. I just thought I was a bad friend for a long time, but maybe I am not, maybe I just quit being me and loving me and as my girl RU says "If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love anybody else" Rupaul is the shiz those are the deepest words right there.

Shine was a turning point for me on this one, I got as much out of that trip as Meredith did, I had fun with the kids and the adults, I let my hair down and let ppl get to know me again and it paid off. It was scary and I went back to the hotel and cried a lot, but not because I was upset, but because I missed just being myself, not a cancer wife, a mother, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, but Stefanie the person. I have reached out to a few old friends who I lost because of me not because they weren't there and Lilia, Mo, Tracy, the original Stephanie Thomas we are going to start hanging out again, you are my girls. Life gets busy but dammit we need time for being women, individuals.

Also with growth comes letting go of negative ppl and things in life and that has been a big growth for me this year, I have cut a lot of crap out of my life and that has made room for me to find myself again, sorry but if you just drain me and add nothing than I can't. If I can't be happy with you in my life than I choose me. This has been the hardest for me personally because I want to be there and help and support and love, social worker mentality dies hard. My kids need those parts of me so buh bye. Even though it still hurts sometimes, I am a better mother, wife, friend, individual for it. These people never put me ahead of their baggage even when I needed it most. I only took 2 kids to raise, the rest are bonus.

There are some ppl I have built healthier relationships with like my brother, my grandma, my Aunt, my mother, being happy with me helps me not to feel undeserving and less than so I can appreciate our differences and love them as me instead of who I think they want or need me to be.

My husband, he will forever be my best friend, I got stuck for a long while in being a cancer wife and not a wife, things were not bad, but not fulfilling either, we were just going through the motions so I did what I do when I don't know how to express my feelings and picked a fight. It was not a normal fight though, I in his words, went crazy, yes his dumbass called a woman crazy when she was angry lol but I didn't just fight with him, I made him hear me and I vented out my frustrations, not with him but what cancer took from him and I as husband and wife, I for the first time put it all out there and fully expecting it to end bad, it instead changed things, we were able to realized we were both feeling and needing the same things just both to afraid to lay them out there because there is that fear of loosing that comfort or finding out you aren't in love anymore. We found that we are still very much in love and just needed to cut the BS and say what we needed and how we felt. The tension is gone, the comfort is gone but in a good way, we are us again, silly, passionate and carry the stress together again.

My church family and God, I got lost for a while, in my faith and in feeling deserving of their love. I was angry at God, I was angry at things at church, but instead of facing it just isolated, I am good at that, but then God kicked me in the ass and reminded me what that family means to me. I love you all, I can always count on you all, when I fall there is always one of you there to catch me even when I don't let it be known that I need you. God kicked me in my ass through my Pastor, who is by far the best person I know in this world. She didn't get on me, she didn't push me, she just kept up with me, a card in the mail, constantly commenting on my post "I miss you" "We missed you today" with out fail on almost everything I said on FB, not with judgment or condemnation but with love, finally hit me that it wasn't just words, she did miss me and so did God. See Sherry Roby and God were both gently reminding me of my worthiness and Gods forgiving love. One day I heard them and started working on fixing that relationship. Now you all know I am not s perfect Christian, I don't fit in a religious box, but my God, My Pastor, My church isn't about being Christian, they are about being God like and meeting and loving you where you are at. For this I am thankful. I smoke, I cuss, I get angry with God often, but that is where I am growing from, I went backwards after Mike got sick again. I allowed some people who were not God like to hurt me and I accepted that for gospel. Once I got it together though my church family and my God was there. Our first lady too, I can't forget her, she made a constant presence on social media because that is where I was at. I am good being a work in progress, when we stop being in progress we just stop.

So what got me to these bad places, mostly my unwillingness to see my own worth. I was thinking in terms of not having enough money, my health not allowing me to be as involved as I want, being convinced that I was just not able to offer anything to others and not wanting to be a drain on others, a burden, feeling unequal while fighting for equality. The devil telling me I was not good enough. I am not sure how my changes came to be exactly, I see a lot of post saying things like "be the change you want to see" and "you have to make changes to be change" ect, but I didn't set out to change, I just did, I started making changes out of necessity, not necessarily conscious on many of them, some very precise and necessary. The more I started taking care of me and seeking happiness, the more things started to change. I didn't just change me, I just quit fighting myself and allowed myself to be again.

Not that I write much anymore, but why do I share these personal things, simply because they are part of me and I am not ashamed and maybe I will one day help someone else be ok with who they are. Stop fighting your changes and embrace them loves, but ppl out, be open to new ppl, let God lead the dance.

 

Ponder This🤔

This will be a whole lot of crazy, I will warn you now, so buckle up, because it’s the law, but if you are driving a motorcycle no need for a helmet because that is not! This is pondering of the great questions of the world or at least my world. The big questions that keep me thinking and praying like why do people assume we are all on equal footing, the mentality of, if I can than you can all the way to the seemingly menial stuff such as how would anyone know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop, can anyone actually, lick, count and not end up biting the dang thing on purpose or accident. Just saying, I know you can find the answer to this on the internet, but seriously, it must have been a mathematical conclusion because I just don’t think it is really humanly possible. I write this while biting into a lemon head, just saying.  

I will start off with some light stuff such as, how does a “keep off the grass” sign get on the grass? I mean obviously someone put it there I would assume, but from the start the rule is being broken and a bad example set. I don’t know how light this one is because it really gets me in a frenzy, but when you’re at the movies, which arm rest is yours? Is there a right answer and does that answer change if you are left handed? Here is one I face almost every day! Why do people push the elevator button more than once, do they think it will speed up the elevator or perhaps they think the light indicates that your message was not received and it is merely a request to try again? While on the topic of elevators WHY WHY WHY when the thing is almost empty do you not hold the elevator for the person who is just barely behind you, ever think the difference that can be made in a person’s day just by getting on the first elevator and maybe throw in a “have a good day” while you’re at it? Changing the world, changing people, making things better for the ones we leave behind can be obtained or at least helped along by pondering the little things. Changing the way we think, for instance, when driving, I am guilty too, if someone speeds up, passes me, keeps me from merging they are an asshole and are holding me up, if they are slower than you, follow traffic rules they are a moron and holding you up also. So is there really a winner in this situation if you don’t change your mindset. Again just me pondering some of the life questions that keep me up thinking at times, you will get no answers from me or judgment. If I had the answers this would be a much different entry.

Now Nature vs. Nurture? This one drives me nuts, having a son who was raised by a man that didn’t contribute to his DNA, I see so much of both men in him though he has only been raised by one. I don’t know which one has the most baring on a child, shapes who there are, plays the biggest part. What I do know is that STARWARS, YES STARWARS is nature, it is embed, it is born, my son is living proof of this so I can’t tell you nature vs. nurture but I can tell you that if you make a child with a STARWARS loving parent, that child will also like, love STARWARS, no matter how much you nurture them not to!!!

 Another one that keeps me thinking in my bed or recliner instead of sleeping is “what am I the most grateful for”? Goodness, my kids, but which one if it is only one thing, Mike’s health? Well that would mean that I am grateful for some part of cancer because if I had not almost lost him would this even be in the running? My grandparents because they shaped who I am, who I am made all these other things possible, but without being created and birthed so my parents but then again my mom wouldn’t be here without being created and born so that brings me back to my grandparents?!? I don’t know, just thinking out loud, ok that was on purpose, is it thinking out loud if I am doing it in written word? Also coming back to parents, my bio dad, ugh, just NO, he doesn’t love me, it hurts me, it hurts my kids, but there was a time when he was a good dad, brief but it is in my memory and at times makes me think fondly, which always brings me back to hurt so my next question is, is it better to have love and lost than to never have loved at all or to put it better,  know someone and lose them or never know them at all? Does it depend on the person in question and the person asking or is there a general answer and how can you know if you never knew them and by then it is too late because you know them so there is no unknowing them. See this is hard stuff.

Now to lighten it up again because I don’t want anyone’s mind to explode or implode or for them to bang said head on a wall because of this entry so my next one is kinda strange, but it really could be important one day to someone, how do you handcuff a one armed man? Do you cuff him to something or to his leg or what if he was a she, it doesn’t change the answer but we often use HE instead of SHE when talking in general or hypothetic terms because MAN good, Woman less good. This one though, this one “If you could start over, what would you change” I hear this asked all the time and all I can think is WHO has the energy to start over and do this again, not me, if I had the option to start over I would probably pass unless I could know then what I know now, then maybe I could make some changes, but seriously, no, no energy to even think about this question, even think of a redo, so how could I redo and make changes so just ignore that previous statement, the answer is NO. Then there is the question of “if you had one wish” ok, now we all say something noble, but who would really use it for world peace because likely the world peace would not last, I think I would be selfish and go with money, why? because we have all heard money can’t buy happiness, that may be true but I know I could help so many people with that money that would not be helped by me using it to fix problems that will become problems again.

 A few more for fun, I could do this all day, I really could. Is it easier to be loved or love? Dang now that is a hard one. I think to be loved, but that is just one old ladies opinion, it’s not fact or an answer, just my opinion. Loving comes easy to me, but being loved is hard for me, I tend to skate around it and hardly ever let anyone see me, my raw self, I struggle after 15 years to even lay my head upon my husband’s shoulder and cry or express vulnerability and isn’t love a lot about vulnerability? Speaking of love, What terrifies you the most? Not about love, but life in general, is it possible to answer? I would imagine that even if I said, then something worse could still happen, something scarier and then I would think I conjured it up because I am nuts, honestly you must have at least figured that out by now lol.

This will be my last paragraph, I know you all have better things to do than follow me on this tangent. So a fun one maybe is what you would title your life if it was a movie, not really asking, just asking. (Again I am nuts remember) Then this one that I thought of after watching 13 reasons, if you did a wrong act and no one was there to see it, is it still a wrong act? Now we are getting to the point of this rambling, the one with no point. Well is it? In order to fix this world folks we have to think, we have make choices and we MUST change how we think, how we think about the simplest things to the most though provoking like, is a terrorist just a terrorist or a freedom fighter, does it matter if we don’t agree? I don’t know all these answers and as I said most of them don’t even have a correct answer, this post was just to get you thinking, I think all the time. Talk less listen more from Hamilton, Talk less think more from Stefanie.

I am adding a paragraph because after rereading this entry I am not sure my vision for this entry was clear enough. Pondering? Thinking about situations, questions, people and life in general at times. Think of Christian, Muslim, LGBT, Straight, Race, Atheist, Democrat, Republican and on and on, there is no correct  or wrong answers to any of these categories either, just our perception and how we choose to react to our opinions and feelings that are charged just like some of my other examples above. How can a single one of us KNOW if something is right or wrong, we can only judge based on our own thought processes and prejudices so we do, but if you stopped to think, stopped to put yourself on the other side for a moment, stopped to think of the person behind the label does that, can that change your reaction, your hate, your anger. I think it can, we have become reactors instead of thinkers. Yes I said WE, I can tell you after the Orlando Massacre, and then the shootings by and of police all around and the kid and the alligator, my brain and heart exploded and I started ranting and cutting people away. I may not be able to understand all the hate, but I have to stop and look at the people behind it and see them as people just as I ask you to do. Stop and see those you hate or are against and see the person, if you are against a person than I guess you are something to ponder on your own.

 

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