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So my husband and I were talking about the brain this morning and the fact that there’s no sensory nerves in it so you literally cannot feel anything in your brain. He was saying the fact that you can’t feel your brain is what makes meditation damn near impossible for some people…the fact that they can’t feel it. Which seemed kinda weird to me in all honesty, because I’m very sensitive to energies. When I meditate I can block out the entire outside world and I can physically feel the universe around me. That sounds like madness right? Crazy hippie dippie bullshit? It’s not, I swear, once you actually get in the zone and really meditate you’ll feel it too. Everything has energy that you can feel if you just listen. That’s what meditation it helpful with, quieting your mind and listening for the infinite knowledge the universe has to offer. Once you get the hang of it you won’t necessarily need to meditate to feel different energies. I can literally feel it when my husband is in deep thought or when he’s in a bad mood, the energy around him completely changes and I can feel it. Same goes for when I meet someone for the first time, I can feel their level of vibration. You know when you meet someone and your stomach sinks and you aren’t sure exactly why, it’s their energy, it doesn’t jive with yours. A general rule of thumb trust that feeling, even if you don’t know what it is. Always surround yourself with people who’s energies match or exceed your own, never ones that are going to lower your own vibration. If this isn’t something you can do or have ever experienced you can absolutely hone in this skill. If you haven’t tried, I highly suggest meditation. Set a side a time and a place to just be. Close your eyes, breathe, and open your mind. Our minds are cable of unbelievable things all you’ve got to do is try.

I’ve talked about this before, but I haven’t always been nice to my body especially when I didn’t like the way it looked. Pregnancy took a toll on my self esteem. My first pregnancy I gained maybe 30lbs, got no stretch marks, and lost all the weight immediately; I wore I crop top a week after having her. This pregnancy I was enormous. I have a bunch of stretch marks and people were telling me it’s hard to bounce back after the second. We’ve been planning a family trip to FL for the end of May. I measured myself (minus my belly) at the end of January and I would’ve been in a size 12! Before I got pregnant I was an easy size 4. I cried SO HARD for an embarrassing amount of time. I get I was pregnant, but I still had MONTHS of being pregnant left and I knew I was only going to get bigger. It was at this point I decided to take the same initiative my husband did a month prior, just because I’m pregnant doesn’t mean I can’t diet and exercise right? I talked to my doctor and she said so long as it doesn’t hurt I can work out during and after pregnancy, so I sat down and did a shit load of research on pregnancy workouts and diet plans. And on February 1st I implemented the game plan. I started eating a well rounded diet with my husband (with a lot of added chocolate) and working out at least twice a day. I started with barre and prenatal yoga. I started noticing a difference with how I looked and felt and I loved it. After I had Kaja we were in the hospital for 2 days and when we got home one of the first things I did was get a good work out in and I’ve worked out doing HIIT and yoga every day since. I don’t push myself too hard, I don’t deny myself food when I’m hungry. I simply eat a balanced diet and do a workout that feels good and leaves me sore. I’ve been kind to my body and the results are amazing. I feel good mentally and physically and every day my body is looking closer to how I want it to. I’m proud of myself and the hard work I’ve been putting in. Your body is capable of so many amazing things, be kind to it, love yourself. Hard work pays, love your body and it’ll love you back.

This phrase gets passed around our household a lot, mostly in a joking manner. But in all seriousness, it’s not about you. Everything we do in life generally serves a selfish purpose. Weather it’s getting high, getting sober, going on a diet, getting fat, joining a gym, quitting your job, going back to school or dropping out, anything. Think about it, who are you doing it for, who are you serving. Some of you might say someone other than yourself, but are you sure? How does your choice really serve your people? Because that’s who you should be serving. Every choice you make should be for the benefit of yourself and your people. Every level up you make should bring someone with you. You get sober because a better you is the first step in a better life for your people. You can’t be a pile of shit and benefit anyone. You quit your job because you’re going to start a business that you love, you show your people to follow their dreams and be successful. You go back to school to study what you love so you can get that job you’ve always wanted to be the provider your people need. You quit your job to be a stay at home parent to take care of your people. Everything you do should be self serving and selfless all in one. Not living up to your own potential disrespects those who love you to the highest degree. Each of us is born with limitless potential, but many of us let that go to waste. We live our lives just stuck in in miserable, comfortable mediocrity. How horrible does that sound? Knowing that you’re capable of literally anything you put your mind to, but you settled for some minimum wage job where you just barely cover the bills. I think there’s nothing sadder than someone dying without even attempting to reach that potential. I refuse to let that be my life anymore. I’m done settling for less than the absolute best. We will teach our children to reach for the stars even if they fail a million times, at least they can say they never gave up, that they were always striving for the best the world has to offer. I want to raise my children as dreamers, believers, and leaders and I want to lead by example.

When people hear how my husband and I talk to each other for the first time they generally stare open mouthed in shock. There’s no mooshy gooshy bullshit here and I frequently forget the way we talk to each other is far from how other couples speak. Don’t get me wrong we love the shit out of each other but as he says, “love isn’t lies”. We tease one another, call names, and beat the hell out of each other in the car if we see a slug bug; but that’s all in good fun. I might call him “mother fucker” more than “babe”, but he knows he’s my favorite person on this planet. Our love is loud, aggressive, and crass; but it’s also supportive, caring, and honest. If I ask him if my knees are getting fat (thanks mom) and they are, he’s going to tell me yes. I don’t ask him things or get his opinion just to have him tell me what I want to hear. I ask him to hear his honesty. There’s never improvement where there aren’t critiques and our goal is to be constantly improving. We push each other because we each see the other’s potential. True love is wanting the best for the other person, we don’t accept mediocrity. We challenge each other, we both make sure the other got up when we said we were going to, make sure the other person worked out if they said they were going to, took our vitamins, read part of our book, adhered to our diet (which I frequently cheat on); and if we don’t we tease the other relentlessly! Love isn’t easy it takes work, it takes honesty, it takes growth, and understanding. Our love might seem aggressive, but we don’t yell or call names in anger, we hold hands in the car, he occasionally opens my door, we cuddle and watch our shows, we compare notes from books we’re reading, we share what we’ve learned that day, we’ll workout or do yoga together, he wakes me up with coffee and breakfast in bed frequently. Out loud our love might seem angry but quietly our love honest, caring, and constantly growing. He’s my best friend and I’m so grateful I get to go through this journey of life with him by my side. Even though I sometimes fantasize about putting him through a wood chipper there’s not a single person on this planet I’d rather go to sleep next to and wake up to every morning.

Okay, hot button item here, we co-sleep. If this upsets you or you feel the need to tell me how unsafe it is or some awful horror stories, fuck off a little bit and just listen, okay? My daughter started sleeping with us out of necessity at our old house. That place was a train wreck, it got SO COLD during the winter! The windows didn’t seal, the pipes would freeze, the furnace couldn’t keep up, there were holes in the floor where you could see into the the rape dungeon-esque basement. The summertime was equally as bad because it was mind meltingly hot! There was no central air, again the windows don’t seal, we lived in an area where we couldn’t leave the windows open for a breeze, and there was one window AC in the living room. So, long story short, we all dog piled on a mattress on the living room floor to either soak up the AC or keep each other warm. Fast forward almost a year, we now live in my in laws’ basement and my daughter won’t sleep by herself and now we’ve got the new baby, he’s got a bedside sleeper bassinet. And let me tell you, it gives me complete peace of mind to have my two smallest babies within arms reach while we’re sleeping. If I could get all the kids to fit in this full sized bed with us I’d be in heaven. Arie sleeps right in the middle of the bed taking up way more space than I thought could be humanly possible for someone so small, snoring like a tractor, and looking like an angel with her mouth wide open in a puddle of drool (like mother like daughter), daddy gets to take one for the team and sleep kissing the wall and I’m at the other side of the bed in between the two babies so I can have Arie snoring into my face and my hand on little man in sleeper all night. I’ve had people say I’ll regret “spoiling” my little ones and having them sleep with us. That we’re going to have teenagers still trying to crawl in bed with us. That we’re never going to get alone time, so on and so forth. I don’t see it like that. Even my 5 year old loves nothing more than a sleepover/snuggle session in a pile of blankets and pillows on the living room floor. And I fucking love it. I love having snuggly babies. I love waking up up surrounded by a symphony of snoring. For fuck sake I live in my in laws’ basement and we have 6 kids total, alone time doesn’t exist unless we make time for it (which in my opinion you should always make time for your partner, set a date day or whatever floats your boat, your only alone time shouldn’t be just in your own bedroom you fucking weirdos, put some effort in. That’s a topic for another time), and you know what? Who gives a shit if I’ve got 6 teenagers that want to crawl up into bed with us? I mean really? Who wouldn’t kill to have their teenager want to snuggle with them? Our kids only stay little for a very short period of time and I think a lot of us take that for granted. Slow down. Take the time to appreciate the beauty in every little moment because life moves quickly and we only have right now. Find your piece of heaven on earth and soak it up for as long as you can!

With getting home and getting back into the groove of everything with a new baby, I’m seeing my patience for anything is quite thin. I know this, I see this, and I’m trying really hard to moderate it. I’m continually trying to consciously correct my snippy reactive behavior before I do it, but if I’m being honest I’ve been doing more reacting then correcting and apologizing later than I have been anything. I keep reminding myself that it’s not the end of the world. Things are frustrating, but nothing unfixable or life threatening so chill the fuck out. Milk gets spilled, babies get knocked over, messes get made; who cares? Take a deep breath and come back to it later. We can clean up messes, wipe tears and kiss owies, and show up a little late; no one’s gonna die. So why in the actual fuck am I getting all worked up about shit that isn’t going to matter even a little bit when I wake up tomorrow? Deep breath. I know it’s crazy, but we’re learning and getting acclimated to having a new family member and it’s stressful for all of us, but yelling isn’t going to help anyone learn faster. Make the mistakes, learn from them, and keep on trucking. It’s not doing anyone any benefit to be in high alert for no reason. It’s a time for learning and growing and loving. I need to remember that these days aren’t going to last forever and right now we should enjoy these moments of being together and not have them tinged with regret of how I kept overreacting. So today I will remind myself to relax, breathe, smile, and enjoy my time with my family, even though the house is a mess and the kids are fighting and my boobs hurt. This time is wonderful and I can’t forget that.

If you ask me how many kids I have I’ll tell you 6. I have 5 sons and a daughter. I have now given birth to 2 children of my own, I have my son who’s adopted, and I have 3 steps and then I have their two moms as coparents with my husband and myself. I get a question all the time that drives me a little bit crazy and only because the ignorance behind it hurts my heart. I get asked frequently, “aren’t you worried you’ll love your kids more than the other ones?” And what I assume people are asking is if I’m worried that I’ll love the two kids I’ve given birth to more than my other four kids, which doesn’t even compute in my brain. This question I assume comes from people with little to no experience with a blended family. I mean it’s absolutely different to have given birth to a baby, to know that you actually MADE that tiny person is incredible, but in no way does that equate to more love. We are not born with a certain amount of love that we have to distribute throughout our relationships, love is boundless and ever growing. My mom has always said that you can never have enough people to love you, and I’ll go the other way with that too and say you can never love too many people. There’s no such thing as running out of love to give. These kids have been a part of my life for most of their lives; they’re the reason my heart beats, why I get up in the morning, and they saved my life entirely. I spent a good portion of my relationship with them fucking up and trying to make amends and I’m by no means perfect or cured, but I do feel that I’m in the best place I’ve ever been, my head is clear, and my priorities are finally aligned properly. I have to say after being able to look objectively at my life I am so thankful for the boys’ moms. I spent a lot of time trying to be angry at them for choices that they made TO PROTECT THEIR CHILDREN from the shit storm that I was. How dare I, I mean that, how dare I be angry at a mom that was making probably some of the hardest decisions ever in order to protect their children and then giving me chance after chance to be a parent after fucking up so many times. The entitlement on my part for that anger and bitterness I held onto for too long is almost nauseating. These two women put themselves on the front line for their kids and I was much too selfish to see that. It has taken me a long time to see and understand that I am truly grateful for them, not only because they gave me an opportunity to be a mom, but because they are amazing moms and role models to our kids. I love our kids more than the air I breathe and they are half the man I love and half their moms. And while we were less than parents for quite some time their moms stepped up and created some of the most astounding human beings I’ve ever had the pleasure to know let alone been given the opportunity to call my kids. I didn’t get to “choose” to be a mom figure to them, I was given that chance by the two amazing women these boys call “mom” and I think that means a helluva lot more than people realize. So to anyone that asks; yes it’s a lot different to have given birth to kids, but different doesn’t mean more or better. I love all my kids equally and I love their moms and I love seeing the amazing people they are turning into and I love more than anything be able to be apart of that. There’s no such thing as too much love.

Alrighty so my bad on not posting anything yesterday. My husband and I were at the hospital all day having a baby! I know I said there’s no good excuse, well, I lied because I was a bit preoccupied! Our son was born last night at 11pm and he’s perfect. That being said there’s nothing in the world that will give you more clarity than bringing a tiny, perfect, innocent human being into the world. The moment you see that little face and just know they are perfect in every way possible and a completely blank slate that you are in charge of teaching how to be a well rounded human being. You will be their entire world. It’s crazy, in the grand scheme of things we’re so very small, but when it comes to this teeny tiny person we’re literally their entire universe. I never imagined myself being a mommy, ever. Little did I know that this is exactly what I needed. My life has changed DRAMATICALLY. I would not be where I am right now if I were still living like I used to. You’re new life will cost you your old one and that’s okay. Your new life can be whatever you want it to be; it can be full of happiness, beauty, and full of surprises but you’ll never know if you don’t drop your old life whole heartedly. Just because something is new and scary doesn’t mean it isn’t worth going for. My life is everything I never knew I wanted until I got it. I just knew that my life wasn’t giving me anything I wanted…even though I had no idea what I wanted I just knew that where I was headed wasn’t it, so I started cutting out everything that I knew I didn’t want and that made room for my blessings to start flowing in. Changing your life is possible, but not easy. Anything worth having is going to take some work. Even if you’re not sure what you want from your life I’m betting you’re acutely aware of what it is you don’t want. Start small, remove one thing from your life at a time that you know isn’t leading you to true happiness and eventually your path is going to change and it’s going to lead you somewhere new, unexpected, and exciting.

Our main goal is raising our own personal frequency, because the universe returns what you put out there, right? Well, one of the fastest ways we lower our frequency is by feeding into negative situations/emotions that are completely unnecessary. Most of us do this without even thinking about it, something bad or unpleasant happens; whatever the negative interaction. We use our first knee jerk emotional reaction to handle the situation and end up ruining the entire day for ourselves or maybe we dwell on it even longer and get stuck in this pit of low vibration. If this is you listen up, but if you’ve been given tools to not do this, such as the rule of 5s (will this matter in 5mins, 5 days, 5 years), taking a 10 count (step back count to 10 to pass that first instinctive emotional reaction), or anything else good on you and I hope you implement those. For those of you that haven’t learned those or need something more effective here’s my husband’s rule of thumb: is it worth me stabbing someone? Now, that might make some of you giggle, but to us that holds a ton of meaning. Why, you might ask? Let me tell you; my husband is a third striker. What that means exactly is if he is ever charged with another crime the penalty will always be up to life imprisonment. Pretty fucking harsh, right? So when we encounter a situation that we deem of lower frequency the question we ask is, “is this worth stabbing them over?”. What we’re really asking is, is this one negative interaction worth the possibility of being away from the ones I love for the rest of my life? Is it worth losing everything I love? Everything I’ve worked so hard for? Everything that has yet to come? Is it worth my entire future? If not then it can fuck off entirely, we waste no time or energy feeling any type of way about it. Do you have any idea how easy it is to walk away from a situation and then look at it objectively later if you’re staking your entire life on your reaction that moment? The way I deal with negative interactions has changed DRAMATICALLY with having that mindset. Sometimes people are stuck at a negative frequency and they aren’t lashing out at you personally at all they just don’t know how to deal with whatever it is that’s going on in their own life right now and it has literally nothing to do with you other than you’re a nice target at that moment. Shake it off, pray for them to find what they’re looking for, and move on with your life because it’s probably not worth your time or energy. You have this one life, this one amazingly magical life, why waste a single second of it dwelling on that past or worrying about the future? Live for today and plan for tomorrow, but take the time to see the beauty in every moment. Don’t let the negativity that’s out there bring you down, instead be such a bright light that you ignite others. Be a flame of love and understanding that draws people in and bring them up with you. Don’t get stuck on the woulda, coulda, shoulda mindset. Be the best and most genuine you and give that to the world. You attract what you put out there. So before you pull out your switch blade take a step back, take a deep breath, and think is this worth stabbing someone over? I promise 99% of the time it’s not. Lead with love and love will follow you. If you’re not working every day to be the best you, you’re disrespecting everyone that loves you.

I might vomit butterflies and shit rainbows over here most days, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have days where I struggle too. There’s days where I’m bored and my mind wanders back to when my life was complete and utter chaos and for whatever reason my brains goes “wasn’t that fun?”. Why is it that our brains do that? Because I can actually recall very few times over the last fucked up decade of my life that were truly “fun”. I hear people tell war stories laughing about the good ole days and sometimes I want to chime in, but why? Why are we glamorizing and romanticizing the absolute worst and ugliest periods of our lives? Sometimes I think it’s just the chaos that I was so comfortable in that I miss some days, the constant activity and adrenaline rushes, but other than that if I really sit and think about it, there’s not one fucking thing I’d give up to go back to that point in my life. I willingly handed over everything I said I loved just to feed the darkness until I had nothing else to give and now I’m working my ass off to get those things back. Living in the fast lane doesn’t last forever, it eventually comes to an ugly screeching halt somehow or another and then you’re left with nothing but yourself and the rubble you’ve created. Here’s what I’m missing out on if I’m being honest with myself: wondering where my next high is going to come from, wondering if my house is going to get broken into, wondering if my car is going to be vandalized, wondering if I’m going to be able to pay my bills, trying to keep up with the lies I’ve been telling everyone, checking the warrant lists for multiple different counties, wondering where I can hide at, who’s couch I’m going to sleep on, wondering if I’m going to eat today, hiding when someone knocks at the door unexpectedly, wondering if it’s the cops and if they’re going to kick it in, wondering if that’s just a normal car behind me or if it’s warrant task force to get us, wondering if I’m going to get a call from the jail or a hospital because someone hasn’t answered me for 24 hours or more, avoiding everyone I love, filling myself with substances to fill the hollow void I’ve created within myself by single handedly destroying my life over and over again for this dumb ass life style I keep chasing for no reason whatsoever other than I’ve got myself convinced I’m having “fun”. I don’t think I knew what fun really was. Good times were sprinkled few and so far between during that time in my life. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it forever ITS NOT COOL TO BE A FUCKING LOSER. I still have panic attacks when I hear sirens or see the cherries behind me. I still have nightmares and wake up in cold sweats because of shit I’ve gone through. I still cry about the repercussions of some of the choices I’ve made. Active addition isn’t fun, but we’re really good at telling ourselves it was. You want to know what’s actually a lot more fun than any of that? Waking up at home to my family, hearing my kids laugh and play, having the opportunity to be a mommy, watching my husband grow into the most amazing human being I’ve ever known, being surrounded by those I love, having continual love and support, being open and honest with everyone around me, not having to lie or sneak around, finally being stable, finally picturing my future and how beautiful it’s going to be. My life may not be nearly as exciting now, but I wouldn’t trade any bit of it. I am safe, I am stable, I am happy, I am loved, I am learning, and I am growing. My life has meaning and my life is worth living. I can’t imagine a worse fate than dying a senseless death without having the opportunity to have even tried to reach my full potential. So yeah sometimes I have a bad day and I get stuck in the past, but I remember what that actually entailed and how lost and miserable I was and I get the fuck up and I vomit butterflies and shit rainbows because someone out there is stuck in the dark looking for the light that I’ve found and I’m going to share it.