I have been volunteering at NC Works for a while now. Because of my incarceration, I know how hard it is to find a job when you get out. You have a record. You’re unhireable. The scary “have you been convicted of a felony” box is checked and you’re going to be questioned about it.
Being arrested and serving actual jail time was the hardest thing that I ever had to endure – then life decided to make me homeless afterwards. Surviving all of that and now thriving in my own place with everything I need comfortably, has been a HUGE blessing. I was a professional HR manager for over 20 years, and I know because of my record I can never work in my field again, so the least I can do is give back to those who are in need – and God willing, I hoping to obtain a career somehow, doing this kind of work that I love so much.
Knowing all that I know in Human Resources, and after conducting literally thousands of interviews in my life, I know what employers are looking for, and I know how to survive an interview. I know how to make someone hireable, confident, and help make an interview go seamlessly with the tools to get past that “criminal record.”
It’s most valuable thing I can give to those just coming out of jail and prison – just giving the knowledge of how to navigate finding a job, especially if they have been incarcerated a long time and have NO idea of how to do this. It is the greatest gift to me to have someone, (after taking my free class), tell me that they landed a job, or aced an interview, when they thought they would fail miserably.
It’s a job I do for free selflessly, and I love what I do.
Is it me or are people just getting angrier and angrier? Angry at prices, angry at the world, angry at the president, or just mad about everything? I am yet to see a positive news article or a news broadcast of hope. Gone are the days where the last 10 or 15 minutes of a news show were dedicated to some positive story in a neighborhood or city – now it all seems to enflame the anger that is consuming everyone.
These days, it seems it is unique to walk around with a smile. It is unique to promote positivity and actually get followers. I hate to have such a pessimistic attitude towards things, but when this week’s daily prompt asked about aspects of a unique person, all I can think of is how rare it is to see positive attitudes and kindness among people today. Is it the NYC girl in me that thinks so? It is no mystery that NYC is a tough city to live in – I know because it’s where I grew up and the loneliest I have ever felt in all my life. I think it was the lack of kindness I faced. People weren’t smiling a lot, and people weren’t really that friendly. It could have also been the sour mood I was always in, (I don’t want to blame NYC completely).
Moving to North Carolina has changed things. Now I see this “uniqueness” in everyone. Friendlier faces, happier attitudes, and just a different overall outlook on life. Growing in my church has also helped that. I don’t think it would have been the same welcoming of a Muslim into a Catholic church in NYC – I don’t know why I think so, but I do. Something is different about the land I live in now, even the air and water. Taking a large breath air outside is a lot different than it was in NYC – that same breath of fresh air can be said about the people here. It also might be that there is a lot less pressure on people here too – more resources, more community and honestly a lot less potholes, (I don’t know about you, but slamming into one of those bad boys can ruin an entire day).
I will say this though – positive attitudes and kindness are the easiest things to have if you have a different way of life. I know because that sour mood I was always in really changed when I moved here. Maybe there is some truth to “how you live, and act depends on where you are.”
Of all the steps back, I have taken in my life, none of them would have prepared me for what was ahead in life. I have faced jails, institutions, and certain death through addiction and mental illness, that I never thought I would be where I am at today. Failure is the catalyst that drives us forward; it’s almost religious in a way – the way I’ve seen God is to be shown the Devil. If I hadn’t fallen down as hard as I did, I would have not been able to find my way forward.
In November of last year, I suffered a really bad manic episode. It was totally my fault; I had stopped taking a crucial medication at the advice of my doctor because I was feeling better. This led to three trips to the hospital, back-to-back, where I ended up losing my boyfriend, my job, and my self respect. I was mourning the loss of these things for months, when I realized that it was God who was testing me, it was needed to push me to propel me forward. I am still mourning my relationship – I miss my boyfriend terribly, but God has allowed us to stay in communication helping me build what was broken. I managed to keep my apartment, and my car is still working beautifully, and even though my savings became depleted, I have been able to slowly build back what was lost.
I had another setback with that manic episode where I had called my ex-mother-in-law and told her some not so nice things. She turned around and threatened to have me investigated for the time I was a payee for her son. I loved her son so much, and I kept his money safe and did whatever he asked me to do with it, but it still scared me because no one has gone after me that way before – again another failure in a relationship that I am mourning, but the success is I won’t let her put fear in my heart. Her son destroyed my life – putting the crack pipe in my mouth, stealing my car, and getting us both in jail – I did so much for him and gave my all to him, it’s almost a slap in the face to be honest.
But through all these mishaps and failures, I have found success. I am almost 4 years sober; I am still living the best life I could possibly live, and I have friends and family in my life I never had. Nothing could have prepared me for the setbacks in life, but that’s what life is isn’t it? Life is a series of ups and downs and unexpected events that can derail even the most secured plan – and even though I was flying high in November and on top of the world, something, some force, deemed to knock me off that high pedestal with a lesson in mind. The adventure now, is finding out what that lesson is and learning from it.
Stay Tuned.
Daily writing prompt
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
Self-acceptance is really, really hard. I think we all struggle with this in our lives, but as we get older, I feel like it gets worse if we never really addressed it when we were younger. This has ALWAYS been so hard for me, and I don’t think I’ve really ever allowed myself to try this – that’s why I am going to try to do accept myself for the first time in my life.
There are several things that bother me my life – just general worries, but mostly about how I feel about myself. It is no secret that gaining 50 pounds in three months due to my thyroid surgery hurt me A LOT, and then in working with my therapist, we identified the “bully” in me that beats me up constantly and says bad things about myself needs to be quieted. I identified this “bully” as my younger, skinnier self from when I was in my 20s. I was so obsessed with my weight and looking good, that I constantly beat myself up about it – that later translated to me doing a real number on myself, twenty years and nearly a hundred gained pounds later.
It is really hard to accept yourself these days, especially in the world we live in. I recently saw a filter in SnapChat that made me look SO good, but then I realized how fake it actually was. All these filters and outward things that skews the actual way we look isn’t good for us. How can we ever accept ourselves if we’re always looking through a filter?
So today, I am taking steps to love myself more. I am buying clothes that actually fit and putting away the ones I no longer fit into. Buy bigger sizes is SO hard, but it’s on the road to self-acceptance. Also, my insurance is going to stop paying my YMCA membership in December, (like I really go anyway), which is a real disappointment because I really wanted to start going again. But as I get closer to my church, looking at myself in God’s eyes, and realizing how much He loves me, I can never be as ugly or as hideous as I think I am. Plus, my boyfriend always assures me how much he loves me, and my ex-husband always loved how I looked – not that I should use that as a gage of how I view myself, but it does help that I have that kind of reassurance.
But no matter how I look at it, this is a new journey of self-acceptance that I am embarking on, and I am really excited of what the future holds for me in this new view of myself.
Just as the title says – I have prayed my entire life for independence, sobriety, and a peace of mind which includes stable mental health, and I am absolutely living that life today. After being an alcoholic and bipolar mess for so many years, I can honestly say as I look around my apartment, (after spending an amazing Sunday afternoon with my incredible parents), that the HELL I went through is totally worth the life I have now.
I still battle with thoughts of my ex-husband – I know he is still stuck in the clutches of addiction. I know how much he is struggling, and how much it hurts his family. Every now and then, a song would come on the radio, and I would find myself crying at a stoplight because I would be so overwhelmed with guilt because I turned my back on him. But how could I not? I went to jail for this man, I did drugs with this man, I robbed stores with this man, I lost myself in this man. When I realized that I had to change my phone number too, I knew that it would be the final line drawn in the sand. I knew that it would be last time I would hear his voice. Everything in me wants to sometimes call his mom and get the phone number to where he is, and just hear his voice again and tell him everything is going to be okay – but I know I can’t – it’s not a road I want to travel down. Plus, how will I ever explain a move like that to the loving boyfriend I have now? NOPE. IMPOSSIBLE.
But there are so, so many tears of joy in my life now. Driving down the roads in my neighborhood especially, knowing how many people I know, how many church people’s houses I have visited, the AA clubhouse I attend, and just growing more and more in a community that is so loving and giving to this New York City explant. I never in a million years thought I would leave the confines of a small, tiny room in my parent’s house – let alone have my own beautiful two-bedroom apartment with a cozy butterfly-themed guestroom for all my amazing friends to stay over in.
In all, I have to say, sobriety is the absolute key to all of this success. People say, “well I can use CBD or smoke weed. “Oh no you effin’ can’t. You’ve GOT to get rid of all that crap if you ever expect to live a sane life. Every single thing that alters your mind, also alters your mood, and I am sorry to say that also goes for mental health medicine. I know, I know, some people really need their medication, trust me I know, I still have to take mine, but I don’t have to flood my body with tons of medications that I know I can fight through and do without. Like the Lithium that I have finally come off of after 12 years of being on it – I can’t even tell you what kind of battle that is like, but sometimes you just need to FEEL what you need to feel and ride the wave till you come back to your normal self. That’s called having a thick skin, soldiering through, and womaning up, and it’s one of the main reasons why I live so good today. So yeah, tears of joy = the life I live today, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’ve done a lot of the “daily prompts” lately, so I thought I would change it up a bit. Being a recovered bipolar and now sober three and a half years, looking back on my life and where I am going now has been a beautiful thing. My boyfriend is absolutely amazing and is a man that I have always dreamed about being with. Not only is he heartbreakingly handsome, but he is one of the kindest, caring, smartest, calmest, and most responsible men I have ever met. There is a big issue with his daughter though; she suffers with severe mental illness and is the main reason why we can’t physically be together right now. However, I am taking the time to let the relationship progress, and despite a recent breakup, I’m hanging on tight. He is worth loving, and I am worth the happiness I have always wanted, so a little time and patience is all that is really needed.
I haven’t heard from my ex’s mom in a few weeks – the last time we spoke, she told me he had been sent back to a mental hospital for a fourth time in two months after several nights of using drugs in the street and going back and forth to the terrible neighborhood that he’s always known. It hasn’t been going well for him, he has gotten beat up pretty badly several times, and even lost the suit he was going to wear to our wedding – that broke my heart completely because I still have my wedding dress. I love him so much still – I have been thinking about him a lot lately, and as I am growing closer to God and my church, I am wondering if spiritually the Universe is trying to tell me something. I have been hearing “Green Eyes” by Coldplay a lot lately on my Pandora rotation, and not only does that song upset my boyfriend, but it would also upset him more to know that I cry and think about my ex every time it comes on. He sang that song to me when we were together, and he told me he used to sing that song to himself all the time in jail when he thought of me – during that time we were both incarcerated in the same detention center, and I was still holding on to a hope of a future with him, despite all the bad shit that had happened.
Since coming off of probation, and my ex receiving the last letter I sent, I think it’s time to let him go. I want him to find peace, and as I think about what I really feel, feelings of dread erupt in me, because I do not wish him death – but honestly, that’s his only way out right now. He runs to the streets every chance he gets; he is getting beat up so badly out there now and losing so much weight, he has become a ghost of the man I fell in love with all those years ago. He is going to get killed out there, and I often wonder if he does, indeed, have a death wish. I can only imagine what he’s feeling – last night I found myself in tears thinking of the nights that he laid next to me holding me tight and begging me never to leave him. I promised I never would, and as tears come in my eyes now, I feel like such a piece of crap for breaking that promise amidst all his suffering now. I wanted nothing more than to always take care of him, and as I battle the never-ending struggle with my weight, I realize that none of that ever mattered when I was with him – and that full acceptance of all that I am, came directly from his love for me. Now I know, you are all thinking, “you don’t need a man to justify who you are or your beauty,” but dammit it helps, and even though my boyfriend now loves me with everything in him, he hasn’t been with my physically every day like my ex was, so that fear of rejection is still ever present.
So today, as I live the life I have always prayed for, despite this whole weight issue, I think back on my ex and our life and how much I really needed him as much as he needed me. I would have never left New York, never left my parent’s house, and never gotten a life of my own and the independence I had always dreamed about. Today I have real-life friends who I actually spend time with, I am around REAL people, and I am off the internet and out in the real world as much as possible. I also have such a full life and the relationship with my parents and family that I have always wanted. Today, I get to show up and be relied upon, I am sober and proud, and on so little medication, I don’t even consider myself bipolar anymore, just recovered. From the years of the endless revolving door of the mental hospitals, the years of the drinking and drugging, the years of self-abuse, self-neglect, and self-destruction, I have finally come through to the other side, and tomorrow never looked brighter and fuller of opportunity. So, I think it’s time I put Giovanni away for good. I love him, but I have to move forward.
Upon thinking about it, the most important thing that motivates me not reliving the desolation and depression I faced years ago. I remember what I went through, and it pushes me forward every day. There was a time where I just slept, ate, scoured the internet searching for a man, engaged in despicable acts with the ones I found, and just felt horrible about myself. In between all that I mixed alcohol with my psych meds, going through an endless cycle in the mental health system.
Thinking about that life, it motivates me to stay sober, take care of myself, and push forward to the future. Yesterday was a hard day because after therapy all these feelings came out about what it would take to make me happy. I mean, I have an amazing life now, but my weight, my horrible weight, in which I blew up 50 pounds in just three short months, has been the most excruciating part of my everyday life. What is ironic, is that the same weight issue is what has held me back from living my life years ago as well, despite the fact that I was 70 pounds less than I am now.
Having horrible thyroid issues has been my Achilles heel in losing this weight. My doctor recently told me that she is not surprised at all that the scale isn’t moving at all despite all the gym visits and dieting I have been doing. It is more than discouraging, but it is not as debilitating as it used to be. What motivates me to get out of bed every morning, (and make my bed so I don’t jump back in it when tempted to just lay down and hide from the world), is that I have the life I have always prayed for, and I never want to slide back into the past. The endless loop of despair and remembering the days and nights drinking my woes away – even the mornings at 11am at Applebee’s ordering endless Long Island Iced Teas, lying to waitstaff that I had just come off a stressful night shift. And of course, I would wait for the alcohol to wear off during the day before I took my night psych meds to go to sleep – all of this led to multiple hospitalizations because of the deadly combination of drugs and drinking.
Remembering all of that, motivates to push forward and stay sober. I am on much less psych meds for my bipolar disorder, (even though I don’t even think I’m bipolar, just an alcoholic), but I know in my heart where I never want to be again. As far as the weight goes, I think I won’t let it be the entire focus of my life anymore and dictate how I live every day. I mean it was so bad at one time that I didn’t even leave the house or date because I thought I was so fat and ugly. I am so glad to not be in that headspace again, although, being much fatter than I was then affects me a lot sometimes.
My overall motivation is also directly to my current relationship – I want to be in a much better place mentally and physically for when my boyfriend finally gets here, and we start our life together. After all those years of wanting a good man who loves me, I finally got the relationship I’ve always wanted – everything else will just fall into place.
The words, oh the so many beautiful words that come across the screen as they enter my mind. The beauty, the nostalgia, the excitement the sheer joy it brings! I love being able to express myself, I love sharing my story, I love that people read them and enjoy them, most of all, the sheer therapy of it all is monumental.
I will never forget the days of my early journaling, and when I created my first blog – of how much pain used to be written down and expressed to now being able to feel the freedom and power of overwhelming peace that has taken over my life.
Everything I write now is with purpose and intentional, and to me it’s the most beautiful kind of art that exists in this world.
When we think positive emotions we feel the most often – it’s usually happy, excited, even ecstatic – but what about gratitude? I have come to find out that gratitude is the one I feel the most because it is directly related to all my positive vibes and happiness.
I honestly feel the “idea” of gratitude is often beaten to death in the mainstream society we live in; people say make gratitude lists and practice gratitude, but do they even know why they are doing it, or what it’s even for? To me, being grateful has saved me time and time again, especially from falling into a deep abyss into depression over my weight and failed marriage. There is a lot that I hate about my life, but who doesn’t these days? Money is tighter than ever, my boyfriend lives far away, and there is so much I want to do that I am unable to accomplish. BUT – when I do that, I miss out on all the amazing things and people I have in my life, that’s where the gratitude comes in.
So, I practice it often, and mainly every day. The most amazing thing is, the more I practice it, the more positive things happen and come into my life. Yesterday was pretty tough, because I have a lot of issues with “punishment” when it comes to God and faith so when I was on my way to work, my tires went flat and had to go get them fixed. I felt, of course, that I was being punished for some of the seedy things that I have been doing that haven’t been the most holy. My path to faith has been a good one so far though, directly in line with my boyfriend’s faith – another reason why I am so grateful every day. But that feeling of “punishment” and not being good enough comes back time and time again because of my past religious background, and how I view God, but that growth will come in time.
So, in the meantime, I am continuing to create a positive space by expressing unwavering gratitude.
In an endless loop of mental institutions and instability, my only salvation was to become sober or die trying. Many people in recovery often talk about the fact that becoming sober was no longer a choice, that rock bottom wasn’t even where they were at, it was that they were literally knocking on death’s door.
I am very much in the same place. What bring me peace is staying sober and passing the message on the next addict/alcoholic. I mean the principles being AA teach that very thing, but the reason behind it is that it brings peace and total serenity to the teacher. My life was chaotic for so many years, just endless nonsense of angst and frustration – and as I mentioned in a previous post, when I was looking back at some of the old threads I made on a mental health website, it made me painfully aware of how out of control my life was.
The main culprit: drugs and alcohol. I didn’t start using cocaine until I was 40, but the alcohol use screwed up my brain bad enough to the point in which I was in constant torment of myself and others. People don’t take sobriety seriously; many believe that weed isn’t even that bad – I am here to tell you that ANY substance that alters your mind in its natural state, will rob you of any peace and calmness you seek. We are not MEANT to be high; a human’s brain is not built for that; we are built for community and fellowship – we should be getting high on the endorphins we get from good feelings created by good deeds or a really good workout.
Sound like buzzkill yet? GOOD! Your ass doesn’t need to get buzzed. Living a peaceful life isn’t about getting lost in a fantasy created by chemicals created in a lab to create an altered state. That’s a temporary peace, one which you will be chasing all your life to get, much to the detriment of others and yourself. Also, it depends on your definition of peace as well. For me, the satisfaction of teaching felons and convicts the skills they need to land the job they thought they could never get brings me peace. The inspiration that I instill in a newly sober brother or sister with sharing my story brings me peace. And of course, the fellowship in my AA homegroup and the participation in my church gives me the ultimate peace.
Stillness, and calmness comes from being able to say to yourself: I don’t need this TV on for 10 hours straight binging something on Netflix, and I don’t need to scroll for hours on ten-second reels and videos because my attention span is pretty much now fried from it. All I need is a good book, (with actual pages), and a small lamp escaping into imagination in the silence of the night. To some, this may be a boring existence, but to me it’s a nirvana that I have been searching for my whole life.
An Inspired Odyssey Through✨️Ink & Stardust✨️ 