Why This Quirky Woman Blogs - Blog Challenge Day 31

It's finally here. The finish. Grand Finale. Le Fin.

Why I blog and a quirk I have.

The author David Eddings once said that if you're a writer, you will write, whether you want to or not.

I spent years fighting it. After all, writers seldom make money, and the image of a starving artist wasn't really in my life plans.

I've done a lot of different jobs in my life. Few of them really sparked my interest, even if they felt good for a little while. What I found, though, was that very often, I would loose myself in a story that I was making up in my head to occupy my short-attention-span creative brain.

This is boring, let's make up a story to make it more interesting...

The less creative my job allowed me to be the more... well... bitchy I got. It's harsh, but it's true. Much like a grumpy old female wolf, I'd snap at anyone and everyone. I chose jobs that had a lot of stress, because then, I could justify how miserable I felt using a mask of "I'm stressed out because I had a crappy day at work, leave me alone."

It doesn't work well.

Okay, so maybe millions of people around the world are making it work for them. It didn't work for me.

I got sick, I was tired. I spent years feeling like I'd been plowed under by a bulldozer.

And finally, I realized that I felt better when I was making up stories in my head. Not necessarily stories about my life, but fictions, with characters that lived in my head.

Why not put them on paper?

I am now, telling those stories, crafting tales that have lived in my head for a long time. I'm stretching my wings and learning to be a novelist.

In the meantime, I blog. It gives me an extra outlet, a chance to practice my craft. I suppose that this is also my quirk: I'm a story teller and a weaver of words. I answer questions in stories and carefully mold characters to reflect aspects of life as I see it.

I started this blog with most of an idea of what I wanted to write and create as a business in my head. That has evolved, and I'm not sure how often I'll come back to this one. I've got ideas in my head, but my focus has changed as I've found my feet in this world.

I am a writer. Writers write. And while, on one hand, it's difficult to let go of what I started, I'm finding that it's okay to let it go.

I have drafted the first of a 3 book series. I am planning another novel entirely for National Novel Writing Month. I am fostering my need to be creative, and planning the launch of my creatives business next month (Sage Wolfsong Creations), for which the blog is already running. Sage Wolfsong is all about being creative, being a writer, and the things that come from my heart and into a physical form.

As a family, we've started a concerted effort toward building our used bookstore, Once Written Thrice Read, and the blog for that business is up and running. There, I blog about the books we post for sale in Amazon, reviews of books, some of our daughter's writing, and a little more about living the life of a writer.

Funny side effect of writing my first book: My confidence has soared as a result of finishing that first draft. Aowynn and Teo (the main characters) have become my friends and a part of our family. My actual family has caught the spark, as hubby and daughter are both lovers of the written word, and they have both begun writing their own books. Apparently, we just needed someone to take one for the team, sweat it out, and get the ball rolling. Never really thought of myself as a trailblazer--I've always preferred someone else lead, to be honest. Yet here I am, setting an example by not worrying about what they're doing, and giving myself the time and space to write, and great things are happening.

Today marks the end of a 31 day voyage that took me 3 months to complete. You know more about me than I probably ever dreamed I'd share with strangers. I've learned more about me than I ever imagined I'd find over the course of a summer. I had a summer romance with myself, I suppose. It's over, and yet, it's only beginning.

I hope you enjoyed this series. If you want to go back and read the posts from the beginning, you can start here, at the Intro. If you're a blogger, or just getting started, and need some material that's a little more personal and offbeat, by all means, feel free to use it. I just ask that you credit your sources, and be kind. Then hop over to my Facebook page and let us know, so that we can all follow you, too!

The Last Time I Cried & What I'm Looking Forward To - Day 28

Whoa... two topics that I either haven't written about, or that I can stand to write about again. How about that? Totally unexpected for this late in the series, but these two are intertwined for me at the moment, so here goes: 

I cried last night. 

Not a little, either. Last night, really hit me hard. I killed someone. Two people, actually, and it broke my heart to do it, even though I knew it was coming. 

Well, now that I have your attention, I suppose I should probably explain myself a little better. These two people? They only exist in my computer. They are, well were, characters in a book I'm writing. One was expected, she was old, and needed to die to make room for the things that push my protagonist to move forward toward her destiny. I expected her to die. I planned for her to die. And yet, it totally caught me off guard how deeply affected I was by her death. The second character that died was nameless, faceless, and she may get revived in the revision of the story. I wasn't happy with how that scene came out in the drafting, so who knows. That's the beauty of being a writer: You can make those changes. Usually. 

I've been trying to honor my commitment to writing for 1 hour a day. Every day.

I'm doing the NaNoWriMo challenge in November, and since I have two solid story ideas, I figured I'd use one to get into the habit of writing, and start finding what does and what does not work for me when it comes to writing. I'm reverse engineering this particular story; rather than developing the characters and setting and all that before drafting, I'm drafting the story, and going back and making notes about my main characters as I go. It's not easy work doing it this way, but I only have about 6 weeks left to get this drafted before my focus fully gets turned to the book I am writing for NaNo. That book is getting done in the "proper" way: I'm developing characters and settings and plots and archetypes before writing. 

Now, there's really no wrong way to write a book, I'm told, other than to not write the book that's in your head. Give yourself permission to write badly, just to get the idea down on paper. You can always go back and edit later. And you won't have anything to edit if you don't write in the first place.

So, this idea of writing badly, led to my tears last night. 

I spent 1 hour writing, probably looking a bit like a mad woman, pounding away at my keys, moving music into playlists as I went (I like to write to music, so I'm building playlists for the writing of both these books), and knocked out about 2,000 words in that 60 minutes. I have my work single spaced, so that comes out roughly to 5 pages of text. I think, just based on how I felt after writing it, that about half of that will get cut in the revision process. But I wrote. I honored my need to write, and did it.

Nothing sucks for a new writer nearly as much as spending an hour writing crap and killing off a loved character all in one night. I had to cry. I needed to purge the crappy feeling. I cried on my writing buddy's shoulder and gave myself permission to let it go. Tonight, I'll write again, and keep my protagonist moving towards her destiny. I'll work on my characters for the NaNo Book, and start shifting my focus just a bit towards their story.

Which brings me to what I'm looking forward to.

I'm looking forward to NaNo. I'm looking forward to write-ins with my buddy at her place in SecondLife. I'm looking forward to holding a finished manuscript in my hands; a story that I pulled out of my head and gave life to on paper.

That said, I'm also a little scared of it. My writing buddy and mentor, Allie McCormack, has encouraged me to submit my NaNo book for a competition that takes place in the months immediately after NaNo, which means getting that book revised, edited and ready for public consumption in just under 5 weeks (throw Christmas holidays in there, too, just for kicks and giggles). 

Her faith in me scares the hell out of me. My husband totally supports this idea. 

But Allie is right: It's motivation. If I commit to it, and pay to enter, then I have a really big reason to see it through. Even if I don't win, my book has been put out there, and that's not something I've ever done.

This whole year has been full of stuff I never thought I could actually do. I never thought I could get my craft business off the ground, and here I am, setting up an online store. 

I never thought I would find a good Reiki teacher that I could afford, and yet, today, I received my Reiki First Degree certification from my Reiki master/teacher, Elle North.

I never, ever thought I would see my dream of owning a bookstore materialize, and yet... Our online shop is open and doing business, with plans coming together for a physical store-front in the next 2 years.

I started this year out with a bunch of dreams that felt like a really far reach. And yet, here I am, standing near the end of the year with so much coming together that it drives me to tears sometimes. 

I don't think we would ever have been given the gift of dreaming, if our dreams were out of reach. So dream big, darling. Dream Big.

Oh, and if you are curious about this NaNoWriMo thing, check it out. If you're brave enough to write 50,000 words in a month, sign up, and grab me as your first writing buddy (JennBradshaw is my user name). If you're curious, but not sure you're ready this year, join me on my Sage Wolfsong Creations Facebook page, and let me know you want to be my cheerleader. I'd love to have you! If you happen to be in SecondLife, look up our NaNoWriMo Obsession group, and join us for write-ins, sharing, feedback and mutual cheering on. 

If you're enjoying this series, please hop over to Facebook and let me know! Or, you know, you could just drop a comment below. If you've missed any posts, you can skip back to the Intro and read from there.

Are you a blogger that's flailing for content and need a little break from your normal topics? Or perhaps you're just getting started, and would like to populate your blog with some great posts that help readers get to know you? Feel free to snag this challenge and run with it. Just... do so ethically, please. Cite your sources, And then, pop over to that Facebook page and let us all know you're doing the challenge so we can follow you, too!

Favorite Music & Best Things: Blog Challenge Day 22

In the home stretch, almost ready to sprint for the finish! Today, we're talking my 10 favorite songs and the Best Thing to Happen This Year. I love it when things are all rainbows and sparklies!

I love music.

Seriously love music. Have been having a lusty affair with it since I can remember, thanks to my mom and her love of music.

So, get your Amazon music, your Pandora, your Spotify, your iTunes.. whatever floats your boat, and check out these favorite songs. I've given links to Amazon's digital music for each song. [disclaimer: my favorite music changes regularly, so these are as of this writing. What I'm listening to in a month or a year could be very, very different.]

1. Firebirds Child by S.J. Tucker
2. Mo Ghile Maer by Celtic Woman
3. Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield
4. Pachelbel's Canon in D
5. The Mummer's Dance by Loreena McKennit
6. The Mystic's Dream by Loreena McKennit
7. Let It Go from the movie Frozen
8. Now We Are Free from the movie Gladiator
9. With or Without You by U2
10. Doum Doum by Carmine T. Guida


Yeah... that right there makes for a really interesting playlist, I know. But honestly? I don't usually throw them all together in one lump. But whenever I get a new music subscription, these are the songs that make it into my collection right off the bat. Favorites. All time.

Best thing to happen to me this year?

I'd have to say that the best thing to happen to me this year was all the crap I went through at the end of last year.

Heartbreak. Multiple times over.

Depression. Crippling. Debilitating. Not getting out of bed for days at a time. Not eating for no other reason than because absolutely nothing sound interesting enough to eat.

Saved on groceries in November and December, and I lost several pounds. But I also felt like crap all the damn time. So... Not such a great thing on the surface.

However, that dark time in my life led me to where I am right now.

All those hours in bed, I laid there and asked myself over and over and over: What is it that I want out of life, cause what I'm living isn't really living, and it doesn't feel good.

I asked until the answer felt right and felt complete. I wanted more time with my family. I wanted energy to get out and do stuff. I wanted to put myself out there creatively and send more out into the world. I wanted that financial security that I've been missing since I left my J.O.B.

And when January rolled around, I knew what I wanted out of the year. I've been working diligently towards that every day since. Even on the days I deem "off" days, or "vacation" days, I'm still working towards that, because taking care of me was part of that vision. My family and my business can't support me if I'm not taking care of me first.

The very best thing that's happened to me this year, was the depression that happened at the end of last year. Delusional? Maybe. Did I find a silver lining for the crappy dark clouds that filled my life the last two months of 2015? Absolutely.

If you ask me, it's the best damn thing to happen to me this year. The rest? It's all ingredients in the cake that I started making back in 2015. I'll put the icing on this baby in January of next year. Indeed.

Are you enjoying this series? If you'd like to read it all from the beginning, you can hop over to the Intro and read from there. If you have your own blog, and would like to use this challenge to get yourself rolling, or just take a break from whatever you regularly write about, please... by all means... use it! I just ask that you practice ethical blogging and credit your sources. And hop over to my Facebook page and let me know that you're doing the challenge yourself, so that I (and those on my page) can support and follow your writing!

Until next time: Live Large, Lovelies! Muah!

Blog Challenge Day 16 - My Dream Job and the Top of my Bucket List

Halfway point... Day 16. Let's talk dream jobs and bucket lists...

Dream Job, you say?

In the 40 years I've lived, I've never managed to actually answer the question "What do you want to do when you grow up?" I have been a nursing assistant, a secretary, an accounting tech, a bill collector, a telemarketer, a mom, a Mary Kay and Avon sales rep and a homeschool teacher.

This past year, I've been "recreating" myself. 

The past several years have taken a toll on my body, mind and spirit, and this past year, I finally woke up to the fact that I've been trying to take care of my body and mind, but I've been utterly ignoring my Soul. And I realized, that I've never really asked my Soul what it wants. 2015 ended with a conversation something like this:

Ummm.. hi, Soul. What exactly is it you want me to be doing?

Have you ever talked to your Soul? It's not always the best at telling you what it wants. Oh for a communications class on talking to your soul! [Beware of what you ask for--you might get it!] 

I told my lovely spouse that I needed some significant change in my life. Oh... What kind of change? I dunno. Spiritual change... I've gotta do something about my spiritual life, and figure out what the heck I'm supposed to be doing with my life-life.

We agreed to a couple of things, like more time alone, moving my laptop into the bedroom so I have some quiet space to work on my inner world and meditate, and setting aside a little extra cash so I could buy better walking shoes.

And... I started working on my insides. I started meditation, and I started walking. I paid better attention to my diet and what I ate. But mostly, I asked the Universe to give me a little help down here, and help me learn to how to listen to my Soul. 

If you've never done this, I highly recommend it if you actually want to learn. If you're not totally ready and totally committed to learning, don't. Just. Don't. You will be sorry you did. 

Because when you ask the Universe to teach you something, it will rain down lessons on your head like an Arizona monsoon storm. There will be lightening, thunder, and teachers and information coming your way so thick and fast that you can't catch your breath. 

They might all be so subtle that you'll really have to look for them, but they are all around you, all the time. There's no getting away from the storm that you've unleashed.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear, right?

It did. Within a week, I had a cloudy little picture of what I was supposed to be doing, so I dug at it some more. An email came in that gave me a clear feeling of "This.. do this and do this NOW." Then another, and another. As I felt my way through these emails and offers and information, the picture came in clearer. I got a view of what I was supposed to be doing, and I committed to those parts that were clear.

And then, another email came in. Now I've committed to doing something with my life that my Soul loves, I've got this email in my box that is a schedule of FREE classes that are coming up on a week that my daughter and hubby will be out of town, and these classes are all about having and running soul-based businesses, doing what your soul wants you to do, and how to achieve, define and handle success. 

Well, duh. 

"Here's your sign."

Out of that week of classes back in February, I've made connections I'd never dreamed of. The more I ask for clarity about anything in my life, the more clarity I'm given. 

I wanted to have a business where I could use my creative talents for helping others heal. I make stuff. I read. I write. I wanted to put these skills to use to provide for my family. But I wanted the healing part of my business to be intuitive and energy based. I did research. I wrote out exactly what I wanted my life to look like in 3 years. I was still feeling my way through this. 

I should mention that I'm a Gemini, and we like to day dream... We never plan simple projects. Ever. Our projects tend to run off in a hundred different directions and we end up feeling a bit like the guy getting pulled apart by 4 or 5 horses. This was me at this point. 

I had this idea that I could do life coaching, financial coaching, crystal healing, Reiki, write books, write a blog, design my own websites, and... and... and... 

I didn't even know what the heck Reiki was. I knew that it was a kind of energy medicine used in massage therapy. And that. was. all. I. knew. But I was going to learn it, yes I was! 

Then, reality came crashing down. Reiki courses run thousands of dollars. Crystal healing courses aren't much better. We have maybe $40 a month in disposable income. This wasn't happening on my own here, folks. So, what did I do? Oh, right. I went back and asked the Universe for a little help. This is what my Soul thinks I should be doing, and I have no idea how the heck we're going to swing it, so... a little help here?

"Here's your sign."

24 hours later, another email pops into my in box from a very lovely teacher about a week of free exploration into the intuition. Well, duh. Yes, I'm there.

I struggled through that week. It felt right because I was learning how to listen to my Soul. It felt scary because it challenged a hundred beliefs I'd held all my life. It felt confusing because I wanted so much more than just a week of this.

I went to the final online class for the course. I cried through it because the ritual at the end touched me deeper than I'd ever felt anything before. And the teacher offered something that I never in a million years would have expected. She offered her intuition course at  price I could afford! On top of that, she was throwing the first level Reiki training in free. There were other things she was gifting as part of signing up, but I think at that point, I wasn't hearing anything she was saying. I was in tears, wanting to know from my husband if it was okay to commit part of our income to this. 

And there it was. I was on my way to making things happen.

I've refined a lot of the details since I wrote that first plan back in February, but my dream is becoming reality. We've started our used bookstore (online only for now, more on that later), and I've begun writing for more than just fun. The Reiki training is clicking along nicely, and by the end of next year, I should have completed my master-level training. 

Does all this seem a little too wishy washy to you? 

Would it simplify things if I just said this:

My dream job is to have my own used book shop, with a space for doing Reiki and crystal healing work and to write stories that touch women on a soul-deep level so that they, too, can recognize that little voice in side asking them to do what their Souls want them to do.

The top of my bucket list?

To have a used book shop and Reiki and crystal healing practice and write awesome stories... 

I'd also like to travel around Scotland and Ireland, dive the Great Barrier Reef and celebrate one of the solstices at a stone circle. We make our own dreams come true, right? So why not!

Live large, lovelies.

Want to read all the posts in the series so far? You can hop over to the Intro to start from the beginning. If you're enjoying this series, please feel free to use it on your own blog. I just ask that you blog ethically and cite your sources, and maybe hop over to my Facebook page and let me know, so that we can all follow along! Have a great day, everyone!

Blog Challenge Day 11 - 15 of my Favorite Things and My Most Proud Moment

I'm humming a piece from The Sound of Music as I write this morning. Here we go...

Let's start with 15 of my favorite things.

1. Pizza - crusty, lots of meat and gooey cheese. Perfecto.

2. My meditation time - Spending that quiet time slowly moving over my mala beads is one of the highlights of my day
3. Walking on the beach - We live a little over a mile from the Pacific Ocean, and we try to walk there at least once a week for a breather. The dog gets to run around, chase seagulls, splash in the water, the kiddo gets to do kind of the same thing (minus splashing in the water - puppy paws dry faster than human shoes and socks). And Hubby and I get to walk quietly along the shoreline and soak up all that fabulous energy from the waves and salt water.
4. Writing - I love writing. I'm a storyteller at heart, and writing is my medicine.
5. Baking - I've got a sweet tooth, and sometimes, the chemical taste of store-bought sweets just annoys me.
6. Daydreaming - Some days just beg to have me sit on the bed, close my eyes and drift off into some other space and time.
7. Being in the woods - We're blessed that we not only have ocean beach, but some gorgeous woods that are available for hiking. There is something blessedly restorative about walking among the trees and all their old, hanging Spanish moss.
8. Creating - I love crocheting, painting, writing, drawing, cooking, baking, dreaming...
9. Music - Almost always on in our house. Classical, jazz, meditation, pop, instrumental, Celtic, rap, bagpipes... Tunes are on. Or they're playing in my head. I love making playlists that I can use to set various moods. I'm working through a 40-day Saraswati course with Elle North, and one of our challenges was to create a playlist that inspired traits of this Hindu goddess of creativity, knowledge and order. I did mine on Youtube so that I could share it with the class. You can go check it out here.
10. Books - Anyone who knows me knows that there is rarely a moment when a book is out of my reach. They are a portal to the thoughts and stories of another person. Captured moments in time for anyone to pick up and savor.
11. Horses - There is something about watching a horse move across the landscape that absolutely takes my breath away. I could sit and watch them all day (oh, yeah.. I have done this! In person, and on Youtube). I used to spend hours grooming the horses in a nearby field (after getting the landowner's permission)... There is a gentle rhythm to brushing, stroking, and loving on a horse and being in their accepting presence that is a balm to the soul.
12. Wolves - Again with the beauty and grace thing. My totem animal. Keeper of my spirit. Something quiet and powerful goes through me when they call to each other.
13. Crystals - I love me 'dem sparklies! I have a box of crystals that I play with from time to time, and my favs are out on my altar space. Amethyst, selenite, quartz...
14. The library - Ours is nothing short of amazing. Free college courses, tons of books, documentaries, magazines, music, movies, tv shows... And an amazing team of librarians that knows us by name, and can make recommendations for our daughter.
15. My bed - There is nothing quite as wonderful as falling into bed and dropping off to sleep. We've got this awesome scroll work iron bed that was given to us from my mom, and the coverlet is hand crocheted by me. Somehow, that blanket can be either cool enough for the summer, or warm enough for our mild winter nights, with a little help from an extra blanket thrown over our feet. Sleep well!

These are a few of my favorite things...

There are moments in life that take your breath away, some that make you hang your head in shame, and others that make you glow with pride.

The moment I felt the most proud was...

My husband and I have been sweethearts off and on since we were in high school. Now, he's three years older than I am, so he graduated the year we met, and headed off to Army boot camp the day before my 15th birthday. I had a few years to go, but we traded letters and saw each other whenever he was home until I graduated. For those not young enough to remember a time when email wasn't everywhere, and not everyone had a computer, we hand wrote letters (my sincere apologies to my English Lit teacher in high school-I was actually practicing my grammar and syntax skills on my boyfriend in your class), pages and pages and pages of letters went back and forth between us for three years.

Things happen, as they do, and we parted ways after I graduated. Went from nearly engaged to zilch in one phone call - all because we didn't simply talk about the assumptions that each of us was holding.

Nine years went by.

Things happened.

And through a series of little synchronicities, we ended up talking, and eventually got back together. In time, we married... and that... THAT moment, when I got to say "I Do" to the love of my life, was a moment that will always hold pride-of-place for the "Most Proud" moment. It was a moment I'd been waiting for most of my life, and one I'll never regret. Very few people get a first shot at real love. We were blessed to get a second chance at it. Needless to say, we didn't screw it up this time. Yes, there have been exceedingly painful moments in the 11 years since we said our vows, but we've stuck it out, worked it out, torn down the old to make room for the new, the more stable, the stronger versions of us, and we're committed to doing so for the remainder of our lives.

Enjoying this series? Do your own blog challenge! You can grab my sources and the list of topics on my intro blog post, then let me know you're doing one, too, so I can read along and share your challenge on my Facebook page. Enjoy!

31 Day Blog Challenge - Day 5

Yummy... Day 5 gives me two topics I like to write about...

My guilty pleasure is...

I have a lot of them, yet I oddly don't feel all that guilty about many of them. Perhaps the only one I really do feel guilty about is my love of cereal. My tastes change regularly, but I love sugary cereal, within limits, and could eat it several times a day.

No, I'm really not supposed to eat cereal at all, according to my doctor, but after she cut yet another group of foods out of my rapidly dwindling list of "okay" foods, I finally decided I'd had enough. Yes, I lost 50 pounds eating the way she wanted me to. However, when my short list got shortened even more, I made the brave decision to find joy in food again. Oddly, I haven't gained any weight back, so maybe there's something to this.

Maybe my guilty pleasure is simply that I love food, and I love eating again. I'm learning to honor my hunger and my body's needs and wants, and I'm finding that I come full circle once again, and I'm craving more nutritious foods again, though now, it's from a place of "this is what I want to eat" not "this is all I'm allowed to eat." Funny how that makes all the difference.

What's my guiding principle now that I've quit dieting? Intuitive eating. I'm learning to listen to my body's hunger signals, stop when I'm full, and savor what I eat. Make a fist. That's really all the bigger your stomach is! Now, think of how much food you cram onto a dinner plate. Do you really think you're enjoying all that food? Do you walk away from the table feeling like a fattened calf?

I'll step off my soapbox, but will highly recommend this book (you can grab it on Amazon by clicking the link):

10 songs I love right now...

I picked 10 songs off my favorite playlist that I listen to every day while I'm writing or creating. They fuel me, give me some oomph to carry me on into my day, and move me forward. They are:

1. FIGHT SONG - RACHEL PLATTEN
2. FIGHTER - CHRISTINA AGUILERA
3. STRONGER - KELLY CLARKSON
4. LET IT GO - PENTATONIX
5. POCKETFUL OF SUNSHINE - NATASHA BEDINGFIELD
6. TEN THOUSAND HOURS - MACKLEMORE
7. BANG A DRUM - SELENA GOMEZ
8. UNSTOPPABLE - SIA
9. BEST DAY OF MY LIFE - AMERICAN AUTHORS
10. WE'RE TAKING OVER - BEA MILLER

31 Day Blog Challenge - The Meaning Behind my Business Name

Day 3...

I'm still here. Yup. Still working on this. Today's challenge is to explain the meaning behind my business's name, "Unlabel My Love". There is a corresponding website for my biz, that's still in development (published, and always under construction), called Living Without Labels. Similar, and in the same theme, there's a story behind the name. Isn't there always? So, as I love to tell stories, get comfy, and I'll share the story behind Unlabel My Love.

I have always been a people pleaser. You know, that needy little person who bends over backwards for the smallest bit of praise? Doing everything to please everyone around them... Being "the good kid"... Striving for the goals set for me by other people. I worked my butt off in school to get the good grades, so I could get into a good college and get a good degree to open the doors to a good career. As defined by someone else.

What did I really want? Meh.. As I'm knocking on the door to 40 years old here, I couldn't even tell you what I really wanted because I was so busy trying to make others happy. I do recall wanting to be a race jockey, but by 4th grade, I was already taller than most professional riders, and heavier by at least 20 pounds. But that wasn't what killed that dream. "Girls don't do that," I was told. So... I shifted focus a little... "I'd like to be a veterinarian when I grow up," was met with girls don't do that kind of work.

Pshaw... Really?

Fast forward 15 years, and I'm married (to the wrong person and miserable for it) with two kids. I wanted to stay home and raise them, but I was, instead, working 50, 60, 70... sometimes 80 hours a week for a paycheck I didn't have time to spend, yet we never had money. But I was "a good Christian wife" and didn't believe in divorce.

Give me another 5 years, and I managed to overcome that belief, remarried, have another beautiful daughter with my military husband, and I'm living with the label of "Army Wife"--which honestly, I never minded so much. But O.M.G.! The labels they use in the military (and I'm not just talking about the soldiers--those labels are useful and necessary to maintain discipline, order and chain of command so that things don't get uber messy and ugly!). "Oh, your husband is only a [fill in the blank, complete with condescending tone from an officer's wife]?" Wait.. since when did my husband's position define me as a person? Hmm...

Another 2 or 3 years down the road, and our little one has started school. I've developed several debilitation medical problems that all fit hand in hand with each other, and I'm dealing with disability paperwork, medical appointments, drugs of all kinds, pain like you wouldn't believe (or maybe you would?), and my daughter is showing signs of her own problems. Like ADHD, autism, and a speech disorder. She's having trouble with learning to read, and I'm fighting tears with every lesson, because she's just not getting it. I'm overwhelmed because I want her to enjoy school, to love reading, and to savor learning (a tall order for any 5 year old, I know... but what can I say?), and I'm on the phone, crying my heart out to her teacher that I just don't know how to make this work.

You know, the teacher we had for our daughter's kindergarten and first grade years should be nominated for sainthood. She stood by our daughter, advocating for her long after we were no longer in her class, advising me as mother and "learning coach" (the online public school title for a parent who does all the teaching, but doesn't have teaching credentials, so the school gets all the credit for the student's actual learning). This woman was a phenomenal force in our daughter's early education, and her best advice to me was this:

Sometimes, you have to throw away the manuals, and do what's best for your child. If she's not learning it the way they want you to teach it, find a new way to teach it. The end result is really what matters the most--that she knows you love and accept her as she is, and that she grasps the material and how to learn even more from what she already knows. Take away the labels and the stereotypes, and let her be herself, let her learn in her own way, and you'll all be happier for it.

"Take away the labels and the stereotypes..."

 We did.. we did just that. We did get her into speech therapy and get an "official" diagnosis of ADHD so that the school would allow us to let our daughter learn the way she learns best (sometimes, she moves really fast through information that she gets, sometimes, it takes her a while to get a concept if she's resisting it and the school just wasn't going to allow that without "a medical reason"). They slapped her in special education classes, even though she's extremely bright (she developed a love of Shakespeare in 3rd grade). And it took some really extreme measures to get her special ed teacher to stop treating her like an imbecile (test scores are everything, and my daughter tests low on standardized tests for reasons I won't go into here). Those measures earned her the label of "twice exceptional," which really just meant that they expected even more from her in areas outside of school, adding pressure, and they didn't take me seriously when I said that this kid learns at her own pace. She might fall behind for a month while she fights to understand a new concept in math, but then she'll make it up in the next two months, and be 5 months ahead of her peers. The labels that the school slapped on her restricted her (and us as her parents) so much that we finally said to heck with it all, got our certifications and decided to homeschool her completely. (The best choice we ever made, by the way, though it's been a difficult road of it's own.)

Around 3rd grade, the school started pushing us to pursue getting our daughter tested for high functioning Autism spectrum disorders. I started that process. And then, when we got to the point of calling to schedule that appointment, my daughter looked at me and asked "So, if they decide I have this, what other labels am I going to be stuck with?"

There are moments in a mother's life, that change everything. 

This was one of those moments. Getting this diagnosis wasn't going to change anything for her. We were already planning on pulling her out of public school, and this label wasn't going to change how we parented, or how we saw her or handled her education. What's more, I had researched this thing, and talked to several parents who had children diagnosed with this. I'd talked to teachers about it, And I was dealing with a couple people in my life at the time who used ASD as an excuse for some really poor behavior (perhaps this is ignorant of me, but if you know that you abuse people because of a medical or mental disorder, it's time to get some professional help. It's never okay to use or abuse others and excuse it with "I have [fill in the blank], so you have to put up with it."). I excused myself from the abusive situations, moved on with my life, and after careful discussion with my husband, we opted not to move forward with having her tested for ASD.

The bottom line, was that our daughter simply didn't need another label on her life. She is who she is. Period. And that's how we want her to see herself, and how we want to see her. That time in our lives led me to really start looking at my own life, and my own beliefs. I found that there were dozens of times every day that I would label others and myself. I was hiding behind my own labels, and using labels others had stuck on me as an excuse for not following my own passions and taking care of my own needs.

Long story short (I know, too late, right?), Unlabel My Love and Living Without Labels are the brain children of a woman who has spent the last few years peeling stickers off of her energetic life, trying to find peace within a space where stereotypes and labels aren't welcome, where people are free to be who they are without restriction, and where my dreams, and the dreams of others can take flight in a peaceful place filled with love and nurturing for spirit and soul.