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I Will Fight For Love

Love one another and you will be happy. It is as simple and as difficult as that.

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To Write Love on Her Arms

help and hope

On March 28, 2015 I went to my first meeting. I knew I had a problem, but I had no idea what to do about it. Acting on the advice of my counselor I walked into my first Celebrate Recovery meeting at a local church. I was welcomed by the sweetest people and felt the warmth in the atmosphere with my first step through the door. That night I signed up to start the 12-Step program. With that choice, my road to recovery began.

A few months into my recovery I had gone through withdraw, a bout of depression, and a relapse. I still stuck with the program. The following May a book came out. It was called If You Feel Too Much by Jamie Tworkowski.

To Write Love on Her Arms was something I had heard about in when I got to college. It was all the rage when they made their tour through the nation called “Heavy and Light”. My friend had introduced me to it and I liked what they had to say. I was going through a depressing time and I liked the idea of there being hope at the end of my tunnel.

When I saw If You Feel Too Much on the shelves of Barnes and Nobel Jamie’s name looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember why. As soon as I opened up the book I knew why. He is the founder of To Write Love. I picked up the book, bought it, and read the whole thing in one night.

He understood the hardship of dealing with depression. He knew how hard it was to confront a parent you had resented. He knew what it was like to go through an excruciating heartbreak. He understood why Valentines Day sucks sometimes. Through all of my recovery I had not picked up a book I could relate to more. He knew what it was like to feel too much.

The next day I woke up and spent the entire day on the To Write Love on Her Arms website. I ordered t-shirts. I read blogs. I tried to figure out how I could be a part of this movement.

I knew I wasn’t alone in my recovery and in my struggles, but the stories I saw and the poetry I read put faces to the struggle. I related to them. I felt their pain, and I was encouraged by their hope.

To say this movement helped me would not even come close to doing it justice. I don’t have the words to thank them enough. I have found a community where I feel my most true self. I may have never met them face-to-face, but we have a common link. We understand that we are broken. We understand we need help. Most importantly we use our brokenness to help others.

That is why I am supporting this movement.This is why I champion this movement. I ask that you check them out. I ask that you help me, help others.

April 16, 2015 is the day I will be exactly 11 months sober.  It also happens to be the day I am running in their annual 5K and I need your help! Any donation is helping others find the hope and help we all need. All you have to do is follow the link posted below! If you can’t donate, help spread the word!

With all of the brokenness in the world, we all need a little hope. Hope is real in this movement. I found it when I thought there was none. Help someone else find it too.

Peace

To Learn more about TWLOHA: https://twloha.com/learn/

Fundraising Page: https://www.classy.org/fundraise?fcid=623830

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love

Yesterday I go my first tattoo and I could not be more stoked.

After long deliberation and having friends write it different ways for me, I picked the writting I liked the most and just bit the bullet.

Some people may say that getting “Love” tattooed on your arm is cliché or so “basic”. Well here is why I chose to write love on my arm.

Love is more than an emotion. It is more than telling someone you love them before leaving or hanging up the phone.

Love is and action and a choice.

Love is the foundation of everything that I believe in.

I have lived the majority of my 23 years believing that I was not worthy of love and that I had no love to offer. I could only offer a sarcastic comment in order to cover up my insecurities. I grew up not understanding what it really meant to love. My father always provided for the family financially and otherwise, but was emotionally distant. My mom tried to over-compensate by being a people pleaser and make us all happy, but that isn’t the definition of love either.

With this upbringing it was very easy to develop a hardened heart, and that is exactly what happened.  Through my teenage years I rebelled like most kids and stopped talking to my parents and just gave the cool kid head nod saying “What’s up” when I walked through the door on my way to my room. With that rebellion also came a bout of depression that led to thoughts of suicide and ultimately a sex addiction. I came out of that depression by the grace of God and those around me and am still working on the addiction part, but taking it one day at a time in my recovery.

For the first time in my life, at the age of 18 I realized what it was to be loved.

I had a friend I thought I was going to loose. I thought, like so many time before, I had messed up beyond repair, and they would just walk out on me. But she didn’t.

It clicked. People had been loving me all along, I just didn’t see it because I was too busy trying to shut them out. Once I started letting people into my story, my whole world changed. I started being honest with myself and a handful of people around me. Slowly but surely I started letting people into my life. I let them love me and show me they loved me and I did my best to do so in return.

Over the past five years I have made it my mission to show love in any possible way to those around me. Simply because if there is one thing I have learned it is this:

I was created for a purpose. The vast majority of that purpose is to love and be loved by those around me.

To value people.

To show them they are important.

To show them they have a story that is meant to be lived out.

To live my life authentically so that I can be living proof to others that it does get better.

To love my family.

To love my friends.

To love strangers I meet in the Starbucks line.

To simply be myself and love who I am.

Don’t get me wrong, I have stumbled a lot along the way. I am still stumbling today. I am a much healthier me though. I am recovering day by day. The biggest change in me is that I choose to live with love in my heart and in my actions. I still throw in the occasional sarcastic comment here and there, but it’s not all I do now. I choose to live love and speak love.

This is why love is written on my arm.

Side Note: I grew up in Germany and hold that beautiful place near to my heart, which is why the language I chose is German.

Peace

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I Will See You Tomorrow

I have been racking my brain about what to write today seeing as it is a very important day, World Suicide Prevention Day. I am a big fan of the To Write Love Her Arms Campaign: We’ll See You Tomorrow, and all of the people it is reaching.

I thought I could share my own story of how, when I was young, I thought of committing suicide almost every day for about a year. Then it hit me that, while my story is important and very much can help others as I write it, this day is not about me.

This day is about those who are struggling right this second. Those who are thinking there is no hope for tomorrow. Those who dread the night because that is when the thoughts are at their worst. Those who are thinking no one would even noticed if they were to leave this world. Those who think there is no way there is a light at the end of this tunnel I am in.

I am here to tell you that it does indeed get better. You may be tired of hearing that, but you have no idea how true it is. I am living proof that it does and so are members of my family. The pain of what you are going through right now may seem unbearable. The darkness surrounding you may make it seem like there is not light in the world anymore. However, you can and will make it through this unbearably dark time.

The best part is that you don’t have to do it alone. There are people going through the exact same thing you are. Believe it or not there are people who have made it through something similar to what you may be going through.

There is always hope. As long as we hold on to that hope it gives us strength to fight another day.

As hard as it is to believe sometimes there are people out there who care about you.

Who want to see you thrive in the life that has been given to you.

Who want to see what an inspiration you are going to be.

Who want to see you tomorrow.

 

 

 

Peace

 

If you are hurting in any way please reach out. There are people out there who would love to talk to you!

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

1.800.273.TALK (273-8255)

Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN)

1.800.656.HOPE (656-4673)

The Trevor Project

1.866.4.U.TREVOR (488-7386)

National Child Abuse Hotline

1.800.4.A.CHILD (422-4453)

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identity

For years I hated Sushi. There was just something about putting raw fish in my mouth that was disgusting and in no way appetizing. My brother tried for so long to just get me to try it, just a California roll, it gets no more basic than that. I just wouldn’t budge. So I went off to college. Now we all know that in college you try new things (some good and some bad). Well I met a friend and she loved Sushi. She asked me to try it, so and I did. Turns out… I love Sushi.

I went home for fall break and my brother wanted to go get Sushi and I said I would tag along. He was excited, thinking I was finally going to try it. Little did he know I had become a aficionado. When I told him, he lost it. All of these years and it took one random girl I had just met to get me to try Sushi. Needless to say, I still have not lived this down.

Now this may be a random example, but you know that you have had a moment like this. Your friends and family have told you that you need to fix or change something about your life, but you don’t listen. Then you hear it from someone else, someone new, someone who surely knows what they are talking about, and you do without question.

I had this happen to me recently.

As an addict you lose who you are in your addiction. You lose who you were made to be. You lose so much more than control. You lose yourself.

Because of that, a majority of the recovery process is figuring out who you are, getting reacquainted with yourself. So I just started brainstorming, “Who do I want to be?”:

“Okay, this is my one chance to reinvent myself. This is my turn to choose who I want to be, not who my parents want me to be, not who my friends expect me to be, not who society thinks I should look like. I am free, for the first time, really free.”

Well the first thing I thought was that I should find my identity in Christ. That is so much easier said than done though. I had this thought that I could not be this really down to earth person and still be this “Awesome Christian”.

I was so far from wrong it wasn’t even funny. I had this idea that I had to be an extreme. A miserable sinner with no hope or the person who thinks they are above everyone else and better than the world just because they are a Christian.

I was reading a book called “If You Feel Too Much” by Jamie Tworkowski, the founder of To Write Love on Her Arms. Here is this person that is so down to earth and yet loves God, and you can see it in his writing. You see that he is happy with who he is and that person is a follower of Christ and a surfer who swears every once in a while. I am not writing this too praise him, simply to give the example that you can live your life authentically and be accepted for who you are. People who are real make the biggest difference.

Now I have had people telling me this for as long as I have been in recovery… My Sponsor, accountability partners, friends, but of course it didn’t set in. I don’t know what it is about hearing it from a stranger, but it really resinated with me this time.

This is something I am still figuring out. This “how to be free” thing. I don’t know, and have never really known what that feels like. I like the possibility though. I like the freedom to choose who I want to be, to choose what I want to be, and to follow my true passion without any inhibitions.

I am free. I just have to choose to love myself enough to do what truly makes me happy.

 

Peace

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