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Melissa Cote at a  NHA4A event  This is something new for me. I interviewed my friend Melissa for her non profit, NH Artists 4 Autism (  https://www.facebook.com/nhartists4autism/ ).    NH Artist 4 Autism mission is to spread Autism awareness and acceptance. There is a fundraising event in April, for Autism Awareness month. We, oh let me mention, that I can be found behind the scenes here too,  organize local sponsors, and this year at the big event we have local vendors too. Melissa and I, are both Autism Mommas, and our children are very different but we relate in the advocacy for our children. I often tell Melissa we are out there in the weeds together, or if we are getting ready to really advocate for our kids, we are in the trenches of war together. Below is the interview: What made you start doing events for Autism? My youngest daughter, Zoey was diagnosed with “severe autism” in 2014. She was diagnosed a month before her 2nd Birthday. ...

      I grew up in a small town, next door to my grandparents, who owned a store. My grandparents are kind of small town celebrities, and my mom joins that rank too, even though she moved a little further away. Small town life, while it is peaceful ( most of the time), often times means word travels fast.  People get divorced around here, and the whole town knows in a week. You get arrested, good luck making it twelve hours before someone knows. My teenage years, everyone always liked to threaten they would tell my mom or my grandparents, if I got even a hair out of line.     Now as an adult, or an adultish, person, moving back to that small little town, brings mixed emotions. Sometimes a serious of events happens, and I question my choice. I choose to move here, we needed help, but there is a whole level of being in a place I swore I wouldn't come back to.     They used to say it wouldn't be the same if you left and came back. I always wonder...

I honestly thought at this point in life I would have things figured out. Life, well it leaves me on a never ending path of new experiences good and bad. I learn things, I regret very few things, and I move on. I go forward into whatever direction the wind blows me. I really do seem to have a Gypsy heart, from year to year the only thing that is the same is the love for my inner circle, and even that changes from time to time. Life can be mentally exhausting, and December dear lord we fought some battles, I will always, always fight for my kids, all three of them. December was a whole lot of this. I ended some battles in 2019, and just left them where they were, because I am learning that you don't have to always have the last word. Some battles will carry over into 2020, because some, the ones related to my children, all three of them are the ones I NEED to invest my energy in. I recently had therapy and we did a depression check in because December was that fun and I...

Dear 2019, You were supposed to the year my life finally fell into place. The year I was putting all the bs behind me and moving forward. This was the year I was going to feel like a grown up, being 35 and the youngest being in school full time, I thought this was the year I was going to figure it all out. Spoiler alert, it wasn't, but it wasn't for a lack of trying. 2019 was the year of some pretty interesting curveballs. I spent the summer becoming caretaker of an elderly women, who would just walk out of my life. It sucks when you know someone is mentally abusing and elderly person, but you can't control others. I set up a boundary line and moved on. If she called me right now and said she was sorry, I would dive back in, because that's the kind of person I am. I can't not help someone who was family by choice. I can't not help. Then, there was a really big thing that I don't really talk about because it's not my story to tell. My part of it I c...

The ending to 2019, is proving to be a rocky one. I have been lied to, by the places that are supposed to teach my kids. They have put me through hell, and yet I still have to brave face it, and deal with them. My children have come to me crying. One wants to be home schooled, one is still doing well in school, and one I want nothing more then for him to come home. My kids, are so much of my life, that often I joke about what I do in my life that doesn't involve them. I have been doing some advocacy work on the side for a friend of mine, I got him started and he has been doing pretty well I thought. I have been wrapped up in my own stuff with my own kids, but he sent out the bat signal the other day, and I have been called upon. Then, then, there's the unusual health issue I had found myself just recently having. It sucks to be in recovery this close to Christmas, I can't seem to get enough ahead to hold my footing with my little health issues. First I was sick, then ...

Tis the season, what a complicated season it has become this year. I think I wrote a little while ago about being "stable" and the tailspin that sent me on. Why you might ask, because never in my life I have been the stable one. Passively suicidal, over dramatic, ten thousand emotions and a bit of a space cadet is what I am used to being called. SO imagine my surprise when I was sitting there in therapy and I was called stable. Typically I struggle this time of year. Seasonal depression and arthritis at my young age of 35 leave me often times lost in pain and in my head. NOW, now I got this new label. What happens when we go into a time of year that is normally hard for me and I fall all to pieces? Have I failed? Is it just my mental illness screwing up my life again? How do I function? Now let's add to this my weak immune system has already failed me and I have already had Bronchitis for a month. Yesterday I had one of the most intense flashbacks in my life and I s...

      I care too much. I care too deeply. Once my walls come tumbling down, I trust too much. I think if they cared enough to chip away at the walls then they must care. This is where I get myself in trouble.      Throughout the year in therapy we have been working on boundaries, relationships and how to make those two work. I developed a three strike rule, third strike and you are out. This was to save me from the ever turbulent waters of navigating life with other people.     I suck at relationships, I push the wrong people away, and let in the words of my mom " energy sucking vampires" in. I have never known balance in relationships, personality disorders and PTSD gives a pretty skewed version of life. So I came with the three strike rule, show me your heart is ugly three times, and you are out. I think it's fair, and let me tell you it has been a life changing rule.     Over the course of the year, the whole year, this has come...

In life I have come across many people. In life I have endured more then most people will ever understand. In life, there are some deep scars that occupy my heart. They can't be seen from the outside, but inside, the scars are deep.  There was the man who I thought I loved, and he broke my young heart. He taught me a lot about perception, and people who are two faced. I thought I knew him, but man was I wrong. I was young, naive, and clueless. When your fresh out of high school you think you know it all, you think you are invincible. He taught me a lot, I was living outside of the safety bubble, I was fresh and new into the world. He was an eye opener, I don't think I actually loved him, I was still in love with the idea of the fairy tale.  Then there was the stranger who took something from me I can never get back. I wasn't prepared, nor ready. I was still naive, and young, he left a scar deep in my heart. It left me shattered and confused. I didn't speak about ...

I don't know what it is about summer, it always seems to be more chaotic then I expect it to be. It always seems to either stand still with time, or fly by. I accomplish the world, or start fall with a mess of a house and unfinished projects. For me, putting a name on things, labeling trauma, are very scary things. It makes everything concrete, it makes it real. It validates is happens, it becomes real, raw, and unavoidable. I avoid  a lot of things until I am ready because well, I have this really bad habit of sweeping things under the rug. Gray areas, I really hate them. I am more black and white kind of thinking. If it's wrong today it will be wrong tomorrow. You can do the wrong thing for the right reason if I can see your heart is in it, it's still wrong but I can forgive that. When you get into the clearly heavy stuff, the stuff that no matter your reasons is wrong, like hurting someone on purpose, then it's unforgivable. Now you are like, well these three t...

Dear  Whoever Reads This, If it's my mom, you probably won't like this one. This is your warning. Seriously stop. Okay, here's the thing, I talk openly about my PTSD, I have no shame in saying I have Borderline Personality Disorder. These don't fully define me but they are a part of me. I blog, and like nobody reads it, well besides my mom, so I tend to put it out there. It is public but it is safe because I am a hermit, a wallflower, a sideline sitter, one of those forgotten people. I am very used to this. I tend to write for the hopes that one day someone who sees this will be like yes, she gets me. I am not alone. Today isn't going to be on those blogs. This one is for me. This one is because I need to get the thoughts out of my head. They are starting to eat me up from the inside and I can not hold it in any longer. I have been in therapy for a while, like two years now or something. For a long time my day to life was Chaos, and I was in survival mode. I...