How time flies!

How Time Flies!

I have traveled, I have settled, I have learned from mistakes, I have had epiphanies, and I have learned to LET GO!

I moved close to kids, close to friends, and further and further outside the “big cities”. I found love for garage sales on weekends, being a vendor at a market, defining and refining what it is to be a “friend”, a mother, a sister, a daughter to two dads and a mother. I refined my path, I defined what I loved to do for work(vocation), what and where was my ROI was the highest, easiest, and possibly the most satisfying work I’ve ever done. 

I saw South Dakota again, the mineral baths, and the hotel. Sad to say, the waters were weeding out the people, becoming “contaminated”, and seriously were being disrespected in a way I’d never seen before. Along that path at the beginning of 2024, I met the most fabulous, authentic, bodacious female entrepreneur ever. The moment I met her I knew I’d work with her in a heartbeat. She shifted my world in less than a week. We still communicate and she is throwing her work into the world. Now, she is to be protected, always. Her work is amazing. A true healer at heart!

Then, I had a “battle” to fight. I was, again, scrambling to “figure shit out” on my own. When in all truth, I was avoiding coming back to Champaign, IL to live. My mother and I spoke of our time together in 2020 constantly, and say to each other we’d live together again in a heartbeat! This is the most healing thing to my heart and soul. We are NOT easy women to live with…hehehe! She’d be ok with me writing that out, because it’s the truth. We admit it to ourselves everyday. 

As I was fighting the feeling of coming home all summer in ‘24, I knew whatever I was struggling with only being close to my mom and siblings would “make it better”. I craved my family, I craved “adventure” again, yet didn’t know where I’d land, again. I needed my roots more than I thought I did. 

I am a first born female, to a first born female, who gave birth to a first born female. That’s only three generations and its history, present, and future. I haven’t even begun to write of all the past generations of my family, present ones being created and birthed, or what holds for the future for my family; I am proud and need humbling, always! 

I moved home and knew my “battle” internally was done; for the time being, of course. What I didn’t expect was to lose 5 family members or loved ones I had known years ago. I absolutely didn’t expect to lose a dad so soon after moving home. I didn’t expect to lose the matriarch of my mother’s family, and I sure as hell didn’t expect to see it all happen in a 6 month period. 

The moment I saw my biological father in a hospital bed I knew “his time” was over soon. That man never set still, that man was always “on the move”, even in an electric wheelchair. I heard others call him Mr. C, the OG(at a coffee shop), and to be called Steve, a friend by the community he was apart of. My biological father was a pure, diagnosed(in the 70’s) paranoid schizophrenic. I balanced this “relationship” when I felt I needed to. The last time I had a lucid conversation with him was about getting him a cellphone that he could use, how to set it up, and the conversation was one that I’ll never forget. He was “normal”, he was clear, he was lucid. As we “parted way” for the day he yells from across the street to me, “Love you, I gotta go, I see static when I’m around you.” As if that’s a “normal” goodbye. I realized that day he could only, his whole life give me about 30 minutes of time for a reason. My “static” brought him peace, yet scared him as to why he wasn’t “seeing” or feeling anything else that was normal to him, daily. 

I will continue….In time.