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[saraannsworld]

Trained Position

After a very long day of driving, emotional check in’s and another day at the children’s hospital we arrived home to an injured cat. Stella was her new norm of grumpy. Now with one eye open and one eye shut. I could tell it was bothering her and the longer I watched her the more the anxiety of something is wrong grew.

Stella was my son’s first emotional support cat, although we didn’t know she would be that. We got her from a home that had the air about to many homes I had experienced trauma in. It really just being walls and a roof. It did not deserve the title as home.

As we drove up the long gravel road threw trees we past multiple motorhomes with discarded belongings strewed about their lawns. As we pulled up to the home that contained our kitten we pulled in and parked. Next to us was a car which was more then ashes. It looked recent the smoke how dispensed in the last few days. As I messaged the guy that we had arrived for our kitten I told Henry not to get out of the car. With all the past traumas running through my mind.

I soon saw the window crack open and two kids pear out the window so curious what they were looking upon. The father opened the front door. I got out, yet stayed behind the my car door with the option to flee available. He wore pants that where tucked into boots that where laced ever so tight up his calf. A t-shirt that the sleeves had been torn off and a beer in his had.

He announced that they were having a very hard time finding the cat and that they always seem to be hiding under the couches. As if puzzled as to way that would be. After a short pause his eye darted to the burnt car next to us and he said, “I’m a firefighter “ as if this would somehow land the fully burnt car under an exceptional reasoning. I politely nodded my head and said “OK” then sat back down in the car.

It was not to much longer and he came back out with the kitten. I met him part way. I said thank you and held her close to my body, the kids about four years old watching me carry her back to the car. From the moment I held her and to this day I still wonder if I should have saved the other kitten from that trauma filled home. I hope every time the thought crossing my mind that she would have escaped. Found a new life in the wilderness. Maybe another loving home would come and save her showing her what a loving home feels like.

I named her Stella seeing that she was going to be my cat and my son already had a cat named Thomas. We soon found out that Stella loved my son so much more. When he cried she was there rubbing on him purring. She would do laps at the front door talking endlessly, not wanting Henry to go to school. Only to later get a call saying my son was having some kind of attack that was really his first seizure. She seemed to be in tune with him all too well. I often found myself watching her to know how much I should worry about my son.

When Stella was about two I got a text one day from a friend seeing if there was any way I could take this three week old orange kitten with blue eyes. She was the cutest little thing with all her fluff. She had been found on the side of the road. The family that found her quickly learned that a member of the family was allergic. She was the exact cat my son had been asking for since the moment he could put a sentence together.

He was so excited to get her. He made a place for a litter box in his closet. Set up a place for her to eat. She very quickly was stuck to his side like clue. His room was always a safe space she could escape to. Eventually she got her own bed on top of her own pillow that she would sleep in every night. Falling asleep smiling with a loud but subtle purr. He named her Pippi and the name could not be any more than perfect.

On this day when we arrived home Stella with a hurt eye. Me knowing all too well that once again Stella had taken her hurt out on Pippi. Feeling Pippi had taken her place. Pippi has wanted nothing more than to be Stella’s best friend. Stella stuck in her heart brake would only sometimes tolerate her presence.

It had already been a long day but as I watched her struggle with her eye and continuously try to hide. I knew I needed to take her to the vet Hospital. As I turned to my son and said “ I think that Stella” my son melted into a ball on the end of my bed. “ I can’t handle anymore! This day has already been to much” I rubbed his back and said “OK, OK, let me see if Niese will” knowing he was already in overload mode.

My Mom conveniently had been camped out in her RV in my driveway while her house was having work done on it. I asked her if she would be willing to take Stella in for me. I had already called and gotten her on there list to be arriving, and filled them in on what was going on.

As I talked to the vet and she explained that she had a scratch on her eye. That she would need pain meds, and eye drops and a cone head for up to five days. I could feel my hopes for my week slowly dwindle away.

I ended up shutting her in my room which was already where she spent most of her days. I found that the pain meds where enough for her not the bother her eye and, took her cone head off. The second day my son decided to build her a fort she could hide in on my bed. She was all to happy to have this sheltered space to hide away from the light. Feeling some sense of comfort hidden between pillows and blankets. She slept there all nigh and awake as if the fort had magically healed her. Like all she needed was knowing her Henry had made her this safe space to heal in.

As I lied in my bed trying to fall asleep I thought of how we both had found safety in our learned positions. For Stella it was a fort that brought her the same comfort as hiding was under the couch in that home she arrived in from the kids running about. His boots stomping, my assumption of yells of pain and unhappiness vibrating the walls. For me it was sleeping on my right side as I had learned to sleep with my son in my arms between me and his crib. My back a shield between him and his father, knowing this was the only way I would sleep. Henry snuggled under blankets and pillows, a fan blowing over him and Pippi. Her fur blowing in the wind a little cold but so happy to be with her Henry she didn’t care. Henry all to happy to not be sleeping alone.

We had all found our learned positions and being in that same position gave us the comfort and safety that would let us relax just enough to fall asleep knowing all to well our position was no longer needed.

[saraannsworld]

Today My son and I pack our car up once again to drive the now all to formeler drive down to Grand Rapids. I remember our first trip being so overwhelmed. Not knowing and, having no idea of where I was going. Trying so hard to be the image that my son needed of culm and collected. We at that time where starting what we did not know would one day become a normal part of our lives. The stress of it all was second nature.

This time we would pack books, games, tablets and headphones. Plot our trip to Noodles & CO, and the ever so familiar just incase bag of clothes and snacks. We still leave earlier because the hospital has the most confusing parking garage. Even after three years of arriving there I still feel my shoulders tighten, and my chest feel heavy knowing that I always get it wrong. We always are rushing in the door. My sons stress rising with his connection to me always ending in a “Henry I just need to focus can you give me a moment”fallowed buy the overwhelming shame that I did what I said I would not do next time.

Now the attempt to make the trip not so bad my son sees through. Knowing all to well it never takes as long as promised and knowing all to well he will have things done he hates. We would do our best to try not to think about it. To focus of our favorite pasta dish hugging our anxiety to help it wash away. We would focus on how this time we might get answers on what has plagued our lives for three years.

This time I wonder how big the void will be when we get the answers we have searched for for so long. Will we miss our tips more than we thought? Or would they become distant memory’s we could now laugh at. Process making it another experience that made us yet stronger again although we never asked for it. Would we cry when got our answer, or laugh. Maybe we will be so in shock that we actually figured it out we wouuld awake in the night with the relisation we were done. The overwhelming relief causing us to cry until the tiers stained our cheeks and every time you gasp for air a lite seasoning of salt would fill our mouth.

As I packed my bag so proud that I finally thought of what I needed to carry us through this hopefully braise you God, thank you lord conclusion I could not help but feel hopeful. It is hard not to when you watch a kid who should be playing in the yard with friend and laughing at things only kids think are funny. Somehow smiling and laughing while wires string from his head chest and arm. When your eyes look upon him all you can think is this is work for adults, this is what you do later in your life. Somehow his later is now, and he finds the joys and focus on them. Asking things like “ Can we get the potato’s from the hospital?” Reminding you all to well that he is just a kid.

[saraannsworld]

It has been a while since I have posted on here. I needed time to find my balance and heal my soul. I have learned over the last few years how important the health of your soul is. How much you are doing mentally and spiritually. Here is my story of how I got to where I am right now.

During the end of my time in collage I went through a traumatic event that changed the path of my life. Since my way to dealing with it was to put it in a box, not tell anyone and keep going. The trouble with trauma is that it takes over your heart and soul if you do not treat or face it. So that meant I experienced one trauma after another until years later ( 15 to be exact) I was at a point I no longer knew who I was. What I was doing or how I got to this place in life. I was a stranger to myself and in some ways to the people around me.

My PTSD was so bad that my Mom found a trauma therapist for me to see. She was a hour drive away and I think that time to myself ( I was a single parent now) was healing. She was a good therapist but, I knew I needed something different. Something more so, I started searching the web on how to heal from trauma. I found a trauma program not to far from where I lived with my parents and started the best decision and hardest path I had actually decided for myself in years. I learned so much about myself and how trauma lives inside you. My therapist explained trauma in the brain to me one day, and I will never forget what she said because those words changed my outlook on my life so far and my future.

“ If you think of your brain like a file cabinet each part has its own file, body function, hopes and inspirations, expectations, motor skills, ex. But then you have a trauma happen and your brain has no idea how to file it because it has no place that it fits. So I am going to help your brain figure out how to file away your trauma.”

In that moment everything clicked. I had this free radical floating around my brain making it all confused. The more events of trauma I added the more radicals to confuse and break apart the person that I use to be. This was the moment I started to heal. I started to put my life back together. Find Sara again. Create a new path and a new direction from where I was. A year later I was back at a place I had not been in a very long time. I was ready to move forward for me and my son. My soul was finally healing and I needed it to keep healing. To do that I knew I needed to leave Colorado, because to many bad things had happened to me there. I knew I wanted to live somewhere like a smaller town or city. I knew it needed to not be too hard for me to get my son and I to our family’s summer cottage, and back to Colorado to visit family. So I started my search. I knew art and creativity being part of the city was important to me. I first checked out Iowa City, Iowa. It was a college town creative and small. A short tip to the places I wanted to be able to travel to. So with $500 and some food stamps in my pocket I drove out for a 48 hour trip to see what I thought. It was not what I thought I would find. Something about it was off although to this day I don’t know what but it was not it. My soul was not singing.

About a month or so later I traveled up to our family cottage in Conway, MI. I had heard things about Traveres City, MI. It checked all my boxes so I drove down to see what I thought. I remember driving around the neighborhoods. I walking around downtown and saw all the art and local things happening. My soul was singing now. This was where my future would start, where I could live my life again. Two months later my Mom and I had found me a place to live and I was moving in. I got a job in the beginning of Covid when everything was still not back to full working more.

For four years I worked as a Team Lead at Panera. I left in my last year to be an Assistant Manager at in Independent Home. I ended up running everything in the building after being there for two weeks. It was one horrible thing happening after another, and no support from the company. Once it started to make my PTSD come back and my son’s anxiety worse I quite. I went back to Panera. Only this time it was different. I now believed in myself and the full capacity of what I was capable of. After walking into a work day of disfunction, and that underlying feeling that I could do so much better with my time and talents I quite. And this leads me to now.

It has been almost three months since I quite. Money has not been this tight in a very long time but, I have not felt my soul like this maybe ever. I have started my own art line which you can view at www.soulstainedink.org and I have started walking almost every morning ( 5.45 Miles). I am doing Somatic Yoga at night to rebalance myself before sleeping. During the day I create my art and work on my shop. I make some money doing yard work for neighbors and, selling on my Soul Stained Ink shops. I am looking to get certified as a life coach and help others find there path to a place where there soul can smile also.

I hope you continue to follow my journey and can find inspiration or knowledge and if nothing else learn about another humans experience through this thing we call life.

[saraannsworld]

Don't Put A Label on Me

For the last year I have been 100% on a path to get my body soul and mind to the best place possible. It has been a really long and frustrating road.

It was about a year ago that I had had another one of those appointments and came home and broke down. I remember telling my Mom "They say I am fine but, I know I'm not. Something has been wrong for a very long time." I remember crying thinking it would always be this way. A few night later I saw a add for a bipolar meditation and thought, "hu I do a lot of that" so then I was non stop reading about bipolar and then trying to find a good place to be diagnosed for people who can't afford the high quality care. Then I was going threw this 3 session 3 hours each process of getting diagnosed. In the end I was diagnosed Bipolar, anxiety disorder and PTSD. So I saw a trauma therapist who agreed I had PTSD but did not think I had anything else. She helped me get heal my PTSD which I got from the traumas I had been through.

I then started meds for my Bipolar. At first I felt amazing but the more I was on them the more I became less of a human, nothing was solved. I just lied in bed all day. So I started to go off of my meds and things got better I was doing stuff again.

I then heard of the Walsh Approach and did this long list of blood and urine test. Once I got that I found out I have really high copper, and really low vitamin D and Zink. Also that my body stores every fat I eat so I have to be really careful.

So now here I am taking all this stuff to try to even out my body and hopefully this works. Because I am tired of being tired. I am over people judging me on how I live when it is not how I want to but it us all I can do with where my health it at. I am ready for a better for me for my son.

[saraannsworld]

I Drew this to try to show the steps of healing trauma.

[saraannsworld]

Do you really know me?

About a week ago I went to my high-school reunion most of the people I had not seen in 16 years. Really since the day I graduated.

I had no idea what I was walking into, but once I left I felt way different then I thought I would. Two thoughts have stuck with me. One, that people can be something very different than you think they are. Secondly, that you are doing way better than you thought.

I almost didn't go to my high-school reunion. I literally baught my ticket hours before going. For one thing I am a single mother and only had $75 in my account $35 would go to my ticket and another $10 would go to buying a drink so I could get threw the night. Plus did I really want to go and remind myself of the horrible things I went threw?

Yes I know high school is hard for every kid. Mine was a little more on top of that, and now a days far to comen. For one thing I was put in special Ed which I did not belong in. Then I was going to a small high school which both of my brothers had gone to and when I started people would say "Oh your a Billingsley." School had always been hard for me and my life at home was not much easier. My parents were divorced. I lived with my Mom. My Dad was around but I was never really close with him and at this point in my life didn’t know how to talk to him. So we were never really close. Then on top of that was the event when I turned 16.

When I was 16 I was sexualy assaulted by a friend of my brothers. I believe he was 21 at the time. I was accused of being the one who cheated on his girlfriend with. She even called me one day to have me explain myself. All I remember saying is that I didn't know, that I was sorry, and didn't want to hurt anyone. I never spoke a word about what had happened until about 2 years ago.. I am 34 now. So this goes back to the people might think they know who you are but have no idea.

Walking threw those doors and seeing everyone reminded me of how much I kept in for so long, and how lost I was. Even the people who knew me well just knew something was up with me. I don't think they really had any clue what was really going on with me though.

Then there is the second part of how insanely well I am doing givin the life I have lived so far. I had been threw so many traumas and had come out the other side. I even went through Trauma therapy, healed my trauma, and was raising a son on my own. It was in this moment that I finally stopped giving a shit what anyone else thought of me or my life. Because if they really knew my life they would think differently. If they still didn't think differently than they had no place in my life.

[saraannsworld]

Here You Are

After so long of living in survival and denial. Then spending a year facing my past and my truths I now find myself with this overwhelming feeling of " Well here you are"

It always hits me at odd times like these kind of things always do. For the first time in well maybe ever I have been thinking about what it is that I see for my life. For to long I was just trying to get threw the day. Hopefully have a good one. To be able to think past the past, that was unthinkable for me.

When you are living in survival after trauma the world becomes very small. For a long time I was very jealous of other people I knew because of the life they had built for themselves. But I was not seeing the whole picture.

Once I started to heal I started to see that I was living in a bubble for years. It was not that I was jealous of the life they had. It was that I never thought I would feel safe enough to live outside of my bubble. But here I am, bubble popped and now the possibilities are endless. So many of them I could see myself doing. But what one do I truely want. This is when I find myself taking a deep breath and saying here you are. Here in this moment in the strangth, knowledge and confidence you have become. You can make your dream come true, but what is my dream? . Not someone else's dream for me. I am finding my way trying things out, and learning what works for me. The most rewarding part of this part of my journey is that I am no longer worried of what it will be. I am excited to find it and learn. See things about life that I missed before. I do know that when I find it it will be powerful and my life will take off.

[saraannsworld]

This was something a close friend said to me and I feel is true for everyone.

[saraannsworld]

I created this piece to remind you to Breath!

[saraannsworld]

Little Me, Big Me

My Mom would always tell this story about me when I was little. The story goes something like this. When I was a kid if I wanted to do something like open a door and then someone else opened the door I would get really upset. My Mom would go on to explain that there was nothing you could do to make it better. Even if you closed the door and let me open it it would not matter, because the door was already opened. She also tells this story of how if I fell down that you could not even ask me if I wanted help or if I was OK. I would do it all myself. For most of my life I was ashamed of these stories. Like it made me less of a person or something was wrong with me.

It was not until I was going through trauma therapy. After I told my therapist these stories that my feelings changed. My therapist response to my stories was how impressed she was. How that is what got me threw everything. My strong will, determination and my strength to get up on my own and move forward. 

For a long time I have hated the saying “ God only gives you what you can handle.” Because my life has been hell. To think that there might be something worse that I would live threw was danting. I also see that from the moment I was born I was given what I needed to get through my life and bloom into this strong woman I am today.  It is interesting to see how life has changed my perspective of myself. How a story I once hated I now find pride in.

[saraannsworld]

What Is Here

For so long I have been trying to find what I am meant to do while, trying to be what I think people think I should be. This is not possible. Since I was a kid I knew I was meant to be a Mother and, to help people change their lives by loving themselves. 

Threw out my life I have had these signs of what I was meant to be doing why I was here on earth. Why I was put on this earth, in this life, that I live every day. In this blog I will talk and share my life and my path threw this life. 

A consistent thing that I have had loved ones and friends say to me is. “ You should write a book about your life” For a long time I was not sure how to process this statement. Part of me was flattered that they felt people would read my story that it mattered. The other part of me would think, “ wow is my life that bad.” But now I can see that my story is not bad or good. It is a lesson, a truth of life. It is a reality of so many people’s lives. I was given the gift to tell my story to share the truths. Speak openly about the traumas I have gone threw and, far to many others have gone threw.

 I tell myself things everyday threw my son. After saying these things enough I am finally seeing myself, embracing myself, loving myself, and sharing my knowledge. My knowledge of life. Pain, failure, growth, lose, unhappiness, success, despair, have money and then to be poor. This is my story and knowledge of being human. 

To give a little background on me I was born a artist but did not start drawing until I was 6 when I started my training and trained until Graduating from Pacific Northwest College of Art and Design. I have lived a very painful life. As one of my brothers said to me. “I am sorry you have had your life that you have gone threw what you have”. As a kid I was sexualy assulted, in collage I was gang raped. After college I was lost and living a life of servivale and, a life of forcing my life puzzle together and not letting my life puzzle put itself together. In that span of time I lived in my car, got two DUI’s, had a kid with someone I thought I knew, but did not at all then becaming a single mother. I then had a life changing experience which brought me my loses point in my life. I shortly after learned just before my 34th birthday that I had Anxiety disorder and PTSD. That everything I had been doing was that voice in my head that drove me to the Dr so many times over the years was right.

I hope threw my stories and things I have learned that I will help someone on the path of their life to see that it is OK to be you. It is Ok to have lived through whatever you have. That you are just human.

You may ask yourself why I called my blog “ Falling IN Love With Strangers.” I named it this because I myself have fallen in love with someone who I thought I knew so well only to learn I did not know them at all. The most important stranger I have fallen in love with is myself. For far too long I was not who I was meant to be. Threw this journey we call life I have fallen in love with my true self that I would say was a stranger to me for far to long.