“Some women fear the fire, some women simply become it.” – R.H.
“She never seemed shattered; to me, she was a breathtaking mosaic of the battles she’s won.” – Matt Baker.
The following interview is from the empowering book “Your Sparkle Is Inside of You.”, a book that I created while recreating myself from scratch…
I lost the people that I loved the most as a child. The person that loved me the most, a mother figure, was my grandmother and I lost her at 7 years old. Then the abuse still continued when she was gone. When they were alive, her and my grandfather were my protectors on this earth. With them I felt safe and that I had refuge. Their house was my safe place to be a child, and not be a 4.0 student, etc.
It was never enough, I could never get enough trophies and I was never praised but in my Grandmother’s and my Grandfather’s views I was the Queen. They were poor people. It wasn’t that they had money to spoil me with things. What they did is that they spoiled my soul and planted seeds. They are the reason that I am the way that I am today, because they planted seeds.
Seven is a huge number to me. My grandmother left me at 7 and my grandfather left me at 14. I could go back even further on it. I’ve been finding all these pennies and dimes and I think it’s because I relate finding all these things to my grandmother. The day that she died she came to me in my dream and said “I will never leave you.”
Then think about it, when I stopped finding dimes and pennies than I was given this money by a family who I had helped their family member in their last days (authors note this Queen was such a blessing that she than passed on the money to me, it was the same amount of money that she had planned to gift me with for the shoot!)
And then I found a gold and opal ring, which are my two favorite stones. So I stopped finding dimes and pennies and now I’m finding gems! I’m drawn to the fire opal and it’s not even my birthstone. My birthstone is amethyst. And there’s another lady at the hospice center and her name was Opal. She retired and I got to say goodbye to her and she was one of those pivotal people, where it was just like this angel came down.
She helped me embrace who I was and the woman who I was – not just on a professional level, but on a personal level too. The day that she left that facility she walked me out to my car and hugged me and told me that my journey had already begun.
So it’s all these little things that come to me, and I take them as signs. The shift in me began before I met my partner. I was already under construction and the shift had already begun. For the first time my inside smile was matching the outside smile.
And even though my outer shell was not in the shape that it was in ‘07, the two smiles literally caught up with each other. I can literally cry when I think about Robin Williams because he smiled and he laughed and everybody thought that he was this great person, but they had no idea that he was crushing on the inside.
I can relate to him, because if you asked everybody in this community, “What do you think about her?” They would say, “Oh she’s bubbly, happy, always kind, always nice, etc.” They wouldn’t say, “Oh she’s depressed.” They wouldn’t say those things because they wouldn’t know them because I wear a mask.
When I went to therapy this week my therapist asked me, “What no longer serves me?” I’ve realized that what no longer serves me is those past experiences that keep the fear growing inside. I can’t eliminate it but when I can call it coming, like “fear I see you” I tell fear, “fear be gone.”
Instead of going back to that experience of me and being stuck in that experience bubble, I’m throwing fear over to the “what no longer serves me” bubble. But then I’m keeping my skeletons back in check. they get a polish and an overview, and that gives me the, “Okay, I’m not denying where I come from”, because I think that is the worst thing that women do. Women deny self and women deny self feelings.
The skeletons in my closet are a reference to my past experiences. I don’t deny that I went through those experiences, I hang them up in my closet. But for maintenance purposes you have to take them off and dust them off and polish them. If you don’t do that and just leave them in the closet then the dust bunnies, which are all your negative thoughts will go back to the skeletons that are hanging in your closet and will build and build. When you do that, then they become life like. Then the only thing that you can do is see these skeletons become alive out of your closet and instead of being a past moment, they come and interrupt who you are in the present moment. I have a child with autism and ADHD and I had taken his needs above myself, which is the wrong thing, but it’s what mothers do.
The real thing that we need to do is take of our problems first and then it will just be that and six months from now it won’t affect us. But when you allow your skeletons to build and build and build, that’s what happens, you live in that experience bubble instead of the bubble that serves you. So that is where I am at in this growth and these pictures (our boudoir pictures that we had shot together) put life to the skeletons in a life like form.
When I see the pictures it’s very “wow”, I could watch this video of my pictures again and again and again. Just like that picture where I took of myself when I was 125 lbs laying there and the photographer telling me “Oh your beautiful”, and I didn’t feel beautiful.
Now you took these pictures, and I got to see my inside and outside smile match. Even though my physical body wasn’t in the prime shape that I thought I could be. I’ve just started therapy and I’ve made my therapist cry twice already. He tells me that I’m the strongest person that he has ever met. I just look at him and say, “wow.” If I could write a story to women about their glow I would tell them not to go out looking for a man to fulfill you.
Find yourself, even if that means that you have to disconnect from everyone. Sometimes people say that they are there for you, but the reality is that they are not there for you.
Only surround yourself with people that feed your soul. If they’re not giving you soul food keep it moving and them “next” and “bye.” Even if that person is your own family. You have to cut the ties and work on self-love and self-inner because for a long time I based my thoughts on my appearance off the opinions of others.
Even as a small child I was bullied and told that I wasn’t pretty. When I was little my hair was cut off and I looked like a small boy. My mom, from the time she was three years old to fifteen years old, was raped by her father, and she put that on me. She put that generational curse on what happened to her as a child to me. So not only did I become a victim of sexual abuse as a child from someone who was a member of my family, but I also carried my mothers over too.
Even though she was married to my father my mother made herself look like a man too, and they were together 19 years. When it was found out that something happened to me I was sent to my grandmothers.
All this, the only people that told me that I was pretty was my grandmother and my grandfather. When they died, at 14 years old I rebelled and told my mom to not touch my hair and that I was going to let it grow.
By the time I made it back to high school at 10th grade all of these boys and girls were like “Who are you? Who are you? Oh you’re the new girl!” I thought to myself, “are you serious, I’ve been to Pre-K with you all my life!”
They didn’t know who I was because I had changed in one year. In one year I had grown my hair out and looked feminine and now all of the sudden I am the new girl and the pretty girl and everybody wants to talk to me.
These were people who I had known since Pre-K and went to church with on Sundays. These were the people who had belittled me. I remember being 16 years old, putting on a black swim suit and shaking. I wasn’t even 100 lbs! I still didn’t get that I was beautiful. I was shaking so bad that I thought my insides were going to come out of me because all I could see was this ugly person that everybody said that I was.
At 19 years old I had my first child and went from 100 lbs to 200 lbs. I really was fat. I dropped down to 105. But as the children kept coming the abuse from my ex-husband also kept coming and escalating. He would always plant that seed, he would tell me that I was ugly and fat over and over again.
But if, as a teenager I had self-glow it would have been different. When I hear teenagers talk about boyfriends and how they are in love with somebody, I tell them that they are not in love with somebody, because the person that they need to love first is themselves.
When you can love yourself and feel like you are on top of the world, that’s when you feel that you are on the next level to even attempt to date and that’s really what dating is.
People think that with dating they have to commit right away. But If you date, set boundaries and find out what you like, and that changes things. Not everybody deserves your personal self. You can go on two dates with somebody and never speak to them again. But that’s okay because that’s where you need to be. That’s where I did wrong. I thought that I had to be loved by someone and they turned out to be my abuser. My abuser hurt me from the age of 18-32 years old.
My breaking point was when he came to the house and put the woman to my face and told me that he was having an affair. Then I found out that he had been taking my kids out on dates with her for 6 months!
I was a stay at home mom for 15 years and when it started getting rubbed in my face I looked at my five boys and realized that they were going to be somebodies husband and somebodies father someday. If I don’t break the cycle right now then it would continue over 5x.
The woman showed up to my house and told me, “I want your husband, your house, and your kids.” She knew that he was married. She knew everything!
I read something the other day that made me laugh, and it was something about how when you cheat on your life, how you don’t realize the monster that you allow into your world. That’s exactly what he got. She’s horrifically bad and my ex-husband is miserable. I glow. I chose to make lemonade out of lemons, but I chose to do that by making my own path.
When I turned 40 years old I asked myself what I wanted the next 20 years of my life to be. My 40th birthday I ate at a very fancy restaurant with dinner reservations for one. The restaurant is at a tower in the sky and I wished for a Prince Charming riding a tortoises. I knew that I deserved love and that I was capable of loving, but that it would take a very strong person to come to my space who would accept six boys and all of the skeletons that I have.
How I handle daily skeletons is that I have squirrels. That’s who I relate to my thoughts in my head, as squirrels. So now I have gotten strong enough that when the thoughts start, I just say, “Oh the squirrels are at it.” So I call it out and by doing that I’m pulling the thoughts outside of my head and putting out to the universe and saying “I know that these are squirrels and that they are doing some pulling and chasing in my head but what can I do in this moment?”
I always try to ground myself. When a full moon comes I walk outside in the moonlight and find inspiration. I want to be that person that inspires others. Today I met an old lady at Walmart who was driving to Austin to meet a friend for her birthday, she was trying to buy expired chocolate but she only had two dollars in her purse.
She had a big diamond ring on her hand and all I could think is that her husband must have passed because she didn’t have the money for the chocolate and so I bought it for her. I have a lady that is 102 that is priceless!
I asked her the other day if she was married and she asked me, “Which time? I’ve been married 4 times!” I asked her, “Are you serious?” And she said, “Well a couple of them died and a couple of them I got tired of.”
She never settled! She is going to be 102 and goes to the beauty shop and gets her hair done. She has her moments where she tells me that she has to get dressed because the plane is coming and I have to tell her that she is on a lay-over and stuck with me, and she goes, “Oh hell, thank God that I’m with you.”
I want to be that way as I get older! I tell women that everybody in life is a reason, a season and a lifetime. Not everybody is going to be all three to you and it’s okay. It’s okay that you spent the certain amount of time with the wrong person. Because in the end it wasn’t wrong, but it was the wrong season. But if you can go back and learn from what your mistakes were, not the other person’s mistakes, but yours. You cannot blame that person on your participation on it.
That’s where I had to learn that I was co-dependent and that I accepted abuse. I didn’t deserve it, but I had to own my partake in it. I can’t blame him, he is responsible for his actions. I had to blame myself and heal and learn from healing from self. Healing from self is acknowledging that yes I participated in this because I allowed it.
I learned to love myself because I’ve realized that, that time was my season. That’s what I always go back to. I don’t have a tattoo, but if I could have a tattoo I think I would tattoo on myself, “a reason, a season, a lifetime.” I would tattoo that on me so that I could look at it and say, “that was just a season that I was in, it happened for a reason, and the lifetime of experiences, whether it be good or bad.”
We don’t grow when we are at our highs. We only grow when we are at the bottom. We only grow when we are at the bottom because there is no other way to go but up. If you are already up here and everything is just being passed to you, how are you going to keep going higher? If you never went through the peaks and the valleys and been crushed and broken how can you grow?
I once found something on Google that said that the average person is in love only three times in their life. Your first love, your second love crushes, and then your third love is really the one. I’ve already made it in my mind and I’ve expressed it to the person that I’m with now that if something happens between me and him, whether it be a reason, season, or a lifetime – I love him with all of my heart, but the other part of me that is inner self love Jessica.
I will continue alone on this journey for whatever time I have left. Because that means that if I can’t get it right with him that I didn’t have enough self-love to put into it. When I look at these pictures….yes I can say that I am going to surprise him with these pictures. But these pictures are for me. These pictures are self-love.
Just like when I took those pictures in ‘07 when to see if I really was the fat person that my ex husband said that I was, when I was 125 lbs with 3 kids. Now I’m 185 lbs taking boudoir pictures that make me glow!
In the picture that I took in ‘07 I was lying down because how much lower could I go? In these pictures I have on wings. The 125 lb body vs. the 185 lb body, I’ll take the 185 lb body. My advice for other women to transition from where I was in 2007 to where I am in 2019 is that you have to first love self before you love children and that’s the hardest thing that I have learned.
I’m the mom of 6 boys. You can’t pour into others from an empty cup. I tell this to moms all of the time, when I see a mom with a newborn baby at the store all stressed out I tell her to go drop that baby off with her husband, her mom, or a neighbor, just drop that baby off and tell them that you need one hour. You need one hour to regroup, recharge, reboot. Whatever you need to do to get there, take that hour to just find self. Even if you just go to Taco Bell and get the shits. Just go.
Don’t think that you have to cater to everybody. When women try to outsource and out do this and out do that – and when I see these poor kids dragged to all these different baseball practices and basketball practices, where do you get to be a kid and where do you get to be a mom? Bat shit crazy! Then you are waking up to coffee to wake up and drink wine to calm down. I have five days a week that I do nothing. I’m now five days free of sweet tea! I’m really going crazy! But I’m passed the headache and just drinking water.
Both of my parents have horrific lives right now. My father has one kidney that is not working and is now on dialysis and has cancer of the liver. He’s already survived eight cancers. My mother broke her back permanently and is in a nursing home full time. My mom is only 66 and my dad is only 68. They are both medically and mentally not well.
I look at them and say, “Okay, that’s not going to be me in 20 something years.” I’m going to be the grandma that’s all blinged out with hot pink and gold! I’m going to be bedazzaled gmom! If you can criticize another womanm it’s not about the other woman that has the issue, it’s you! When you have time to criticize another woman you have to write that down because that’s note to self that you have a problem.
When you put yourself as a first and not a second or a side chick or a part time chick, that’s when you take yourself off of the clearance rack and onto the boutique. When you do that then people say, “Whoa, she’s glowing.” “Whoa, what’s her? What’s she’s doing?” What you are doing is doing self. When someone enters your space, like I said, you and I might never see each other again. This may be our only moment in time. But in this only moment in time, I will always remember you as “The tiara woman,” in my phone book that’s what it says, (authors note, when we met each other for the first time it was in Walmart and I was wearing a tiara). And you didn’t ask me “Who are you? What are you? What is your address? Where do you live? How much money do you make? What do you do? Etc.”
All you asked me was “Can I capture your soul?” I was like, “This 183 lb body and you see something?” “And now I’ve seen the slideshow that you made me 2x and I need to see it a third time before I leave just to believe what I just saw!” It’s not where you go in life it’s who you are with. Sometimes that person is not there for a long time, but it’s not the quantity of time that matters, but the quality of it. Joy is a word that I recently learned. I’m 44 years old and I didn’t know what the word joy felt like. I heard it in songs like “Joy To The World” during Christmastime, but that’s pretty much it. Knowing what “joy” feels like vs. just saying that word is two different things. I’m 44 years old and just found out what joy is.
If I can find joy at 44 and really use it not just at Christmastime when everybody else says it. When I turned 43 I had a t-shirt made that said that “I am a unicorn in a world full of jackasses and horses.” Because that’s what the world felt like. At 44 I found the word joy. A part of me does want to go back and think about the words that I found along the way.
Think about it, every year they add new words to the dictionary. But have you ever really experienced that word? Words are powerful. Words can make you or words can break you. But it’s the words that you say to yourself, those are the words where you find self love. Because everyone can tell you a word that is negative and it hurts to the core. That phrase “Sticks and stones make break your bones but words will never hurt you? Baloney!”
Words are very powerful. When you learn to rewrite your story and change the words that you heard, no one can ever do that for you, you have to do it inside the self. When you reach deep down inside self and pull it forward, that’s when you really begin to understand words. Whenever one broke me, I chose to take my words and rewrite them in terms of how I pictured hurt you? Baloney!” Words are very powerful. When you learn to rewrite your story and change the words that you heard, no one can ever do that for you, you have to do it inside the self.
When you reach deep down inside self and pull it forward, that’s when you really begin to understand words. Whenever one broke me, I chose to take my words and rewrite them in terms of how I pictured myself. And pictures like this are only the cherry on top of what I’ve been through on this journey from ‘07 to now.
I never wanted to find someone who when they met me at the 125 lb body I would have been a piece of eye candy or an arm trophy on somebodies arm with everybody saying “Oh your so pretty, you’re so pretty.” I’m the 183 lb woman going “Girl, I got to put these spanx on today!” But you suck it up, you stick it in and you’ll still smile.
When you own it, but love the skin that you’re in and know that it goes through many seasons and it’s not going to always be a pretty season. It’s not. Especially when you give birth to children and have hysterectomies and major surgeries. I’ve broken my neck and had my gall bladder taken out.
Imagine if we empowered every girl who was from 9-17, imagine what this world would be like? Everybody clicks on Instagram wanting approval. Why don’t we put “hot mess” Instagram and get pictures of when we wake up? Why do we have to be five shades of foundation, and how many contours and all of this?
When you have to be afraid to go outside because your factory reset button is going to fall off, you got to question yourself. I do believe that there are people who love makeup. But when you have to make yourself up to be something that you’re not, when you take off your makeup and you look totally not like the person that you are just to get approval or just to get a like? When you’re doing that because you think that’s what society wants or thinks is beautiful? There is a prettiness in every color, shape, and size, just like there is a fool in everyone.
I like to help the ugly ladies. One of my closet dearest friends is ugly as homemade sin. She has no femininity…just…when you look at her based on any standards she is not an attractive woman. But her heart is gold. Her heart is gold! She will check on me on a daily basis and a prettiness in every color, shape, and size, just like there is a fool in everyone. I like to help the ugly ladies. One of my closet dearest friends is ugly as homemade sin. She has no femininity…just…when you look at her based on any standards she is not an attractive woman. But her heart is gold. Her heart is gold! She will check on me on a daily basis and sometimes I won’t see her but twice a year.
I’ve known her since 2010, and she has had horrible life events happen to her, stuff you couldn’t even make up. She still reaches out to say “Are you okay?” or, “are the boys okay?” “Are you doing alright sis?” And we say “baa.” Because we are the black sheep of the family because I see crazy, I identify crazy and I speak out against it. Birds of a feather flock together. And with women, if you can’t call that person in the middle of the night and confess your sins, then those are people that you don’t need during the daytime.
If people walk with you, you need to know if that’s your ride to die or not. I had a very close friend who I had known since 2010. She was the very first person that I had confessed that I met my partner. She was the only person who I had wanted approval from. I thought of her as a mother figure and she has no children. She knew all my dark secrets and all my trials and tribulations and she knew everything.
When I went to her I was on cloud 9, so excited and ecstatic! “Mama Rachel, Mama Rachel I met someone!” In three minutes she crushed me down to nothing. She told me that he was going to use me and that I was just from. I thought of her as a mother figure and she has no children. When I went to her I was on cloud 9, so excited and ecstatic! “Mama Rachel, Mama Rachel I met someone!” In three minutes she crushed me down to nothing.
She told me that he was going to use me and that I was just his part-time. Anything negative that she could say she said to me. She crushed me in the parking lot. All I wanted was her to say “I’m so excited for you! Oh my gosh!” This is somebody who was in my life for many years and I spent lots of time with her and did things with her. But at that moment she showed me that she was only with me because she got a thrill off of my struggles.
She was not there for me for good or bad. She’s an ex-social worker. She only got a thrill out of the down time of helping me up. But the reality of our relationship was that the closet person to me was the closet person that was against me. Now that I had found my dream come true she immediately cut of communication. I saw her once, months later at Thanksgiving, and she did say an apology but our relationship was never the same, we never picked it back up.
It was like somebody who I had spent so many years confiding in was now dead to me and the only thing I had expressed to her was my happiness. I If I wouldn’t have loved myself than I would have been allowing her to crush me time and time again. I would tell women to not give up when they are broken and to put themselves together. It will take time and it won’t happen overnight. I dislike when people say that they have to pray for things to be alright. Why don’t you just be grateful that you woke up today? Why don’t you just be grateful that you have a roof over your head? I’ve been homeless. I’ve been without food. I’ve been without all those things, just be grateful for the moment that you got because today is not promised. You woke up today not promised. Tomorrow’s not promised either. The only thing that you have is the moment, now, the present. That’s why I’m in my counseling of what no longer serves you. If you can find the strength to find out what no longer serves you and what you can do today in this moment, even if you are having the worst day – what can you do to reach out to somebody and be of service to them? Stop trying to make yourself look better than others, and adjust another women’s crown. Tell another woman that that she is beautiful just because! Compliment a man just because! When you do kindness out of the good of your heart it does come back to you. It doesn’t come back always fast. Don’t keep tabs either or do things for social media brownie points. Be grateful.
