HEALING WITHOUT RESOLUTION: Accepting Your Unfinished Self

Healing does not require closure or resolution. It begins with accepting who you are today, even if you feel unchanged, fractured, or unfinished. Growth does not have to be visible. Healing often happens quietly, alongside uncertainty and setbacks.

The idea that healing requires resolution feels almost heretical in a culture that insists healing must end in understanding, apologies, or neat conclusions. We are taught that peace comes after explanation, justice, or when the other person finally says, “I’m sorry.” But sometimes healing can begin much earlier. It is a willingness to accept who we are today.

Healing happens underground, in the places where confusion and pain still live. It can exist alongside fear, anger, and unanswered questions, even when the body remembers what the mind wishes it could forget.

I know this because I have lived it.

In 2005, a moment suspended in my memory, I am 37 and pregnant. He is 37 and a Pastor. I am standing in a bedroom, confused. Sunlight spills through the curtains. The carpet is cool beneath my feet. The room looks ordinary, unchanged, which makes the cruelty harder to understand. How can someone do something so violent and act as though nothing happened? How can the world remain intact when something inside me has shattered?

My body holds the truth even when words fail. The truth: his actions triggered a miscarriage. There is tension everywhere: my tight chest, my knotted gut, a heaviness that presses me toward the ground. I feel dry, depleted, unable to cry. I can’t even empty the pain. I want to scream, run, disappear into sleep. My soul feels suppressed, distant, unreachable. In my desperation, I wish for divine intervention, punishment done to him, not because I want violence, but because I want acknowledgment. I want the harm to be seen, named, made real.

The wish for an apology is not about reconciliation. It is about validation. If the one who caused the harm were to seek forgiveness, it would mean admitting the harm existed. It would allow me to acknowledge it too, to stop wondering whether I imagined it, whether it counted. Without that acknowledgment, I am left alone with the knowing, carrying both the wound and the responsibility of believing myself.

Today, 20 years later, through the inner work of healing, when I return to that memory of the bed, something or someone else appears: a protector, an ally, a voice that says, “Fuck you,” to the bed, not to destroy it, but to defend me. A hand reaches out to help me sit up, to wipe my tears. Although I am still afraid to face the bed, I am willing to peek around my protector’s shoulder. This, too, is healing. Not the absence of fear, but the presence of support.

The bed itself has not changed. It is an inanimate object, made as always. And yet it holds meaning. The comforter had light teal squares, abstractly arranged, some solid, some floral, hints of pink scattered throughout the pattern. Calm existing in chaos. I want to burn that bed, to erase the sight of the pain. But I also want to save the comforter, folding it carefully, rather than destroying it. Because I am allowed to carry reminders without being consumed by them.

This is not closure; it is not resolution. It is acceptance of where I am now and how far I have come.

Healing, in this sense, is not happiness or forgiveness. It is a quiet decision to stand with yourself, even in uncertainty. It is the recognition that healing can happen while questions remain unanswered, while anger still flickers, while the past refuses to stay neatly behind you. It is the understanding that being unfinished does not mean being broken.

Healing begins the moment you stop waiting for someone else to give you permission to believe your own experience. Healing does not require closure, because closure depends on other people behaving in ways they often never will.

CPTSD Tool-kit

Moving past trauma does not come from fixing the past or controlling emotions. It happens slowly by how we take care of ourselves in the present.

What we think about, how we talk to ourselves, and whether we choose to honor our exhaustion rather than punish our perceived failures.

People who appear more resilient are not untouched by hardship; they have learned ways to carry it without being consumed by it.

Four Things I do When I am Triggered:

Breathe
Check in
Let it out
Remind

Breathe

The first thing I do when I’m consumed with the past is breathe. Not the shallow, panicked breathing that comes naturally when you’re triggered, but intentional breathing. Deep inhales that fill my lungs completely. Slow exhales signal to my body that I’m not in danger right now.

This has to come first. It’s not optional. When my nervous system is activated, nothing else works. I can’t think clearly, and I can’t access the rational part of my brain. I can’t connect with the parts of me that need attention.

Breathing calms the nervous system down. It tells my body: I’m safe, and I can handle this.

Check In

Once I can breathe, I check in with the different parts of me that got triggered.

The parts of me that are still the little girl who survived trauma, and the ex-wife in me who learned that abuse meant something, were fundamentally wrong with me. The old version of me, the mom, who feels guilty for everything. For the past, for staying in an abusive marriage for 24 years, and for things I can’t control. There are parts of me that are exhausted from trying so hard to be different, to break cycles, to heal.

I’ve learned in therapy that these parts all have something to say. They all need to be heard. And when I get triggered, it’s usually because one of them is scared or hurting and trying to protect me the only way they know how.

So I check in. I ask: which part of me is feeling this right now? What does she need? What is she afraid of?

Let It Out

After I’ve breathed and checked in, I need to let it out. The feelings can’t stay inside my body. They need somewhere to go.

Sometimes I journal. I write without editing, without trying to make it make sense. I let the fear, the guilt, and the helplessness spill onto the page. I write about the abuse I survived and how it still haunts me. And I write about whatever might have triggered me that day. Even if it was only the dog getting into the trash.

Sometimes I talk to someone who understands, like my therapist or my husband. I say the things out loud that feel too big to carry alone. I let someone else witness my pain without trying to fix it or minimize it.

Just: I see you. I hear you.

Getting the feelings out doesn’t make them disappear. But it makes them manageable. It takes them from this overwhelming internal storm and gives them form, language, and a place to exist outside of me.

Remind

The last tool is the one I need most: remind.

When the old shame tries to convince me I should have healed enough by now to not get triggered, I remind myself:

I did the best I could with the tools and knowledge I had. And I’m doing the best I can now.

When I feel like I’m failing because I got derailed again, I remind myself that a brief moment of being consumed isn’t failure. It’s part of being human. It’s part of having a nervous system that remembers trauma. What matters is what I do after.

I also remind myself that I’m safe now. And I am loved.

Healing comes in waves, just like grief does. Sometimes the waves are higher and harder, like when an anniversary of trauma comes around, when my nervous system gets activated by something I didn’t see coming. Sometimes the waves are just ebbing, gentle reminders that I’ve been through hard things, but I’m okay now.

Self-help culture promises a permanent better. It sells the idea that if you do the work, use the right tools, and heal properly, you’ll reach a destination where you’re fixed. Where you don’t get triggered anymore. Where you’ve moved past it all.

That’s a lie. The truth is that healing isn’t reaching the shore. It has the tools to stay afloat. And it is the repetition of returning to these practices, not because you failed the first time, but because this is what healing actually

THREE STEPS TO PEACE

You can have peace can even when you have been through trauma or if you are grieving. This doesn’t mean you have to force happiness or pretend that the loss didn’t happen. It simply acknowledges that alongside suffering, there can also be moments of steadiness, breath, and relief. These moments are not a denial of what happened. They are learning to live alongside what happened.

A Three-Step Approach to Peace :

Create brief moments of physical safety through slow breathing, grounding, or gentle movement. This calms the nervous system without denying pain.

One time, I put on some Black Sabbath and started moving my body to War Pigs. Never before had it moved me like it did this day. But as I moved my body to its tune, the tears started flowing. I had emotions built up inside me that had been begging to be released, but I kept ignoring them. So my body said, “Well, now we’re going to cry while you dance to War Pig, a very unlikely match.” I felt so much better after that!

2. Practice holding two truths at once. You can acknowledge your pain while also noticing that you are safe.

3. Redefine peace as steadiness rather than happiness. Peace can mean staying anchored for a few minutes, even when you’re not feeling joyful.

I’ve lived this. I’ve known what it’s like to carry a grief that reshapes everything, to sit in the aftermath of trauma and wonder how to keep moving. The words I’ve written here come from experience, from finding small moments of steadiness in the middle of inner storms. I’ve learned, often the hard way, that peace doesn’t mean forgetting or feeling happy. It means allowing space for both the ache and the breath.

WHEN CHRISTMAS CHANGED

I don’t know when Christmas turned from magic and lights to misery and blight. I only know that one day the lights didn’t sparkle as much anymore. Shopping feels like a waste of time and a drain on life savings. I don’t see why we spend four weeks preparing for something that lasts a day and two more weeks taking it apart.

For me, Christmas starts at Thanksgiving, when our family combines the holidays. The tree goes up a week or so beforehand and stays for the long haul, like an unwanted guest. Or a fly trapped in a car. Some years, I play Christmas music. Most years, I keep playing my usual, Ozzy and the like. This year has been an Ozzy year (RIP).

I don’t know exactly when I started to hate Christmas. Maybe it was when my former husband threw a fit because I wasn’t decorating the tree the way he thought I should, or in the colors he preferred. I remember standing in the living room, feeling crushed. It was Thanksgiving night or the evening after. I had cooked all day, and the meal was devoured in about fifteen minutes. Then came the cleanup, too much for three young children to help with, while he lay on the couch and napped.

After a few years of begging to do it myself, I learned it was easier to stand by and hand him the ornaments. There was rarely a time when I was alone. He took up most of that space unless I woke earlier than him, something I trained myself to do after a few years of marriage.

.I was excited to put up the tree so the kids could feel the same anticipation we had as we grew up. We finished hanging the cursed lights you pray will still work from the year before. The last thing was the topper. No matter how hard you try, tree toppers never want to stay straight. It didn’t help that he was obsessive about details. Somehow, it became my fault that the angel leaned and refused to stay lit.

Then there was the money. I had no idea how we were going to buy presents with what little we had. He was in Bible college and believed he should not work. If God wanted him there, God would provide.

It was then that I started questioning the sacrifices we were making. We gave money we didn’t have to a church and to missionaries who earned more than we did. We decided things like toilet paper and electricity were luxuries, not needs.

How do you reconnect to Christmas after that?

When I was a child, my parents had a tradition that I could open one present on Christmas Eve. Sometimes I choose it. Sometimes they did. Now that my youngest is still at home, I understand why they sometimes chose it, because there was that one gift they dreaded wrapping.

The oversized gift hidden in my closet this year will be opened the same way, because it is simply too big to wrap.

I remember the year I received a Nintendo with a Smurf game. I stayed up all night playing. When my parents woke up, I was still sitting on the floor in front of our wood-encased television, controller in hand.

My mother asked if I had slept at all and warned that I would be too tired to open presents later. I told her I would be fine. I was twelve. Of course I was.

Every Christmas Eve, we went to my grandmother’s house for dinner and gifts. No one ever knew what to buy for my uncle, a grown man still living at home who owned every comic book printed. He usually received socks or an ugly sweater. I hated getting gifts from him because they were never helpful.

Then, one year, he bought me the entire Wizard of Oz book set. He was a reader. Once he learned I loved books, buying gifts for me became easy. That year, he earned my respect.

My grandmother made many of my gifts by hand. Stuffed animals. Dolls. Raggedy Ann and Andy. A panda bear. Characters from The Wizard of Oz, except the witch. Around that time, rumors circulated about possessed dolls. I wasn’t afraid of Raggedy Ann or Andy, but the Oz dolls terrified me. I stored them in my mother’s closet.

I was fifty-six years old when I learned the infamous Annabelle doll was a Raggedy Ann, identical to the one my grandmother had sewn for me.

Every year, she stitched us matching Christmas dresses or skirts. Mine always brushed the floor. By the time I was thirteen or fourteen, I decided that kind of outfit no longer served my image.

One year, she made me a stocking more than five feet tall. My mother filled it. Stockings were always my favorite part of Christmas. Candy and small surprises, one after another.

We used to cover the tree in silver tinsel so it looked like snow. It didn’t look like snow, but it looked like Christmas. The cats loved it too and walked around for days with tinsel trailing behind them. No one wanted to deal with that, so we didn’t.

As a child, I loved Christmas. The lights. The colors. The music. My earliest memory is of a tree in the front room and presents underneath it. Our dog unwrapped a gift I had made for my parents, and I was furious.

That same year, I wanted a necklace so severely that I couldn’t stand not knowing. I unwrapped a present early, saw it was the necklace, and wrapped it back up. When they asked, I blamed the dog. But they didn’t believe me.

Christmas stopped being simple over time; loss layered itself onto the season. One of my children is gone. A serious family rupture surfaced during the holidays. My former husband despised Christmas and made it miserable. Putting up the tree was always a fight. There was never enough money.

One year we threw the tree away, calling it an idol. I had the scripture to support it. He declared the sin we were committing and the consequences. I enforced them. Out went the tree. Out went the decorations.

Minimalism became our way of life before it had a name.

This is why my adult self does not love Christmas.

My inner teenager can take it or leave it. She once begged relatives to give her gift certificates so she could choose her own clothes. Instead, they bought things she wore once and never again. She loved shopping with her mother because she got to choose, except for the extra-tight parachute pants.

I don’t know exactly where I stopped enjoying Christmas, maybe when I got married, maybe when it became my responsibility to make it happen with people who made it difficult.

My current husband shares a similar background and the same ambivalence about the holiday. We try. We are doing fine. But Christmas is no longer all about lights. Not like when our mothers made it special.

Recently, I did something I hadn’t done in several years. I play instrumental Christmas music and turned it up. Then I baked.

Banana bread. Apple bread. Pumpkin. Gingerbread. Peanut butter cookies. Most of it adjusted to be Paleo.

All day I measured, mixed, and baked. Timers went off. Batter waited for its turn. I tasted everything.

My favorite was the banana bread sweetened only with bananas. Not overly sweet. Just enough.

The final loaf was made from leftovers. Extra pumpkin. Extra applesauce. I still don’t understand why recipes don’t simply use the whole can.

Halfway through, I remembered dinner. I pulled out the Instant Pot, added frozen meat and seasoning, and thirty minutes later, we ate.

The kitchen felt chaotic and magical at the same time, warm, messy, and smelling like Christmas.

I don’t enjoy Christmas as much as I’d like, but I am learning to find ways to make it more enjoyable.

Life After Suicide Loss Is Lived in the Present Moment

Lessons From the Tufted Titmouse

This morning, I was noticing the Tufted Titmouse at my feeders. It is a small, alert bird with a soft voice and a steady presence. A symbol of healing, but not in the way people often think. It is not promising closure or answers. It tells us to keep going even when life has permanently changed.

After losing a child, life stops making sense, and grief collapses time. The future feels unreachable, and the past feels too heavy to carry. Most days are not about hope or meaning; they are about surviving the stage you are in. The Tufted Titmouse reminds us to stay present, do what the moment requires, nothing more. It isn’t suggesting that we “move on.” It invites us to survive this moment, then the next.

The bird’s small, persistent movements mirror how we, as bereaved parents, can continue living through each season. Maybe you are just surviving, fragment by fragment. But getting up and feeding yourself is showing up. Saying their name and breathing through waves that come without warning does not weaken us; it is an endurance that strengthens us.

The titmouse is also known for its song, reminding us how important it is to speak our child’s name, tell their story, and to allow our grief to have a voice. Silence can isolate us. Sharing does not mean we are stuck; it means our love did not end. It does not mean “everything happened for a reason.” But it does imply that life still has purpose, even while we carry this permanent loss.

Some days, noticing something simple in nature may feel like the only thing that can ground us. It’s a Tufted Titmouse at the feeder, a windchimes melody, a foggy morning of calm. These moments do not minimize our loss; they remind us that we are still here, even when our hearts are broken. The Titmouse teaches us to live with grief rather than resolve it. Strength is not the absence of sorrow; it is learning how to carry it.

Why Happiness Makes You Nervous

For the girl who thinks the tightness in her chest is normal

Good times make you nervous, don’t they?

You don’t call it fear—you call it “being cautious,” or “not getting your hopes up.” But the truth is quieter: you’re not used to peace. For so long, love has felt like tension, panic, apologizing, overthinking, and walking around someone else’s moods like they’re landmines.

So when something finally goes right… Your whole body glitches.

You look around, waiting for the explosion.
You wait for the tone in his voice to shift.
You wait for the moment he decides you’re “too sensitive,” “too emotional,” or “too much.”

And if nothing happens right away, your brain fills the silence with dread: Is this the part where it all turns again?
You don’t trust happiness—not because you’re broken, but because you’ve survived too long without it.

Girls like us learn early that peace feels like a trap.
A setup.
A calm before the next storm.

No one told you that real love isn’t supposed to feel like bracing for impact.
No one told you that safety isn’t the same thing as “keeping the peace.”
No one told you that if your body relaxes only when he isn’t home… that’s not comfort. That’s survival.

Listen, sweetheart—if happiness feels foreign, it’s not because you’re incapable of it.
It’s because someone taught you to expect pain.

And here’s the part I wish someone had whispered to me sooner:
You don’t have to keep living in the story where fear feels like love. You don’t have to keep shrinking yourself just to fit into a relationship that was never safe to begin with.

Real peace doesn’t make you nervous.
Real love doesn’t make you flinch.
And real happiness doesn’t feel like a setup—it feels like finally coming home to yourself.

You deserve that kind of happiness.
And I promise… it won’t explode.

When someone ties despair to God Himself, it buries you in a deeper kind of fear. You stop dreaming. You stop believing in the better. And every time life gets quiet, you brace yourself, because you know the calm never lasts.

I remember once, after one of our rare calm seasons, we tried to dream again. We made a little vision board together — nothing extravagant, just things a normal couple would hope for. A peaceful home. A reliable car. A future that didn’t feel like walking through broken glass.

But his face went dark, the way it always did when anything felt too good.

He looked at me and said,

“God hates me. We will never get any of this.”

And just like that, the air changed.
The hope drained out of the room.
My body learned — again — that peace wasn’t safe, and happiness wasn’t to be trusted.

When You Take the Blame That Wasn’t Yours to Begin With

To Every Woman Still Carrying the Weight That Was Never Hers

I used to believe that everything was my fault.

The slammed doors, the silence, the yelling that followed the silence, the fists that followed the yelling—I took the blame for all of it. If dinner was cold, it was my fault. If he had a bad day, somehow I caused it. If he lost his temper, I should’ve known better. I should’ve stayed quiet. I should’ve smiled more. I should’ve been less.

When you live under the same roof as someone who thrives off control, you learn quickly that survival means shrinking yourself. It means bending until you barely resemble a person. It means learning the art of swallowing blame for things that never had anything to do with you—because arguing only brings pain, and agreeing brings temporary peace.

But what they don’t tell you is that even when you get out—when you finally pack the bags, find the courage, or flee in the middle of the night with nothing but your breath in your chest—that voice follows you.

Even in freedom, I found myself taking the blame for things that weren’t mine.

If a friend was upset, I’d replay our last ten conversations, convinced I did something wrong. If my boss looked stressed, I’d take on extra work, hoping it would ease a tension I didn’t cause. I’d apologize for everything. For asking questions. For not asking enough. For existing, sometimes. I was hunting for ways to feel terrible, and life kept handing me proof that I was right… because that’s what trauma does. It warps the lens.

But here’s the truth I’ve learned—he was wrong.

I was not the problem. I was not too sensitive. I was not too loud or too quiet or too emotional or too needy. I was not weak for staying. I was not selfish for leaving.

Healing isn’t linear, and it sure as hell isn’t clean. Some days, the guilt creeps back in like fog through a cracked window. But I catch it now. I see it for what it is: a ghost of the past, trying to convince me that I’m still that powerless woman I used to be.

I’m not her anymore.

I don’t carry blame that isn’t mine. I lay it down and walk away from it.

Now, I advocate. I speak. I write. I sit with other survivors and tell them: you are not crazy. You are not broken. And you are not to blame.

If you’re reading this and you’ve ever felt like the villain in your own story—take a breath. Hand back what was never yours to carry.

You deserve peace. You deserve love. And most of all, you deserve to be free from blame that was never yours to begin with.

You survived.

Now it’s time to thrive.

The Victim Mindset Is Keeping You Stuck

Why Blaming the Past Feels Safe—but Is Silently Sabotaging Your Growth

There’s a mindset that keeps people trapped—and often, they don’t even realize they’re in it. It shows up subtly, quietly, in the way someone reacts to life’s hardships. And over time, it becomes the lens through which everything is seen.

It’s the victim mindset.

It convinces you that life is just happening to you. That your circumstances, your past, and the way people have failed you are the reasons you can’t move forward. And while there may be truth in those hardships, staying stuck in that story only leads to one place: nowhere.

This mindset is especially dangerous because it feels justified. You’ve been hurt. Life has been unfair. Opportunities have slipped through your fingers. But the victim mindset doesn’t just acknowledge the pain—it builds a home in it. It keeps you focused on what’s been done to you rather than on what you can do now.

And the most painful part? Sometimes, it makes you push away the very help that could make a difference.

You might tell yourself that you’re independent—that you’ll figure it out alone. But if you’re rejecting real, practical help while still depending on handouts or the temporary kindness of others, that’s not strength. That’s survival. And survival is exhausting when there’s no plan to move beyond it.

When you stop asking yourself hard questions like, “What part am I playing in this?” or “What can I take responsibility for?”, you give your power away. It’s easier to blame the system, your past, or your circumstances. But blaming keeps you stuck. It keeps you from healing. And it lets you off the hook.

The truth is: you’re not powerless. You’re not broken. And you’re not doomed.

But if you’re constantly rejecting growth, avoiding discomfort, and refusing to let others help you in meaningful ways, you’re choosing stagnation. And deep down, you probably know it.

Real change is hard. Accepting help feels vulnerable. Facing your patterns takes courage. But that’s where transformation lives. It’s not in the blaming, the begging, or the surviving—it’s in the choosing.

You can’t heal what you refuse to take ownership of.
You can’t rise if you keep convincing yourself that you’re stuck.
And you can’t move forward if you keep turning your back on the help that’s already within reach.

Let this be the moment you get honest with yourself. Not to shame or guilt yourself—but to reclaim your power.

Because the victim mindset will always keep you stuck —and you deserve better than that.

I see this in my daughter. We have sent her to trade school twice, but she has dropped out both times. We paid off her car, paid her auto insurance for a year, and helped her pay for her own apartment.

And now she is in a worse place than before we did that, begging people for money.

My family members and I offer true, lasting help – like coming to stay with us so you can get on your feet, etc. – but she refuses. Instead, she chooses to remain in the chaos, her comfort zone.

Why You Always Zero In on What Hurts

When trauma teaches you to fear the good, trusting peace can feel like betrayal

Have you ever noticed how fast your mind finds the crack in the glass?

Something good happens—and before it even settles, you’ve already ruined it in your head.
You pass the test, then tell yourself you’ll probably fail the next one.
Someone says they’re proud of you, and you immediately wonder what they really meant.
You finally get a moment of peace, and instead of resting in it, you’re holding your breath waiting for it to explode.

That’s not you being dramatic.
That’s trauma.
That’s conditioning.

When you’ve lived in survival mode long enough—when love came with punishment, when silence meant danger, when even your joy got twisted into a weapon—you stop trusting anything that feels too good.

Your brain starts treating calm like a trap.
It looks for warning signs even when there aren’t any.
Because in your experience, the good things never came without a price.

So, of course, your mind zeroes in on what hurts.
That was your safety plan. That’s how you kept yourself alive.

You learned to listen for footsteps. You studied his moods like they were gospel. You walked on eggshells because they were safer than landmines.

So when someone tells you to “just think positive” or “celebrate the good,” it doesn’t land. It feels fake. It feels dangerous. Because in your world, hope always came back with bruises.

I remember the day I reached for help.

I wasn’t even expecting a miracle—just someone to see me. I told the truth. I admitted I was scared, confused, and unraveling. I laid it all out there: how small I felt, how broken I had become, how the God I was clinging to didn’t feel like He was anywhere near me anymore.

And the answer I got?

“Just go home and be a good wife.”

No rescue. No comfort. Just a command.
That broke something in me.
I learned right then: honesty doesn’t guarantee help. Hope can backfire.
So I stopped reaching. I started bracing harder. I got quieter.
Because at least silence couldn’t slap me in the face like that again.

That moment shaped me. And not in a holy way.

But here’s what I want to tell you—what someone should have told me:

You’re not negative.
You’re not broken.
You are conditioned. And you can unlearn it.

But not by pretending. Not by slapping affirmations over your scars.

It starts small. Like this:
When the voice comes up that says, “This won’t last,” or “You don’t deserve this,”
just pause.
Don’t fight it. Don’t obey it. Just notice it.

That voice isn’t your truth.
It’s your trauma.

And slowly, you can start choosing differently.

Not because you’re suddenly healed. But because for once, you’re finally allowed to be aware of how deep the damage goes—and how much more you were made for.

You’re allowed to want peace without fear.
You’re allowed to hold joy without bracing for pain.
You’re allowed to believe something good… might actually be good.

Even if your brain’s not there yet, you are.

GRATITUDE IN REVERSE

What felt like the end of the world turned out to be my greatest gift.

Albert charged into the side door of our house, clad in polyester basketball shorts and a t-shirt adorned with armpit sweat.

I inhaled, holding my breath, thinking, “Oh boy, what now?”.

“Pastor Riggs told me to hand in my resignation.”

He wouldn’t say he got fired — that would sound too obvious, like admitting he did something wrong. No, he was ‘asked to resign.’ He explained, with pride, that he had told the pastor off and had a long list of reasons.

All I could think of was Thanksgiving back in 2007, when we had to eat spaghetti because he had been fired from a previous position helping a pastor grow his church. He didn’t have a proper title, so we called him the church evangelist — but really, he was the church shit stirrer. I can recall three men who have dared to tell Albert the truth to his face. None of these men was a hothead like him. They had boundaries, and he crossed them. One preacher even went so far as to call him “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” I remember that night and still chuckle inwardly.

But this day felt like the end of an era—the end of our lives. We knew poverty. We survived it. But I was so tired of just surviving. So tired of pinching pennies, being the recipient of groceries because people felt sorry for us. I was downright exhausted. He told off the wrong guy, and that guy had the balls to stand up for himself. Kudos. But that didn’t help the situation. We were in dire straits. Bills do not miraculously stop just because you lose a job. No, electricity still runs, and a bill is still accumulating.

This is when he decided we would pursue his lifelong dream of starting a cleaning business.

“Oh gawd, yuck. I hate cleaning.” I thought. I did not want to do this. But being the obedient wife I was,

I said, “Okay.”

I was already at my wits’ end with him. I had even filed a restraining order earlier that year, thinking it would change him and he would be a different person. It only changed me. I became a different person. I was finding my voice.

We pushed along, started from scratch, and kept on scratching until we had a decent little cleaning business. It turned out it wasn’t as brutal as I thought it would be —cleaning, that is. Since he was OCD, I had learned to pay attention to detail.

I remember one time he was at work (I was a stay-at-home wife and mom), he may have been at bible college. Regardless, I spent all day cleaning the house. I wasn’t taught to keep a clean home. As a kid, my room was livable — clothes piled up, and I’d make a path to the bed and push them off to sleep. Dishes would overflow in the sink and onto the counters, even with a dishwasher sitting right there. My mom never asked for help — just pouted on weekends, complaining nobody helped her. But she never asked for help. I do not remember a single time my mom showed me how to wash dishes or asked me to wash them. But when I stayed the summer at my aunt’s house, she made me clean up after myself and even showed me how to clean behind the toilet.

So like I said, living with an OCD person – my husband – taught me to pay attention to detail.

Back to the part where I had cleaned all day, then he came home and went on a rampage:

“What have you been doing all day? Why does the house look like this? Get off your lazy ass and clean this fucking house!”

Nothing was lying around —not even a particle on the floor; everything had been freshly mopped and vacuumed. Do you know what he saw? A smudge on the corner of a mirror. Something I had missed. I cried that day. But I learned how to pay attention to detail on that day, too.

Cleaning houses felt a bit rewarding. I cleaned behind toilets and wiped baseboards, tops of door frames, and ledges on the doors. Top to bottom. No mirror had a smudge, and you could eat off the toilet seat. 10/10 would not recommend, but it would have been safe to do so.

As time went by, my disgust for him grew. But I could not figure out how to survive on my own with all these kids still living at home. It wasn’t until he got sick. Real sick. He ran a fever for over a week and refused to see a doctor. He would come downstairs and cry and whine like a baby, literally. Imagine a 3-year-old whining when they want their way. That was him. Then he would go back upstairs to sleep. He slept and slept. I would bring him soup, tea, water, and even made a homemade herbal remedy, which, for the first time in our 23-year marriage, he took. I welcomed the quietness his illness brought me, but I still performed my wifely duties of “in sickness and in health,”. Then went to clean the houses by myself. My daughter, who was in Christian school, would take a few days off to help me, but I found it easier to clean by myself than to go behind her to make sure she did it right. Not that she couldn’t clean, but this was our only income, and I didn’t feel I had room for mistakes.

Two more days went by, and he did not get out of bed. I got scared. I realized something was really wrong with him. He’s not faking or overreacting this time. So I called my sister-in-law and told her what was going on, and she said,

“You march up there and tell him he is going to the doctor, that he doesn’t have a choice.”

And so I did. He refused, crying and whining the whole time I was helping him dress, like a child not wanting to leave the park. Then, I drove him straight to the hospital. The doctor asked a bunch of questions that I answered, since he liked to withhold vital information. I even got the doctor to give him a prostate exam, which brings a smile to my face today. Turns out it was his appendix. It had been oozing into his body, and instead of being able to have the simple surgery, he had the large one where they cut from the top of the sternum to the pubic bone. I felt little sympathy for him, and he is a miserable patient. I was thankful to have work to go to. Grateful that we had just started an enormous organization project that was able to keep me away from seeing his green face and the black bile coming out of his mouth. His recovery took over six weeks. But by then, I’d already been cleaning solo for 8 — and I realized I could keep doing it. I could support my family without him. He had already lost interest in cleaning, wanting always to rush through the houses. He was there only to collect the check. Turns out he did not have as great a work ethic as he proclaimed.

When we finally separated, he left me the house and the business. A detailed story for another page, but what I thought was the end was just the beginning.

I thought when he got fired, we were going to do like we always did and move to another state and start all over. But instead, we started a cleaning business I didn’t want to start, and that business helped me support my then-6 kids at home. And without him there to tell me how the money was going to be spent frivolously, I was finally able to buy my kids’ school clothes and school supplies. For the first time, when they came to me with a need, I was able to supply it.

And that was the greatest gift of all.

Yoli's Write To Sanity

Just Breathe And Write

Category: Essays and Reflections