So sorry for the past week and half with no blogging. I don't expect that to happen again. April 5th (yesterday) was the one year anniversary of my brother's death so needless to say just been fighting to stay out of the funk. Last week was hard, outside situations made it worse but I hope that eventually I will look back and be proud of how I've dealt with this whole thing. I made a lot of mistakes last year after he died simply because I didn't know what the heck I was doing so I am trying to make decisions that aren't solely emotionally based.
My family and I received a lot of sweet texts/calls/emails leading up to the day and we are so VERY thankful to the ones that encourage us with thoughts and prayers and spending extra time with us during this week. I thought about writing a blog yesterday but I feel like there isn't too much to say about it. If you were lucky enough to know Micah for any amount of time then you knew what good guy he was so I don't need to explain that...shoot the majority of people preferred him over his favorite sibling (yours truly, of course). Last year I tried to write a few posts about grieving..daily, on holidays, the firsts of things, etc. Now that we have officially been missing him for 365 days, I am now trying to figure out how to move on and dealing with guilt because I don't want to forget about him, even though I know I never could. It makes the moving on process a little more difficult. So I'm sure this year will be full of new experiences and I'll post some on the moving on process and trying to figure that out.
While I am on this topic I would like to post some things not to say to people grieving (I received a few this week and a lot last year) so here we go:
1) I'll pray for you- While this is very endearing and thoughtful and definitely what we need, sometimes people grieving just want another human to take genuine time even if its just a phone call, a text conversation or actual quality time spent. I'll pray for you can come off as a dismissal type thing and just your way of getting by and not trying to put any effort into it Grieving is the worst thing someone can go through and being alone for a periods of time only make the funk worse. I promise any time you put into someone grieving doesn't go unnoticed and I do believe how you treat others will come back when you are dealing with something like grief. (Not saying don't pray, pray please. Just also respect how it can sound.)
2) He's in a better place- Well what good does that do me?! I'm still here..on earth and dealing with everything he got to leave behind... I am super appreciative of the fact that Micah knew God and accepted Him as the only way to get to Heaven. Buttt he left me here, dealing with crap and sadness and he gets to be up there with Aunt Becky and Granddaddy Alvin just waiting for the rest of us.
3) You'll move on- What if I don't want to...if I associate that with forgetting him then I definitely don't want to do that. Again I understand why people say it but just understand that it hurts to think about life without this person.
Trust me I heard a lot worse but these were the most common that just left a stinging feeling. So I know you're probably thinking "Well then what am I supposed to say?!" Never fear, I have a few examples for you!
1) What do you miss the most about him/her? While this is usually not a short answer, it shows that you are interested in an authentic way. I love telling stories about Micah and talking about anything related to him.
2) You know he/she's looking down on you.-This isn't question so it won't take that much time out of your day. When I got married, it meant the most when people walked up to me or text me that day to let me know that Micah is with me and he is watching. While I don't believe he is my guardian angel or anything like that, I do believe he is getting to see certain things and my wedding is definitely one of them.
3) He/She's would be proud of you.- Pretty self-explanatory. It's similar to the one of above and just gives you confidence and peace at the same time.
Showing posts with label substance abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label substance abuse. Show all posts
Monday, April 6, 2015
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
life lately
hi y'all!
Trying to figure out blogger is quite the hassle, I have to admit that WordPress is so far easier to function but bear with me and we will go places on this page!
Life lately:
Grief-
I have really been putting a lot of energy into exercising, I bought the book "Grief Healing Techniques" a few months back and it has some helpful suggestions. I am a physical type person, so any to-do list or how-to scenario is right up my alley which is how this book is laid out. I would highly recommend it to someone experiencing grief. It talks a lot about making some changes in your life and being physically active as possible. I started back karate in December but it was a sport that I had only done with my brother which did bring up a lot of emotions constantly because I had never done it without him by my side. I decided in January to take a break, give it some space and try to come back when I was ready because karate truly is a passion of mine and I know with some time I'll be able to do it and honor my brother's legacy through karate which was a similarity we always shared. It can get discouraging to be almost a year from his death and still struggle for periods of time but finding different outlets has been beneficial and I hope I can give some ideas to anyone in the same boat.
Fitness-
Fast forward to now....I signed up for Pure Barre (which I had previously tried) and Hot Yoga (which I had always wanted to try) and I LOVED them so currently I am doing both of those around 4-5 days a week. It truly helps to exhaust myself on something positive and allow myself to feel happiness and accomplished at the end of the day. I am already seeing results on week 3, I can now touch my toes (I have never been able to do this in my entire life! yay!) and my clothes are fitting better. I think anyway you can feel accomplished at the end of the day ultimately helps with grief.
I've never been physically active where I get to dress cute so doing these two activities have really been a treat. It sent me in search of work out clothes...so far the cutest I have found in my budget range were Old Navy and Fabletics (Kate Hudson owned, SHE'S MY LITERAL FAV). I am in love with any printed legging currently. ADORE ADORE ADORE.
Reading-
"Grief Healing Techniques" I am also starting the She Reads Truth "Esther" series. If you don't know about She Reads Truth it's a GREAT app (iPhone and android) for any female that is looking for a bible study.
Events-
We are less than a month away from the 1 year anniversary of Micah's death and this past week my mom and I decided to do something in honor of him that weekend. Micah loved the outdoors so we are looking into planning a one night camping trip...any ideas on camping or suggestions please let me know! Micah often went camping with his friends and I know he would love this idea...well he would probably say it was gay...but secretly appreciated it. :)
Trying to figure out blogger is quite the hassle, I have to admit that WordPress is so far easier to function but bear with me and we will go places on this page!
Life lately:
Grief-
I have really been putting a lot of energy into exercising, I bought the book "Grief Healing Techniques" a few months back and it has some helpful suggestions. I am a physical type person, so any to-do list or how-to scenario is right up my alley which is how this book is laid out. I would highly recommend it to someone experiencing grief. It talks a lot about making some changes in your life and being physically active as possible. I started back karate in December but it was a sport that I had only done with my brother which did bring up a lot of emotions constantly because I had never done it without him by my side. I decided in January to take a break, give it some space and try to come back when I was ready because karate truly is a passion of mine and I know with some time I'll be able to do it and honor my brother's legacy through karate which was a similarity we always shared. It can get discouraging to be almost a year from his death and still struggle for periods of time but finding different outlets has been beneficial and I hope I can give some ideas to anyone in the same boat.
Fitness-
Fast forward to now....I signed up for Pure Barre (which I had previously tried) and Hot Yoga (which I had always wanted to try) and I LOVED them so currently I am doing both of those around 4-5 days a week. It truly helps to exhaust myself on something positive and allow myself to feel happiness and accomplished at the end of the day. I am already seeing results on week 3, I can now touch my toes (I have never been able to do this in my entire life! yay!) and my clothes are fitting better. I think anyway you can feel accomplished at the end of the day ultimately helps with grief.
Reading-
"Grief Healing Techniques" I am also starting the She Reads Truth "Esther" series. If you don't know about She Reads Truth it's a GREAT app (iPhone and android) for any female that is looking for a bible study.
Events-
We are less than a month away from the 1 year anniversary of Micah's death and this past week my mom and I decided to do something in honor of him that weekend. Micah loved the outdoors so we are looking into planning a one night camping trip...any ideas on camping or suggestions please let me know! Micah often went camping with his friends and I know he would love this idea...well he would probably say it was gay...but secretly appreciated it. :)
Thursday, August 7, 2014
It's been a long year..
Whew, I know it's been quite a few weeks since my first post but what I failed to mention in that one is that I was planning my wedding. Tripp and I set our wedding date in July 2013 so when my brother unexpectedly passed away just 15 short weeks before our date, we were forced to make some decisions that we had NO clue we would have to make. When planning a wedding one section that people forget to mention to you is, what if an unexpected death in your family happens? While that is super depressing, it is very real for us and caused a lot of hurdles in the last few months of our engagement.
I want to be as transparent as possible on this blog and that is what I plan to do. My goal is not to be super hateful or super depressing on here but to talk about some things I've experienced or am experiencing in hopes that someone who hasn't been able to relate to anything before may find this relatable. My main passion in life is to help the lonely, no not the lonely for a soulmate kind of way but someone who feels that their situation is completely different from anyone else and who goes to bed at night feeling completely alone in what they are going through. I've had that feeling too many times and I never want to know of someone having that feeling when I could help in some way. So I hope that this blog brings about some kind of comfort for someone.
That being said, like I stated previously Tripp and I did not have unexpected death in our wedding plans, for financial sake or emotional sake. Our engagement was one of the toughest things I have ever been through, it had extreme highs and extreme lows and I am grateful for all of the persevering that we have gone through because the Bible says that God blesses those that persevere. It was not easy and we did not always handle it right, simply because we had no idea how to handle it, nor did we have it in our plan. In the end, we did what we needed to do, what we had to do and what we felt led to do, no matter how hard it was.
Tripp and I do not come from money and we make no bones about it that we are simple people that were both brought up on hard times. When we got engaged, we were overly excited and exceeded our budget fast. We were quickly brought back down to earth in January and tried to make do with what we had and also had some help from our parents which we greatly appreciated but like I said, we do not come from wealthy backgrounds which I feel is the normal thing for most now. We both have student loans and paid for our own bills at the time we got engaged. We did not have some grand savings to pull from and literally started saving aluminum cans from the second we got engaged. We lost a lot of wedding weight doing the ramen noodle diet and learned that life could still be complete even if we got rid of cable. We both made a lot of sacrifices for the wedding and trimmed down our idea of what a grand wedding would be. (All that being said, I was OVERJOYED with our wedding in the end and it perfectly fit the couple that we are!) When we first got engaged, we had a huge venue picked out, a huge guest list and a huge wedding party. Well life happened which brought our idea of the perfect venue down, as well as, eventually our wedding party became smaller. Some of you may be wondering what this has to do with me dealing with my brother dying but it was so close to our wedding and financially, my parents did not have a child's funeral and a child's wedding all saved up to happen in the same year just weeks apart. Around 7 weeks after Micah passed, Tripp lost his job. So with all that had just happened, we had no choice but to continue to trim on the wedding that was in just a few weeks and while the wedding party did not understand at all what we were going through financially or emotionally, the show went on. Everyone said that we would find out who our true friends are during these hard times and we truly, truly did and I am so thankful.
During all of the financial hardships we were being hit with I was still trying to comprehend having the worst day of my life and the best day of my life so close together in the same year. It was hard and I wanted and tried to talk Tripp into eloping more than a handful of times. He did not want me to have any regrets, which now I am so appreciative because our wedding was exactly what I needed. It was hard to have family pictures and it was hard to see him have pictures with his siblings. As we were on stage during the ceremony, at one point I did glance at the groomsmen and think of how in a perfect world Bub would be standing up there with them. Micah loved Tripp, honestly Micah wasn't the type of brother that would be the big bad wolf. He would've said, "Screw everyone that has not tried to make this time easier on y'all, including myself."
After all the hateful words, hard financial times, people not understanding, sadness and anger thrown our in our direction...our wedding and honeymoon was so perfect for us. It was really a day where I didn't care how ugly anyone acted to me, if the flowers were the wrong color or if my cake was falling apart from the humidity, Tripp is mine and I am his.
A few wedding pictures:
I want to be as transparent as possible on this blog and that is what I plan to do. My goal is not to be super hateful or super depressing on here but to talk about some things I've experienced or am experiencing in hopes that someone who hasn't been able to relate to anything before may find this relatable. My main passion in life is to help the lonely, no not the lonely for a soulmate kind of way but someone who feels that their situation is completely different from anyone else and who goes to bed at night feeling completely alone in what they are going through. I've had that feeling too many times and I never want to know of someone having that feeling when I could help in some way. So I hope that this blog brings about some kind of comfort for someone.
That being said, like I stated previously Tripp and I did not have unexpected death in our wedding plans, for financial sake or emotional sake. Our engagement was one of the toughest things I have ever been through, it had extreme highs and extreme lows and I am grateful for all of the persevering that we have gone through because the Bible says that God blesses those that persevere. It was not easy and we did not always handle it right, simply because we had no idea how to handle it, nor did we have it in our plan. In the end, we did what we needed to do, what we had to do and what we felt led to do, no matter how hard it was.
Tripp and I do not come from money and we make no bones about it that we are simple people that were both brought up on hard times. When we got engaged, we were overly excited and exceeded our budget fast. We were quickly brought back down to earth in January and tried to make do with what we had and also had some help from our parents which we greatly appreciated but like I said, we do not come from wealthy backgrounds which I feel is the normal thing for most now. We both have student loans and paid for our own bills at the time we got engaged. We did not have some grand savings to pull from and literally started saving aluminum cans from the second we got engaged. We lost a lot of wedding weight doing the ramen noodle diet and learned that life could still be complete even if we got rid of cable. We both made a lot of sacrifices for the wedding and trimmed down our idea of what a grand wedding would be. (All that being said, I was OVERJOYED with our wedding in the end and it perfectly fit the couple that we are!) When we first got engaged, we had a huge venue picked out, a huge guest list and a huge wedding party. Well life happened which brought our idea of the perfect venue down, as well as, eventually our wedding party became smaller. Some of you may be wondering what this has to do with me dealing with my brother dying but it was so close to our wedding and financially, my parents did not have a child's funeral and a child's wedding all saved up to happen in the same year just weeks apart. Around 7 weeks after Micah passed, Tripp lost his job. So with all that had just happened, we had no choice but to continue to trim on the wedding that was in just a few weeks and while the wedding party did not understand at all what we were going through financially or emotionally, the show went on. Everyone said that we would find out who our true friends are during these hard times and we truly, truly did and I am so thankful.
During all of the financial hardships we were being hit with I was still trying to comprehend having the worst day of my life and the best day of my life so close together in the same year. It was hard and I wanted and tried to talk Tripp into eloping more than a handful of times. He did not want me to have any regrets, which now I am so appreciative because our wedding was exactly what I needed. It was hard to have family pictures and it was hard to see him have pictures with his siblings. As we were on stage during the ceremony, at one point I did glance at the groomsmen and think of how in a perfect world Bub would be standing up there with them. Micah loved Tripp, honestly Micah wasn't the type of brother that would be the big bad wolf. He would've said, "Screw everyone that has not tried to make this time easier on y'all, including myself."
After all the hateful words, hard financial times, people not understanding, sadness and anger thrown our in our direction...our wedding and honeymoon was so perfect for us. It was really a day where I didn't care how ugly anyone acted to me, if the flowers were the wrong color or if my cake was falling apart from the humidity, Tripp is mine and I am his.
A few wedding pictures:
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