This is my therapy.

Years ago - when I was super young and absurdly naive and just finding some semblance of footing in an adult world that I was not prepared for or not designed to exist in… I used to write.

I published some of my more coherent ramblings as part of my photography blog but I always edited what to share based on what would be considered “professional” or “appropriate”.. being young and, at the time, worried way too much about what people would think, I stifled a lot of the things I felt the nudge to write about & eventually the entire blog just disappeared in to the digital abyss never to be scrolled through again.

Trauma from my childhood created a people pleasing tendency so thick, I was not able to put myself out there to be exposed and potentially upset someone so the most vulnerable of those writings were left private. In my mind at that time, the WORST thing would be if anyone would aggressively disagree with me online and I would have to feel THOSE feelings of being misunderstood.. so I watered myself down.

But we are wrapping up 2023, the year of our lady Taylor Swift, and the internet is full of opinions and assholes - and we have the option to choose which opinions and assholes we follow and no one really expects you to be an curated version of yourself to appeal to the masses. I am entering my IDGAF era and I am hopeful it will heal many of the things I have GAF about for too long.

I am just here to write what I feel like writing, create what I feel like creating and be who I feel like being. My goal is that in the process, I heal some of the parts of myself that need healing, and maybe also give others permission to try and do the same. So if it’s not for you, keep it movin’ - love you bye.

Still reading? OK so, listen… I have never been ashamed of the fact I struggle with nearly every part of being a human. Looking back, I have tried to protect others from having to consider how much I struggle. I have presented as a very highly functioning human for the majority of my adolescent and adult life in an attempt to keep friends, jobs, lovers, maintain stability, be accepted into circles, not be seen as a burden, survive, etc. but not a day has passed where I did not mentally struggle to be a human. It is truly a pressing issue for me, like I did not sign up for any of this, and would LOVE to be excluded from the entirety of the narrative. I dream of a life where existing is not simultaneous with struggling. I watch my husband exist effortlessly and it looks really nice. I’d like to try it but so far, no dice.

Yes, this shit is exhausting and yes, I have tried therapy, medications, exercise routines, binge eating, general running away from my problems, meditation playlists, taking a deep breath, taking long hikes, going on solo trips, leaving jobs and relationships, burying myself in work, taking a sabbatical from work, working from home, working from an office, working myself until I have no choice but to start a new career because I cannot fathom being a ….fill in the blank…. for one more hour, quitting alcohol, taking up smoking weed, going back to school, opening a new business every couple years, smiling at the damn ceiling…etc.

I have reinvented myself more times than I can count and yet still, here I am, with this same stupid traumatized brain, thinking you are mad at me. ARE YOU MAD AT ME? Wait, why would you be mad at me? …. If you know, you know.

I assure you, despite what it may look like outwardly, there is nothing to be jealous of here. The success, happiness and stability I do have were hard fought and my brains ability to enjoy them waxes and wanes. There is not a single piece of my life that trauma has not tarnished. I live a pretty comfortable life now, with a very sweet and sexy husband who has promised he is not mad at me or leaving, ever.. and he puts up with me asking him 3-4 times a week just to be sure. He has taken me and my kids from a terrible, no good, very bad situation (IYKYK) and put us on solid ground. We are best friends and I know we will be together for the rest of ever because of that.

He has a long standing career and is excellent with paying bills and being a grown up. I have my own business (with a real life brick & mortar studio and shit!) and we both have a nearly infinite amount of freedom in our lives and are not oppressed in anyway, unless you count being owned by some cats. So, yeah, it’s pretty damn annoying that I feel insecure AF and cannot imagine that the sense of security I have now is real or that it won’t disintegrate one day. I tell him how sure I am that he will eventually serial kill me because noone is this nice, and he explains that if in fact, he is a serial killer, he is a very bad one who has wasted a lot of time not killing me. I accept it either way, and tell him I intend to enjoy the time we have before the murder. Oh, come on, thats funny… or maybe just the other trauma folk are laughing… yikes.

Anyway, what i am trying to get at - is trauma doesn’t care about reality. IT DOESN’T CARE.

Struggling upward is my profession and I have gotten very talented at it. Turns out when you have no fear of failure, you actually succeed.. even if the only reasons you are not afraid is because you are rather aloof about living or dying. Its all very warm, fuzzy and full of hope for the future right?

Humaning is very hard. Ever since my first experience with the tragedies of my childhood, I have felt called not to be full of shit about it.

(Trigger Warning: this is when shit gets real and we talk about suicide.)

On October 13th, 1999 - My mom dropped me and my sister off at our respective schools, and then drove home and killed herself in the bathroom when I was 13. I was driven the 5 minutes home by my junior high principal and guidance counselor so I knew something was way bad at home. I don’t remember a lot from that day but I remember a friend of the family (who felt more like an Aunt to me) showing me a book that explained that people who kill themselves are not rejected from heaven, as she reassured me I would see her again. Yikes. I also remember in the aftermath, my mothers family trying to say my dad killed her… so yeah, things were most definitely not okay and have not been okay since.

But to give you an idea of how it shaped me into the absolute disaster of a human that I am now - that very night of my mother’s death - I attended a birthday dance party at the local community building with my junior high classmates. Walking in, I just knew that everyone in the building was thinking and talking about “the girl whose mom killed herself.”

I have spent that night and every day since - 25 years now - rejecting the fact that my mother’s suicide defines me. I have never stopped pushing myself to outachieve my circumstances. I have refused, for the majority of my life, to accept that I may need help or accommodation from anyone, becoming so self-sufficient and independent, bootstrapping harder than anyone and never ever stopping to enjoy it for long… because why? Survival Mode.

I know now that my entire life is a trauma response. I stopped being parented at 13 and have been the most mature adult in most spaces since that day. Not to reference T. Swift twice in the same chapter but “you’re on your own kid, you always have been” resonates deeply with me. I did not fully accept the weight of my mother’s death in my life until my first born daughter turned 13 in the spring of 2023. I had read Motherless Mothers and knew that your own child hitting the age when your mother died would hit different but holy shit people. Holy. Shit. Hope Edelman, if you are reading this, thanks for the warning.

I look at her nearly grown face and I cannot imagine leaving her. I cannot fathom how that would affect her and it has shook me to my core. I have never had this kind of compassion for myself - hell I dont think I have ever really seen my own humanity at all until now. I have been so deeply in survival mode - trying desperately to create a life where the weight of what happened on October 13, 1999 was not felt by anyone else but me. Trying so hard (and failing a lot) to create a world where my kids feel safe despite the fact I don’t feel safe or relaxed, ever.

I have been notorious in my overcompensating for my mom not being here with my older daughter. I am VERY good at doing WHATEVER it takes to make sure she is not put at a disadvantage in life. Her infancy damn near killed me because she was not a good sleeper - looking back - I can see my rookie motherless mistakes.

I never forced her dad to get up so I could sleep more because what if that pissed him off and he left us?
I never called my mother in law asking for a break, because that would make us a burden and noone loves a burden.
I never gave up the middle of the night breast pump schedule for more sleep because in my young, tired mind, the good moms serve fresh breast milk.
I sure as hell didn’t use a daycare so I could run my business, because “these moment are fleeting and you don’t want to miss them!” echoed in my head.

While I regret literally nothing now, because she is spectacular - I do not suggest any of the things I did for anyone. I treated myself like shit because I saw myself as unimportant. A notion that one picks up pretty quickly when the most important and loved person in their life ends it abruptly not even an hour after dropping them off at school. Stay in your lane, take care of your family, be the best housewife you can, but don’t forget to work hard and make plenty of cash so noone else has to worry, prioritize everyone elses needs above you and people wont leave you and you’ll be happy. Right? No, dude. No. This turns out to be very wrong and a good way to end up totally out of touch with yourself and your needs.

I did it all, and I did it around the clock and I ended up divorced. In my effort to give her everything - I wore my self down to the point I couldn’t be helped by anyone - not even my husband. Looking back, its easy to see that I was too young to be married. But its harder to accept that I was just plain too traumatized to parent with another human. My fear in fucking up as a parent created an environment that, alongside other factors, lead to divorce. I do have to say as partners in parenting, we have done a HELL of a job, our daughter is incredible, but my god… I just had no idea how to do anything and because my closest female figure was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when my baby was just a few weeks old - my hope of being taught vanished in an instant. I got 8 months with my adoptive mom, and I have not grieved that loss. As it turns out - newborn babies don’t give a shit if you are traumatized. They can’t cry less or sleep more because mom is exhausted and grieving. So we carried on…

I try to exist authentically in an extremely fake world in an effort to set others free to exist in their own authenticity. I have spent lots of time in forced, fake, masked living and I am so done with it.

The rest of my life will be an invitation for others to join me in being honest about how messy, tragic, painful, exhausting and just plain hard life can be. I have had enough people mention that they appreciate this about me that I don’t really care if it doesn’t resonate with you. You are the lucky ones, and we are jealous of your big beauitful well-functioning brains that feel safe and secure in this unpredictable world.

Maybe its the fact that I have weaned off my anxiety and depression medication - and for the first time in years - the heaviness and struggle I experience daily is not dulled or controlled. It is screaming at me to be tended to. The big emotions that I numbed by medication are now so vivid and painful they interrupt my day. I step outside alone and try to convince them its safe to come out, but my body is not used to crying. I just don’t cry and have not for years. So when I do feel tears come up, they feel important. They take my breath. I sit up and take notice of them, begging them to do what they need to do so I can move on with my day… then I come back inside and take care of my kids.

I can not help but think of all the other women out there who are in different stages of the same journey, just straight up struggle bussing it. The wheels on the struggle bus go round and round and the babies on the struggle bus don’t know they are on the struggle bus because moms are immaculate pretenders.

I have a 13 year old and she and I raised each other. I was 23 when she came into my life and that little baby girl couldn’t have possibly cared less that my mom was dead, or that my adoptive mom was dying.. she didn’t care that I worked on my business until 2 am most nights so I could stay home with her.. she didn’t have a clue that mom was so deeply exhausted from pretending everything was fine. I regret nothing because I missed nothing, but whew, when the second kiddo came along, I was on E.

I go to bed early and lay with the notion that life has no finish line and that I will never escape it, until I die. I think about dying and how it isn’t an option… too many dependents and too many things still left to experience. I know that feelings are fleeting and don’t mean shit. I know that they try to bully me into acting like an older, less refined version of myself. I know they are an indicator of things that need my attention, things that need let go, things that need healed… things that my 13 year old self, mourning my mother’s suicide couldn’t handle. Hell, 23 year old me, becoming a mother without a mother couldn’t handle it. Now I’m 37 and my 4 year old needs me to handle it… so here I am, TRYING.

Maybe its the fact that I no longer call myself a Christian and feel the weight of presenting as others would expect me to. MAYBE its just because I am getting old and want to impart the things I have learned - to help someone else who has not set themselves free yet. MAYBE all the years of masking finally took me out and I can’t help but figure myself out so I can start showing up as myself, for myself, and my family. I don’t know, but this website is part of my therapy, and as much as I hope it helps someone, it’s for us. So my family can have their mom as close to healed as possible.

Now, that girl who wrote those old lost-to-the-digital-abyss blog posts years ago, by Taylor Swift’s definition, is dead. She can’t come to the phone right now, and even if she could, she wouldn’t.. because she is a tried and true millennial and doesn’t use her phone for that. But also, she has been let go, and the new Allie is here. She hopes some of you would still like to meet her, and maybe, she will resonate with some of you.