Raw and Real

I am going to start this post off by saying, I started this blog to have a safe space to share my ideas, finds, recipes, and also share my feelings. I am honestly not sure how many people read this or if anyone even does, but it has been a sort of outlet over the years. Of course throughout the years there have been plenty of posts that have been deleted or hidden and who knows this may end up being one of those at some point. I like to keep it positive and upbeat, but unfortunately life isn’t always rainbows, butterflies, unicorns, and sunny days. So, with that being said, this post is a real, raw, and full of emotions. 

5 Stages of grief;

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

No one and nothing can prepare you for a loss of any kind, parent, pet, friend, family, baby, relationship, the list goes on and on. You hear of the 5 stages of grief, but until you have fully come through on the other side you don’t realize you are in it. It has been 2 years since I lost my Mom and there are still moments where I want to pick up my phone and call her, or those surreal moments where it just hits you like a ton of bricks that she isn’t here physically anymore.  When I was in the moment and in the grieving stages I had no idea that I was going through each and every stage. (I still don’t entirely understand the bargaining stage, but maybe that is up for interpretation?) I didn’t know or realize it until I went through them all and looked back and felt every single one of those stages, and still do. And it makes you wonder if you ever truly finish grieving, for me with my mom, I don’t think I ever will. I think it is something I have accepted that she is not in our physical dimension. If you have followed my posts I have talked about mediums, signs, and my take on after life. So, from here I am going to lead into something very personal, but something also very common that society has almost shamed in a sense and turned into a taboo subject. 

Miscarriages. Something I would never wish on my worst enemy. I feel like the 5 stages of grief still apply, but it takes it to a different context and level. You try and stay positive and google everything you are experiencing and try to justify it and think that this is normal, then you get angry that your body failed you, but in my case I have to remember that my body didn’t fail me. It brought a healthy baby boy into this world 6 months ago. Even after my first full term healthy pregnancy with Anchor I still did the typical take multiple pregnancy tests, I was beyond excited, scared also the thought of having 2 under two, but so excited. About a week after finding out and scheduling our first doctors appointment, we had a miscarriage. It was surreal. I didn’t want to believe it, I didn’t want it to become reality, but it already was. It was happening, it happened. The worst part of it all was having the continued morning sickness and the reminder that you were, past tense pregnant. 

I think there are so many things in peoples lives that they are afraid to express, because when you have emotion it is taught to us as a sign of weakness, and honestly if anything I think it is more of a sign of strength. Strength to be able to talk and articulate your feelings and feel what you are feeling in the moment isn’t an easy thing to do. 

So, I go back to one of my favorite sayings, one I have tattooed on me…Everything Happens For A Reason. In the moment we may not understand it, heck it may take years for us to understand it. But there is a reason things happen, I also believe we have control on those things and how we use it to better ourselves, learn, grow, whatever it may be. We have control over that portion of it. It isn’t easy, and taking another pregnancy test after it happened and seeing the words not pregnant stung, but there was a reason. I don’t understand it now, but hopefully someday I will. But for now I am going to keep living in the moment and be present in this beautiful life I am so blessed with. 

x0_meagen lea

Thirteen

A little backstory before I go in to the number 13 and it’s significance in my life. My Mom was my best friend, and when I say best friend that stopped at nothing. If we didn’t talk at least twice a day it was odd! She knew every detail and aspect of my life and still does (more on this in the blog post The Hummingbird Amongst) She passed away 2 years ago on June 13th, which was the hardest day of my life, and the hardest years of my life prior watching her hurt and suffer battling a horrible thing called cancer. She was so strong and fought so hard to stay in our world with us. 

So, my Mom was very into numbers and I picked up on this as well. License plates, addresses, phone numbers, there were some that would stand out and have a meaning. A collection of numbers adding up to a certain number. With that being said, 13 has for some reason been given a negative vibe, but for me that is the complete opposite and actually puts me at ease. Before my Mom passed away the number 5 kept coming up and had a significance, well after she mentioned that, we had 5 kittens, which were all born on the 13th, this is when 13 came to be what it is to me today. The first brand new vehicle I bought is a 2013, when I paid it off, I owed $13k on it. My Mom passed away on the 13th, the 1 month of her passing was on Friday the 13th. Our new house we just built has the number 13 in it, when I was pregnant I knew some aspect of his birth would have a 13, he was 7 pounds and 13 ounces. We put an offer on our house on January 13th, we put the deposit down on our puppy on the 13th. There are so many others, but those are just a few. 

Cheers to numbers, especially the number 13.

x0_meagen lea

Four New Shot Glasses…

So let me start this post and section off by saying it all started with key chains from every state that my mom and I visited…my husband and I decided to carry on the tradition, but with shot glasses. So far we have 15…for those of you who do not know our full story…we have only been together since January 1st of 2019. Lots of traveling!

Looking back at this experience, we can laugh, but in the moment it was one of those things where we knew the over all experience would make our relationship much stronger and we could get through anything!

We had just bought a campsite in Gold Bar to move the RV from Peoria Illinois to Gold Bar, Washington so we could have an escape and it would be in the same state we live instead of storage sitting and not being used. Our plan was to drive from Peoria, IL to Washington over Memorial Day weekend (2019) since it is quite a long drive and we didn’t want to use vacation time away from work. So the plan was to check on the RV and truck the weekend of April 12th-14th and get everything ready for the 2,000 mile drive that would take place just a little over a month later.

We flew in and started right to work on getting everything ready, new battery in the truck, pulled the RV out, checked all the tires, generator, etc. it had sat thru a long cold (very cold winter) I won’t get into all of the nitty gritty, but basically one of the water lines on the exterior froze and broke, the generator was dead from not being run and wouldn’t work so we had to get a generator to start the generator so we could hook it up to the truck, it was a rough weekend with lots to get done to say the least. So as the weekend was coming to an end we rushed to get everything that we could done so it was an easy departure the next time we flew out to drive it back home. Well Sunday morning came around and our flight was scheduled in the afternoon, we woke up and there was snow….and it was coming down hard and quick!

My husband kept checking our flight status, everything was on time the snow wasn’t sticking to the runway and we were good. As we drove from Peoria to Chicago to the airport it just kept snowing, almost like a blizzard in some parts. Something I had never seen before! We dropped off our rental car and went into the airport to check in, there was a HUGE line of people so we were confused when the website and app kept saying our flight was on time and the snow wasn’t sticking to the ground. When we tried to check in at the kiosk, it was it was unable to find out flight…then we looked up at the monitors and our flight was cancelled. Let me also add in here that my husband had a HUGE meeting that Monday he couldn’t miss so we had to get home. So we got in line….1 hour….2 hours…2.5 hours…finally we spoke with someone. All flights were cancelled, not a single one was flying out. The earliest flight out was on Thursday….yes that is right THURSDAY…it was Sunday. So we started freaking out, both of us had to work on Monday and this was not going to work. So we started looking at other airports with flights to Seattle…well we found one…out of Omaha…yes you are reading that right…Omaha Nebraska…we were in Chicago, Illinois. We walked out of the airport went back to the car rentals, grabbed a car and started driving. By this time it was about 5pm we had about an 8 hour drive and a flight to catch at 5am from Omaha to Colorado, then Colorado to Paine Field (our car was parked at Sea-Tac airport).

From Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska we hit them all and made sure to get shot glasses at each state. We also stopped at the biggest truck stop off of I-80 I mean we had to! We made our flight and were beyond exhausted. Next stop Colorado…another shot glass to add! Then finally made our way to Paine Field and called an Uber to drive us back to our condo (luckily at the time we were living in Mill Creek/South Everett, so we were only a 15 minute drive from the airport). Oh what an adventure…on a side note, we won’t be flying Southwest anytime soon!

x0_meagen lea