I need to start with the disclaimer that I intentionally chose this name and wanted to start this blog as a continuation of my previous, which had been My Nearly Empty Nest, in which I had chronicled my life as my older children were leaving home and heading out into the world. This left me with their younger sister as she would wrestle the likes of middle and high school.

Life, as we all know has a funny way of taking us down paths we don’t expect. That guiding power, that isn’t us… my higher power, whom I call God, has always had different plans for me. I being a stubborn, and often defiant firstborn child (to name a few of my defects) doesn’t always listen. I still tried to do things my own way, to come up with my own fix. Trying and retrying the same thing over and over and over again… ah, the insanity of it all.

Needless to say, God did indeed have bigger plans for me. So in the fall of 2017 He ever so lovingly nudged me, by allowing a series of very uncomfortable events to push me to just reach out for council and I instead was provided an open door. It was then that my then 15yo daughter and I would leave the only home she ever knew in a small rural community, to the bright lights of a big city. It was here, that we, my daughter doing so first, found solace. I watched this young girl, so broken and damaged from her previous environment, begin to thrive… she had finally found her place. She excelled in the classroom, extra-circular activities and even finished all required classes a semester early, doing all of this during a pandemic! She is now in the second semester of her sophomore year at college, where she continues to thrive and works hard and perusing her dreams. She once was the little caterpillar that perhaps maybe even got knocked of the leaf it tried to attach to, but God placed her on a firmer branch and allowed her to stay safe and warm, to thrive and grow until it was time for her to spread her wings and fly.

I told you that God had bigger plans for me, and our move to the “big city” allowed me to find something that I didn’t realize I had even lost, that is until I found it once again. Because of my job, I couldn’t move immediately with my daughter, and the time separated from her was difficult. But what was more difficult, was packing up the chaos that had been my life in that little town for nearly 18 years. I found myself trying to pack and being overwhelmed, trying to downsize, purging a lot of things for the sake of my sanity. I would love to be able to say that I took things to our local thrift shop or to the Goodwill that was 20 miles away, but sadly I took most of the things I didn’t keep to the local dump. It wasn’t worth anything to anyone and it simply needed to be done, little did I know there would be internal purging in the months to come.

The first year was a time of settling in, getting used to all new things around us and trying to learn to manage in the new environment. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but it was an improvement of our life the year before, and for the first time in a long time, it had promise. Yet, in the midst of all the adjusting, trying to manage the changes, I knew I needed help; some comfort from the only true safe place I knew. It was a place that was easy to find, as easy as pulling out my phone and doing a google search… but more about that later.

I want to end with a follow up to the above mentioned disclaimer. The name of this blog, this platform allowing me to toss my words onto… is now about the silence that surrounds me when I take the time to truly listen to what He might be trying to tell me. Another disclaimer, fully honest, I don’t always listen well, as He has been quietly telling me for some time now, months really, that I need to be writing. You see as much as I have loved sharing my real-life happenings, sharing the joys and accomplishments of my children over the past years with past sites. For years, I have known, without a doubt, and especially once I finished my degree in 2020, that I need to share my story, to write the memoir of my survival of the abuse I endured as a child and teen at the hands of my father. I have been silent far too long, it is time to speak up, to share my words, my heart and soul; so that I might just maybe help one girl, one woman who is still hurting from the same pain and hurt. Perhaps buried and never spoken, silent.

Join me in the silence, that it might be broken.