It can be hard to pinpoint what exactly abuse is when it's not in a physical form. There are a lot of checklists people can refer to online if they are wondering if they are in an abusive relationship. Those lists ask questions like: Does he yell at you? Does she criticize you in front of others? Does he control how you spend your time and who you are friends with? During my marriage, I went online a number of times and looked at those lists. I determined that I must not be in an abusive relationship because I couldn't check enough of the boxes. We really need a better way of helping people. If the people in the abusive situations don't think they "qualify" based on these lists, then the people they go to for help surely won't. What can we do? How can we help current and future abuse victims to know that they are enduring abuse and that they can and should get out? And how can we equip communities to see the signs and help sooner, rather than later? ...

Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? Shouldn't there be thorns among the roses? Unfortunately, that's not how life works sometimes. We want our life to have roses, but it has thorns instead. But I think if we look close enough we can see some roses among those thorns. Sometimes they are pretty hidden and we have to really pay attention. It's interesting how marrying my husband brought so much heartache to my life, but at the same time brought me blessings. Marrying him was a huge mistake, and if I could tell my younger self what to do, I would say don't do it. BUT if I hadn't married him I wouldn't have been able to attend the church I attended for over 5 years and made so many great friends. I have some girlfriends now that I consider best friends from my years in McMinnville. My life is so much richer because of them! What about my husband's family that I now consider my own? They are awesome! Every time that the whole group gets t...

I've been thinking I should probably write a post to clear up a few questions that some people may have about my blog and its purpose.  I'm going to try to do that today. My blog is to help me heal emotionally, and hopefully help someone else who is going through something similar. I want to tell people that need to hear it that change can come to their lives, and they can be strong enough to take steps that they need to take. Some of you may be wondering how I feel about marriage now that I've been wounded so much by someone who was supposed to love me. I still believe in marriage. I've seen too many good marriages to believe that good marriages don't exist. Of course they require a lot of work by both people involved for it to be that way. I do feel like it's not fair that I went into marriage willing to give it my best, and my husband went into it...I don't know. I like to think he probably had good intentions at first. But he certainly didn't...

You may be wondering how I'm really doing, so I wanted to post this letter and let you know. It's occurred to me that it would be natural for you to think of me as being really sad because that's how I was when you last saw me. Every day was a battle, and at times it was so hard to keep my tears at bay. Sometimes I couldn't keep them at bay. Now things are different. I have so much hope for the future. I have a smile on my face. I don't walk around with tears just waiting to be shed. I'm in such a good place for this time in my life;  it's so good to be with my family. I definitely have some healing to do, and I have to be patient with that process. But the church family here has wrapped their arms around me and stood with me like you did when I was there. (I still feel your arms from a distance <3) It's a little hard to know how much of this to go into because there are wonderful people that I really don't want to hurt. But I didn't ...