Listen Yall: It's A Journey.

Nikki Sixx said it best when he said “you can’t live until you die.” He didn’t mean literally and I don’t either. But when I lost my entire family within these past thirteen months, I felt like I died. A part of me did at least. It felt like I literally couldn’t get up every day and pretend to be happy to save face, not that I cared to anyway.

But in that dying experience, I truly learned how to live. Hitting rock bottom is not something I wish on anyone. But for me, hitting rock bottom meant I had two options. Sink and take the ship down with me, or swim and rebuild the ship.

I chose to swim and rebuild the ship.

When I hit the bottom, I hit it hard. For a while it seemed like there was no coming back from the wreckage. I had lost all hope but I knew in order to rebuild, I had to fix myself first. I’ve been in counseling for many years of my life but it wasn’t until this catastrophic event that I chose to truly open up the tightly locked boxes that I had stored in the darkest, deepest places of my mind.

I have an addiction problem that I’ve hid my entire life. When I was younger I didn’t understand it and I didn’t exactly come from a background where it was normal or accepted. Addiction generally isn’t accepted in our society anyway but trying to deal with that in a strict Catholic household wasn’t effective. So instead of accepting it myself and getting help, I hid it. Eventually it metastasized into a really big, ugly monster and I hurt a lot of people along the way. It finally became too much to handle and control on my own and I knew I needed to get help. I just hate that it took me relapsing to accept that I had a problem and to get my shit together.

Along this process and journey, I’ve done infinite amounts of self reflecting and through the progress I’ve made, I’ve been able to start to repair other relationships that have long been broken. I’m genuinely thankful for the opportunity to fix all the damage I’ve caused along my path of finding who I truly am.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not perfect. I still have a lot of making-up to do. And the grief still blindsides me on occasion. The holidays this year were really hard.

My husband has stood by my side for the entirety of this process and I am so so grateful for him. He has encouraged me when I felt like I couldn’t do it anymore. He has loved me even when it’s been incredibly hard for him to. He has been there for me to lean on and cry into when I didn’t expect him to be.

Stay true,

Hails