Christmas "Present"....

me ..Christmas past...about 1964

me Christmas past..about 1965-1966

my girls in Christmas past...1992

Hello Luvs,
 I am writing to you because it's been awhile and I thought I would do an update. I wanted to let you know that I did post a video a post or two back. It's a video that I was asked to do by the people at "IDA"or"invisible disabilities association". They asked me to do a "feature video"about my pain and struggles and to show how people who are in much pain and suffering can appear 'Normal' &  seem to be just "fine". If you'd like to look at it, it's only a few minutes long and it's close to near the post before this one.
   I wanted to let you know that I have fallen twice now in the last week. I was in our garage both times. The first was about a week ago and I was out of the car and going into the house but my right foot /leg wouldn't go up the step and I fell straight onto the hard tile floor in the kitchen. My right hip was hurt & so is everything else since then. I will most likely be wearing the foot/ankle orthotic braces again but had not been because they hurt the RSD and irritate and make the pain worse. I did get new ones that are not quite so painful so I will try them again.
   Well so now we're up to Christmas eve. Of all nights...we had gone to church and dinner and looked at Christmas lights. We were all getting out of the car to go into the house and somehow I tripped! I went to take a step and fell backwards on the cement floor! OMGOsh...it hurt soooo badly! I was trying NOT to cry because it was Christmas eve. WE are all that each other has in this life and I didn't want to ruin their Christmas! I love them so much. But I did hit my head and tried to hide that fact at first. The cement is pretty hard and it didn't let me hide for long!
   I hurt my back,shoulder,neck and other places as well. I started to feel very nauseated but watched a Christmas movie and tried to have a s'mores with my family, and have fun. I got a couple hours worth of sleep. I then awakened in the morning but myhead had been hurting all night and it was still hurting and I was still nauseated. I started vomiting and thought maybe I had the flu? But since I'd had the headache & nausea all night,I decided that it probably was from the fall. My head was hurting & burning too. The dangerous part of everything is that I'm on blood thinner,and if you fall it can be very dangerous!
   I was finally feeling better and we started our Christmas at about 2pm. We opened gifts and stayed in our PJ's all day, which is what we were planning to do, luckily anyways! Yes...we have no real family to speak of..as my husband's family has shunned him & treat him horribly. They didn't invite him to his own brothers' 50th birthday party...after we'd invited all of them to Craig's 50th party a few years earlier! He has lost his children just as I have lost one of my two children. His son was skipping school and doing illegal and immoral things/activities while in High school & living with us. We wouldn't allow that behavior but his mother did. So he moved out. He's never come back no matter how many attempts we've made to re-connect. Now he's about 30 yrs old and we have a granddaughter that we've never met. It is heartbreaking. My husband's parents invited us over so we went. Thought we'd try to talk to them. Because they (his sister's and brother) have all shunned him and befriended his ex-wife! They even celebrate holidays with her & are Facebook friends with her! It's so hurtful! It's just not right! MY husband is my soul-mate! He's a good,kind man. He is my life! When we went to his parents house we sat for 3 hours! This was after we hadn't seen them for years,except for our occasional visit to the hospital to see his dad for one thing or another.
 So,we went over there and my husband was going to try to "talk" to them but it never happened. I sat in a chair next to his mother talking for a long while as he talked with his dad. I was in much pain so I said "I need to move to the couch now,I can't sit here any longer!" I got up to move and went and sat down on the couch next to his father. His father got up and moved away from me. I said "What? you don't want to sit next to me?" He said "No...I don't!" (How mean and rude!! right?) Later, I mentioned a book to his mom and wanted to show it to her,on my phone. She said "no Im not interested".
   I just closed my eyes and prayed for the time to leave.  As we were getting ready to leave; his parents knowing full well that I am in constant  chronic pain along with many health issues and RSD/CRPS!! They actually had the audacity to say "We don't want to go all the way up to Bay City for Thanksgiving or holidays anymore (that's where his sister lives with her family)..they said they "didn't like her in-laws" because everything was "about his mom"! Next,they actually invited themselves,his mom's sister,her n'air do well,40yr old son; along with my husbands' brother & his "Senior by about 20 yrs" girlfriend! THEN they also invited his other sister & her boyfriend!! *(this is the sister who helped turn his children away from him as teens and kept it going). But they had a lot of NERVE! They know that I'm in much pain...I just blurted out "I CANNOT DO THAT!" They invited themselves & others who haven't even tried to befriend or know us in over 15 yrs! Then they wanted it at OUR HOUSE and for US TO COOK it all! Then to WAIT on them hand and foot! NO WAY!! I wasn't allowing MY husband to wait on anyone when he does everything in and outside of our home and including laundry and cooking on a daily basis after working all day! I feel bad that I cannot do it now...but certainly that is rude of them to invite themselves and others who don't even truly love him or care about us; but just wanted a place for dinner! His mom stated "because we have the house that fits"...uggh!! We hadn't seen them in years due to the fact that they go to his ex's home for holidays and are friends with her! The woman who left him for another man, cheated on him, lied and then later turned his children against him along with his own family!! They allowed it to happen!
   I just wanted to let you know what happened...so we haven't seen or spoken to them again since that visit and probably never will. WE can forgive without having to put ourselves through all of that abuse again and again. We actually thought they were going to say "let's try and do Thanksgiving together and we'll try to get your kids to come too and get the family all together again"...but that's not what was their plan whatsoever!
  Then of course we switch to the annual horrible,nasty phone messages and emails etc. from my side of the family which worsen during the holidays as usual. Just to catch you up, I grew up in a horribly abusive family. My mom died of colon cancer in 2002. My father & 2 older brothers have been more abusive to me since her death and have not been there for me through the car accident,the surgeries or injuries that followed; nor for my heart attack,stroke or RSD/CRPS! My cousin who is kind to me says that she's never seen a father and brothers who "get pleasure from someone they're supposed to love's pain".
    My father/brothers send abusive emails, phone messages etc. I've had to block them on my phone & online! It's horrible to deal with on a daily, weekly,and lifetime basis. It never ends & they helped to turn my oldest daughter away from me also. After I raised her myself for the most part..and was the ONLY ONE there for her always. I was at every school program,swim meet,honors day and everything anytime! I would leave work and bring her homework & then go back to work! I tried so hard to be the best mom I could be! But she turned towards the illegal & the immoral at about 15 yrs old! I couldn't stop her no matter what I tried! I couldn't believe that my baby would do anything like that. But then I saw first hand and & things got worse at home. She told people untrue things & it hurts so much! Her father (who was only allowed to see the girls with a supervisor because he was abusive to me,our Rottweiller and then he hurt another girl besides me. He was fired or from ever being a cop again! He didn't like having a supervisor so he moved a thousand miles away, to Maine. He didn't see the girls hardly at all but I still took the girls to visit his parents an hour away from our home. I didn't have to, but I thought they should know their grandparents. Little did I know that his parents would be "ringleaders" & hurt me even more!! It was a nightmare and still is. I "lost" my oldest daughter in Summer 2004. She never showed up when my husband called about my heart attack. She never called back even to see if I lived or died. I was told by several people that she said she "wishes I would've died in that car accident in 2004 and she was sick of my pain and surgeries" and "it was depressing" at our home because of my injuries!**she was already 17 when it happened and had started doing "bad" things at age 13!! I didn't want to believe it. She was my "baby" and I always believed she was "good".
  She got married and didn't even tell me or invite us or her little sister! It's a mothers' dream to do all of that with her daughter. I feel so robbed of that dream & others! She's been gone almost 8 yrs now. I miss her so much! It hurts that she's friends with my abusers; especially my one brother who was in jail & charge with hurting his own daughter! A few times he'd been crazily sitting on our patio & wouldn't leave! More than once, we had to call the police on him to get him some help..she knows how they are so crazy and she instead sees them but not me or us....it all hurts so much!That's the likely intent.
   These are the things in my heart at this time and in my head...This is the pain I feel which never helps the physical pain either. To "top it all off"..we had these best friends,you know..the kind that are your "chosen family"..those kind of wonderful friends that you can go & spend holidays with and such? Well,those friends of ours who had been spending the holidays with us just stopped suddenly one year because I had asked if my younger daughters boyfriends' mom could come w/us to Thanksgiving dinner at their house. This woman does soup kitchens, so I never fathomed it'd be a problem! She claimed to be a good Christian. But after I'd asked if this boys mother could come, our friend said "no". First she used the excuse that "the table was too small"(for one more? Heck, I would've sat on a card table/chair!); then she said that "her sons would feel awkward w/someone they didn't know" (um..they were already twenty somethings, living away from home!). I didn't understand? We did spend holidays with them and we always had such a great time. A few years prior to that happening, we'd spent several holidays with them and had a great time. They told us we'd "never be alone on holidays again! We'd always have them!" But that was short lived when I asked for one extra person to come over; who had no place else to go on Thanksgiving.
  Well, as you can see we have each other and I thank our Lord daily for allowing me to have Amy and Craig in my life. We are all we have. Its' sometimes scary and sad. But we could not have each other and that would be even worse! I just thought those people were our "forever friends". I even tried to let it go and be forgiving but got no response. I want my daughter back in my life, our lives...but not until or unless she tells the truth.
   I'm going to the pacemaker /EPS DR. tomorrow morning. I'll find out when I get my pacemaker surgery which will most likely be this coming Summer 2012. I'm scared, yes...but I'll be in good hands.  I just hope that this Dr's team will listen to me and that I'll be "out like a light" ! I do NOT want to be awake for a pacemaker surgery! Mine is cut into the pectoral muscle,not just under the skin; so its more surgery & pain; longer recovery.
    I will keep you posted..thank you so much for being here for me once more. with gentle hugs, Suzanne

Cousins...Christmas Past...

my girls Christmas past and their cousins another Christmas past....

We Make Our Own "Merry Christmas"!

Hello Luvs,
I first want to say that I wish you all  very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. If you are in pain, I pray that you will not be in pain for the coming year or that it gets much less. I have been really upset about something and sometimes I wonder if people really believe how horrible my family really is and has been to me? Not just today, not just now but for years and years as long as I can remember!
  My brother, david, the middle brother is bi-polar and he is the worst, aside from my "evil" father now. I tried to bring up the abuse issues and what happened when I was little to my parents in 1997 but they disowned me pretty much and hated me ever since (and even before that time!). But David was sort of "OK" when he was on his "Lithium" for the "bi-polar disorder" but my mom told him he looked like "Buddha" because he had gained some weight from those meds...needless to say, he stopped taking them and is worse than ever. 
    My mom died in 2002, of colon cancer and lymphoma and it went to her liver also. I wasn't even told until my uncle from S. Dakota called and told me that she was "very ill and may not make it home from the hospital." Even though I had recently 2 mos prior, been in a horrible car accident and suffered many many injuries, chronic intractable pain, herniated/bulging discs in neck and lower back, torn shoulders, frozen shoulders,2 screws in my left and the right also had long thoracic nerve severred! I had my both knees whacked out of alignment, a ruptured biceps tendon, 2 torn meniscus and then had to get a pacemaker from the TBI I suffered which gave me also "Dysautonomia/POTS/NCS" and then my last surgery in '07, I got a horribly painful disease called "RSD/CRPS" and now that is "full body RSD/CRPS". I had several horribly painful things wrong and still went in my wheelchair day after day and got someone to drive me to the hospital to see her. 
    She had been abusive also and we won't go into that now. But before she stopped being able to speak, she told me that she "loved me infinitey" and I said it back to her. I felt like that weight had been lifted and I forgave her and she wanted me to know that she didn't mean to do it. I believe she was also bi-polar as it is passed down usually from mother to son or father to daughter. My brother has it so from the actions of my mother all of my life, my Psychologist who's known my family now since 1999, says that she was most likely also "bi-polar". She would be nice and then "snap" and be mean and hurtful and down right abusive. My father, has no excuse except for his awful childhood and what happened to him with an abusive father and his mother died when he was only 4 yrs old. He did have 3 much older sisters (15 yrs older!) that took care of him though.
   Anyways...it is "THAT" time of year again and David is pulling his shenanigans as usual. I had my phone company block his phone numbers for the past 3 months. They can and will only do that for 3 months at a time. I also blocked my dad and older  brother. But again I was too late this time because the block had been lifted and he text'd me at 430 am yesterday morning on the anniversary of my mom's death! It was 9 years ago, he is 51 years old, almost 52 and he needs to move on and get over it! He called my phone at 430am and left me this text: "Please take a moment today to honor Mom. 9 yrs ago today she passed from death unto life @ 425 am." UGGGGH....I KNOW IT, OK!? I don't need to be reminded, I'm not stupid, or mentally out of it or deranged or that forgetful!! I KNOW that my mom died and when she died. But other than praying for her in my own private way, why do I need to be told? Because they are abusive and will NOT leave me alone!
   I have a "you tube" page and he didn't like what I wrote as my profile. Because I have an older daughter, that is 25 yrs old and with help from my abusive ex husband and my abusive biological family, she left home at just turned 18 yrs old, and while still in High school for another few weeks! I wouldn't allow her to do immoral and illegal activities and they told her that "times are different now days and those behaviors are OK"...what??? My father would NEVER have allowed ME to do those things!!! But he/they get "pleasure from my pain" and are enjoying our estrangement! My own cousin has told me this sad truth!
   I miss my oldest. I'm sorry that she didn't like our rules and I'm sorry that she told me she "hated me and was sick of my pain and surgeries". I was hit by a man who ran a red light, so it wasn't my fault that I was injured so badly that I got a TBI and many injuries and surgeries. Then I had a heart attack the first Mother's day after she was gone and acquired "atrial fibrillation"....was put on blood thinners to avoid a stroke and then still had a CVA/stroke in 2006! My husband called and told her about the heart attack but she never came or called back!
   Well, I will always accept my daughter back if she wants to be forgiven. I will forgive her and I will always continue to love her and miss her greatly. But the lies and horrible things she's said really have hurt me. My family urges her on to do this more and then the family she married into (without ever telling or inviting me or us after I raised her from age 5 all by myself mostly while I worked full time and then 1/2 time in 2 different jobs! But I was always there for her and always the ONLY one in the audience clapping and yelling for her !) urges her to be hateful towards me also. They don't even know me. My father's girlfriend treated me inexcusably when we saw her over the Summer while at an outdoor concert too! I went up to her as kind as can be and introduced myself. She looked at me and if looks "could kill, I'd be dead"...she got up and walked the long way around the table  and left without saying a word to me. She only knows the horrible, evil lies she's been told by my family and my daughter who now does her hair as she's a hair stylist.
    Ok...so back to the evil, sick brother. I went to my You tube page and saw some nasty and evil comments but luckily NO one else can ever see them unless it's here where I am showing them to you. This is what he wrote which is moderated by me first, so luckily no one will ever see this on my you tube page:

	drmoodman (1 month ago)  (Pending approval) Approve | Remove | Unblock User | Spam xyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
	drmoodman (1 month ago)  (Pending approval) Approve | Remove | Unblock User | Spam yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
	drmoodman (1 month ago)  (Pending approval) Approve | Remove | Unblock User | Spam You only worked at U of M for a couple years and even then only part time most the time. You spent more tme trying to figure out how to get out of working. Also, you have TWO daughter...the one you mentiona nd the oldest who disowned you for you mistreating/abusing her for so long as a child. She finally got away from you and is doing wonderful today and we are all so proud of her.

**So what he is talking about is that he does not like my "profile" on you tube. I only mention my one daughter because I don't think I need to get into anything on my "You tube" profile! Don't you agree? why should I tell my whole story there? I can do it here in my own blog, much better! So then he also puts me down for "not working enough" at my job at the Univ. of Mich hospitals. But little does he know that A) I got up at 5am for many years and then got ready and got my 2 baby girls ages 3 and 5 up and ready and took them to day care mon-friday from 710am until 615 pm!  So naturally, when an earlier shift became available, I took it! I didn't like working full time and being away from my girls. ALL I ever wanted is to be a "MOMMY"/"MOM". 
   I then got to go 1/2 time at the hospital and could work: Mon,Tues and every other Weds. This gave me a chance to still be an "Interpreter for the Deaf", which is what my degree is in from Madonna University here in Michigan! I worked on my other days off as an Interpreter for deaf students in two different school districts and interpreted "on call" for the hospital and for parents that were Deaf and needed to have their parent/teacher conferences Interpreted for them! But my family or brother chooses to forget or not know that I did that for some reason and wants to say I "didn't want to ever work" instead!!! BUt I got 9 "supergrams" from the Univ of Michigan hospitals! That means that over the years I worked there when some employees get "zero" or "none" of these "supergrams"; I got 9 of them where a patient wrote in something nice about me or that I did something nice for them or treated them in a kind way etc.! Then the University had a banquet or reception in my HONOR! I got to leave my job and go have cookies and wine and get "honored" by the big boss's! I also had a perfect attendance award all of the years I worked there because they didn't count the "allowed" sick days or "family care days". I used all of those and vacation days to be home with my girls when they were sick. I stayed and worked at my job when I was sick and even when I had pneumonia one time!
   I had 3 "employee suggestion" contest wins! That means they implemented all 3 of the suggestions that I offered and I won $100.00 each time too! I was a great employee and though I've been on SSDI now for a long time, I still have a job should I ever be able to go back  there, which probably won't ever happen now with all of the pain and injuries and surgeries I've gone through and the "full body/systemic RSD/CRPS" now also.
    When you are being mean or evil or abusive to someone, you should at least get your facts straight because it makes you look really stupid if you are mean to someone when they didn't do anything like what you say!
    Anyways...I wanted to use my blog today as a sounding board to put this up because they freak out every holiday and start sending me crazy messages and things and I just do nothing. I always do nothing but they still don't stop. People always say "don't do anything, that always works best to get someone to stop bullying etc..." well it doesn't work with my family!
    I just had to get some of this out of me today..thanks for reading and being my friend and if you are a reader but not a friend, I thank you for taking the time to read. 
   Merry Christmas to all and Happy Holidays....and don't forget to LOVE each other and remember that time is something that waits for no one! Once time is gone you cannot get it back...but you can make things right...NOW and from now on..."IF" you choose to make things right...Love to all and Blessed New year 2012 !!!  Sincerely, Suzanne

an award that I got for using my time to volunteer and help out at the school's

page1 of a letter I rec'd from my dad's 2nd wife after mom died & she divorced him after only a year

page 2 of the letter from my dad's ex wife to me after their divorce

note from my Psychologist who's known my family and me since 1999!

It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year!

"To The World You May Be One, but To One ....You May Be The World!!"

The day my firstborn came home from the hospital...I thought that my dreams had come true!

this is me with Amy (she is in 2nd grade here) and I was the school's "Jump Rope Team" coach!

Hello Luvs, 
I must say that I just love the picture above! It shows my sweet daughter, Amy (23yrs) and me together having fun! I like the way the words "good times" and "best friends" are superimposed! I just love spending time with her and she's just the sweetest, kindest, smartest most thoughtful person I know! She does cute little thoughtful things that help to make life just a little more pleasant. She tries to do everything 150% and sometimes gets  down on herself when things aren't just right! I know this post is coming just prior to Christmas with all of its expectations and memories.  I also do miss certain people that had played a big role in my life especially during this special time of year. I wanted to write about the goodness and love that I share with the two people who are in my life most of all.
   I wanted to share the new/short story of "us"...of our "new traditions"..the ones we are making and have been since it's just been the three of us.*(It's just the 3 of us as far as blood family & has been for awhile now; but I never forget our wonderful friends. We are truly blessed to have a number of close and true friendships with a long history together. Some of them have been with us through thick and thin. While others are a bit more recent, but none the less strong relationships).  The three of us had a wonderful time making the chocolate covered potato chips and pretzels for the holidays! It's become a "new" tradition in our family, to make chocolate covered pretzels and potato chips during the Christmas season at our house! We also make the "Chex" Muddy Buddy mix with the chocolate and peanut butter with powdered sugar and it's poured over the cereal mixture and sprinkled with red & green candy sprinkles! It's sooooo yummy and we enjoy having company over to share it with them also! We've been making this every Christmas now for about 7 or 8 years.  I have a "fruitcake or fruit/nut bread" recipe that my Mother and her Mother used to make way back when. I made a few tweaks and changes of my own to it and now the new and improved "fruit/nut bread" is and has been part of our Christmas tradition also. This year for the first time since I can remember, I didn't make that fruitcake or fruit/nut bread. I'm the only one in my family who has the true full recipe, the one in which my mother wrote down for me on a recipe card. The same one her own mother made. My brother, Steve, tried to make it  a couple of times but it never came out quite the same. It was dry and had waaay too much Rum flavoring in it. 
     So as we await the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and as "some" of the children of the world await the coming Of Santa Claus, I am trying to live my life as awesome as possible with all of the things that I've gone through and am still having to go through on a daily basis. I still don't have my oldest daughter in my life. She left, as you know if you've been reading along, back in 2004 and still will not come back to me or us and is still telling horrible lies and stories that are to hurt me for some reason that I'll never understand.
      I don't want to go into that story today. It is Christmas time and the "spirit" of Christmas is among us. I want to feel the magic in the air and the goodness of the people that will try to do good things this season and throughout the entire year. I want to be a good person and try to be as kind and loving towards others as I possibly can. I don't want to do it just at this time of the year, but all of the years and all of my life. I want there to be a sense of kindness and love between people instead of the bickering and meanness that is all around us today. I hate that families continue to fight and not get along with each other. There's nothing more that I would love than to have a family that wants and loves me and treats me like the person that I am and not the horrid "thing" that they treat me like in reality. I don't have to do anything mean or be spiteful because it states in the Bible that God will take care of everything. The Lord says "Vengence is mine". He also says in Romans 12:12 "Do not be overcome with evil; overcome evil with good". 
  It still haunts me today what my fathers girlfriend did to me this past Summer. I wish so so badly that she would have been at my Aunt Vera's funeral last Summer in June 2010. At her funeral neither of my brothers were there and Shirley, my dad's girlfriend was not there either. I know in my heart that my dad found a way to force them somehow without their knowledge, to not come to her funeral. He KNEW....HE KNEW...my father KNEW that my cousins would be saying good and kind things about me and my husband, Craig. They indeed did just that! They spoke of me as their families "angel". They said that I did so much by visiting their mom and doing her hair and her nails whenever I could! They spoke of Craig and I taking her out shopping and out to the park in the Summer time and even to dinner. They spoke of how we visited her and played "Skippo", the card game, with her almost every Sunday. Also how I decorated her door and her apartment for each of the holidays for quite a long time! My Aunt Vera loved me and I loved her. She believed me and believed IN me! She told me that she "needed" my dad, her brother, to do some things for her like grocery shopping etc. so she could not speak to him about the abuse and the way my family was and still is, treating me today. I understood what she was saying and how she "needed" him to do her errands, therefore she had to sort of act like she was on his "side" I  guess I just wished that (Shirley) my dad's girlfriend, and my brothers had been there to hear those kind words said about me that day.  My Aunt Vera is gone now and she was my biggest confidant's and she believed me and in me, I miss her. 
    I guess the holidays are the times we most miss the people that we love. I do love the Holidays and the warm fuzzy feelings that still creep into my heart and soul. The pictures from the past that sneak into my mind and the longing for things to be the "way they were" at least the way they were when my oldest daughter truly loved me as much as I loved her. I am so grateful that the Lord has seen fit to allow me the pleasure of having my youngest daughter live with us a little while longer. I see the extra time with her as a "gift". She comes and goes as she pleases, of course and  she works hard at her three jobs part time and as she's finishing up her Master's degree. She has her career, her school classes and her friends and she's a very busy girl. But I cherish the time that we do have together. 
   I can't say that some days I don't wish for some things to go back the way they once were with us as a full and true family. I know we are a "true" family still today. I feel loved and I love them too, I just mean that I always feel and notice that empty spot at our table. I still feel that lonliness of having 3 instead of 4 of us.
    Well,it feels as though everything was just a "dream" or even a nightmare! The "reality" that truly unfolded was so awful because the reality wasn't really very good for a very long time. I let things go for too long, trusted too much  and trusted the wrong people. I believed in my oldest and even though she could sometimes behave badly, I just never thought she'd throw me "to the wolves, stomp on me  and jump on me while I'm already "down".  The same goes with my ex husband's parents. I was good to them. I was truthful with them always. I took my girls to visit them monthly all through the years when their son had either "supervised only visits"(per the judge's decree) and all of those years when their son lived 1,000 miles away in another state.  I thought I was doing a kind thing and thought I was being a good person by driving  the girls to visit their fathers parents, their other grandparents, even though they did nothing for the girls or for me. They did nothing to even help us while they owned 5 houses, a boat, 23 acres with barn animals and had so much "material"  "stuff"!!   While their own granddaughters and their granddaughters mother stood in line at scarey places with barred windows for 2 hours sometimes in a terrible, bad and scarey part of the city to get our monthly food stamps and medicaid insurance for my daughters....their blood granddaughters! My girls never went without a winter coat but their grandparents, their father's parents, who were millionaires; never even offered to give them a winter "snowsuit" so they'd be really warm and able to play in the snow. They wore whatever I could get for them and we made it work. One year even my own parents who were abusive towards me, cared enough about their granddaughters to help out and buy them each a long snowsuit for Christmas one year. Those suits lasted a few years as we got them large and then still when my oldest outgrew hers, the younger one had it for another 2 yrs! But  I also never asked either set of parents for anything. We just stood in our long 2 hour line each month until I made $80.00 too much per month to get anymore help. In essence, I lost 250.00 worth of food stamps due to an $80.00 per month raise! It Doesn't seem to make much sense, does it? But I still felt deeply proud deep down inside that I finally made too much to get aid from the state. I was "free" to not live under a microscope any longer and we would just barely "get by"...but we had so much love and did many fun things that cost me no money or very little.
   Sooo...those are a few of the bad memories mixed with some good; and some of the things that I've endured and lived through with my daughters and the different family members and "ex" family members.
    Now we'll go back to the "present", the "gift" of today and the "here and now".  I have much to feel blessed about and much to be very sad about. One thing after another continues to happen to bring more pain physically and/or emotionally to me and my little family. 
     For example:Yesterday I was making my way through the back garage door into the house and Craig was getting the groceries from the trunk. I attempted to step up into the garage door through to the kitchen and my brain thought my foot went up the step, but my foot didn't go up enough (due to my "footdrop" and L-5 radiculopathy and polyneuropathy). I do have 2 AFO's (ankle foot orthotic braces)to wear but I don't really wear them anymore. It's been 7 years, no...it's been since 2002 now..!!! WOW!!! Time has gone by hasn't it? So it's been 10 yrs now since our car accident and I wore them for 3 yrs..or a little longer and "on" and "off".  They hold my feet and toes up so I don't trip over myself due to the lack of good nerves and the presence nerve damage.     I got RSD/CRPS in my right foot after foot surgery in 2007. The RSD/CRPS has since spread to "full body". I have it everywhere now and including my eyes, mouth. The ENT Dr. that I've had and whose known me since 1986 has said that it is considered "Systemic" which is also another word for "full bodied". I went up the step and my foot or feet didn't go with me and I fell left hip, arm and full left side of my body first onto the kitchen hallway floor. I lay there in a heap and cried and could not move for several minutes. My husband was and is so wonderfully loving towards me. He waited and in the most kind voice; or the most lulling sweet voice he said to me "I'll just wait until you can talk. It's O.K., just take your time. I'm here for you, just take your time". I couldn't even speak because the pain was so fierce!

Jessy and her step dad, my husband Craig...having a great laugh & fun at Disney

   I finally got up and started to tell him what happened as he helped me over to the couch and brought me my "rescue" medications for emergencies. They are used only to keep me out of the emergency room because I refuse to go there anymore. The Dr's don't understand RSD/CRPS. They don't treat it or even know what it is. Last time I went, a Dr. and a Nurse were "googling" the term "RSD/CRPS" right in front of me while I was on a guerny waiting to go into the operating room for the worst nightmare "heart cath" of my life.!! I was totally wide awake and screaming that I could "feel everything" and no one cared and nobody listened to me or did anything to comfort me in any way! Finally at the end of it when I was exhausted and I knew it was over, I finally fell asleep and stayed that way for the next 3 hours! I'm still so upset about that! UUGGHhh...
    These are the things that happen to me now. I must come to grips with the facts and the truth that my oldest daughter may never come back....my pain may never go away and my dad will probably die before he'll ever tell the truth to the people that he's lied to about me...and that really hurts so much!  I hate being called a "liar" for being the "truth bearer"...Well, Jesus was persecuted and he was the light of all truth!! I will just continue to be the best person and mother and wife that I can be. I will keep on keeping on as far as the pain goes.  Also, I will persevere and continue to chase the dreams that I still have left; even if most of them have been "squashed" by abusive, threatening and horrible people. I still have my wonderful and loving soul-mate; my husband, Craig....and I still have my beautiful, kind, and loving "sweet pea" daughter who is making me so proud to be her mother! I cannot wait to see her grow more and more mature and see her continue to blossom into the lovely adult daughter that she's become!      

this is a letter that my oldest wrote to me not long before she left home!

     Have a good Holiday everyone!!  Come back and hopefully you'll read about better and brighter days ahead for 2012! love and blessings to you at this holiday time!

letter from my Psychologist because I was telling him what my family threatened & what they were saying!