If you’re reading this right now, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my little big heart. You investing your time to my story is worth far more than I could say. I hope you take the time to read these words with an open heart and mind, and that in someway you find a friend in them, maybe a safe place, as I take all my courage to be vulnerable.





I want to tell you a story, because stories are powerful, and secrets are too. But secrets are not always the good kind of powerful, they carry shame, embarrassment, despair and hopelessness. When we share our secret stories we open up to being vulnerable and open up to healing and connecting with those around us.





In a recent session with my therapist she asked me to do the hardest thing I have ever done, since checking myself into rehab. She asked me if you were a friend and they were in your situation what would you do? What do they need? How do they ask for it? I said something sarcastic but then I got quiet because I know exactly what I would do for that person, but it’s a lot harder to feel okay needing and to ask for help when you are that person. She said she was grateful I was at the end of my rope with this because that means I have to ask for help. It takes a lot of pride swallowing and mirror facing and laughing at yourself and some brutal honesty to do that. So here are my answers, here’s what I would do for me, and here’s how I am asking for help, because I can’t continue my story alone, none of us can and sometimes we need some help.







First thing I would do is show up, and well here you are. So thank you, you whoever you are however I know you, no matter the relationship or place or time, you showed up. Showing up for me has been key in my healing process, if you know me at all you may know some of the struggles I have had with mental illness, traumatic experiences and life just not always being kind. Showing up for someone, giving them one more chance, giving love one more try well it’s a risk and we aren’t guaranteed a soft landing, thank you for taking that risk on me.







Second thing I would do is let myself be seen, and this takes a hell of a lot of courage. I love to encourage and see raw and open truth in the hearts of others, I strive very hard to give safe spaces to those in my life to show up without editing. But the truth is I am very much afraid my truth isn’t enough, even right now writing this I’ve backspaced and walked away from the computer so many times, you’d laugh, I’m kind of laughing too, it’s a little ridiculous but sometimes you gotta laugh at yourself. Shame loses it’s power when it’s spoken but do you have any idea how fucking uncomfortable and hard it is to tell your truth. Yeah it’s pretty rough but you know overtime I have been able to do it with different struggles I’ve faced like depression, self harm, heartbreak, abuse, failure and I find time and time again that the healing comes after the really hard stuff that we like to talk about but not actually do. So here’s my actually do, here’s my hard stuff, the uncomfortable, the hurting, the aches, the nightmares, the anxiety, the reruns, here’s me letting you see, well me.





I have experienced a heavy amount of sexual, physical, emotional and verbal abuse in my life as well as being raped several times but the last time was bit different. I got pregnant, and I didn’t know and I had a miscarriage. Heavy stuff I know, but stay with me if you can I promise my story is worth it because I have to believe that I am worth sharing the truth. In short I was drugged at a house party, something slipped in my beer, raped and then left in room where I woke up with no recollection of anything that had happened no idea where I was except for a pounding migraine, several bruises, my phone and keys in jacket. I remember getting up and walking out in a fog walking down streets I knew too well, till I found my car and driving to my best friends house. I remember not saying a word to her, except I need your shower. I remember her putting a blanket over my black and blue body and not saying a word because she knew I couldn’t bear to believe this had happened to me, again. We didn’t speak about it for several weeks, I was in denial and shock, it was the last thing on my mind as I was in my last semester of college, working five jobs to float, with a very sick parent, and to top it off I was about to be homeless.





I’m not a fan of November in fact I’m not a fan of winter season in general but November has a chill of it’s own, I lost a dear friend in a car accident that month that turned my life upside down several years back and while because of her love and friendship I was able to change my life, go to rehab, and start down a path of healing, it’s still a heavy month for me. That cold day was a blur mostly, I went to my internship at the Dr. Phillips Art Center downtown, I made a joke with my favorite janitor, I drove to one of my many jobs, I did my homework on my break, and napped in my car before going to my next job. I got there and I knew something was wrong, like gut feeling wrong. Like I did the morning I woke up from that house party, like I did when I was little and my parents got divorced, like I did the day chelsea was slammed into by a drunk driver, our guts they know, they know the truth even when we don’t, or refuse to see it. I remember running to a bathroom, I remember blood running down my legs into my very old vans, I remember running out of my job grabbing beach towels from my trunk, I remember driving to a hospital, I remember debating if I should go because I had no health insurance, I remember trying to wait it out, I remember giving up and realizing whatever my body was going through it wasn’t stopping anytime soon, and it wouldn’t for the rest of my life.





I hate hospitals. I’ve had more friends and loved ones die than years I’ve lived and that’s not very many. They are cold, sterile, white, and lonely, very lonely. The next part is rather horrific and I will do my best to make it short, but I need to say these parts. They rushed me in, I was in a bed, they kept asking me all these questions like how far along I was, when I was due, if I wanted to call the father, while running around hooking me up to all these machines saying I was losing too much blood, that I need an immediate transfusion, running me down the hall to the ICU. The worst part wasn’t nearly dying, wasn’t not knowing even, no the worst part was you’re awake, and you’re watching the whole time. And let me tell you I will never forget for as long as I live those hours of pain, of watching life torn from me in another way, of seeing pieces of a little that I would never hold. The whole thing is happening and you can’t change a thing, you are completely powerless, and all these strangers are watching some of them being kind, some of them judging you, most of them pitying you in an awful way, but most of all your alone, completely alone. You go into a shock they say, you scream things, you cry things, you curse things, you throw things, but most of all you say the same thing over and over, where’s my baby, I want my baby.





Then it’s over, but it isn’t but it is. You’re in clean clothes, they tell you can go home they say you can get back to life. You leave with nothing but a white bracelet, 7,000 dollars in debt, some pain killers, and the realization you just lost everything you ever wanted but didn’t even know you had. Life goes on isn’t that a bitch. It is but it does, we make do, we mend, we hustle, we get by and if we work hard sometimes we even get the chance to heal. It comes in ways you wouldn’t expect like nannying a new born and letting yourself cry while you hold him, like sharing with a friend and asking her to be there for you, like getting a tattoo to celebrate the baby’s birthday, like sitting with a therapist and talking about how you relive it every time you close your eyes. Nothing is ever the same, and it never will be. I hate when people act like healing is getting over something, it’s not it’s getting through something, and through something is an everyday kind of process thing, and I’m going to be healing for the rest of my life, and that’s okay.





Third thing I would do for a friend is to ask for help, to reach out and help to fill the need. Fast forward it’s been two and half years now, and I will say it’s still a pretty heavy struggle but I am doing my best but I need some help. After my miscarriage I experienced severe trauma to my uterus and reproductive organs. I have had almost two full years of excessive bleeding, scar tissue not healing properly, several hospital visits, multiple tests by several doctors as well as a whole lot of bills I cannot afford to pay. If you know me at all you know I work basically everyday, if I’m not at one place I’m somewhere else, doing whatever it takes to make the ends meet. But it can get really hard to make the ends meet when you don’t have steady design work, don’t have health insurance, as well as your still paying for school loans, let alone the idea of paying to talk to therapist and trying to talk through the process of healing. So here I am reaching out and asking for help. Money is a weird thing, and I’m not much of a fan of it, I’d honestly rather work a million jobs than to ask for it because it can be uncomfortable, feel weak, be super vulnerable, therefore I usually work myself to the bone to avoid that pride swallowing, honest process, and shameful experience but this time I’m facing it head on. My body has slowly begun healing after a very long season of hell, as well as my heart too but my debt from this season has extremely taken a toll on me not only physically but emotionally as well. I have worked as many jobs as I can to get it down, cut as many therapy sessions as I can to make it work, I’m a true blue hustler believe me, if there’s job I’m doing it. But it hasn’t been cutting it, because I can’t work everyday for 14 hours anymore because it puts a toll on the exact physical organs I’m trying to heal, and even when I work for 10 hours if I’m only making ten dollars an hour well a hospital visit that costs me 7,000 dollars on top of several doctors and medications, it becomes really hard to float.





So here’s my truth, I was drugged and raped then I had a miscarriage that tore my body and heart in half and I’m doing the best I can to pay it all off but I need some help, because I can’t continue my story if I can’t heal, and I can’t heal when I can’t eat, or I can’t sleep, or I can’t talk to a therapist because I can’t pay my bills and yes it has gotten that bad. I’m in the middle of relocating in order to get a full time design job that will help me do everyday life but also hopefully be an opportunity to get to do what I love. It’s been a long time coming but I’m finally in the place where I am taking the risk and just going for it. It’s a big risk I’m taking, but I think that it’s worth it, and I know I am asking you to take one on me but I think my story, my truth, your help, sharing all this shameful and embarrassing stuff it’s worth it. Whether you’re in the same place as me or you’re in a better one or maybe just a different one, any help is more than enough, even if it’s giving in a different way, my little big heart is so grateful for it. I don’t know if this will help at all, or if it’s a crazy thing to ask, but I’m trying just one more time, and this time it’s for me, I am doing my best show up, for me. To be in a place where I can float, where I can sleep and maybe not work 15 hours, where I can take the time to go to therapy and actually pay for it cause bless my therapist’s heart she’s comp’d me so many sessions she deserves to get paid, to move and not be afraid I may literally drown in my debt, but to put a dent in it, maybe even get rid of it, to be able to keep going. I won’t ask you to give if it’s not in your heart to or you can’t but if you can I hope you know that you are a essential part of this next season of healing for me, and I wouldn’t be able to do it without you. So thank you for being my friend, for showing up, for letting me show you me, and for listening to me reach out and ask for help. I hope our hands meet in the middle and connect somewhere, and I hope one day I get to play a part in helping you continue your story too.

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