Pushing past the boundaries

Winters almost here and I am on the search for the perfect job since moving from the little town of Eaton Rapids, Mi to Holland, Mi. I have pondered the idea of moving south where all the good paying jobs are only I am engaged now and still have family here that make it difficult for me to leave. Why can’t all the good paying jobs like the ones I’ve found down south be available here. I did get a prospective job opportunity today a half an hour away but still as I ponder the weather of the south and the harsh winter weather coming here soon….its a tough choice to NOT want to just go.

Will I always be stuck here in Mi? I have wanted to get out for a long time now but STILL not sure when that time will come for me. Hoping to get some other work than call center jobs like I have been getting in the past. Today I submitted my information for an IT/administrative job. I have a degree; almost 2 and STILL the ONLY work people want to place me at here is in a call center. I have the degree but not the experience therefor its made it hard to get my foot in the door someplace. Down south there are alot of entry level jobs willing to train people. Well its time for me to start pushing past my boundaries and going out on my own without help even if I have to take a stack of my resumes with me and start handing them out like flyers. Thats what I am about to do.

Be careful on the 4th

So as its the fourth of July today I’m always reminded of the day I took my kids to watch the fireworks in town. We just sat down with our chairs and as were all sitting there waiting, I grabbed a handful of sparklers to light with the kids. I didn’t think nothing of it when I took one to light in one hand, while still holding on to the others and I had someone help me light it. Then the next thing I know, I see this big ball of fire ignited in my hands and it immediately knocked me backwards in my chair. I started screaming because my hand hurt so badly and we walked to the fire station next door to run my hands under some cold water. I immediately seen my hand/flesh turning black.

We drove to the hospital while my sister stayed with the kids. I ended up having third degree burns on my right hand and had to take time off of work because it needed to be wrapped and I couldn’t use it. Pretty much one of the scariest moments in my life so whatever you do this fourth please do it with caution. Happy fourth of July! 😊🎇🎆

Gotta love them back country roads, NOT!!

Too many times driving down the roads in the country weve had issues with our back tire losing air. Its that dreaded moment when your losing air but not sure if it will hold with fix a flat or if it will end up going completely flat and your in the middle of no where YIKES! We live in a small town where the air costs and arm and a leg at that uuhhggg so we put the air in with the fix a flat and it holds. But for how long. So were told there was a hole in the tire but it was patched as we replaced the front tires after hitting a major pot hole around Christmas last year on my way home from work, twice! Now the tires have been rotated and the one that was patched with the hole in it is holding up until today. My sons a third shifter and were headed home thirty minutes from town and then the air slowly started going out and we barely made it home when it went completely flat. Now we still had a can of fix a flat from the last time we needed as for whatever reason it didn’t end up using much of it but it was also cold that day. Seven months later here we are filling it up and taking it to get changed for yet another tire gone bad. So with us putting so many miles on the car were going to have some peace of mind at least now u knowing we wont break down on the side of a back country road. My worst fear having a bad back is to end up walking home or someplace to get help. Now we need to move ASAP, which hopefully will also be very soon and we wont want to see another back country road again for a very long time. This is how our day was hope yours was better 😊

Michigan SUCKS!!

So I just recently had major lumbar surgery on my back that took me five years to have because of the healthcare here in Michigan being so bad.I’m still having issues with my “now entire spine”, SI Joints, carpal tunnel that (I’ve already had surgery on my right hand for, that didn’t work), I have five nodules in my thyroid, only one tested negative for cancer but not sure of the other one’s because I was supposed to already have had the surgery to remove one and test the others but that’s had to take a back seat to my back problems, intestinal problems, re-occuring kidney stones/gallbladder pain “sludge”, sinus/head/temple/nerve pain, and my kids are dealing with health problems that aren’t being taken care of too. My daughter has to drive to the Cleveland Clinic to see a specialist. This is THE WORST STATE for healthcare.We’re having to fight to get help with my social security when I hear some people in other states get theirs right away. This makes the 5/6th time I’ve had to apply to get it. I have MSHDA helping pay our rent only because I had to be homeless to get it and recently we was shut off by our city for an electric bill of $120 with a child in our home. But when you get one for $160 it doesn’t. Then nobody would contact me back about a news story to help others out that might be going through the same thing. (Co-hoots??) We were blessed to have legal aid help us with an eviction that went from $221-$641 legal and late fees included. This entire state of Mi is corrupt. There’s nobody than can help us when we have issues with MSHDA and they’re the reason we got into this mess with our eviction for the calculations being wrong for our income and waiting 3 months for a recertification after trying to do an informal hearing through the state representative’s office. The informal hearing process wasn’t handled correctly neither and they tried to make us out to be liars for not reporting jobs that we were reporting and dates for things that were wrong. I had proof of it all and I assume they didn’t think I did. Even when getting things figured out, getting other people involved that seen what was going on STILL couldn’t help us figure it out either because there wasn’t anyone running things to get answers from. Its a YOUR ON YOUR OWN/GOODLUCK State we live in and its sad.Were leaving this State in another year and honestly the entire country is our next goal. Nothing is ran right here in the US. They take from us for no good reasons and expect us to just deal with being screwed.There are no good jobs, no good people and no good healthcare. It never changes.

Taking a life-break

So I haven’t been able to write on here obviously in some time and A’LOT has happened in the past year since I last was on here. I had to take a life break! To be honest, it got to a point where, I thought nobody wanted to read anything I wrote and wasn’t sure if it was worth my time to share my life with everyone here but….I got an email yesterday and it was WordPress letting me know that someone liked one of my posts and so I thought okay, I’ll bite lol.

Not really sure if its because I don’t have a paid platform to write on here or not but I’ve been broke for awhile now not being able to work. I’ve been trying for more than three years now fighting for my social security and I am STILL fighting it. Its crazy because I just had major back surgery in January 2019 and was a week out from my surgery when I went to see the judge from my last denial, sitting there with my back brace on and everything and was still denied.

This makes the 5th/6th time having had to reapply in May to submit more of my medical documents that I think were not submitted after having my surgery. My lawyer was supposed to do it but not sure he did. They say it can take up to six months after I just waited three years and I have given them a functional capacity report that CLEARLY shows I CANNOT WORK FULLTIME. This state I live in really sucks and I feel like I just really want to get my social security so that I can move out of this place. I’ve had nothing but heartache’ here my entire life! The laws here are also horrible and don’t even get me started on our insurance rates.

Since the last time I wrote on here, my son won custody of my granddaughter. June 2018 she came to live with us and in February of 2019, her mom started supervised visits. She has come out about her molester, about all kinds of abuse/neglect, and she’s been in continuous therapy. Its always a roller coaster of emotions and she’s still having a difficult time telling CPS who the molester is, not sure why!? We think its because CPS isn’t asking the right questions and they wouldn’t even let her therapist go into the disclosure room with her. CPS tried saying she was accusing other people (my son and his brother) other than her perp. We have had THE worst experience dealing with CPS and these investigators whom she doesn’t know, she doesn’t feel safe enough to talk to them, and all of her experience with law enforcement (taking her out of our house in the middle of the night) they have made her feel scared to talk to them. She thinks they’re going to take her away from us too.

This has been one of the most difficult times I’ve had to go through in my entire life outside of myself being abused/raped twice. Only I think its because I have, that it helps me, help my granddaughter, n yet its still difficult because she’s got similarities in her story compared to mine n yet we do experience everything differently. I have to remember that often. We are trying to get her moms rights taken away because its hurting her more having her in her life and even her therapist agrees. Her piece of shit mom wouldn’t even go to her therapist appointments and even suggested she give up her rights. Now if that doesn’t suggest a guilty a concsience than I don’t know what does. This has been a nightmare that I’m hoping will be over soon as its been exhausting to deal with and we really need to work on helping my granddaughter heal & this isn’t helping. Please pray for my family as we move forward into the rest of this year with all that we have going on, there’s gotta be a happy ending soon 🤗😕😔

Thanks for reading, God bless 💞🙏🏻

My mothers day without my mother

I wish I could say that I got to see my mother, my sister, my best friend, or my grandmothers today for mothers day but they’re all gone. I have a good relationship with my daughter now, she is the only female left that I have any kind of relationship with anymore and I am very grateful for that because we didn’t always have the best relationship. My mom would always tell me she hoped we would have a good relationship one day.

Every female that I held dear to my heart and got most of my support from in my life are all gone and passed away except for one. My only living sister that I have left and we have never had a very good relationship. In fact I think that it was maybe a year after  our mom and my other half sister passed away, that I spoke to her last in 2012. I would see her occasionally but we never really had any deep meaningful conversations it was always in passing.

We used to fight a lot when we were growing up and she was always trying to boss me around and tell me what to do and I hated it. As we got older, I would try to spend time with her and she always felt like she had to tell me what she thought I should be doing with my life. It drove me nuts and got to a point where I just didn’t want to talk about myself around her anymore because every time I did she would think she had to give me advice. I didn’t want any advice I just wanted someone to listen and I had to even tell her that once. But my sister isn’t equipped that way, she has the personality of a drill sergeant, I am not even sure where she got that from because she wasn’t ever in the military.

As time went on I stopped talking to my sister and began just living my life. I moved away in 2016 with my oldest son to another town over an hour away from our hometown. I occasionally think about her but I never go to see her if I am in my hometown. I am not really sure what I would say to her if I do see her because we just can never manage to have that bond that me and my other sister had.  She doesn’t even have a relationship with her son and I go visit him often. She’s just really hard to get along with.

She turned my extended family against me shortly before my mom passed away in 2011 by telling them stuff about me that wasn’t true. I took a trip South right after my mom and half sister passed away, as they were right next to each other at hospice and passed away within 11 hours apart.  I was distraught over it and I didn’t know how to go on with my life after that. I just wanted to start over but it didn’t work out and I ended up having to go right back to our hometown again. But I did get the chance to find out first hand how our extended family really felt about me by wanting me and my children to stay at a shelter instead of letting us stay with them for a few days to figure out what we were going to do. We ended up staying in a hotel that my brother worked for a few days and then they paid for us to leave and told me to never come back. That really hurt my feelings a lot and I won’t ever forget it.

I’ve been struggling to get my life figured out, and having had some health problems along the way that have kept me from living the life I’ve wanted for years. After raising my kids by myself as a single parent now their basically helping take care of me. After all of the hard labor work that I had to do when they were little, led me to have back problems and chronic pain. Now I am in need of having surgery and can’t work anymore, so the rest of my family looks down on me for that as well as other things. They did the same thing to my mom when she wasn’t able to work as she was legally blind and had mental health issues. It was only after her funeral that I found out how everyone really felt about her….shame! They were ashamed of her even though it wasn’t her fault that she had health problems and didn’t have money or a husband to take care of her.

My writing is what is helping me deal with life after losing all of the people that I love & cared for most in my life. My life hasn’t been the same since they left and I don’t know why God took them home as they were all so young. Why did he have to leave me with a bunch of assholes that don’t care about me or my kids. Maybe he has something better for me but right now I couldn’t begin to imagine what that might be. I just hope and pray that I can finish my career and education, get my health taken care of once and for all and finally become the person I am meant to be. Who knows maybe when I publish my book and I tell the world just what kind of family I have, maybe they will think twice about how they treated me and my children but….I doubt it. People like that don’t ever change, they just grow more bitter and cold hearted.

My inspiration again!

I finally had some inspiration to get back on and write again yesterday but today I am feeling it much more and have the urge to write my book again. I once had a creative writing teacher tell me to write like someone else’s life depended on it. But it’s my life that depends on it really.

There is just so much that I want to share and honestly it’s been hard to write for many different reasons. Last night I wrote on here about my depression and although it’s true that it has a big part to play in my life there are many reasons for not writing my book.

Do I want to share my story with the entire world? Would anyone really want to read what I have to say? Can I inspire someone in this life with the things that I have been through? These are all very good questions I have had to ask myself. I contemplated writing it because of my past. I haven’t ever really had too many supportive people in my life and mostly when I think about my writing I have to wonder am I good enough?

Everyone growing up in my family would always say very negative things to me and about me that I think eventually gave me a complex about who I was as a person. It’s very destructive behavior to tell someone things to make them question who they are and if they exist in the world around them….

I never really gave it a second thought for a long time as I put my life off to help take care of my mom when she needed me and then I ended up in one abusive relationship after another with guys that took my self esteem level way way down as well. I was raised with an abusive father and that caused me to later in life end up in some pretty crappy relationships. But when my mom and my sister both passed away in 2011 I realized that I had wasted so much time with this asshole that just ruined me and my kids life. So I left and never looked back.

It took me a long time to realize that I had put off a lot of my life in search of finding the right guy to help make a family with me and my kids as I have three kids by three different fathers and was tired of not having a father for them. That kind of thinking is very destructive and lead me down the paths of pretty bad relationships. I must have been vulnerable maybe even desperate to think that I could just be with anyone guy that I “thought” was right for my kids and myself. But I was wrong. I got wayyyy ahead of myself. Instead of taking time to get to know the real person that they were I jumped with both feet in and got into trouble.

Finally I realized I didn’t need a man in my life for me or my kids. I focused on just me for a while until I started to have some major health problems that were trying to keep me from doing what I really enjoy in life. Having to reevaluate what it was in my life that I wanted most. Writing is what I enjoy most and after being side tracked several times I finally realize that this is what my true passion is. Now I am just going for it. I am going to get it all out there in my book for others to see what I have gone through in my life and I am not going to hold anything back. If I can inspire just one person with the things I have gone through, then it will be all worthwhile.

The NEW and improved Lori is back and I am finally getting to the point I have always wanted to be. I am just going to jump all in feet first with this book and I hope that others will enjoy reading it eventually. If there are any believers out there….say a few prayers for me to finish my book please as this means everything to me.

Thanks for reading and God bless! ❤