My Christmas Gift

I will make this post short and sweet because I believe the most important part about Christmas is spending time with your loved ones. I have been stressing for the last week what to blog about.  Usually I talk about things or thoughts going on at the time or in the past.  But with it being Christmas today I wanted to do something different.

I finally came up with something new.......  I want to give a gift.

For the last month I have been a founder for a private group on Facebook.  The Facebook group is for those who are affected by alcohol abuse.  This mainly is for those who are family members or spouses of Alcoholics.  

For so many years I had felt alone not really feeling safe about who I would share my fears or thoughts when my husband abused alcohol.   My sister finally encouraged me to make my own Facebook group because she hadn't heard of a support group for just the spouses or family members of alcoholics.  She knew of support groups for other addictions and how helpful they were.  

So I started this support group for a few weeks.  Oh my gosh it is awesome!  It is so nice to be able to talk to other spouses/family members and be able to share your emotions, thoughts, and feeling and they totally get what you are going through.  It is bittersweet knowing others who deal with the same battles you do.  I wish they didn't have these problems but it is so nice to know your not the only one.  I have loved hearing their stories and getting to know everyone in the group.  Such amazing and strong people!  All of us feeling safe to vent and in return being shown love and encouragement in our struggles.  

So my gift to you is I want you to feel more than welcome to join.  If you have someone very significant to you who has an alcohol addiction reach out to me.  I would love to add you to our group.  It is a safe place to be honest and go to for encouragement and love when you feel most alone.  

Send me a personal email to keesh711@hotmail.com and tell me your name and address to add you to the group.  I would also love to hear a little bit about you to welcome you to the group.

I hope all of you have a Merry Christmas and you are able to enjoy this wonderful time with your families.

Our Good Times

I feel like I have been posting about some pretty deep stuff.  And I'm going to be completely honest... I've been having a hard month.  With that being said I'm going to post something happy.  I want to point out things that I treasure doing with my husband.

Lets be honest after a few years of marriage, a few kids, Jobs and etc your marriage isn't the same. But over the last year Cole and I have come up with some things that we really enjoy doing, to have some bonding time.


1. Our Night:  I'm sure you have seen online all the millions of blogs about how smart phones, tablets and other forms of technology are interfering in marriages.  One night while I was laying in bed next to Cole I realized we were not talking and just staring at our phones.  I thought to myself "Oh great we are totally one of those problem couples mentioned in those posts."  So the next day I came to Cole with an idea.  (No I wasn't going to make a rule of no phones once we go to bed.  I think having a rule like that is crazy.  I still have friends, family, clients that sometimes text at weird hours.) I came to Cole asking if he liked the Idea of having a night where we tried to not have electronics and just talked, played a game or whatever else we wanted.  He agreed that was a good idea and we settled on doing it every Tuesday.  Now due to trips, job schedules and other things we have missed a few.  But I really enjoy this time together.  We usually end up laughing and glad we spent that time together.

2. The Question Game:  So my clever husband thought of this game when we were first dating.  He was stationed in another state prior to his deployment and he wanted to get to know me better.  So he started asking random questions.   Eventually we turned it into a game and took turns coming up with questions for each other.  We probably asked a million different "What's your favorite..." questions.  And it was fun and challenging to think of unique questions.  We still play this game every once in a while.  Luckily for me, my husband has a horrible memory and forgets a lot of things.  So going over the same questions every once in a while is fine.  Plus you change over the years.  It's not like pizza can be your favorite food for your whole life.  We are currently playing this game now where we take turns every other night and one of us thinks of a question right before we go to bed.  And we take a turn answering that question.  I look forward to this every night right now.

3. TV Shows:  We have a list of TV shows that we love to watch together.  We loves SOA, Parks and Rec, Orange is the new Black, Walking Dead and so forth.  It's nice having someone who is watching the same shows with you and you are able to vent and laugh at some of the moments on the shows.  Now lately with my husbands work schedule I have been horrible and skipped ahead of him on a few of these shows.  Writing this blog is reminding me to be a little more patient ;)

There are other things that we enjoy doing together but those 3 are my top favorite.  I'm lucky that my husband is OCD and an amazing cook.  I enjoy the days when we help each other out with meals.  Or when we tag team cleaning the house.  I enjoying family outings, going on walks,  Dates and so many more things.

I think finding what you and your spouse enjoy doing together are pretty important.  Make a list and try to make these things a reoccurring event to have that special bonding moments.  Or come up with some new traditions.  Cole and I had a date a few nights ago where we made up new identities.  We drove separate and ended up at the same restaurant and pretended we didn't know each other.  We kind of started over and had a fun first date again.  Later when we got home we gave each other pointers on what to not do again on a first date since it has been a while for both of us.  I hope to repeat this fun date idea in the future.  Thank you Modern Family for the fun Idea.  We enjoyed it.

Tell me some of your fun bonding times with your husband.  I would love to know.  (Lets just keep the X rated stuff to ourselves though) :)

I Choose To Be Happy, Important and Beautiful

So I recently found out I have a serious problem.... I'm a people pleaser. Your probably laughing because this isn't a big problem.  But it has been a big one for me.  I have recently found out that my happiness is determined by others peoples happiness.  I care more about making others happy then myself happy.  Trust me this is extremely good to have with my career as a cosmetologist.  Come to think of it that is probably why I started having this problem.  I wasn't always like this.  I learned how important it was to keep my clients happy.  And I loved doing it.  Nothing makes me more happy then when I finish someones hair and they are just beaming and telling me what a great job I did.  I love those moments.


But lately I realized how unhealthy I was getting about it.  Yes others happiness still matters to me.  But I need to also care about my own happiness.  Pleasing others isn't always going to make me happy.  And sooner or later I'm going to lose my mind.  So for the last month I have really been reflecting and thinking of how I am going to fix my problem.

As a mom I found that my emotions affect my families through out the day.  If i'm upset and angry my kids get upset and angry through out the day.  When I am happy and laughing...so are my kids.  My emotions are contagious in my household.  I have even seen how they affect Coles emotions too.  So I decided it was time to make some changes.

First I decided whose happiness matters the most.  And of course Immediately I thought of my boys and Coles happiness.  These 3 are my world. My Family, friends and my clients matter as well.

Next I thought about what made me happy before.  I use to love shopping for myself.  Hanging out with friends. I love getting pampered.  You may think I'm crazy but I love working out too.  And yes I do these things every once in a while but I don't do them enough.  My life reflects around my boys, my husband and my clients.  I also need to make sure I care about myself too.

So for the past few weeks I have really worked on changing this. I'm going to make sure I am a little more selfish in doing things that I need and want.  Of course I'm being selfish in a good way. My family will always be very important but they don't always have to come first before myself.  I have gone shopping for myself and bought new clothes.  I have met up with friends and had girls nights.  I even went and got a new haircut by one of my friends.  (My ends needed some serious help)  I'm also getting more ready.  Just spending that extra 5 minutes to doll myself up so I feel pretty.  It's important to feel pretty as a mom we get so lost in the busy schedule of our kids.

I am also setting a goal of working out more.  It's a little tough because I live at my parents for the meantime. My husband is currently applying for a new job in another state that we will be moving to in a month.  But i'm hoping I can do a few work outs here and there around the house to help myself feel better fitness wise.  Once we move I plan on getting a gym membership.

And so far it is helping.  I'm more happy with myself.  I'm enjoying my friends company.  I'm finding that my happiness really does matter. I'm seeing that those around me are also benefiting from it.  I'm not planning on not caring about others happiness.  That still really matters to me.  But I am finding that I can still achieve both.  And I'm a lot happier with the results.  So I encourage you if your reading this to make sure that you find that your happiness matters to.  Once you have this accomplished you will realize that your happiness affects others too.

Meet Hank

Have you ever seen the movie me, myself and Irene? It is a movie staring Jim Carey and how he has a split personality disorder.  He is normally this sweet man that is a police officer and is sweet and respectful to everyone around him.  He is so sweet no one takes him seriously and pushes him around.  Finally one day he snaps and his personality disorder breaks through.  He calls his other self Hank.  Hank has no respect for anyone or anything.  He does what he wants.  The movie has crude humor so if you stay away from those kind of movies don't watch it, I told you the important part of the story line to understand this post.

I only watched it because my good friend told me about this movie and how her husband has a Hank side.  Her husband is a marine buddy of Coles and guess what?! He also has PTSD and has an addiction.  It was interesting talking to her and sharing stories of our husbands and their moments when there addictive side came out.  I loved her bringing this movie to my attention because I never had a name for Cole's addictive side.  I seriously am tempted to start calling it Hank.  "Oh boy this is Hank talking again.  Can I speak to Cole please?"  

Cole is a great guy.  He makes friends easily,  Super funny,  great with kids,  blunt and honest, loyal, hard working, and just all around a good person.  He seriously has so many friends it's hard to keep up with his social life sometimes.

Hank is not such a great guy.  He is quick to anger.  Judges quickly and dislikes people for simple things.  He is quiet and not outgoing.  And usually he influences Cole to drink.  I do not like Hank.

If you have a spouse with an addiction,  seriously any addiction, this post will make since to you.  You love your spouse and the person that they are.  But your spouse has a slight personality disorder because of the addiction.  And it can be so hard at times to figure out how to handle that different person.  You see the person that you love but they aren't acting like the person you love.  I feel your pain and I am so sorry you are dealing with this. (Becuase I totally know your pain.)  But with the proper help and support I am sure I will get through this.  I will learn how to address my spouses Hank.  How to prevent Hank from taking over my spouse.  No I don't think I can fully get rid of Hank but I do believe that I can learn how to live with Hank in a healthy way.  It takes a lot of patience and love to get through this so hopefully you are up for the task too.

I don't like Hank.  But Hank is not going to ruin my happiness or Coles happiness.  I'm on a mission to find a healthy solution to the Hank in my life.