Thrive As You

I've commented on this blog more than once how I don't take my own advice.  It's easy to do.  There are times when we are so close to a situation, we can't even see it for what it is.  We need to gain perspective. The last few months have brought about a lot of change for me.  I recently began a new job.  Leaving my previous position was a very difficult choice for me to make, and up until the very moment I walked into my new job, I regretted my decision to leave.  For a few years now I have worked with elementary students, my "babies."  I have developed amazing relationships with these kids and their families.  I have watched them grow, change, and develop right before my very eyes.  In fact, I think it's safe to say that I had at least a small part to do with that growth and change.  I love these children as though they are my own, and I don't say that lightly. But sometimes in a workplace, there is more than just "the work," and a...

Has anyone else noticed that I haven't written in.......... MONTHS? Yeah, me too. Which seems a bit odd, given that I had this utterly life changing  gift handed to me by none other than Elizabeth Glibert herself.  You know, that time she published me in a little book called, "Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It." The book that is currently number five on the New York Times Travel Bestseller List? I can't even dream this stuff up. So here's what I did. I choked. I'm not even going to sugar coat it or pretend it's anything else.  It's time for me to come clean.  These past few months I haven't been living my own words, my own mantra.  I haven't been thriving at all, I've been barely surviving.  I've been nearly choking on my own existence.   There's about 30 blog posts in here for sure, but as it relates to the book and the writing, and the website let me just say that my friend Jessica summed it up so perfectly...

I hope you like the way this blog looks because it's going to be getting some changes.  AGAIN.  I love change.  Some people hate it, but I love it.  Sometimes it's painful as hell but man, transformation feels so damn good, right? So here's the thing.  I'm ready to make some big changes.  I'm ready to receive some big changes.  Just over a year ago, you may remember that I created a " Super Moon Manifesto ."  I achieved almost everything on my manifesto.   Really.  It was in a sealed envelope.  I wrote it and never read it again for another month and when I did I was shocked to learn I had accomplished almost everything.  Maybe the right word is, manifested .  So why did it take me another year to write one?   I should be writing one every month, and so should you.  But I digress.  I wrote another one last week as I was flying to Arizona.  I titled this one, "The Super Sky Manifesto."  and I...

I've never actually thought of myself as a writer  per se.   Several years ago, my friend encouraged me to start a blog about what it's like to be an autism mama.  She thought maybe some people might like to hear what I had to say about my journey, my walk, with autism.  And so I did. I'm an avid reader, but that doesn't make me qualified to write .  I've always loved writing, I was the editor of our yearbook in high school, wrote for the school paper, etc.  Essays were my favorite kind of tests.  I excel with words.  I think it has something to do with talking so much.  But I've never taken a class on writing, on grammar, on where punctuation should go and stuff.  As a substitute teacher I have found myself googling the most basic of grammar questions because I just forgot all of those endless rules.  I always tell the students, "Listen, it's been about 100 years since I was in 4th grade."  And sometimes it feels like just ...

Oh my dear friends, it has been exactly 30 days since my last post!  Eeeeeek! Let me tell you why. I fell off the bandwagon.  Not just the "writing" bandwagon.  The "me" bandwagon. Sunday in church we were discussing testimonies and sharing our stories.  I do a pretty good job of sharing my story with anyone who wants to land on this website.  The interesting part of the sermon was that Pastor Mark was talking about sharing our story (in turn, sharing God's glory) before we are even actually healed. I'm even BETTER at that. So I stood up and said that, yanno, like to everyone in the congregation.  Don't worry, I wasn't the only one. I'm not healed.  I may never be "healed."  What does that even mean, exactly?  It's kind of like in the autism community when we talk about "normal."  Is there such a thing? To say that I am "healed" is to suggest that I have nothing going on in my life that causes me ...

In the new age of social media we share a lot, quite often, too much about ourselves. Writing a blog you tend to share more of yourself with, you know, anyone in the entire universe who can access the internet.  Sometimes it can be a very scary feeling. I made the decision quite sometime ago, when I first started blogging, to share my story.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  I had this feeling that if I was able to share my struggles, it might just help someone, even ONE person get through theirs. When I started my blog it was originally called " April walks with autism ," and the sole focus of my words was to help other mama/daddy warriors on their journey through autism.  But as I started writing, and as more people began to read, I realized that what I had to say, was actually having an effect on a few people out there, and maybe I should open up and begin to talk about some of the other things I was going through, too.   It was around this tim...

For many years, people have told me I should write a book.  In fact, I have told me that I should write a book.  It's less of an "idea" and more of a "calling."  I just know it's inside of me and it needs to come out.  I'm not sure if anyone will actually read it, and that's ok.  The book is inside of me, and I need to write it, to express it. For a long time, I hesitated to to sit down because I thought "I'll never write like Elizabeth Gilbert ."  Well Duh.  There's only one Elizabeth Gilbert just as there is only one April Schmidt.  But the real problem wasn't really that I wanted to write like Liz, but I wanted to write a story similar to hers.  You know, minus the amazing travel.   The story of how I too, found myself crying on a bathroom floor for weeks and months on end...... took a journey (mostly internal), found and endured the David years, and then........ perhaps ended with a love story like hers and Felipe's....

The thing about being married is that you forget how fun breakups are.  Kind of like a long married couple can forget how much fun dating can be.  But there's a crushing flip side to the "fun."  A few months removed from a devastating breakup and a thousand conversations and therapy sessions later, I'm starting to realize what is truly eating me about all of this. The broken promise. It's not just David that has done this to me.  No, I have a friend who refers to "the list of men" in my life, and while there haven't been many, they all have a common theme. The broken promise. Yes David made the big promises  to me.  "I will always love you."  "I will always be here for you."  "I will marry you and be your partner until the end of my days."  "You have changed my life and ruined me for good.  I will never be the same." "I don't want to spend another day of my life without you."  "You h...

Wait for it........ wait for it.......... I'm about to refer to an author in this blog that is not   Elizabeth Gilbert. I'll give you a moment to catch your breath. But much like Eat, Pray, Love and Elizabeth Gilbert, I'm the last on the bandwagon for this one too.  I'm starting to think that maybe I'm the last to know because I don't watch Oprah .  Damn her. The funny thing is though, that if you read my last post about my new tattoo and the word, "Enough" I think I'm going to  go ahead and call myself cool because I got on the "Enough" bandwagon before I even knew I was supposed to.  I went so far as to have it tattooed on my body. You know, before Brene' Brown told me to.   Many of you are familiar with Brene' Brown and her work on vulnerability and her book, Daring Greatly.  You are probably even more familiar with her TedX talk which is one of the most viewed Ted's of all time.  This is what launched Brene...