The Intermission.

It’s been a while. ❤️

After working through years of trauma while in the midst of a multi-year long depression, I needed to step back. I dumped a lot out after years upon years of holding it in.

Most of what you’ve read are things that not many people knew, or that I had only spoken about on a surface level. Or even tried to joke about with my brother, friends, etc.

When in reality, I ripped off a 10+ year old band-aid and let the air hit my wound for the first time. And that bitch STUNG.

As I said before, I had already been enduring years of severe depression after losing the woman who practically shared a soul with me, my Mama. I always said when she went, to lock me up again because LORD she was my person. And I was right. It was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.

I isolated. I lost friends due to them thinking I was just being shitty, had ZERO hygiene, had my husband brushing mats out of my hair like an overgrown poodle, missed out on so many of my kids accomplishments, missed out on my sister in law’s pregnancy with my nephew, and let everything in my life go to shit.

And then I opened up this old can of worms. What can I say, I’m a glutton for punishment I guess.

But through doing that, being heard, receiving so much support and love after doing so, it healed me in ways that I never thought were possible. And closed up old holes that I didn’t think could be patched. I started living again. I started THRIVING again. So thank you. For your support. For your kind words. For your empathy. For seeing ME. ❤️

And a special thank you to my husband for loving me through it, my brother & sister in law, my in-laws, and my Dad for being my rocks through out all of it, and loving me even if I went weeks or months without reaching out.

Old trauma can weigh you down for so long without ever realizing it… until you’re drowning. And I drowned.

————————————————————————

This next part is the toughest for me, and as a mother, the hardest thing I have to relive. I’ll be working on it over the next few days, and celebrating my birthday on Friday. I will also be including some points that I either forgot to mention in previous chapters, or that I remembered through my break of writing.

Entering the last year of my 20’s, I want to leave this trauma in my past so I can move towards a mentally healthier decade, and be a voice of reason and sign of hope that we DO heal from abuse, rather than a trauma-bogged mess that let JOHN ANTHONY VILLARDI IV win, and stay silent about what we went through.

Coming soon. For Johnny. For Austin.

For ME.

All my love,

Ashley