Random Musings of a Crazy Beautiful Insane Life
I wrote this four years ago. I think I mean it even more today.
I can’t love this meme enough. ❤️ On 9/11 We all shared the horror of watching the towers fall. We held our breaths, collectively, as the next hours unfolded. We all cried as the names came rolling in. We all breathed sighs of relief as we found loved ones that were still safe. We all […]
Live Like It’s 9/12.
Last night, when Bella and I got Chinese, I got two fortune cookies.
I ate the first right after dinner. I was laughing because my cookie actually had two fortunes inside. My future was FULL of possibilities! 🤣
Later, I ate the second cookie.
It had no fortune.
My immediate thought was, “Ouch. Are you saying I have no future?” (Obviously I was joking because fortune cookies are just a game, but still…ouch. 🤣)
A few moments later, though, I realized something.
An hour earlier, I’d gotten two fortunes.
It had already evened itself out.
That’s a funny thing about being human.
We react to the most recent event.
We rarely give the previous one the same consideration.
A bad day gets the focus, even after an amazing vacation. A rough morning overshadows the compliment we received yesterday. One disappointment can drown out a dozen quiet victories.
We don’t instinctively step back and think, “Eh. It evened out.”
Instead, we think, “Damn. Today sucked.”
Maybe life doesn’t always even itself out.
But I do wonder how much of our suffering comes from forgetting to count yesterday’s joy because today’s disappointment feels louder.
Maybe we don’t need life to be perfectly balanced.
Maybe we just need to remember the first fortune before we let the second one convince us it was the only fortune.
Since I keep seeing news segments on it…I have to say something. The Wall Street Journal did an article this week saying that therapists are pushing people to become estranged from their parents.
I’ll address more of it later, but there is one serious part I need to address first because I think its implications reach far beyond family estrangement.
The paragraph you see here is in the article in question. It is not mentioned in ANY of the news segments I’ve seen.
I’ve also seen several people say therapists should “seek corroboration.”
Corroboration from whom?
If someone has truly been abused, are we expecting them to invite the abusive parent into therapy? Because…I’m not inviting my mother to therapy.
And that’s problematic because this paragraph is HUGELY problematic.
We are in a mental health crisis and you are printing that people with mental health problems may not be reliable narrators of their own stories.
Are there some mental health illnesses that would make someone a less reliable narrator of their life?
Yes.
But remember, “mental-health illnesses” range from depression to social anxiety to eating disorders to PTSD…to AN EXTRAORDINARY number of things…before landing on extremes that may make someone a less reliable narrator.
But, yes…let us come together and tell the teenaged girl who is depressed because she is being emotionally abused at home that we don’t believe her because she has a mental health illness.
Even better. Let her therapist tell her that.
Do you see the problem?
I’m honestly so disgusted by this one paragraph I’ve been trying to decide if I’m canceling WSJ.
Now…here’s the truth on the rest of it.
Are SOME therapists pushing it? Probably. Some therapists suck. That’s always been true. To put it in SAT format, “All therapists are human. Some humans suck. So, some therapists suck.”
BUT I can say that I’ve yet to meet a therapist who does more than ask questions. They aren’t supposed to tell clients what to do. And good therapists don’t.
Should adult children cut off their parents because they disagree with how they voted for?
NO!
But…I’ve yet to meet a person who cut parents off for that. I’ve met a number who did it around the same time OR, even a few who, cut a parent off because the voting difference was the eye-opening moment, after years of hurt, that showed them, “Wow. We really aren’t ever going to understand each other.”
Do I believe the word “toxic” has been overused so much it’s lost its meaning?
Yeah. I kinda do.
Do I believe that means ANYONE has the right to tell someone else that their abuse doesn’t count?
Absolutely not.
In short, is estrangement on the rise?
Yes.
Is it only (or even mostly) because of therapists?
No.
In my honest opinion…it’s because in our (GOOD) push to begin to understand and accept mental health awareness…
We’ve made it safe to admit to ourselves, “Wow. These things weren’t ok.”
We’ve made therapy OK.
We’ve made it safe to talk about, “Wow. These things really hurt and are continuing to hurt me.” with therapists.
We’ve made it seem safe to ask our parents, “Hey, can we talk about these things?”
Some are met with curiosity and discussion.
Some aren’t.
And we’ve made it safe for those adult children to say, “I can’t keep hurting myself.”
I’ve been 100% estranged from my mother for 20 years. No therapist told me to do it. I had a daughter and IMMEDIATELY said, “What happened to me isn’t going to happen to her.” I feel zero guilt about it. And I give zero EFFs whether anyone else considered it abuse. And mine and Bella’s lives are MUCH better off without her in them.
I don’t know if you made it this far…I guess the point of this…this is what I hope, if you run into this news story, you remember: Please don’t confuse “therapists can be wrong” with “people with mental health illnesses are unreliable narrators of their own lives.”
Thank you for coming to my irritaTED Talk.
Randomness:
I am dubbing 2026: The Year Sheri Stopped Fucking Around…And Finally Found Out.
Obviously, the job change. At the end of 2025, I finally admitted to myself that nothing was going to get better until I stopped (possibly literally) killing myself professionally. Years of 60-100 hour weeks had gotten me to the point where I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Once I handled that, it became a lot easier to focus on everything else.
The Rest?
Mental Health – If there was one thing I needed to admit to myself this year, it was that I have intellectualized my trauma as far as intellectualization can go. I understand me. I understand others. I understand the past.
But until I can separate “Trauma Sheri” from “Real Sheri”…until I can separate the past from the present…I can’t move much farther forward than I already have.
That’s why I finally made the EMDR decision.
Physical Health – After five years, I’m finally understanding the difference between doing things because I once could and loving myself enough to embrace every new version of me.
I may never be a distance runner again.
Heavy lifting may never be in the cards again.
But I’m ready to find out what is.
And maybe…just maybe…I’ll discover things I love just as much.
Social – It’s no secret that I spiraled after my life fell apart five years ago. For a long time, I thought it was because people couldn’t love me unless I was everything to everyone…unless I was Super Sheri…the Energizer Bunny.
The truth is more complicated.
Yes, losing people hurt.
But I wasn’t just grieving other people’s choices. I was grieving the version of me that believed my worth came from what I could do for everyone else.
I was measuring my worth by what I could produce for everyone else while loving myself less every time I couldn’t perform. In hindsight, I was holding other people more accountable for making me feel loved than I was holding myself accountable for loving myself.
That chapter will always hurt.
But it also taught me something.
Trying to be everything to everyone doesn’t make people love me more.
It just leaves me with less of myself for the people—including me—who were already worth saving.
Dating – Stilllll a big ol’ NURP.
Overall…I’m not trying to become someone different. I’m just trying to become more myself and less my trauma.
So…here’s to whatever the second half of 2026 has in store.
/randomness
Jazz hands ✨
I started to spiral a little bit today.
It started with such a stupid thing.
My sister-in-law had an Instagram post about great fathers and included pictures of my father and my uncle.
Why would that make me spiral?
Honestly, most people who know them would call them great men. And of course my sister-in-law would include them.
To most people, they truly are great men.
It was only me that was unacceptable.
Spiral.
Spiral.
Scream.
Spiral.
Spiral.
Scream.
“What is wrong with me? Why am I so broken that they can be this to everyone else, but not to me?”
That was my initial internal dialogue.
And then I remembered.
It’s not me.
It’s my assigned role.
The role that I refused to play.
They don’t disapprove of me.
They don’t even know me.
And honestly, expecting anything different at this point is like looking at a duck and expecting it not to quack.
You go, ducks. Quack away. Be you. Be happy.
I’ll be over here being happy as my mama pony self.
Ducks and ponies aren’t enemies.
They just don’t speak the same language…
and never will.
You quack.
I’ll be over here saying, “Nah… I mean… neigh.”
I was speaking earlier with someone about finding what I’m passionate about.
If you’ve read my blog much, you’ll know that, for me, life is all about living with empathy and intentionality.
Based on our conversation, they suggested that my core value is inclusion.
I sat with that for a while.
On the surface, all signs pointed to that being the obvious answer. And yet…
Something kept niggling at the back of my brain.
I do highly value inclusion and try to live every aspect of my life in an inclusive way.
But inclusivity still leaves out one important piece.
The most inclusive people in the world will eventually stop including someone who continually hurts them.
Including me.
I learned years ago that sometimes you have to love yourself enough to love people from afar.
So, inclusivity is important…
But it’s not the top of the pyramid.
So what is?
I thought about it for a while.
Two girls from my past kept coming to mind. For the sake of the now-innocent, I’ve changed their names. 😂
Let’s call the first girl Sarah.
I met Sarah in fifth grade when I wound up in New Jersey.
Sarah…was a fucking c-u-n-yaknow.
She bullied the SHIT out of me. Up to and including the seventh-grade Halloween dance.
I had made a court jester costume.
She waited until there was a lull in the music and said, as loudly as possible,
“Nice costume, Sheri. Your mom make it in prison?”
I never forgot that moment.
SEARED into my mind.
I despised Sarah.
Until…
Around the time we were thirty, Sarah reached out to apologize.
Life had humbled her. She had learned what cruelty felt like.
For the past seventeen years, she’s been one of my biggest champions.
Then there was Maggie.
I met Maggie in seventh grade.
Not surprisingly, she was friends with Sarah. 😂
She made my life a living hell until I moved away after tenth grade.
When I moved back at twenty, she’d become best friends with my brother.
She was still a raging bitch.
One night we were both at my brother’s house and someone mentioned Punky Brewster.
I laughed because that’s been a lifelong nickname.
“Yeah…people have often stopped me to ask if I kmow who I look like. I always ask if they mean Cindy Crawford.”
(Obviously a joke.)
In comes Maggie.
“You know you don’t look like that, right? Like Cindy Crawford? She’s beautiful and you’re…you…”
She trailed off with a look of complete disgust.
God…
I fucking hated Maggie.
Then fate got weird.
We turned twenty-one on the same day.
My brother told me he’d be at the bar with Maggie and, if I wanted to see him, I’d have to come there.
Fine.
I walked in and…
Everyone was there for me.
Not in a conceited way.
In a logical way.
Chris’s friends knew both of us.
My friends only knew me.
Every time one of my friends came over to buy me a birthday shot, I’d smile and say,
“Oh my God, thank you! By the way…have you met Maggie? It’s her twenty-first birthday too.”
Because I wasn’t the only one who deserved to feel like I belonged that night.
By the end of the evening…
She was the one holding my hair while everyone else came to check on me.
😂
After that, she became one of my biggest champions too.
Until the day she passed away.
Those stories aren’t about me being awesome.
Honestly, I’m never proud when I can truthfully say I despise someone.
Not exactly my best quality.
They also showed me that inclusivity wasn’t quite the right answer.
If someone had asked me beforehand whether I wanted Maggie at my birthday celebration…
The answer would’ve been an enthusiastic “Hell no.”
But when the moment actually came…
Both Sarah and Maggie gave me the same choice.
I could cling to a very well-earned bias…
Or I could offer a moment of grace.
And maybe that’s what really matters to me.
One moment.
One experience.
One intentional,
“I see you.”
One small act of kindness…
Can alter the trajectory of a person’s life.
That’s what matters to me.
That, when I have the opportunity to choose grace…
I do.
At that point, the person I was talking with smiled and said,
“I don’t think your highest value is inclusion.
I think it’s redemption.”
That one…
That one feels right.
I think a lot about the word “resilient”. (I know. I know. Hide your shocked face. Sheri was thinking a lot about…a word…)
ANYWAYS…
Resilient.
What does it mean exactly?
Welp, let’s break it into three definitions.
Characterized or marked by resilience: such as
a) capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture
b) tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change
Ok. Now, for the ones in the back row. good ol’ MW up there says that it means being able to deal with shock and misfortune…without becoming deformed.
Cool. Ok. Next.
“You have faced challenges that would have overwhelmed many people, yet you found a way to keep going. You adapted, survived, and continued building a life despite circumstances that could have stopped you.”
Ok…that’s kind of sweet. Usually heartfelt. Its trying to spin a bad situation into a compliment to the person who survived it.
I’ll allow it. Next.
“…’dafuq? Did you just compliment me on only having internal injuries after being hit by a bus? Like… ‘Congrats on the trauma, boo! You rocked this!'”
Please don’t take this to mean we don’t appreciate the compliment.
We do.
We know you mean well.
But that gratitude for the way you describe us comes with so many other feelings.
“I’d rather be considered weak and never have experienced these things.”
That’s the part people don’t understand.
“I mean…tradesies? 🤷♀️”
And, sadly but truly, there’s often a question lurking underneath.
“Do you really believe I’m resilient and strong, or are you just uncomfortable?”
We hate that our stories do make people uncomfortable.
We have been judged for what was done to us.
Sometimes…we don’t know if it’s another silent judgment, a plea to stop talking about uncomfortable things, or – as is genuinely the case – a truly well-meaning compliment from someone who can’t see the scars.
Whatever the definition, I guess at least we’re not visibly deformed. 😆
One of my favorite things lately is re-reading my old blogs when they show up in the traffic. Sometimes it’s because I’m pretty freaking funny. Other times, it’s because I find wisdom I forgot somewhere along the way.
Today, someone read a blog I wrote about how I try to be intentional in sharing kindness, just in case I’m the only person who shows them kindness that day. I wrote about changing my mindset from, “What if I’m the only one today?” to “What if I’m the last?”
What if I’m the last person who has a chance to tell someone they’re beautiful before they give up on ever believing it?
What if I’m the last person to tell someone I love them before they stop believing anyone can?
What if I’m the last person they trust…and I mess that up…and they never trust again?
I have lived that way.
So re-reading that post didn’t remind me of wisdom I’d lost.
It hit differently today.
It made me realize that this feeling inside me…it’s that I’ve reached a lot of my lasts.
I have lived much of my life hoping that one day it would get better. But I don’t have much of that hope anymore. I just have a lot of plans for how I’ll live without those things.
When I think about anyone ever treating me like I’m beautiful, I don’t have hope. I have a list of people who told me I wasn’t. And a plucky, “Oh well” attitude.
“I don’t need to feel beautiful. I’ll live without that.”
When I think about anyone staying, I don’t have hope. I have a list of people who didn’t, and a lot of jokes about becoming an urban legend in the woods.
When I think about anyone caring about my feelings or my boundaries…
You get the point.
I keep going. I keep being “resilient” (I hate that fucking word). I keep laughing and living.
But hope that it will get better?
I’ve already had my lasts.
All I can do now is make sure I’m never someone else’s last.
Sooooooooo…how’s it goin’? 😉 I know I haven’t written much in a pretty long time. But…this time it’s because I’ve been trying to learn to live again after losing Aaron.
I *am* starting.
I had a rather transcendent experience at Warped Tour last November that gave me the push I needed to get my life back in action.
Since then, I left my job that I’d been at for 22 years…to finally go somewhere where I could have TIME to live. And that’s been pretty cool. Scary. And, quite honestly, humbling.
I spent a lot of years being one of the best at what I do. In my opinion (and the opinions of those close to me – even my old boss), I still AM one of the best at what I do. But, Lord….proving it to a whole new set of bosses?
HUM…BLING.
(Quick edit to add: My old boss just told me they hired a second new Tax Manager since I left…because *hair flip* one person couldn’t replace me. Boom. *sassy mic drop*)
But it’s a new environment…and more chances to find actual…life…in my life again.
I’ve tried dating a couple of times. Bad results. Horrible. 0/10 Do Not Recommend. Honestly, has reminded me that I think I’d rather be alone. At least until men figure out how to treat women again. (Side Note: Check out Chanel Yates ONCE UPON A TIME. This song makes me laugh every damn time I hear it. 😆)
I’ve made a few new friends at work…I made up with a best friend that I’d had a 3+ year falling out with…and I’ve truly worked harder at leaving my house instead of wallowing and crying about what I’ve lost.
But I still remember every bit of what I lost.
And, while it still has the ability to bring me to tears…the memories have also been like a radioactive spider that keeps biting me to remind me that losing Aaron gave me one very cool superpower.
My give-a-fuck is completely broken.
The girl who used to spiral over every disagreement, misunderstanding, and microaggression? The girl who has spent her whole life being ready for the danger…the abandonment…the manipulation…and the guilt…and blamed herself for every little piece of it?
She’s with Aaron now.
But Super Sheri?
That’s a whole different story.
Now…I can still be hurt. It’s a lot harder, but I can be. But, when I am… I’m not blaming me anymore. I’m not spiraling in anxiety. I’m just flat-out pissed the fuck off for however long I need to be…and then I move on…usually without the person who decided my boundaries weren’t important.
I’m not chasing people anymore.
I’m chasing my own peace.
I still have to deactivate Facebook sometimes (it’s currently deactivated for a few days), but not because I’m spiraling in anything. Just because…well…if I’m being honest…the world is REALLY loud these days.
And I don’t want to give the shitshow we’re living in my peace.
I can be hurt, but I’m honestly not sure if my heart can actually be broken anymore.
My family and the loss of Aaron have both shown me what heartbreak actually is.
Everything else?
Just noise.
Noise that I’m ready to respond to with, “Nah. You hurt my ears. Bye.”
I’ve always been unbreakable, but I’ve rarely given myself full credit for it.
Now…I’m like a jawbreaker.
Try to break me.
It’s only going to hurt you.
Some people will read this and think, “Sheri’s lost her mind.”
That’s fine.
Those aren’t my people.
My people know that finally getting here…gaining this superpower…being unbreakable (even to myself)…this is the greatest gift Aaron ever could have given me…and one that, I have a feeling, has him cheering on in Heaven like a new GI Joe movie just came out.
And knowing that I’m living in a way that would make Aaron proud?
That’s enough.
(Had to stop back by hours after writing this. One of my very closest friends in the whole world…my surrogate brother…texted me to tell me he’d read this and KNOWS Aaron is proud of me. That made my heart extra happy tonight. ❤️)
Preface this to say, I’m not feeling any kind of way tonight. I’m a-ok, b-ok, etc. I’ve just been meaning to get this thought down for awhile now.
So, one of the wonders of PTSD is flashbacks. Luckily, I didn’t have to deal with those. Or…so I always thought.
Like most people, I always assumed flashbacks were uncontrollable memories of the events. Like a soldier back from war will SEE visions of what he left behind.
That was when I thought all PTSD was the same, regardless of mine having a C in front of it.
I was wrong on both counts.
For many, flashbacks and nightmares aren’t memories of the actual event(s). They are being flooded with the same FEELINGS that you were flooded with during the event(s). Fear, loss of control, anger…all of it.
I only recently understood this about flashbacks. (I already knew it about dreams.)
And since learning this, I keep coming back to one particular memory that always left even me saying, “WTF?!?!?”
It was about 4.5 years ago. I was meeting some friends for a race. I was rather…meh…about going for a couple of reasons. 1. I had just found out that my mother had moved. Still somewhere close, but I didn’t kmow where yet. And that is a terrifying thing to me. 2. I knew someone I REALLY didn’t like…like she triggered me in a way only my mother can…was going to be there. But, so were my friends…so I went.
When we got there, I started to walk to the area everyone was in. But…as I walked up…I saw that woman…and I started to cry my eyes out…I was wandering in circles trying to convince myself not to flee…I was both frozen and ready to take flight. Someone I was friends with could tell I was upset…although neither of us could say why…so we just stuck together for the race and then went to get breakfast.
What I knew, even in that moment. I looked like a crazy woman. A crazy woman who wouldn’t even stop to talk to her friends, but just wandered around crying.
What I now understand, I was having a flashback.
I was already triggered by the move of my mother. Then…as I walk to my people…my life that I’d built for me…there was this woman…this blonde embodiment of my mother (to this day, I swear in EVERY way)…holding court in the center of my friends…my friends that I had already felt slipping alway…as they steadily slipped forward towards her.
In that moment, I was 10 years old again and I was losing everything. In that moment, I was 18 again and my job was on the line because she’d shown up and talked to my coworkers. I was 22 again and she was telling me she didn’t need a daughter, thus taking my little brother away. I was 24 and she was calling my fiance to tell him not to marry me.
In that moment, I was somewhere between that park and my childhood home.
In that moment, I was losing everything all over again.
In that moment, I was again a child who could only stumble around and search for a way out.
Understanding that…and applying it to other memories that suddenly make more sense…has made a huge difference for me. I no longer feel like I’m too emotional and dramatic.
I understand the strength it takes every time I stay and “finish the race.”
What used to be a point of shame is now a point of pride.
And if THAT’S not healing I don’t know what is.
/ blog
*Jazz hands*
*Jazz Hands* Mom