Empowering Daughters of God

As I stood at the back of the only home I had ever known the familiar voice of my father said "you can take them if you want them, I'm just throwing them out!"  My eyes flooded with tears as I stood looking at the 2 big black garbage bags full of the images from my entire life sitting beneath the large garbage can.  I couldn't do it, I did not want the extra burden of going through them all and intensifying my heartbreak.  I replied, " I don't want them, if you don't want them why would I want them?"  Of course I said that out of anger after being lectured about not commenting on the picture of his new girlfriend hanging over the fireplace mantle.  A woman he had never bothered to tell me about in letters or cards.  A woman that if he married I would not be invited to the wedding, he stated clearly. I appreciated the fact that he at least offered them to me, despite the cruelty that this act seemed to inflict upon me.  I let a little pride get i...

It's a little ironic, in a way, that the very thing you carry around with you everyday could also be the cure, weight!  Of course I am talking about two different kinds of weight.  The weight I have carried for quite sometime is worry and anxiety.  The other weight that I am talking about is heavy weight.  You would think that someone with anxiety, no matter how minor or severe, would feel claustrophobic, or more anxious by laying under a weighted blanket.  Well that was my first thought when I considered trying it. I know what it's like to wake up and feel so weighted down and nervous to even start the day.  I know what it's like to wake up during the night or never go to sleep due to irregular breathing, pulsing in my head, and even palpitations.  I know what its like to play head games with myself to get the courage to walk into the doctors office and then once I'm there I look like some crazy lady in the corner taking deep breaths, sniffing in ...

When I was a young child I remember having many aspirations.  Once I wanted to be a doctor, then a writer, then a singer, then a hairdresser, then a Baker, then a teacher, then a artist, then a interior designer, then a builder, then a psychologist, then a lawyer, then a doctor again.  I guess in a way I have become all of those things, not professionally, but for myself and people I love!  I've always had this "Jack-of-all-trades" vibe going on.  I always thought it was a good thing, being pretty good at a lot of things, rather than just really good at one thing.  Afterall the institution that is college, the higher academics want to turn everyone into a "well rounded" person.  One test made me kind of doubt myself and all of that. I've always hated tests!  Even the ones that were supposed to help you decide your future!  In the 9th grade I took one of these tests, its purpose was to help you decide what direction to go based on your strength...

In 1992 Cedar City experienced a larger earthquake than they had in a while.  It was closer to the St. George area, but measured a 5.9 magnitude.  It was not huge or damaging, but it was scary.  My mother was always up in the earliest hours of the morning doing her sewing.  She had her own business and that is when she worked the most.  One early fall morning she heard something that sounded like a freight train and suddenly she knew what was coming.  She heard it before we all felt it.  She yelled at everyone in the house waking them and ran down the stairs and out the door.  I remember running out of the house while feeling the ground shake and seeing the walls move.  My oldest brother jumped the entire stair way to get out of the house as pictures were falling off of the walls.  It all happened so fast and yet it felt like it lasted forever.  It probably would not take a giant earthquake to damage our 100 year old, adobe b...