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Not a Post about Travel

 Spring 2008


I started blogging in April of 2008. At the time blogging saved my life. I don't mean that dramatically. I mean it actually saved my life. 

I started blogging because I hated my life and I hated myself and I really, really hated my marriage. It was during that time that I was really toying with how to escape my marriage. However for a lot of reasons, some of which we may discuss here at some point, I chose to stay.

Staying was really only made possible by my mostly LDS friends (and non-LDS family) from high school who also blogged. I think it may have been an LDS trend among stay-at-home-moms at the time to have a blog. Their stories about their families and their love held me together and helped me make sense of the life I was trying to build. I wanted the life they had. They had loving husbands and the perfect houses with cute hand-crafted items; they cooked amazing meals and baked while loving their kids and being amazing mothers and women. Inspired by their dedication to their lives and the stories they told, and my love for writing, I turned to blogging to save my family.

As always, I believed if I changed just a little bit more this marriage might just work.

I gave up my job at Blue Man Group in Las Vegas. I enrolled in UNLV for my Master's in English. I blogged.

If Mormon women gave me blogging, Blue Man Group reminded me that I am a creative individual who lives for Art and for Writing. If you ever go to Vegas and see a show, please remember hundreds of people work to make that possible. Almost all of those people are incredibly talented artists who are trying to sort out how to survive in this world as an artist. Vegas is a vampire of talent, but people throng there; seeking their people and a community in which Art is recognized and valued. Before I landed at BMG I was fearful of my art and my gift and my voice. BMG taught me that however you find your voice - SING, baby, SING.

And so I found the courage sing and the strength to stay.

I believed, as a good student of literature, the story we tell about ourselves is as important - or more - than our reality. If I could reframe my life into a story that made sense and was beautiful and perfect. The one where I was the perfect mom, Pete was the perfect husband, and my three glorious children were the perfect people, maybe those things would then be true.

And so I tried. Again. 

I stayed. I wrote. I tried to rewrite. And I last another 8 years.

This is a love story. But not the love story you want to read about. Or the love story where everyone is perfect and love comes in on a chariot horse and saves the day. It is the loves story of a family who found their way together. And apart. A broken family. A story of a family who continues to find their way each and every day. A story I hope to retell. 

On April 24th 2008, I posted my first post dedicated to my dear, high school friend Alisa. She and I have a long history of written correspondence and friendship since 1990ish. She is a true and loyal friend. During the divorce I hid my previous posts and all former blogs. I didn't want to share the memories or the stories or my failures with the world. My rewriting did not work. My blogs are all private now. It is a goal of mine to go through these and retell the stories from then. I want to remember and recount and rewrite and to tell the truth. I have had a beautiful, terrible, magnificent life. I do not think my life is inherently worth remembering, but I am called within my bones to write and I only have the spirit right now to write this life. I have no passion for fiction. It seems odd as I teach English and live in the written word all of the time and teach fiction. But I have found over my life that real life is more tragic, more beautiful, and more important to remember than the people we create. The people I love deserve to be written and remembered. And the life of a woman in the middle of America - during this life - might be something to at least offer reflection.

And so I set out today to work at remembering the life I tried to write. I think my kids deserve it. I need it. You can read it if you want.

It is a love story. 

The greatest love story of my life. The only love story.

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