My story is why I wanted to create this space…..

February 2017, I found myself hooked up to heart monitors being told I had heart damage and had to remain in the hospital based on results that the medical staff felt had me at risk for having a heart attack if I was to go home. As I waited for 6 hours in the ER to get in a hospital room, I found myself right there in my WTF Moment! You know that moment when you sit there going, “Yep. I did this and this and this…and now I am at this!” Sometimes it’s not so obvious and you have to think about choices you made but other times, like in my situation, I knew.

  It goes back to 1984. It was the end of 8th grade and I had caught mono. I was never a thin child, but by the time school was about to start for my freshman year, I had dropped so much weight from being sick that I was now a size 4. And even though I stayed a size 4 all through high school, I still had a lot of issues with my insecurities. As the years went on, I was doing pageants and started modeling which you think would have made my issues better but in reality made them even worse.  After school and into my early 20’s, I was working full time and still doing small modeling things on the side.  Not long after, I got laid off from my job so I started looking for more modeling opportunities.  I met with an agent in Allentown, Pa. that offered me work if I lost weight. At the time I went to see him I was 5’6 and weighed 115 lbs.  I think about how  I would love to find this man and say what can you even be thinking when you tell someone this size they are fat? Today I would be dumbfounded to hear that come out of that person’s mouth…back then I was crushed.  He told me to drop 10 pounds and come to come back and see him in a month for a job he had available if I was thinner. So I worked my ass off working out. At this point, I would try to limit myself to eat only one meal a day, probably for the last 3-4 years. Now I allowed myself to eat 3 times a week.  I was 3 weeks into my time and down to 108. I was excited with the results, yet I knew I was not ok. There were days that I couldn’t stand in line to get checked out in a store because I didn’t have the energy. There was a time that I was driving home from the gym that I barely had enough energy to sit behind the wheel and had to crawl into my house to eat an apple and go to bed because my body just didn’t want to go any more. I was living on diet coke and Marlboro lights. I was popping numerous diet pills and laxatives a day because the ten pounds was my prize. The weekend before I was to go back to the agent, I was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. I woke up that morning with a slight scratchy throat but figured it would pass. By the end of the night I couldn’t move, I could barely pick my head off the table. I don’t remember leaving the reception other than telling my date that I  had to get me home. By the next morning I had a fever of over 105. My mom took to the ER and after blood tests (which were done forcefully by being held down due to me trying to fighting off the nurses because I was having hallucinations from the high fever that I thought the staff was trying to kill me..) I found out that I had strep and it was severe due to the lack of nutrition in my body to fight off my illness. After a few days with some food and medications I was much better. But within 2 weeks, the joints in my ankles and feet swelled to the point that I couldn’t walk. For days I was in so much pain.. My doctor had a great insight on what was going on with me because he had asked me the previous week why I had lost so much weight. So with this, and knowing I had strep, he immediately tested me for rheumatic fever.  He was correct and by the end of the whole ordeal, I ended up healthy except for walking away with a mitral valve prolapse from the fever.  One would think after all of that, that I would learn my lesson and start eating. But that wasn’t the case. It took many years and many ups and downs for that to work out.

So…fast forward 25 years to February 2017.. I knew exactly how I got to my WTF moment. But you never think it will catch up to you. Or you think once you stop and gain control that it will be over. But sometimes the damage is there and not going anywhere. It took me 33 years to get it all together. I’m now at the hospital thinking … I am following nutrition plans in a group led by an incredible woman and leading an active life style and meditating to relieve anxiety and… BOOM! I’m lying there in the hospital bed. I am thinking about having the most incredible children in the world to watch turn into these fabulous adults. And I have ideas of things I want to do with my photography and writing. And  I want to travel to see so many things I haven’t witnessed yet. And..and…and….So really?  Are you freakin kidding me??!!

Finally September 2017, and after finalizing numerous tests, I am told there is absolutely nothing wrong with my heart and my prolapse is the same as it has been for years. There is really no explanation as to why I had such intense chest pain that day back in February and apparently there was nothing to worry about.  But it did change me. Mainly because the reason that started all my issues could have been stopped….by me! I wasn’t a victim. It wasn’t like it was cancer or another horrible disease that was out of my hands to control. Controlling your own situation is a powerful thing. I take that scare as a sign from the universe that it is time to be bolder in my own life than what I was living. To take the time to be present and to appreciate what I am capable of achieving. I have taken time over the last few summers to travel, and I am taking a couple more weeks again this summer, by myself to really breathe and to hear what is in my own head. To block out the outside voices that tell me what I should be doing that are usually much louder than my heart telling me what I really want. Now I am figuring it out. I’m back to my art. And writing. And figuring out the places where I love my photography and the places that I don’t. All of this is what brings me to Turquoise Women. I’m pulling together the pieces to make a much bigger picture.  I want to share in it to allow other women to find their strengths in other stories. I want to see the beauty in every single woman’s interior mess and share in how we all overcome the crazy life situations to become a better version of ourselves.  Life is really too short to sit too long in the WTF moments .Truth liberates. I feel like so many people hide their brokenness out of embarrassment due to how people will perceive them, but I say be honest with yourself with what you have gone through and share what didn’t devour you. Share what made you stronger…what part of your journey makes you a more positive female role model. Let’s cheer one another on in life to conquer our battles and relish in one another’s successes. Let’s let other women know they are brilliant. Let’s be better humans.  And let’s listen to our hearts.