Now before you get the wrong idea about this post let’s chat about fighting.

I am a strong minded, direct opinionated lady.  I am very comfortable speaking my mind or telling others what to do.  I honestly came this way!  I love my Heavenly Parents and Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  I love my family and country.  I am grateful for the freedoms I enjoy and understand the price that has and is being paid for them.  I pray for peace.  I seek resolutions when problems arise.  I don’t enjoy confrontations nor will I back down if one arises.  I know how to have tough conversations and end them with love and acceptance.

No matter if you are open and direct or prefer to be reserved when it comes to sharing your thoughts and feelings we all have to fight sometimes.

Early in our lives many of us fought our parents.  We fought against their views, beliefs or rules that didn’t match our own.  We grew into young adults and needed to fight to understand ourselves, our swirling thoughts about life, love, school and who we ‘should’ be.  Then we had to figure out who we were going to be as a ‘grown up’.  This often came with other internal fights against what our parents, family or friends thought would be the next best steps compared to our individual thoughts and feelings.  There is a lot of room for turmoil in this space alone.

Then for me it was a new fight to love and be loved.  Inside of this I realized I needed to fight mental and emotional scars from childhood and being raised in an abusive home.  I had to fight for my own peace and balance.  Then it was a fight to provide for myself and Carlie as a single mom.  I had many financial fights working to make ends meet.

When Trace and I got married it was a new fight to blend lives to strengthen and deepen love and understanding.  I learned new things about acceptance and compromise.  Trace walked into a wife and child overnight which took some adjusting on all our parts.  This has been and is still one of the most rewarding fights of my life.  Being in a serious committed relationship takes effort, patience, forgiveness, respect and loyalty.  We have been married for 21 years now and have had way more good times then bad.  I can honestly say we truly enjoy being together.  Any ‘real’ fights have happen with an underlining desire to make us work.  Being happily married is worth all the effort or ‘fight’ needed.  I am so deeply grateful for the love and friendship Trace and I share.  It is one of life’s greatest gifts to me!

I have had to and am still fighting through the psychical effects of toxic mold exposure.  I spent years so painfully ill I prayed to die over and over again.  I am so much better then I was and yet still struggle everyday with various issues often leaving me barely able to function.  I keep fighting for my own healing and physical wellness.  I am worth it!

Now just over eleven months after my sweet Joey chose to take his life I find myself in a different kind of fight.  I am fighting through and inside of grief and pain deeper then I have ever felt.  I am fighting to find balance in the despair over what I lost while feeling gratitude for all I DO have.  I am fighting to learn what my life looks like now without my baby, without a child who still needed ‘raising’.  I am fighting to appreciate having new time and money freedoms.  I am fighting to support Trace, Carlie and TJ inside their own journeys of grief in losing Joey.  I am fighting for Joey’s friends, for there peace and lasting balance.

So, I will continue to fight!  I seek peace.  I look for light in the dark thoughts and feelings that come. I gather love for myself and others.  I will keep living, loving and giving as I know Joey would want me to do.

I invite you to keep fighting.  Even when your tired.  Even when it feels like it isn’t worth it.  Even when you think it doesn’t matter.  FIGHT!

Life is precious!

Time is short.

Love is real!

All my best,

Genna