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Zoe has always been very sweet and tender. She’s very gentle and when she gets hurt, whether it’s physical or emotional, she is visibly crushed. When she gets physically hurt, she will scream the most shrilly cry imaginable. It’s extremely piercing to the ears. Taking her to get her immunizations usually leaves me wondering where I can find a woman’s medium-sized straight jacket. Zoe will literally back herself into a corner of the exam room, screaming as if her life depended on it, kicking at anyone that dared compromise her personal space. The most “wonderful” time was when this happened when Cali was still a newborn. I was holding and trying to console an infant, that didn’t know what the screaming was all about, as well as trying to hold down and console a five year old who thought she was about to be murdered by a woman in scrubs who was approaching her with a 10 foot long needle filled with unknown chemicals. It wasn’t as easy as it sounds.

When Zoe was born, I was very accustomed to a rambunctious three year old boy who didn’t care how high he was when he jumped off the play set. The only thing Malakai really cried about was when he had to go to sleep. Other than that, he was ALWAYS going and never paid much attention to bumps or scrapes along the way.

Growing up with three brothers, I was prepared for Malakai. Growing up without sisters, I was not prepared for Zoe. It isn’t natural for me to feel sympathy when Zoe starts crying inconsolably after bumping her toe. I would like to say, “Get over it. You aren’t bleeding, nothing’s broken. I didn’t cry when I pushed your 8 lb. 4 oz. body from my womb, you can handle this.” but I don’t. I force myself to hug her and reassure her that she is ok. Then she’s fine and runs off to play again. Sometimes, depending on the injury, she may cry for several minutes and may even give up what she was doing when she got hurt. It’s just not my natural reaction to console her injuries. I want her to be mostly tough and sometimes fragile. Like me.

Zoe wanted to ride her scooter to school today. I am usually over-prepared whenever we go places. I’ve got snacks and changes of clothes and tons of extra diapers and wipes in case the vehicle breaks down on the side of the road. But I decided to leave everything behind, including my phone (?!), as I followed Zoe on her scooter, while pushing Cali in the stroller. Sure enough. As sure as Murphy’s Law loves to prove me wrong, Zoe fell. Hard. She ate it bad. She was screaming loud. I could tell her skinned knees were going to be the cause of torture for her for the next two weeks. She had scraped off a chunk of skin on BOTH knees. She’s wearing shorts, I don’t have band-aids, I don’t even have water and a napkin to wipe off the blood that is now rising to the surface. She wants me to hold her, she’s wearing a backpack, I’m pushing a stroller, a scooter is now laying in the street. I was confused. We were halfway to school. Should we go to the nurse’s office? She’s saying she can’t walk. Should we go back home? Should she stay home from school? Do I carry her on my back? Damn, I should have brought the van. I should have at least brought my bike, with Cali in the trailer, so I could ambulate Zoe back home in that. I don’t even know how to get the scooter onto the stroller without it hitting Cali in the head. Then Zoe says something that instantly made me stop moving, spin around and say, “What?”. She repeats, “I’ll just ride my scooter.” What?!? Wow! “Ok, home? You’ll ride it home?” “No.” she says, “I’ll ride it to school.” In shock I mumble, “Ok, well, we’ll just go to the nurse’s office then when we get to school. So we can clean that and get some bandaids on it.” “Three?” She says, as she wipes the tears from her face. “No, I think you’ll need four. Two on each knee.” I say. For the rest of the way to school, I can’t stop telling her how proud I am that she got back on her scooter and praising her about how brave she was to still head to school and even on her scooter. I was so proud of her.

We get to school and as she’s heading to her class, I ask her if she’d like to go to the Nurse’s office. She nods but then says, “Well Ms. Staff has some bandaids.” So I let her know that we need to wash her knees off and then put the bandaids on. Just like many other times before, I knew I’d be her nurse and take care of her injuries and make her feel better. However, Zoe walked straight into her class and nonchalantly shared with her teacher about the injuries she just received on the way to school. Then she hung up her backpack and took out her supplies to get settled into class. With both of us standing near the doorway, I ask if she still wanted me to take her to the Nurse’s office. She smiled and shook her head “no” and headed to where she needed to be seated. I didn’t know what to do. This was new terrain. My little girl being brave, especially in light of the “horrific” injuries to her knees (there was blood!), was not normal. Even the slightest scrape gets pampered and a bandaid or two. Noticing what was going on, another mom mentions that I looked like I was going to cry. Maybe!! My daughter just took a gigantic leap into something I wasn’t prepared for. Independence. She didn’t even need me to put a bandaid on her wound. Not just any wound. There were TWO and there was A LOT of blood coagulating on BOTH of her knees!

I walked the rest of the way home switching emotions from joy to sadness. I didn’t know if I wanted to shower Zoe with hugs and kisses and an award or just sit in a corner and cry for an hour.

I know this is a huge turning point for her and truthfully, I hope it lasts. At least, I hope it lasts for every immunization visit from now on.

Does your past bury you or carry you?

In my life, for the most part, I’ve let my past carry me. I’ve let it be the fuel for my passion for life and people. I’ve let situations that would normally smother someone, breathe life into me. Since 1996, when I gave my life to following God, I’ve seemed a champion, a conqueror, of my unpleasant (sometimes horrendous) past. If I felt memories starting to drown me, I’d just absorb myself into something new.

Lately, something is changing in me. I’m realizing that I’m not so much a champion as much as I am a survivor. I’m still learning how to survive my past and not let it bury me. There have been times that my past has been a hazard, a hurdle, that has seemed too difficult to leap over, too tough a task to overcome. Guilt over a friend killing himself and another being murdered, the trauma of having been taken advantage of time and time again can sometimes reduce me to nothing but a shell of a person.

Would I change anything from the history that now seems to define the passionate, loving person I am today? I don’t know. There is so much that is ingrained into the foundation of who I am. So much of what I consider trauma allows me to empathize and understand people that others would walk on and ignore. So much of what disgusts me from my past allows me to protect my children in ways I never would have originally dreamed of needing protection. So much of the guilt from my past pushes me to never give in, never give up, never surrender in the fight for my own life and the fight for the lives around me.

Would I sacrifice the momentary pain, that sometimes still lingers, and the extraordinary love and compassion I have for people by changing my past? I think not.

I choose to allow my past to pave a path for my future and in the legacy I leave behind in the generations of life to come.

It’s amazing to me how music can cause so much emotion. Whether sadness, anger, joy or love, music can entice a slew of memories and can encourage action on so many levels.

As we are cleaning up all the Christmas paraphernalia in our house, Jase had his iPod playing random songs from the last several years of our lives and it filled the house with so many memories.

One song caused me to stop what I was doing and open my laptop to write this.

Brand New Colony, from The Postal Service, came on and, I swear, four years of memories overwhelmed my mind. I’m so curious as to how this one song could bring back so much.

I was born and raised in San Diego and Jase was born in Anaheim but raised in San Diego. When we moved to Alabama in September of 2003, we were searching for something new and the opportunity to finally be able to buy our first house was very persuading as we were living in our seventh rental. Within one month of moving to Alabama, we were the proud owners of our first home in Madison. The decision to move was such an amazing step of faith for me and Jase. It was exciting but also an incredibly frightening decision. We always felt like outcasts in The South and the nearest big cities were one to two hours away. Even then, the cities never felt like the big city of San Diego we once knew. The differences between the city of San Diego and the entire South were so vast that Jase and I soon realized we’d never live there for very long.

Brand New Colony became our anthem, over three years ago. The song clarified, for me, that the deep problem in our marriage wasn’t necessarily with each other but the longing we separately had to be back to a place that connected us much more closely to our roots. Hearing that song just now, brought a smile to my face. Life is so good now. Today marks the three year anniversary of getting into our car/moving van and leaving a place we were so unfamiliar with for over two years. We’ve made a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn from the negative path we were on, four years ago, and this song helped us make that imperative decision.

Brand New Colony
I’ll be the grapes fermented
Bottled and served with the table set in my finest suit
Like a perfect gentlemen
I’ll be the fire escape that’s bolted to the ancient brick
Where you will sit and contemplate your day

Everything will change…

In the 1970’s my dad hitchhiked here from Chicago and stayed with some people he barely knew in some cabin in Nederland. A few years later, my mom was sent here from Chicago by her parents, as an 18 year old, to stay with a family in South Denver for several months. Once my parents got married and had me and my brothers, we made many trips out here to visit with the family my mom stayed with. They became our family and the roots of Colorado quickly became entwined through all of our lives. My dad has always wanted to live here and although my mom has painful memories due to reasons why she first arrived in Colorado, spending years in Chicago, San Diego and Florence, Alabama has not deterred her heart’s desire to come back for good.

Before Jase and I met, he drove out here in 1995, from San Diego, with a friend with the intention of moving here. He’s very much in love with snow and has always wanted to live here.

In 2005, I stopped working for a radio station in Alabama to stay home with Kai and Zoe and a few weeks later we were sent a job opening from a former co-worker for an open web designer position, for Jase, at the Corporate Office of this radio station in Colorado Springs. We were tired of living in Alabama, so Jase flew out and interviewed in December and on January 1st, 2006, we were on our way out here with a moving truck, jammed-packed, with our life.

In the beginning of 2007, my brother fulfilled his life-long goal of moving out here with his wife and their four kids. They moved to Colorado Springs from Oklahoma.

After my parents married, my mom promised my dad that if we kids were all raised in San Diego, then she’d move with him one day to Colorado. After decades of hoping and waiting, my parents finally made the move here in July of this year.

Only as a result of Jase and I moving out here, in 2006, have we learned the details of the connection we all share with this state. It’s so strange that five different paths, stretched over three decades, could intertwine so tightly within our family.

Although it didn’t snow and my brother, Ben, and his wife, Rebekah, couldn’t make it out here this year for Christmas, this is the first year, in a LONG time, that I was completely content on Christmas. There was something that just felt right about all of us finally living out here and the satisfaction that we all had the opportunity to share in such a beautiful holiday with each other, in a state we all love so dearly.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone!

I have a love/hate relationship with media and marketing. I see their ploys and sometimes laugh at the stupidity that, sadly, most consumers of the product buy into and sometimes I am amazed at the brilliance of the corporate schemes. My “favorite” is mascara commercials. The idea that mascara can actually “lengthen” your lashes, almost a centimeter(!), in the minute it takes to apply, is a RIDICULOUS claim. My jaw dropped while watching one of these imbecilic commercials because the model had FAKE EYELASHES ON!! How stupid do these people think we are?

I have always struggled with image issues and have spent a couple of decades convincing and reminding myself that some corporate man in a suit will not cajole me into believing that I need their product to be beautiful. It’s very hard to be a girl in this world and be ok with what’s reflected in the mirror. I’ve struggled with self-image issues since elementary school. The pain, anger and sadness I still feel can sometimes paralyze me. Marketing tells us that if we cut this, buy that, drink this, shake that, wear this, drive that, then we’ll be happy and successful in life. It’s a very weary process to wake up happy, every day, and still be happy when our heads hit the pillow.

I knew this day would come but I had no idea it would come so soon. As usual, my five year old daughter was dressing up in her Princess costumes when she told me and Jase that she is holding in her breath to make her tummy skinny. My heart sank, broke and cried all in the same moment. I’ve never shared my low self-image with my children so I thought they were safe, at least for a few more years, from this issue. So as not to alarm her and shut her down, I calmly asked why she was doing that and she said “to be like a Princess because all Princesses have skinny stomachs.” Now, along with my heart getting run over with a steamroller, I felt like I was going to vomit. I wanted to immediately run upstairs and collect all the Princess movies we had and toss them outside for a farewell bonfire. Obviously I don’t really “hate” the Disney Princesses, I’ve never met them so I don’t know them personally… Seriously though, their fake (not to mention provocative) image irritates me and is now making my five year old wish she had a smaller stomach. To witness my tiny, young daughter ALREADY feel like she wasn’t beautiful enough made everything in me want to scream and cry at the same time. We spent a long time encouraging her that she is gorgeous just the way she is and the way God intended her to be and that most REAL Princesses actually don’t have skinny stomachs. We pointed out that there would be something wrong with a real human being if they looked like the Princesses in the movies, they’d have to be missing guts and a heart. However, I still get nauseated and inflamed when thinking about how those movies have already negatively influenced her mind.

Out of all the things in this world that I am passionate about, the number one message that I want to spread is to ‘find beauty within yourself and everyone else.’ Outer beauty is what gives us false perceptions of good character, love and happiness. I’ve seen the most beautiful people, in the world, give a list of flaws they feel they have and share how unhappy they are. I’ve seen men and women transform their faces and bodies into unrecognizable beings, for the sake of “beauty”. Once the cutting and tucking begins, when (and why) will it stop? Once you see a flaw that needs to be surgical enhanced and you “fix” it, your body will continue to decay and sag and the surgeries continue until you become like Michael Jackson and doctors start refusing to work on you and you have to wear a surgical mask on your face because you look like Frankenstein now. Yeah, I’m ranting. I’m pissed at the culture of “beauty”. I’m angry that feelings of failure to attain beauty have cost the lives of so many young kids and adults. I’m angry that most Americans will reject people or accept them SOLELY based on looks and then reject those they initially accepted when they find that the “perfect” people really do have flaws. I’m angry that we feel we know someone based on their outer appearance. We feel that maybe the beautiful ones have it all together and have perfect lives and since we only see flaws in our own reflections, we feel we’ll never measure up. We end up living our lives as unhappy people because “the grass is always greener on the other side” and we’ll never be good enough.

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.”

-Proverbs 31:30

Dove airbrushed commercial.

From elementary school until adulthood… so true.

Most of the time when I lay down to go to bed, I toss and turn (sometimes up to an hour or more) as I try to coax my brain away from non-fiction to fiction.

The other night, after about the bazillionth time of me and Jase laughing and telling each other to stop talking and go to sleep, I thought of this:

Did the word “delete” exist before computers?

That really sent my mind whirling as I pondered the existence of the action of “delete”.

So I asked Jase and we talked about it for a while.

We came to this conclusion: Yes, “delete” did exist before computers as I remember using the delete key on a typewriter. However, it was an endangered word due to it’s near lack of existence. Before typewriters, I highly doubt the word was even a twinkle in Merriam-Webster’s eye.

Although when I just googled, “invention of delete” (cool title for something), I found this and being close to suffering from OCD when it comes to spelling, I nearly had a heart attack. Then I read the comments and saw the category it was under. Interesting read, just the same though.

Every now and then, I get in a rut. It’s odd how it always follows an amazing day or set of days. Life seems bleak and for some reason, communication with anyone becomes scarce to nil, on their end as well as mine.

Today is one of those days.

I try not to look in the mirror because there are too many things wrong with the reflection. Loneliness heaps up on me like a ton of bricks as two of my kids are in school and my 1 year old is sleeping. The house is quiet and the bottle of wine in the fridge seems extremely tempting. I feel exhausted and worthless and would rather curl up on my bed and sleep all day than clean the kitchen, living room, bathrooms and bedrooms.

I worry and think a little too much about life on earth after my death or the death of my loved ones.

It’s a really scary place to be.

I would find myself in these places a lot more frequently as a teen and would self-injure, get drunk or high to get through it. Suicide was a frequent thought when Jase and I lived in the South for two years. Now I just don’t do anything when sadness kicks in and I think way too much. Sometimes I end up just surfing around online for hours on end, like a zombie.

Blame it on hormones, the devil, being a stay-at-home mom (with little to no recognition for hard work), God’s testing, lack of faith/prayer/joy, lack of sleep, talking about my past with others, or the normal strain of life… and the darkness is still there. It doesn’t matter where it stems from.

Oddly, sometimes I like being in this place. I’m comforted with the normalcy of pain. It seems a lot more real to me than joy. I’ve seen way too many fake people being nice or happy than fake people being sad or angry. It’s strange to me how much more real of an emotion this is than my usual joy.

Sometimes these moments pass in a day and other times it takes a week or two.

It’s a struggle just to find things to be happy about. Things that are normally funny to me don’t even make me crack a smile. I struggle with not letting the trauma I’ve put on myself, the fear of being a failure, or the pain that others have inflicted on me, overwhelm me completely.

It’s in times like these that I am so grateful to have children, am married and am a mentor. There have been times where I’ve curled up in a ball, neglecting my children, in my closet, and cried my eyes out in their presence and times where I’ve locked myself in my bathroom and just sat in a corner and bawled while trying to get suicidal images out of my head. There have also been times when I’ve thrown things and screamed, at the top of my lungs, at Jase.

Even so, they still love me. In the mistakes that I make and the pain that I cause, they still love and accept me.

Simply the fact that I have people and innocent children loving and depending on me helps me fight stronger and better.

I’ve heard it said that people should not depend on others to get them out of their depression, but I do. Of course I depend on God, first, but I don’t know where I’d be without Jase, our kids and the many other people that have shown me love.

The good memories, laughter and fun times sustain me.

Now, to just be able to stay focused on that…

**Clarification: After doubting that I had actually thrown thing”s” at Jase, I discussed this with him and we really only have ONE recollection of me throwing something at him. Readers, there is no need to fear because (after being married for 10 years and moving 11 times) not only was it a one-time throw but it was a plastic bowl and… it missed him and hit the wall. So, rest assured. **

I learned a long time ago that a lot of comedians deal with depression and use laughter to cover that up. It was a sad realization to me but then I realized that it’s always been a coping mechanism for me as well. When feeling shy and awkward, I’d tell a joke and people would like me. I learned in junior high (being the outcast / Caucasian minority) and in all three of my high schools that I could fit in better if I just made people laugh. It helped to have a crazy, funny, out-going dad and 3 crazy brothers. Laughter is what overwhelmed our meals and scarce family times. But music and laughter have been an integral part of me sustaining this life.

However, I’m finding that I seriously have an addiction to laughter. Oh sure, there are the times when I’d rather silently sit and study the world and people around me. But, for the most part, I find life so much easier to handle if laughter if sought out and shared.

I spent an entire weekend, laughing more than I have in years. I forgot how freeing and energizing it was to laugh.

I also notice that I’ve lost some inches around my waist. Oh yeah! There just aren’t enough, so, look out diet books!

I’m writing a new one: “Tell a Joke + Hear a Joke= Lose weight!”

Oh, which reminds me, Jase and I created an amazing book within the last couple of years. We had this amazing epiphany that when you don’t have money, you don’t eat. So… here is the title and the contents of the entire book:

Lose Weight By Giving Me Your Money

by Jase and Jen Smith

“Give us all of your money. It will prevent you from over-eating. Giving us all of your money will also make you feel better because you will be losing weight AND helping the poor, at the same time. The End.”

I think it’s pure genius logic.