Tell the World I'm Coming Home!!!

Last August while I was vacationing in Florida, I went down to the inlet that connects the intra-coastal canal to the Atlantic Ocean on the morning of my last day there.  My friend John directed me to go to the inlet, and I went there with a purpose:  In my hand I carried an empty wine bottle with a letter sealed inside.  The letter was a prayer to God, pouring my heart out to Him and asking him to please help me find a way to return to Florida to stay forever.  You see, I finally realized not long ago that I’m just not happy here in Illinois. I do not fit in with rural Midwestern culture, and I just simply don’t belong here.  A carefree, independent glamour girl does not belong in a land of soccer moms, Tupperware parties, white picket fences, a-husband-and-2-kids-before-age-25, and other cliché small-town conformities. After having a lifelong obsession with the ocean since I was practically a baby and absolutely despising cold weather, my last visit to southern Florida convinced me that is where I truly belong.  Whenever I go there to visit, I truly feel right at home…like I’m supposed to be there.  Sure it’s fun looking at all the beautiful palm trees everywhere and the beaches because I’m a tourist from a very different region of the country, but there is still something about all of that that just feels like home to me.  After my last visit, I became desperate to find a way to move there and live out the rest of my life there.  I began by obtaining a Florida Teacher’s Certificate and applying for various professional jobs in the southeastern counties of Florida.  Unfortunately, with the tanking economy and job market (and a mailing address that is 1,200 miles away), getting many responses from job search efforts has been dismal.  So in December, I took a gamble and decided to try a different route to get to Florida:  I applied to graduate school at Florida Atlantic University.  My last 4 months have been spent taking multiple exams for my Florida teaching certificate and entrance into FAU.  Anyway, I went to the pier at the inlet that morning in August, took the bottle containing my message to God inside, and tossed it into the fast-moving water  to be carried away out to sea.  Sometime since then, God must have found my message to Him, because today I suddenly received a surprise email from the director of the History Department at Florida Atlantic University welcoming me to the graduate student program for the Fall 2012 term.  In merely 5 months from now, I will be going home to Florida to stay forever.

I was not expecting to receive an answer regarding my acceptance so soon.  I had applied for admission last December and had been diligent in fulfilling all of the admission requirements as quickly as possible, but I was not expecting to receive an answer until after my upcoming in-person meeting with the Department at FAU.  So today’s announcement was a wonderful unexpected surprise.  Within the next week, I will be travelling to Florida to meet with the faculty and have lunch with some fellow graduate students, take a campus tour, get started on the Financial Aid process, look housing options, open a bank account, and interview for one of the coveted Teacher Assistant positions at FAU.  If offered a position as a teacher’s assistant, it will pay part of my tuition as well as pay me a monthly stipend for income.  Although I would be very busy as both a full-time graduate student and a teacher’s assistant, becoming a T.A. would be a blessing for me since I will be in need of income once I leave my current job here in Illinois.  With my background as a school teacher, I should be a strong candidate for one of the T.A. positions.  It would also provide me with invaluable teaching experience at the college level since I want to work as a college professor after graduation.

It’s hard for me to believe that in just a few months I will be leaving behind every person and physical surrounding I have ever known and living out the rest of my life in an entirely different part of the country.  As much as I dislike rural Illinois, this is all I have ever known for my entire life.  As much as I can’t wait to get the Hell out of this place, the thought of being completely alone all the way across the country from my family and friends still makes me feel a little apprehensive. I have already begun growing a small circle of acquaintances in the area I will be moving to and I hope to quickly make many more friends upon moving to Boca Raton, because I’m going to need a little help getting settled in at first. With no family nearby, any help that my new friends can offer me will be greatly appreciated! As the winter season continues on for the next two months, I will take joy in knowing that this will be the last winter I will ever endure. And when the warm days of spring and summer arrive, they will last forever for me.  As I trade in the cornfields, colored leaves, and snow storms for palm trees, ocean, and surf boards, and hurricanes, I will still spend the remainder of my time here reflecting on the landscapes, special places, and memories I have grown up with. I know now that I should reflect and savor these images and experiences before I close the door on this chapter of my life and open the door to the next one.  You can be sure that I will be impatiently counting down the weeks until my moving day on August 4th, but the time will go by quickly.  To my friends and loved ones in Illinois, get your "Jordan time" in while you still can, because this may be the last time you get to see me or be with me.

Right now, I can't describe the peace and fulfillment I feel when picturing my future life of endless summer weather, sea storms, sailboats, sea shells, seafood, surf boards, walks along the beach with my iPod in the evenings, driving to work past rows of palm trees in the mornings, and a new home by the sea FILLED with nautical-inspired decor.  It's exactly what I often daydreamed about for many years.  And someday when my time here on this earth is through, I will be laid to rest in the sea where I belong...a true mermaid's burial.  I asked God to give me this life I envisioned for myself, and He did.  He understood that this is where I truly belong, and He helped make it happen.  And for the rest of my life I will be able to tell everyone how He did this for me.  My prayers have been answered, but the work has just begun.

The Wonders of Permanent Cosmetics

Apparently even many of my closest friends do not know this, but I have been filling in my eyebrows with a brow pencil for the last 13 years.  Over the years, I mastered the feathering & shaping technique and became so skilled at it (as you can see above) that many of my friends and fellow beauty pageant contestants had no idea that my eyebrows weren't fully real.  In fact, very little of them were real anymore, because I barely even had any eyebrows anymore.

I first began getting my eyebrows waxed when I was 12 years old.  As a kid, I had some pretty monstrous thick eyebrows....and this example was even AFTER I began getting them waxed!!  So you probably can't even imagine what they looked like before I began getting them waxed!

Over the course of 10+ years of waxing and plucking, my eyebrows got thinner and thinner and eventually stopped growing back almost completely.  And thus my face began to look bare and naked with almost no eyebrows left to frame it.  Not attractive.  Hence, the eyebrow pencil became my new best friend.

After several years of having to painstakingly draw my eyebrows on every day with a pencil, I began to get tired of the hassle.  Then one day while I was getting my nails done, I noticed that all of the Asian women in the nail salon had perfectly shaped eyebrows.  I complimented one of the girls on her beautiful brows, and she admitted to me that her eyebrows weren't real either....they were tattooed!!  Out of curiosity and fascination, I began questioning her about how it was done, how much it cost, how much it hurt, how permanent it was, etc. As much as I hated having to mess with an eyebrow pencil every day, I was very leery about getting anything permanent tattooed onto my body....especially my face!  That is the reason why I decided I would never get a tattoo on my body, because it's too permanent and I know that someday years from now I won't want it anymore and it will be stuck on my body.  However, after mulling it over in my mind for a few weeks, I finally decided I would go ahead and take my chances with getting permanent eyebrows instead of having to draw them on for the rest of my life.  I figured that having a set of eyebrows permanently tattooed onto my face wasn't something I would quickly tire of having, and as long as I made sure they were perfectly shaped BEFORE the tattooing began, I would be happy with the results.  I had seen a billboard displayed in my hometown for many years for Grace Your Face Permanent Cosmetics.  I checked out the business webpage on the internet and decided to give them a call.  I met for a consultation with Debbi Sawyer, the owner, and went over all of the facts about the procedure.  To my relief, cosmetic tattooing is not as permanent as a real tattoo.  It lasts up to 5 years and requires a few sessions at first, but gradually fades and requires periodic touch-ups after awhile.  This helped ease my nervousness about having permanently shaped eyebrows.  So I said "Let's do it" and took the plunge.  Here are the end results after three sessions.....

It certainly looks a lot better and makes a huge difference, doesn't it!!  Before tattooing, Debbi helped me to painstakingly draw on the perfect eyebrow shape I was looking for and then filled it in with cosmetic powder injected through a tattooing needle.  A topical anesthetic is applied before tattooing to numb the area and reduce pain.  Most women who have cosmetic tattooing done report that they feel no pain at all.  I must be a little different, because I always feel some pain no matter how much numbing cream we use beforehand.  I also have quite a bit of bleeding during the procedure, which is also not typical for most women.  Once the procedure is complete, you have to apply salve several times a day for a week to help the micro-wounds heal.  It's also common to have some pain and swelling afterwards, so I use Ibuprofen and an ice pack.  Due to tanning and the skin-regeneration products I use, my eyebrows seem to fade more than others, so I have a touch-up done every few months. According to Debbi, my eyebrows are by far the most voluptuous she has ever done...most women seeking her services ask for eyebrows that far less shapely and more natural looking.  But when I told her I wanted "Kim Kardashian eyebrows", she was more than up for the challenge!

Grace Your Face Cosmetics does cosmetic eyebrow, eyeliner, eyeshadow, lip liner, and full lip tattooing.  I absolutely LOVE my new eyebrows and no longer having to mess around with eyebrow pencils.  Whether I'm just waking up in the morning, going swimming, or doing any other activity, I always have perfectly shaped eyebrows that won't come off with water or sweat.  If you're interested in looking into permanent cosmetics for yourself, visit Debbi's website at http://www.graceyourface.net   I can vouch that she does EXCELLENT work!!!



Things That I'm Thankful For

Beginning on November 1^st, several of my friends have been counting down the days until Thanksgiving by listing the things they are thankful for each day on Facebook.  I got to thinking about it and thought that was a pretty neat idea.  In this day and age when daily life can get so hectic and stressful and when the entire world is in a depressing economic slump, it helps to remember that there are still some good things that we should be thankful for.  So in honor of the month of November and Thanksgiving, here is my list of things I am thankful for:

I am thankful for my college education and degree that has opened up new worlds of opportunity for me.

I am thankful to have a good paying job that allows me to pay the bills and live a comfortable life.  This one is especially important given that so many other people all around me right now do not have a job and are struggling to provide for their families and pay their mortgages, rent, and bills.

I am thankful that I’m a financially independent, self-sufficient woman who can take care of herself and doesn’t have to worry about anyone else or depend on anyone else.  I’m not a single mother struggling to raise a child with no education and very little money, and I’m not dependent on a man for shelter, food, money, and other necessities for survival.

I am thankful that I have a healthy, attractive, fully-functioning body that I am happy with and wouldn’t change a thing about it.  No breast implants or liposuction for this girl!!

I am thankful that I have a handsome, sweet, hard-working, gentleman in my life who has shown me so much kindness, understanding, and respect.  He is truly a rare prize and I thank God everyday that I know him.

I am thankful for my goofy, crazy, fun-loving Barnstable family who has accepted me with open arms since the day I was born.  They even paid a lot of money and fought to give me their name so that I would always and indisputably be one of them. My former family turned their backs on me and my brother when we were just kids, but the Barnstables have always been there for us and treated us like true family.  They are a constant source of laughs and entertainment at any time, any place, and any occasion!!

I am thankful to have so many friends in almost every state of the country who love and care about me and are always there for me when I need someone.  They are a constant source of support, encouragement, and laughter.

I am thankful for the AMAZING feats I have accomplished in my life—winning 2 state beauty pageant titles and one national title, walking the runway in 3 huge fashion shows, appearing in a full-page spread in Tiara Magazine, meeting and befriending several celebrities such as Walt Willey and Jojo Sayson, and Amanda Marcotte, and becoming a budding national spokeswoman for reproductive rights.  Sometimes when I look back on all the various things I have done in just the past few years, I think to myself “WOW!! I’ve had a pretty awesome life!!”

I am thankful for various little things—my beautiful brand new car that runs like a dream, OnStar navigation, Satellite Radio, having the know-how to build and run my very own website, my two adorable kitties Bailey and Lexy, my awesome gift for music that I inherited from my family, etc.

And finally, I am thankful for the new blessing and chapter that is about to begin in my life—starting the rest of my life in southern Florida, my true home.  It has taken me 31 years, but soon I will finally be where I truly belong—next to the ocean where it never gets cold.  I am always completely at peace and in my own element when I’m near the water and I’ve known since I was very young that I somehow belong there.  It’s almost overwhelming to think that I’m almost there.  Once I’m home in Florida, I won’t ever be leaving.  I plan on living out the rest of my life there and being buried at sea when I die.

Well there you have it.  You know, I think this list would be a good thing for me to read on days when I’m discouraged or feeling down to remind myself that no matter what comes my day each day, I still have a pretty blessed and awesome life!!

Florida, Here I Come!!!

In less than 48 hours from now, I will be escaping down to West Palm Beach and Miami, Florida for 9 days of sun, sand, and lots of sea!!!  This will be my 3rd trip to Florida.   This year I went through VRBO.com and rented condo in Lake Worth right next to the Intracoastal Canal, a mere 3blocks away from the ocean.  I have found that renting a condo can be quite a bit cheaper than staying in a hotel for a week.   My itinerary includes a steady diet of sea food and margaritas all week long; many long days of sunbathing, swimming, and seashell hunting from sunrise until sundown; snorkeling with tropical fish and shooting underwater photos at Peanut Island; visiting a topless beach in South Beach, Miami; and sailing on the high sea in a 35 foot sailboat!!!  I will be sailing with Captain Don Newmann from the West Palm Beach Sailboat Club in his sailing vessel.  Capt. Don is also a sailing instructor, so I will be learning a thing or two about how to operate a sailboat during our expedition on the Atlantic Ocean.  We will be sailing down the Florida coast on the Gulf Stream wind, which Capt. Don says all professional sailors throughout the last 500 years know that the Gulf Stream wind is THE BEST air stream to sail by.  It provides for optimal sailing conditions, especially in the crystal clear waters of the south Atlantic and Caribbean.  I am just beside myself with excitement; I have never before been on a sailboat or out on the ocean in my entire life!!  I am well-prepared for this trip in every way possible.  I have a brand new wardrobe of sexy beach-wear clothing from Victoria’s Secret, I have a rental car lined up so I can easily get around, and I have compiled a special Florida playlist of music on my Ipod complete with nautical music by Sting to listen to while walking and relaxing seaside and Latin tunes by Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez, and Enrique Iglesias to listen to while driving and doing whatever else. The next three weeks will be spent doing pre-trip body maintenance--hair coloring, acrylic nail fill and pedicure, body waxing, and exercise work-outs to ensure that I will look HOTT on the beach.  I will be flying out of St. Louis at 6:00 AM and arriving in Florida at around 11:30 Eastern Time, so I should be lying on the beach with a drink in my hand by noon!! :)

What's With All These Grumpy Old Men Ranting About Birth Control?

Why do Orrin Hatch and other grumpy old men hate birth control so much??

On August 1^st Kathleen Sebellius, Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services, accepted the recommendations by scientists at the Institute of Medicine to mandate that all insurance companies cover the full cost of birth control without co-pay.  This recommendation was based off the scientists' findings that increased access of FDA-approved birth control to all women would greatly improve women’s health, reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and cut down on health care costs associated with multiple pregnancies and complications.  The IOM recommended that all health insurance carriers cover the cost of birth control with no co-pay in order to make prescription contraception easier to access by low-income women.  This new regulation will not only cover the costs of contraception, but will also cover the costs for breast pumps for nursing mothers, STD-testing and treatment, and counseling for breastfeeding, STD's, and domestic violence.  Basically, these new regulations will require that insurance companies cover more of the costs for preventative care, which will in turn keep people healthier and keep the health care and Welfare costs down.  I had no doubt that Sebellius would affirm these recommendations, because making sure women have good access to preventative care (and yes, birth control IS preventative care since it treats a myriad of female disorders and prevents unwanted pregnancy) will improve their health and in turn cut down on health care costs.  It costs FAR less for insurance companies to cover the costs of month birth control than it does to pay for pre-natal care, delivery, and health care for the children once they are born.  The cost of birth control can range from $50 - $100 per month.  The cost of raising ONE child from birth to age 18 is about $150,000 or more.  You do the math.  With the way our current economy is in complete shambles and millions of people are suddenly finding themselves without a job and a means to provide for their children, you’d think EVERYONE would be on board with doing whatever it takes to help women stay healthy and limit their family size.

But alas, this is not the case.  As soon as the GOP caught wind of these recommendations and heard the words "women", "health care", and "access to birth control", their emergency alarms went off just as I expected they would.  And oh boy did the sh*t hit the fan!!!  Literally every misogynistic anti-woman politician has now come out of the woodwork to voice their backwards opinions on women and women’s health.  Their ranting against women is so insane and comical that I’ve been sitting back and treating it like entertainment!  You can’t turn on Fox News anymore without hearing nonstop, venomous nonsense about “irresponsible, promiscuous sluts” and how cheaper birth control will suddenly turn ALL women in the US into raging whores.  It’s as infuriating as it is hilarious.  Repeating their statements myself just doesn’t do enough justice, so I’ll just let you listen to their incoherent ranting and raving against women yourselves…

Bill O’Reilly says that “Women who have sex are always blasted out of their minds and won’t remember to take their birth control anyway, so what’s the point?”  I guess he doesn't understand that birth control is something a woman takes every day, not just right before she has sex.

Sean “Insannity” Hannity snorts that birth control “has nothing to do with women’s health and is just an excuse to screw around” while vehemently defending Viagra and other male enhancement drugs as “valid medication to treat a real medical problem”.  Please.

Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King laments that birth control will completely wipe out the American population...and boo-hoo's over the fact that the average American woman only has 2 children on average.  Guess we ladies better start doing our patriotic duty and start pumping out half a dozen kids or more!!

Listen real good there, Ladies!  Do you hear that??  THIS is what YOUR government thinks of you, Ladies.  Your elected government officials think you are nothing more than worthless, promiscuous sluts who can’t be trusted to take control of your own health and fertility….even if you are married and monogamous. To the millions of women out there who use prescription birth control to treat all kinds of female disorders or who are MARRIED and are trying to plan your family the way you want, are you going to take this garbage or are you going to speak out and fight back against such hateful lies and nonsense?  Let’s look at the facts here:  98% of American women already use some form of birth control.  Just think about that for a second….98%.  That is an overwhelming majority.  There is not a single TV show that 98% of Americans watch or a sports team that can claim 98% of  Americans as its fans.  In a political era as polarized as the one we’re  in now, it seems that birth control is the ONLY thing that virtually everyone is in agreement on!!  If you don’t feel insulted by these men insinuating that you are an immoral, promiscuous slut for using birth control, you should be.  These pigs have no right to make such gross assumptions about the entire female population. Having access to more affordable birth control is not going to suddenly make every married (or single) woman start opening her legs for every man she sees.  Grow up.

What exactly is going on here??  Where is all of this anti-birth control nonsense coming from?  In this modern day and age, with the high costs of raising children and other living necessities, why do so many male politicians seem to be in favor of making women give birth to litters of children??  To answer this question, we have to look deeper beneath the surface of these men to understand what’s really going on.  This anti-women’s health and anti-birth control stance has nothing to do with religion, morals, or common sense and has everything to do with an extreme patriarchal sense of male entitlement.  These men are on an obscene power trip of astronomical proportions and, to be quite frank, these are the type of men who deep down think that everyone on earth--especially women--should bow down and worship their Almighty Penises.  To these men, women are nothing more than chattel whose bodies are to be “owned and operated” by men.  This explains exactly why men like Sean Insannity vehemently defend easy insurance-covered access to Viagra so that ‘Little Hannity” can be ready for action at any minute, yet begrudge women any kind of health care that might prevent them from becoming impregnated and giving birth to all products of conception created by their Almighty Penises.  To these guys, their penises are sacred and every pregnancy and child women bear as a result of these men’s sexual conquests are a living trophy of their “manliness”.  It’s why you sometimes might hear a guy brag about how many times he got his wife or girlfriend pregnant or brag about how many children he has (even if he doesn't provide any support for them); it’s just a way for him to show off his male virility.  Of course, a REAL man with a modicum of maturity understands that children are expensive and thus works with his wife/girlfriend to plan pregnancies accordingly.  But obviously, we’re not talking about maturity when discussing men like O’Reilly and Hannity.  These are nothing more than man-children with bloated egos who want total control over women’s bodies and could care less if our physical health is dependent upon taking hormonal contraceptives to treat debilitating female disorders.

I for one am very excited and pleased to hear about the new birth-control coverage regulations. We all know from my pageant platform “Our Bodies, Our Futures” that I am dedicated to preventing unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and making contraception more accessible to those who need it is THE #1 way to do this!!!  The misogynistic Right-Wing blowhards can scream and howl about it all they want.  I could care less about what they think of me or other women; their opinion of us is sh*t.  I just hope that their incessant temper tantrums won’t do anything to cause the powers-that-be who approved this ruling to bow under pressure and change their minds, because we’ve got a good thing going here with this.

And to lighten the mood here, I now give you a bit by the awesome Steven Colbert that perfectly and beautifully sums up the ridiculous rhetoric spouted off in the above-mentioned videos.  Enjoy!! :)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Women's Health-Nazi Plan
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

Why Do Smart Women Cling To Bad Men?

This post is about domestic violence. It is an edited version of an older post that I re-wrote in order to better illustrate my point. Plus, the older one was just too long anyway.

Lately I’ve been watching a crazy situation unfold with an acquaintance of mine. It's so messed up that it almost seems like something you'd see on an episode of Jerry Springer. As a rather straight-forward thinking woman with some common sense, it all seems very outrageous from my viewpoint and it really struck a chord with me. After thinking about it and observing other female friends, acquaintances, and strangers, I started to see that this is a much more common phenomenon than I had previously thought. And as someone who strives to empower women, I feel this issue needs to be heavily addressed.

Two years ago, this acquaintance of mine discovered that her husband was leading a double life. He had been lying to her and cheating on her all throughout their marriage. He was literally “servicing” every unhappily married or lonely divorced woman in their town. He was having unprotected sex with scores of women, and thus putting his wife at risk of contracting HIV or other STD’s from him. At one point, about half a dozen middle-aged divorced women all thought he was their “boyfriend” without any clue that they were just one of many. Later on towards the end of their marriage, he started physically hitting her. He even lost his job as a police officer due to his violent outbursts. I think the most unbelievable incident was when he was sent out to investigate a domestic dispute call and arrested a girl for stabbing her husband with a kitchen knife…and then went on to have a love affair with the girl…after arresting her for stabbing a man. I didn’t know it was even possible to be that stupid! So as you can see, this woman’s husband was about as bad as it gets.

After he began hitting her, I expected she would draw the line at that and get herself out of that situation. Many women unfortunately find themselves forced to stay with their abusers because they lack good education and skills and are thus dependent on the men for shelter, sustenance, and money. Others find it difficult to leave because they have young children with their abuser. But this woman is one of the lucky few. She is highly educated, has a successful career, has no children, and even made more money than her husband. So she could literally walk away from him at any time. But she didn’t. Instead of leaving him or at least forcing him to face some consequences for his abusive behavior towards her, she remained with him and clung even tighter to him by buying him gifts and taking him on exotic vacations. At one point, she DID get up the nerve to get an order of protection against him after he hit her, but then took him down to the Caribbean with her only a week later as if nothing had happened. They eventually divorced and moved into separate homes, but she still continued clinging to him…even paying his bills for him now that he had no job! Then several months later, she gleefully announced she was pregnant with his child. And this isn’t her first pregnancy announcement since their divorce, either. There was another one that was either a miscarriage or a false alarm. That means this has been an ongoing thing since they split…she has been trying to get pregnant with her ex-husband who abused her.


Those of us who know her and know about the situation were absolutely dumbfounded. After picking our jaws up from the floor, we all wondered aloud “What the hell is she thinking?!” This woman’s husband had abused her, disrespected her, and put her at all kinds of risks. Now that she was divorced from him, she had the opportunity to walk away in the other direction and start a better life for herself…but instead she chose to cling to him and purposely conceive a child with him so that she will now be tied to him for the rest of her life. And his behavior has not improved one bit; he is still cavorting around with every female he sees, drinking all the time, and taking his aggression out on others. While she is proudly showing off her pregnant belly as if they were still happily married, he could care less that he has a child on the way. And since she already knew that he was having unprotected sex with scores of women, that means she willingly put herself at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease from him in her pursuit to get pregnant by him. Purposely creating a new life just to trap someone into staying in your life forever and knowingly putting your own physical health in jeopardy is about as selfish and irresponsible as it gets. Did she ever stop to think that perhaps a man who has violent tendencies, drinks heavily, and can’t hold down a job probably would not make a very good parent for a child? She doesn’t seem to realize that getting pregnant by a man she was already long divorced from isn’t exactly something to be proud of. I also don’t think she realizes what her life will be like 20 years from now when she’ll still be single and half of her life will have passed her by because she will have spent all her years clinging to this jerk and fighting with him over their child. In many ways, she has ended her own life and robbed herself of a future.


I’ve just been baffled by all this because I can’t understand for the life of me why any woman would ever put up with such unacceptable behavior from a man or insist on clinging to such a jerk at all costs. I have never really been in a relationship where I endured physical abuse, but I have had my share of relationships where the man tried to exercise control over me or cat around with other women behind my back. And I refuse to put up with it for one second. When a man tries to tell me how to dress, how to wear my hair, what I can or can't read, go, or do, I tell him to get lost. When he sleeps with other women behind my back, I kick him into the gutter and leave him there with the garbage where he belongs. If a man ever hit me, he’d only get to hit me ONCE…and then I would break every bone in his body with a baseball bat. I would not remain friends with him afterwards, I would not buy him gifts, I would not take him on vacation with me, I would not pay his bills for him, I would not continue sleeping with him, and I most certainly would not try to get pregnant on purpose with him!! This is why I want so badly to shake this girl and yell at her “Look at what you’re doing; how could you possibly be so STUPID?!” But then I noticed other women doing the exact same thing--stubbornly clinging to men who were abusive and clearly not good for them--and that‘s when I realized that this is not an isolated incident. It’s an epidemic. And I couldn’t help but wonder why so many women seem to choose to be victimized. Why are so many beautiful, intelligent women so desperate and willing to sabotage their own lives and happiness by doing anything they can to remain involved with unhealthy or even dangerous men?? What has happened to cause so many women to think so little of themselves and what they truly deserve?? Why have so many women come to believe that being involved with an abusive, cheating jerk is the best option they have for a relationship?? That’s when I realized that it’s not because so many women are “stupid”…it’s because they have absolutely no self-esteem at all.


This story illustrates a huge problem that is rampant in our culture and needs to be addressed: Women like my acquaintance cling to men who are unhealthy for them because they have little self-esteem and believe that their happiness, success, and value as a human relies upon being attached to a man. To them, having ANY man at their side--even a very bad one--is better than not having a man at all, because they truly believe that they are worth less when they are single. This explains why so many women I have known have stayed with abusive men and would not leave them until they had another new boyfriend lined up and ready to immediately transition to. They could not stand the thought of being single and “alone” for one minute; they had to immediately jump from one relationship into another to preserve their sense of self-worth. They have never allowed themselves to have any “alone time” to get to know themselves better and tend to their own needs, wants, and goals.  This is why the acquaintance of mine continued to be friends with her ex-husband and continued sleeping with him even after they divorced.  She wanted to continue being with him in any way she could even though he had physically abused her and treated her like dirt.  She would rather tie herself to him for the rest of her life by purposely conceiving a child with him rather than leave him in the gutter where he belongs and try to start a new life for herself with a better man who would treat her the way a man should treat a woman.  She has always been a rather heavy-figured girl and doesn't have a lot of self-confidence, and so she thinks this loser is the best guy she will ever be able to have.  It's really sad.  Ladies, we have all GOT to start loving and respecting ourselves more and stop settling for less than what we deserve!! And that includes NOT settling for or clinging to men who disrespect us, abuse us, or don’t treat us as the Princesses we all are!! If you are in a relationship with a man who cheats on you, beats you up, verbally abuses you, controls every aspect of your life, or does anything else that infringes on your happiness and autonomy, GET RID OF HIM!!! Run away as fast as you can and don’t look back!! Do NOT suppress your unhappiness and stay with him just so you can have a boyfriend/husband, do NOT hang on to him if you do leave him or if he leaves you, and for God’s sake do NOT get pregnant with him on purpose!!! Some of you who are reading this may be in bad relationships yourselves. If so, I hope this blog post will be a wake-up call for you. The fate of my acquaintance is sealed; she has chosen to doom herself for life. But YOU don’t have to make that same mistake. My acquaintance made the decision to be trapped and unhappy for the rest of her life, but you can actively make the decision to be happy and free if that is what you desire! Love and respect yourself enough to have a happy, successful, and safe life that you deserve, both for you and your children. Like they say on the L’Oreal hair color commercials, “Because you’re worth it!”

Sharks At the Shedd!!!

I shot this footage of full-sized sharks when Edward and I went to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago a month ago.  I edited the video by splicing together different segments and adding music to hide the background noise.  It's REALLY neat!!!