It’s been awhile since I’ve opened my red digital door to speak with everyone. Everyone? I mean anyone.

In the past you knew me as the Sassy Stiletto Mommy. Brace yourselves, forI have returned to reclaim that title and all it implies.

Back then, I used this platform to tell extremely funny stories, share my desire to have a family, and dish on musings about my husband. Occasionally, this blog acted as a sounding board as a space to release my struggles and heal the intense pain around my infertility. My infertility did take a step back and we had Max. For that I am ever grateful.

As I step back on board, I plan to use this space almost exclusively in another healing process. This one will be more like a journey spanning eight years — past to present. The past 8 years of my life have been exquisitely beautiful and also excruciatingly painful. I have devoted my life to my beautiful family along with my husband, whom I adore beyond words, but I lost myself and my interior joy in the process.

This is not a shock to those in my very intimate circle. My husband understands that I’ve lost touch with my joy, but not my passion. He is aware that he has been a part of that and so many other things that have contributed to it. He’s aware of all the people and circumstances contributing to my pain as well as the parts he has played in it. Additionally, he knows I have been working really hard and feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland searching for joy, life, answers, and meaning within myself.

The pain I carry in my heart is excruciating to the point that words completely fail to describe its magnitude. Honestly, I don’t understand it or know how to access it so as to root it out and free myself from it. Here is a secret that I’ve never revealed to anyone: there’s a space inside me, into which I’m scared to look, because the pain resides there, safely locked away. This space literally feels like a room — pitch black — where all the pieces of my agony press upon the walls, screaming for release. Though it’s in this interior room, I never forget its presence; but, for survival, I keep the door tightly locked.

About six months ago, I decided to explore this room, terrifying as it is, in search of all these things keeping me from fully living my wonderful life. I have asked God to join me there to act as my champion and help me heal my heart.

I am terrified of going into that place of pain.

I am scared that, when I do, I will never come out of it with my emotions in one piece (not to imply that my emotions are such now anyway).

I am full of fear — fear that I can’t cope with what I will find.

But I am committed to this fight because I cannot keep on going down the road I’m currently traveling.

You see, I have been through what amounts to three lifetimes of trauma. I suffer from significant PTSD due to these experiences and, earlier this year. when life finally got quiet for the first time in eight years the PTSD finally decided to let herself be known. Flight or fight has left the room and left me to deal with the aftermath. More stories on all of that to be continued…

I have a story and I am trying to understand it myself. God has continued to use me as a vessel, somehow in our family. And honestly, I am getting really pissed he keeps choosing me. I don’t want to be chosen anymore…I want to be left alone to heal. This isn’t about you, but about me pulling my pain out the dark room and putting it on the table so I can see it, inspect it, deal with it, and find peace with it. I want to find my joy again and I’m going to battle to do it.

So, pray for me…..God tells us to us “guard your heart as it is the wellspring of life”….I am trying to heal it so I can guard it once again. This is gonna hurt……