So, these things may not be weird, but I definitely have my practices, habits, and routines that work for me, and I have my reasons for doing them.
It’s natural or nothing. I don’t get my nails done, do any kind of skin treatment, or color my hair.
Why? I don’t do it—honestly, because I didn’t grow up doing those things, so they’re not part of my routine, but also they’re cost-prohibitive. Travel is my indulgence, so I prefer to save whatever I can for doing that. As for the hair thing—I’ll own that for a handful of years when I started to get little glimmers of gray (ah, stress) I’d do a glaze that washes out. Why? Because I have witnessed myself gardening, and I am terrible at weeding, so I know that if I colored my hair, I would neglect it horribly. Also…it takes a lot of time (I did highlights once in 2019), and it’s expensive, and I go nuts sitting in the chair. I’m like a kid in the backseat of the car—are you done yet? Are you done yet? Are you done yet? Never mind that it’s also chemicals…and I’ll own it…I like my natural hair color. But that said, I think you guys who color your hair look beautiful, so it’s no shade (insert hair dye joke here).
I loathe shopping and typically only shop online, and when I do, it’s on deal sites or thrift sites or shops. I also love vintage anything.
Why? Shopping legitimately gives me a headache. I think it’s the dyes in fabrics. But also stores are cold, so who wants to wander around shivering like a chihuahua and then stripping down under fluorescent lighting to see if something fits? Hard pass. I usually buy new pieces once or twice a year if that. I do my clothes like I do my vehicles—I wear them until they’re worn out.
As for buying vintage, I love the idea that something has the energy of someone who loved it before I had it. Like, maybe that love transfers. I also don’t care about cost. I have a beautiful ring from the early 1900s from the Netherlands that I wear on my ring finger because it’s a reminder to choose myself—not in a selfish way but in a healthy way. It’s real, and it cost less than $600. I will also buy things that I like if I think that the price is a “sign”—like that trip to Italy? The flight cost about as much as my ring because I found a banging flight deal. You get the best flight deals if you can be flexible with your travel time.
One tip about travel—I learned this by taking my daughters to Key West…sometimes when the flight is cheap, everything else is ungodly expensive.
I deal shop for travel.
Why? Because travel can be expensive, but I am experience-oriented, which is why my “indulgence” is travel or a meal that’s better than one I could make myself. I don’t travel to shop—I travel to do.
Like when I went to Costa Rica, the accommodations and the flight were cheaper than a week on Jones Street in Savannah (woohoo!), which was the plan before the (tax deductible because I have an LLC) writing conference I was going to do was canceled. I wanted to be in nature (dammit), so even though there was a super posh resort about 15-minutes walking distance from where I stayed, I chose accommodations owned by a lovely family, and I opted not to drive and to walk everywhere because reviews said roads can get washed out when it’s rainy.
I had a wonderful time walking to the place where you (ugh) pay to hike the Rio Celeste waterfall and Tenorio National Park (dormant volcano). There were a couple of little shops and a restaurant that I was very fond of and ate at often because the food was really good. Even though I suffered altitude anorexia while I was there, I was able to eat enough, and thankfully, they carried my sponsor, Sauvignon blanc, so I was able to get calories from that. I made friends and had a wonderful time.
PS: My go-to resource for travel deals is the Going app—formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights.
I don’t splurge on skincare or any other beauty products.
I have done this in the past, but once I started wearing Ocean Skin, a sea-kelp derived serum and cream made by journalist Tara Copp and her dad (only $27 on Etsy), I noticed my skin was looking far healthier than it had in years. I’m officially a believer in anything that is ocean-derived.
I will also use Korean beauty care products. A friend gave me Paris Hilton’s new kit, and I liked it, but I will ultimately stick with what works.
I also stopped wearing make-up most of the time. This happened in Costa Rica in early February. I just quit. I’ll still we are some embellishments for fun when I got out sometimes, but it’s rare these days.
I don’t wear sunblock or sunscreen.
In 2016, I wrote an article for Alabama Business magazine that talked about the different rays these products protect against. Some protect the skin but can actually worsen the negative impacts of radiation at the cellular level while some protect your cells but your skin bakes. I considered that in centuries past people didn’t need sunscreen, and they didn’t get skin cancer, so aside from the fact that whiteness is probably a melanin deficiency (is it? I have theories….), I choose not to wear it and to just be mindful of when I actually do go out in the sun. Also, when I was in Roatan, I was told that it’s not legal to wear sunscreen there because of the harmful impacts sunblocks and screens have on the marine environment, and as we’ve discussed, I’m a huge fan of anything from the ocean, so….
I don’t diet, but I am a bougie foodie. I also rarely eat fried or American foods.
While I will sometimes eat a prosciutto di Parma pizza or will enjoy cured Italian meats with cheese on a charcuterie board, I rarely eat any kind of red or processed meat. When Sean had cancer, that was considered a no-no. I am skeptical of anything that’s a hard “no”, but I also just notice that my digestive system is like, “Bitch…” when I do eat these kinds of foods, so I am mostly pescatarian. I love vegetables and try to eat with the seasons. I look for organic foods that are either fresh or frozen whenever possible as well.
As I’ve said in the past I struggled with body dysmorphia. I remember that I was seven when I first felt like I was fat. In my mid-20s after my last major bout with bulimia barring a brief relapse when Sean died, I opted to maintain my weight with walking and diet. I read the book French Women Don’t Get Fat, and that helped me discern—pick your indulgences…like if you want dessert, pass on bread and wine. Wine is my choice for indulgence, and I think I consumed enough sugar for a lifetime when I was a binge-eating bulimic (I struggled with disordered eating from ages 17 to just shy of 25), and let’s be real—is nothing more depressing than wasting precious calories on a piece of cake that tastes like chalk? It has to be really good. But there are things I like, but I hold out for quality or exotic experiences on the dessert forefront.
Speaking of wine…I always look for organic or sustainable. They have fewer added chemicals, and you can find some really good budget wines. Just check the back label and look for the little leaves and that magical word—sustainable.
I choose a drug-free lifestyle.
I have plenty of friends who use recreationally, and I have experimented with a few things over the years, but ultimately, I prefer to keep my energy up, and most things make me sleepy—including alcohol. I also know some things can extend the amount you drink and how long you can “party”, but I found that the exhaustion afterward just pissed me off. I want to wake up every day and get after it, so anything that slows me down ultimately isn’t for me. And on that forefront because I opt to be a natural woman, the only things I’m willing to touch are natural—mushrooms and cannabis. If it’s not from nature, I don’t want it.
According to Eat to Beat Disease, 98% of cancers are caused by chemical exposure, and those things are in everything, so if it was made in a lab, it’s a hard pass for me.
I am very open to doing things like microdosing for therapeutic purposes. I’ve only tried mushrooms twice and both times, I was like, “Dance party!” which is fun, but I’m also the kind of person who can be extremely extra, so…yeah. I do want to go to South America and try ayahuasca at least a once. I also have and use shamanic hape for meditation—often before I read my cards in the morning and meditate. But it’s just something I like—not something I have to have.
I don’t smoke because I know that I absolutely could and would use it all of the time, and so I choose not to. Also, I kinda choke and cough, and I’ve had four kids, and nobody wants to hang out with someone who pees on themselves a little when they cough—I assume. I mean, not always, but there’s always the risk.
Again—this is just something I’ve learned about myself and it’s just why I am the way I am.
I am completely unmedicated.
Once again, this harkens back to—was it made in a lab? I find my AuDHD to be a total gift, and I don’t think it’s a disability to be regulated medicinally. The ADHD part? That’s what guides me to what I should be focusing on, and I can hyperfocus like there’s no tomorrow. When I was painting for the August Art Walk when I was invited to read at the Sophiella Gallery, I think I stood there and painted for ten hours straight while I was listening to an audiobook—oh, and I always need double stimulation for anything—except writing. I like to write in an environment where I’m able to concentrate just on the words that flow through me, which is why I wake up early to be able to write before my kids get up because once they get up, I’m frequently interrupted, which can be irritating, and my kids don’t need my mood or attitude in that case.
As for the spectrummy stuff—being incredibly sensitive and literal is interesting, and while emotional regulation is my challenge, my sensitivity is like an internal alarm system. Also, I have a highly specific memory and an atunement for fine details like micro expressions that most people miss. I may not dial into things until after the fact, but I’m always putting puzzle pieces together. Moments that mean nothing to other people stand out with clarity to me, and those are guideposts for how to move about this life and to know who is safe and who I can trust. Thanks to such a long history with manipulative or selfish people, I can read that clearly, and I have a massive aversion to anything that’s not authentic at this point. My nervous system can now tell what’s real and what’s not.
As for other types of meds—like psych meds for depression and anxiety, I took the long road to heal from anxiety, depression, and CPTSD. I worked with a holistic therapist and a CBT therapist starting in 2019 after Sean died, and I read consummately, journaled, practiced gratitude, practiced mindfulness, meditated, exercised, and did everything that I could to heal from both adolescent and also recent trauma. I proved the efficacy of my work to myself in early April 2026 when I had a nervous breakdown as a direct consequence of being group stalked, but what I did was spend three days (unwillingly) in a psych ward meditating and reintegrating.
My conclusion was this—antagonists exist. I can’t control them any more than my sociopathic former partner (ugh) could control me, but what I can control is my attention. Attention is energy. Energy is power, and I drew all of my power back into me. What caused the breakdown was just realizing how massively unsupported women are, and what broke was my realizing that I had to accept that being treated the way I deserved wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t happening, and it wasn’t going to, and I had to give it to myself. That’s fine. I’m just tired of feeling “used”, and that’s what everything since Sean died has felt like. The narrative we were sold was a lie, but by decentralizing men and love in that kind of way, by reforming from being a “lover girl” and by not trying to save the world, I could save myself because the other reality is that nobody is coming to save us. But by helping myself, I can be a better asset for other people, which is part of my purpose—we are all made to be healers in some capacity, and having purpose in addition to breaking down constructs and limiting beliefs over the past two years has ultimately kept me from (1) legitimately going insane, and (2) getting back into an abusive situation with selfish or entitled people who don’t have my best interests at heart.
The other reason is that the handful of times I’ve tried such interventions as medication I’ve ended up having adverse side effects. I explained this to the docs at the psych ward, but they insisted on giving me something that has worn off (and it made me lactate—I told you that I had adverse side effects—nobody knows you better than you know yourself, and people need to learn to respect that people know themselves…this was a recurring theme when I (ugh) dated the sociopath—he wanted to tell me about me while never actually getting to know me or caring about how I felt, and respectfully, he can go fuck himself with that nonsense…oh wait, he did. Good.).
So, I’m totally unmedicated, and I feel perfectly happy, adjusted, focused, and elated for life, which I realize in the current climate seems a bit contradictory, but I also do the opposite of what I know any oppressive system wants. They want us to be at a depressed and low vibrational state, so I choose to do whatever it takes to vibrate at a higher frequency. If you’re interested in letting go of the junk that’s holding you back, I have an extensive reading list, but Dr. David Hawkins’ Letting Go is a title that really helped me in October of 2024.
I don’t dwell on negative stuff.
I love my life, and I feel very positive about the future, but I have things I struggle with. I still struggle to do things that bring me genuine happiness even if there’s stuff I “need” to do. Problematically, writing—especially fiction—makes me happy, but the conditioning to believe that it’s a superfluous hobby rather than the blood in my veins and oxygen to my soul can make it hard for me to actually sit down and write. I’ve decided to start paying myself to do creative writing. Every time I get a chapter done—and I want to get one done once a week if not more, I pay myself in a savings account for travel.
I am very joyful internally and externally, but I also suffer the conditioning most women do, which is to put ourselves dead last. I have already seen how the world ends. I held my husband through his final days, hours, and moments of life, and I know that the time is always now. Dating a sociopathic abuser for almost half a decade and subsequently being stalked by flying monkeys really did create so much trauma that I still feel I’m working through, but I’m doing it. I’ve done it. I know how to do the work, and that’s what I’m working on—handling shit when it comes up, only giving my attention to things that are meaningful, and creating.
I’m focusing on my art, self, and creativity. I’m being constructively selfish (finally).
I have been giving my attention to other things and people since 2013–babies, cancer, death, healing, abusive sociopath, related demons—it’s my time for me. Anything that makes demands on my attention or energy is not for me. Seven years ago today, I was with Sean in the hospital while he got a blood transfusion. He would be released tomorrow. Our baby would turn one-and-a-half the next day. That baby is eight years old now.
The fun, the laughs, the accomplishments—everything that’s happened along the way has been like that REO Speedwagon song—taken on the run. I am so done with running, and I am so done with putting myself last in my own life.
I’m officially identifying as a reformed lover girl.
That’s the phase of life that I’m in. My kids and my art are my priority. One day, I hope—I meet someone to share this journey with, but it has to be someone who values and respects my time and energy as much as I value and respect theirs. I have been told the healthy way for relationships to be, and I have experimented with someone in that regard, but that was a situationship, and a situationship does not value you entirely or authentically. My nervous system couldn’t handle it, which is also why I had a breakdown—everything else worked or felt like it did when I was with that person, but it wasn’t a real relationship in the way that makes sense for me and for what I know is right.
But still—when you treat another person with value and respect, they return that if they’re mature and selfless. Yes—let another person make you feel good, but if you’re only in it for how it makes you feel, then do you really even value that other person? My take is no, which is why I have complete confidence in saying that the detritus of my past didn’t respect me, value me, love me, or care about me regardless of what they say—their actions spoke to the contrary. As a woman with AuDHD, I know that words have very real power, and I believed their words, but when I started looking at actions vs words, the evidence was clear, and the jury was in.
I have no problem writing about these things because if it can help someone else, good. If it serves as a map to someone else for what I’ll tolerate or what they can get away with—think again because I think I’ve also shown how I handle disrespect. I don’t keep secrets. I put them out there, and I save receipts—and if you want to see them, I’ll show them. Bet that find out beats f—k around every time.
I try to live with authenticity. I own my mistakes, and I’ll be the first person to tell you. The truth really does set you free. If I tell my own story and own my mistakes, maybe I can help other people live with their human foibles—God knows, we all have them. But it also means that nobody has any power over me. Did I say that thing? Probably. Did I do that thing? Yep. If it hurts another person, I’m sorry, and I try to do better. I work hard to not make excuses. I like to understand causality, but that’s not an excuse. Being ADHD or living with the vestiges of CPTSD or being exposed to repeated trauma from the flying monkeys doesn’t give me an excuse to be reactive, which is also something I’ve had to work on.
I was very proud of myself for learning to not react to the sociopath I (ugh) dated despite their repeated attempts to provoke me in that living nightmare we call a trauma bond. But I’ve had to learn to do it with people who are unhealed like them, too, and I have come a long way in doing so, and for that I’m grateful.
So, that’s where I am. That’s who I am. I’m just a person who is always trying to do better and to level up in the game of life. I assume, perhaps mistakenly, that other people are trying to do the same. And otherwise I’m just meeting people where they are and wishing the best for them (even the trauma bond person—but also like, eat, but not at my table, not on my planet).