My intention for living.

Being a mother has really shaped my "life's why".
Being a mother put my story together, it showed me my purpose.
((through post-partum depression)).

youknow.
Why am I doing what I am doing?
What is my purpose for living?
Why is the meaning of life?

when you've thought about death and dying (at all)
these are a few of the questions that pop into your head.

---

some people have those defining life moments.
those moments that you look back and reflect on -- and think.
...that made me who I am today.

it could be a positive event.
it could be a tragedy.
all I know is that it shaped you.
everyone has them.
everyone will have them.
no one escapes from these life moments that make life.
life.

it's a life a event that was prior to & afterwards.
you were not, are not --- the same person.
prior to & afterwards.

it's an event that is hard to describe.
yet you want more than anything,
to put words to it.

One of those moments was the day
I was ripped out of bed by two random strangers.
it felt as traumatic as it sounded.
the slang word for it is: being "gunny sacked".

I got drunk less than three times,
(and) only smoked weed a handful.
I was a virgin.

(and) my parents hired people to take me in the middle of the night,
out of my bedroom, fly me across the country
to a wilderness program in Duchesne, Utah.
Population: 1,779

I always believed my life had a purpose,
that I was suppose to fulfill.
D E S T I N Y / F A T E
So, I had to believe there was
some reason I was in these places.

what I used to say to myself:
I am going to be honest.
I should not have been there.
It was a traumatic experience that I should not have had.
My parents paid people not to parent me.
I missed out on so much.
I missed out on highschool.
I missed out on normal school things.
I must be an addict.
I must be mentally ill to have to be here.
There must be something wrong with

...

through the modern medicine lens:
there was something broken with me,
(and) I needed to be fixed aka cured.

---

After having a baby, life forced me to reconsider the perspective in which I had framed my life through.
Did I want to continue down this path of victimhood?
I was also under-pressure from simultaneously going through chiropractic school.
I only had a week post-partum.
my life changed suddenly and all at once.

And this was the recipe life took to mold me, to shape me, to create me
intothemotheriamsupposetobe

In some ways, I was asking for a depression relapse.
In some ways, through my actions I had been asking for a deep change.
A deep polishing of myself per say.

the choice to conceive
not only shaped a baby.
it shaped a mother.

Maybe that was the purpose?

When Townes was born, I thought a lot about the women in my family that went before me.
My mother, when she had me.

What did she think about when I was little?
In all the still moments during and before the little one naps.
did she think about her role, her job in shaping a generation?
did she think about all the things she had to change in her life
--in order to become the mother she wanted to be?

What did my grandmothers think?
when my mom and dad were small?
how did they change into the mothers they were?
what did they think about during the silence, or the nights when they too had to walk the floors
--bouncing their infants, the people that would become my parents.

And the thought metamorphosis began.

...
How I think of my past now:

There were girls that never made it out.

((I don't stop thinking of you all.
I hope you know that.))

the darkness of the treatment industry was never lost on me.
I never fought to supress all the memories.
I felt every slice of pain that was etched onto my soul.
The souls of the ones passed, I can still remember their smiles.

It was a system that could have been better.
It was a system that could have been less damaging.
It was a system that promised families everything
--- and gave back shells of girls they promised to protect.

The systems set up, geared to help the mentally ill.
geared to help addiction
is an illusion of "successful" "curative" "redeemable"
it's so easy to place blame on the mentally ill.
it's so easy to place the blame on the addict.
when medicine has no answers.

Yes, you read that right.
It's been a truth I've been holding back.

Modern medicine has no answers for mental health or addiction.
they don't know what causes it
And actually as time progresses, mental health just keeps getting worse
addiction just keeps getting worse.

This isn't a "class" issue thing.
This isn't a "the upper class" "privilege" thing.
This isn't a race issue.
This is an all around issue and dismissal of the problem.
WEHAVENOANSWERS.
WEHAVENOSOLUTIONS.

Yeah, you can say that poverty makes it worse.
Sure. But the rich still have it.
Actually, "the rich" are still committing suicide.

Access to money doesn't cure mental illness.
what's the root cause?

There are no solutions as of yet.
Suicides are happening -- everywhere.
People are struggling, everywhere.

Everything I saw,
everything I experienced.
happened. is happening.

Pills do not work.
the 'chemical imbalance' theory that was shouted from the roof tops
is not even qualified to be a 'theory' scientifically.
no one inside medicine thinks this is reality.
it's a method the drug companies used to market their drugs.

so what is the solution?

There is not one.
That's why I am in school.
to learn.

I want to be apart of the movement forward that figures out the answer.
there is an answer.
there is a solution.
we just don't know it.

This is a big project, a lot of people have been raised up for the job.
I a m o n l y o n e o f t h e m a n y l o o k i n g f o r a s o l u t i o n
being a mother taught me that.

I am here to make sense of our story.
I am here to live on and make a difference for the girls who didn't live.

I used to cry myself to sleep at night thinking.
If only I could be apart of the solution that helped those struggling
actuallygetbetter.

---

When I became a mother, I thought of those mothers before me.
Those mothers were now dying; my grandparents.
You begin to see the cycle of life playing out before your eyes.
And your dreams become one inch closer.

Life becomes real.
And short.
All at once, you see your very small role
that shapes a generation.

And here I was, living.
Who was I going to be before I died?
What did I want to do with my short time here?

youknow.
Why am I doing what I am doing?
What is my purpose for living?
Why is the meaning of life?

---

And here I am answering.
I am doing what I am doing so that I can first heal myself.
I must heal myself, so that I can learn, thrive, be.
So I can give back to the next generation.

And this next generation I want to help has already began to crawl in my living room.
This next generation is already sitting up.
This next generation already knows who I am.
It makes you want to work f a s t e r.

I need to heal first, for the next generation.
So I can fulfill my purpose.

My purpose was hyperlinked to those memories
that kept me bound and chained to the past
as a child.

Motherhood broke those bonds -- and freed me.

It allowed me to view my past with more perspective,
a deeper sense of maturity and self compassion.
It also gave me direction and purpose.

To say life is not a journey,
to say life does not have meaning,
to say these things.
requires a lack of thought and imagination about
living.

And I want to live.

I am deeply grateful for my opportunity to have become a mother.

I am deeply grateful to be alive.

<3