How this site was born: I Survived My Life’s Major Plot Twist.

I’ve found the courage to write my truth, my experience, my trauma, and the betrayal by two of the most important people in my life.

I hope my vulnerability helps you feel even a little less alone. I hope you feel less invalidated, and more importantly, less humiliated because their actions are not your responsibility.

So here we go.

Towards the end of 2018, I took over 20 years of handwritten journals to my vacation home in the UK. I’ve been documenting my days on pen and paper since I was a little girl. It’s my therapy. 

Reading that stack of journals:

I laughed, I cried, held back a few sobs, and sometimes asked myself, “Jesus Alison what were you thinking?!” 

Three, yes three days later when I came upon the last five or so years of my adult life, all I could think was: “What in the actual hell! Who am I? And I mean who am I?”

Who is this woman vomiting on these pages, she’s pathetic. Where had my identity gone? My entire existence was lifting him up. Not myself, him.

You see, at this time in my life, the ink was still not dry on my long drawn-out, incredibly horrifying divorce.

Escaping to my home in Scotland was exactly what I needed. I had been in the middle of opening up an excruciatingly enormous business project with my father. Barely sleeping. Barely eating. Avoiding friends with the excuse of being so busy. 

“Just get out of bed Alison.”

If I could get out of bed, make it to the shower, then into my car and proceed to make it to my office, I knew I would be busy enough to get through ANOTHER day. And when I got there, I buried myself in 12-16-hour workdays. “One day at a time Alison, Dad needs you, the kids need you, just get through the day.”

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. 

Putting on “that face” we do as women, so no one asks questions, having to conduct media interviews, smile for the cameras, and bury the internal hell I was living in.

I was on repeat for months. I was telling everyone around me that I was fine, the classic “everything happens for a reason” excuse. 

But in truth at my core, I was still suffering the loss of my marriage and family that I fought so hard to save.

Though the kids were adults and out of the house, their sense of loss was real, and they still needed their Mom.

They wanted answers. Why did we divorce? Why is he doing this?

But I had no answers to a mind-blowing situation. They hurt, I hurt. The intensity of it all just wouldn’t seem to go away.

Of all the women in the world to betray me with, why my best friend?

You see he had made a choice. He turned to another woman, and that woman was my best friend. I would not wish that trauma on anyone.

Your imagination can be your worst enemy.

I couldn’t stop wondering if, for one moment, thought what this would do to the children. The kids he raised and so proudly called him “step-daddy.” To my parents who loved him as intensely as they did their own. To our friends.

Frankly, did they even have that conversation? I am guessing not.

Anger and confusion and deep humiliation controlled me. How could they?

How long was the affair actually going on?

Was I that stupid? Was I that naive?

How could they? How?

Watching the woman who I loved and trusted with every fiber of my being living the life I had built; I was still angry. I was angry at him for being so weak, I was angry at her for infiltrating my marriage when we were at our most vulnerable.

I was angry she sat on my couch while I physically shook with anxiety because I couldn’t find my husband.

She cried with me, held me, tried to ply me with alcohol, all the while he was in her home just down the road. 

Once she and I met for dinner, a pretense of concern on her part, just to get me out of my house.

I found out that night why. Because the two of them coordinated it. He went over while I was gone and gathered more of his belongings.

I was stuck on stupid at the time and told I was insane when I accused him of an affair.

The signs were right in front of me. They had been seen around town on dates. Having an intimate dinner with my in-laws.

The blows just kept coming, along with the accusations I was “crazy.”

Less than 14 weeks after he had packed a bag, he told me. He said he was “renting a room from her.”

Coincidentally, the woman who was supposed to be my rock disappeared from my life.

She was the woman I told everything to, including my marriage strains. She would try to convince me to leave him. Constantly.

Losing the two people I loved the most, the two people who I trusted more than anyone.

Gone. It was a double death. It was a sadness, emptiness, and a trauma I do not believe I will ever be able to articulate.

He had one thing right, I was going crazy. The lies were bountiful and getting bigger by the day.

Then six or so months after that he finally admitted it, “we’re together. ”

Within months she gloated on social media with her hashtags “thinbluelinefamily,” “airopsfamily” wearing glitter ballcaps with the Thin Blue Line logo.

Attending the Annual Christmas Party for his sheriff’s office, the weekend he and I looked forward to every year. Those were messages and photos from his colleagues I didn’t need to see.

She was living my life without shame or embarrassment. The true definition of a bottom feeder. 

I put that journal down, stared out my window, and told myself ‘it’s time.’

As I finished reading my words I just stared out the window for hours.

Two adult kids out of the house, living a very intentional, and committed relationship to myself in Scotland at the time….and there I was sitting in my flat reading that entry on Page 192 of my 2017 journal.

It was time to finally pull out a blank canvas To start painting what I, Alison, wanted for my life.

I can’t truly describe it adequately. But I said to myself on repeat, “I can’t be this woman to anyone, ever again.”

I’d been everything to my husband, to everyone, except myself, and that needed to change. I stared out the window, willing myself to do whatever it took to move forward.

And then the memories came flooding in, again.

“Don’t leave me, Alison, I promise it will get better, we are so close to all of our goals.”

All the missed holidays, the stress of his job, all the training…. “the light at the end of the tunnel” he would say. Yet every assignment, every special teams unit, he would commit.

By the time he would get home from work there was nothing left for me.

In the meantime, I’m hiding my anxiety.

I’m hiding my stress behind a bottle of wine, anti-depressants, and a treadmill.

I’m shouldering it all keeping our marriage together and not upset him. 

“He needs to focus on his pilot’s license, don’t screw this up for him,” on repeat hourly in my mind.

“This is what I signed up for,” I would tell myself as I cried nearly every morning after he left for work.

‘We’ve been through so much, I said vows, you cannot leave him.’

Again, him before me. His goals were my goals.

I failed myself.

Every journal entry from the last 3 years of my marriage reminded me that the only person I failed was myself. I lost Alison.

I was his “Wifey,” a mother, sister, Tia, and friend to anyone who needed me. I was accessible, all the time, to everyone but myself. 

But when I’m finished with this first post and I hit that “publish” button, know this… I am so grateful, yes, GRATEFUL to be sitting where I am today.

To be able to sit on this computer sharing parts of my past and not feel that hellacious pain, but to embrace the triggers when they pop up, and yes, they still do.

Protect your peace, cleanse your space of toxicity.

That is not selfish, that is self-love. If you believe repressing emotions is a strength, I’m here to tell you it’s not. I have done it my entire life.

Let it hurt, then let it heal. 

I wore this gown for a photo shoot in 2019 in my boardroom.

I needed to make new memories in it. Why is this the photo I’m choosing for my first post? This dress defined a big moment for me in my marriage, when I felt I had no value and little self-love.

Ms. Insecurity and Ms. Intuition were side by side, working in tandem for the first few months of 2017, the year we separated.

I told them daily to “shut the fuck up!” But still, their whispers in my ear proceeded. So unbeknownst to my then-husband, I hired a personal trainer, then proceeded to get into the best shape of my life.

I wanted to be absolute perfection for him, I knew in my gut something wasn’t right.

We were going to a black-tie gala, and I thought we desperately needed this night together. At the time I hadn’t received a compliment for probably 6 months, and he was usually overflowing with them.

Clearly, Ms. Insecurity was winning this battle, and I was not used to that. 

I remember the exact moment when I finally put the dress on and walked into our living room with my head held so proudly high.

As he sat on the couch, looking insanely handsome in the blue and black tuxedo we had just bought, he looked up from his phone and said in a flat voice, “You look nice. Is Brennda on her way?”

This is also the moment I should have left him. Instead, I walked to my vanity, sat down, and with shaking hands reapplied the mascara that he had just ruined. 

The 3 of us went to the Gala together. She on one arm, me on the other. Looking at the photos of the 3 of us now gives me chills. They were well on her way to destroying my life. I look like the guest, her his wife.

This gown is now my cape. 

I am not sure I will share more stories like this, maybe if they serve a purpose to a lesson. But the trash has been taken out both figuratively and literally from my home.

I’m excited, nervous, and a bit anxious to share how and what I did right, but more importantly what I did wrong, and of course what still needs to be done.

I did not allow him to make me his mistress after making me his wife.

Have I still spoken to him? I indeed have. Why? I honestly do not know. I am sure I will write about that someday. (Update)

This is why this site was born.

The true journey in life is for YOURSELF, not your partner, friends, or even your family. You can and must be everything to yourself first and always. Only then can you decide how to delegate all of the love you have to give to others. 

I am so excited to share with you my healthy life choices including health and fitness, friendships and relationships, along with physical and mental health.

Nothing is off-limits. And there is no better way to live than to live in self-love and constant discovery.