about me

The first thing I want to tell you about myself and about this blog: I’m not trying to BE anything here. I decided that stories like mine don’t make it out of the shadows often enough, and if telling my story helps someone like me feel like they’re not alone in their hard moments (or seasons), then it is worth the trouble of typing it out, wrestling with the anxiety that follows me around all day (or week) after I’ve clicked “Publish,” and putting my hard moments (or seasons) on the internet. 🫣 I am not a therapist. I am not a pastor. I am not an influencer. BUT I might say something that helps you see your story more clearly. I might say something that encourages your soul. I might even say something that inspires or influences you. If not, we can be friends anyway, yeah? 🫶🏻

I made a list of all the things “about me” that might come up in this blog, and I realized all of the things on this list are like facets on a gemstone – like individual pieces of my soul. No single facet can accurately or fully describe me, and no single person can know every facet of my soul. I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a wife, mom, daughter, granddaughter, sister, friend, aunt, niece, daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, teacher, mentor, and the list probably exceeds my own realm of perception. In the same respect, not all of the facets can ever be seen at the same time. The only one that knows all of me and sees all of me and even loves all of me is the One who created me. That’s gonna be a common theme around here because He’s been reminding me of that a lot lately.

So you might be wondering how I came up with the name for my blog: Spicy Soul Survival. It turns out, that’s going to end up being a couple of blog posts!🙃 But, here’s the nutshell version:

I was wondering what about me might stand out, and the first thing that came to mind was my alter-ego (aka Minecraft “personality” if you will), SpicyCashew. Never, in my life, would I have imagined I would be a gamer to the extent that there are people in this world that only know me as Spicy. We’ve never seen each other’s faces. I’ve never told them my real name (until they read this blog, anyway), and that is just kind of weird to me. 🤪We don’t even really talk about our lives in detail very often. And do you know what? We have something in common that we enjoy talking about and doing together. I care about these people that I only know tidbits of information about. We encourage each other, and it’s nice to have a place to connect on something that NONE of my other friends are interested in doing. (I still love them – you know who you are 😘)

Another “facet” of the Spicy part is because my brain is a bit spicy. 🌶️ I talked about this a bit in my first post, and I will talk about it a lot more. I have a condition called PMDD (if you aren’t familiar, a quick Google search will help you out a bit), which manifests for me like a LOT of anxiety and depression, mild fits of rage 😔, SEVERE brain fog, not being able to find the words I want to use, a horribly self-deprecating thought world, and the list goes on. I have also been diagnosed with narcissistic abuse disorder and codependence. Those are “fun.” Heh 🫥 Additionally, after a deep dive into researching autism in females (K1 was recently evaluated for autism), I’m convinced I am probably also on “the spectrum” and just learned to cope and mask the heck out of it as a survival mechanism growing up. So…Spicy. Yeah.

I feel like “Soul” is kind of self-explanatory, but I’ll take a stab at it. It’s really “soul survival.” This is the one that needed to be its own blog post (coming soon), so I will try to sum it up in a couple of sentences: I recently realized that I have spent most of my life in survival mode – my mind and my soul. It has taken years to get to the point I reached this spring, but by the grace and kindness of God, I did. Every day feels like a war with myself, but I don’t feel so alone (or so crazy) in it anymore. It’s me AND Jesus walking this path (thank you for that, Dr. Alicia Britt Chole), and every time He helps me remember that, I feel a little better, and I heal a little.

So. That’s what I’ve got for y’all. It might be hard to follow, and it might feel like you’re on a twisting, turning trail, wondering which way to turn. (Man! That was some decent alliteration!) Welcome to my stream of consciousness. You’re welcome to bail out at any time! 😅🙃🪂