Spotlight on Stigma... Welcomed but Not Accepted

Many Southern church websites say "Come as you are."  Yet, when you get there, you see the pastor in a suit (though nowadays usually not with a tie). Those on stage and in the congregation are in business casual attire. Some are a little more lax. In them, men often wear jeans and not many women wear dresses. Instead, the common attire for women is a dressy outfit - slacks and a really nice shirt. In my experience, it's rare in most traditional churches, at least in my area of the country, to see women in jeans on Sunday mornings - and I have yet to see a female on stage dressed that casually. This has been a big deal to me since I was a teenager. I had a friend whose parents didn't attend church. My friend started coming with one of our mutual friends. She wasn't so poor to the extent she didn't have food or housing, but her clothing options were limited, especially concerning dresses. In fact, she owned only two dresses. This was almost 40 years ago. Then it

One of the main fears I have (excluding all of my phobias and the common fears like having a child die or becoming paralyzed, etc) is not having health insurance - or having it be so expensive that I can't afford the copays. My husband of almost ten months had said he would never get married before we met - and even the first four years of our relationship. Like me, this wasn't his only fear, but it kept us from taking that next step for a long time.  He was afraid he wouldn't be able to provide for me. Well, it ended up that he got fired from the job he had most of our relationship. He had been at that job for a while but a combination of developing an auto-immune disease that would flare up occasionally, a change of management, and having to work from home due to COVID, his performance went downhill. Then add nervousness about the possibility of being fired and he was a wreck - and continued to do worse. Even though he had been there 10?, 11? years before this happened, w

I'm a people pleaser. It's something I've worked for years to overcome... to no avail. I worry way too much about what people think - even from people who I know love me "no matter what." This can be a huge issue with my work. I can be so paralyzed with concern about the product - photos or writing - that I'm producing for a client, that sometimes I will edit and edit and edit before I'm done. Or I overthink what I need to do so much that I can't even get started. This is something that I think pretty much everyone deals with to some extent at some point in life. When you add an invisible illness to the mix, it makes it much worse. For example, lately, I've been going back and forth a lot between physical and mental junk (at times both at once). I feel horrible when I have to miss or cancel an event because I know it could disappoint or inconvenience someone else. The thing is, I am able to attend some of the time. Out of those times I actually mak

I rarely scroll through Facebook posts. I have too many things I can get caught up in... I don't need one that also makes me feel bad because it can portray everyone else as having it all together when my life is most definitely not. However, today I needed to update some selling I'm doing on Marketplace and I ended up scrolling and reading the top few posts. I came across this post from "I Heart Intelligence."   I have loved "I Heart Intelligence" and their posts for years now. I'd never seen one I disagreed with... ... Until today. This was my comment on the post: As someone with several mental and physical chronic illnesses, everything is NOT a choice...  1 - My husband left me. I tried for a year to get him to counseling and tried everything I could to keep our marriage together. He left anyway.  2 - I'm obese. However, due to many circumstances out of my control, "getting fit" isn't a choice. I can work out, eat less, and do everyt

Sometimes life throws a curve ball... and you're rooting for the infield team. Tonight is one of those times.  There are so many highs and lows in life. Even in the highs, there are lows. Even in the lows, there are highs. My first post in this series was about a pretty high day - the day we were media as well as VIPs at an Indycar race. However, even though that day was one of my top lately, there were a lot of lows included. It was hot. I wasn't having a good day physically. There were times I felt stuck at the media center, far away from all of the action. It was an incredibly long day. Etc... Etc... Etc... My last post was about what I thought would be a really low day - or a few days. But I'll save the details for that post. However, a totally unexpected high was sent my way - and I wanted to note it in here. Yesterday, on the way home from another Indycar race (the "low" I wrote about), my husband/photography partner and I were talking about how exhausting t

So... My husband and photography partner, Travis, and I had a blast at the 2023 Indycar race at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL (as I shared in https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/729122040431351468/8161189219424744427). We just knew that the upcoming Indycar race that we were going to get to shoot would be a million times better. You see, my husband is a huge Indycar fan. He fell in love with racing at the track closest to his childhood home in Ohio.  After picking up photography, it was a big dream of his to shoot an Indycar race - and an even bigger dream to do so as a credentialed media photographer at his home course.  This summer it happened. We got the opportunity to shoot for the same driver as we did earlier in the season. We were not only going to get to be credentialed media, get VIP passes so we could hang out with him and his team, AND do it at my husband's home track. We planned to leave for Ohio on a Thursday. That week was completely insane. - I had