I’ll start with the easy stuff.  Originally, I’m a farm girl from small town Saskatchewan.  Now I’m a 34 year old woman from Winnipeg.   I’ve been married to my high school sweet heart for 16 years this month.  We have an 11 year old daughter and a 4 year old son.  We are 4 peas in a pod.  Our favorite times are when we are all together.  When one of us is missing, we feel it.  My son gets very upset when his sister is gone for a sleep-over or doesn’t come off the bus at daycare as he expects her to.  My daughter, who was almost 7 at the time, got up with me in the night for the first few weeks after her brother was born.  And she is now his personal tutor in everything.  To have children that are best friends is more than parents can hope for.  Even our initials spell a word, SLAP, this also happens to be our daughter’s initials.  How cheesy is that?

But it’s not all rainbows and butterflies.  My husband and I each come from traumatic backgrounds on opposite sides of the world.  His was a war zone in Laos.  Mine was a supposedly peaceful prairie existence.  Nothing is as it seems.  And how did I get here?  While I was on maternity leave with my son I decided to take that year to really start to examine how I felt about different aspects of my life and the people around me.  I really dug in and started to write to try to make sense of it all.  And that start led me to where I am today and will hopefully continue to lead me in the direction that I am meant to go.

My father was murdered in a home invasion on June 12^th, 1976.  The prairie was no longer peaceful.  I was born on June 25^th, 1976.  I haven’t quite figured out whether time is on my side or not.  Time is very elusive and doesn’t like to be pinned down for lengthy interrogations.  Either you get it or you don’t.  And by the time you realize which one it is time is already long gone.  And here I am still, after almost 35 years, trying to figure it all out.  The offender and accomplice were caught and it was wrapped up in what appeared to be a neat package.  But I am here to say there isn’t anything neat about murder.  It is ugly, messy and life-long.  While this part of my life does not define me it certainly is a part of who I am, whether I like it or not.
I’m writing this blog as a way to express and examine the things that I have learned along the way in hopes that I can provide myself some closure and help out someone else in the process.  I have some serious work ahead of me and I want to get started.  But first some ground rules.  This is about learning how to be resilient, peaceful, and positive through adversity.  I am not an expert on these subjects.  I’m hoping we can learn them together.  This blog is not to be negative or disparaging but uplifting.  The people in this blog are loved, even if they are not perfect.  It is not up to us to judge but to tell the story.  And this is my story.

~ A fatherless girl thinks all is possible and nothing safe. – Mary Gordon