An Introduction to the Characters

 Because so much has changed since I last regularly posted, I thought it best I introduce the main characters in my story. This is just to provide a brief introduction to each of the most important people in my life so that when I mention someone it's a little clearer who the heck I am talking about.

First, there's Luke. That's my husband. He is a 32 year old electrician. Yes, I am well aware of the age gap and I'll be the first to admit that I was not comfortable with it at first. However, he somehow manages to be one of the oldest person I have ever interacted with. Talking to him, no one would ever guess his age. Most people in our circle assume us to be the same age or him to be older. Being raised by an older mother and grandmother contributed I'm sure, but that barely tells the story. I affectionately call him a "Bible dork". This is a man who spends hours listening to apologetics and discussions on the intricacies of the Bible. He thinks deeply about things, is calm, and probably the most consistent person I have known in my life.

Next is Samantha. She's technically the oldest. Samantha is 21 and lives about 45 minutes away. Honestly, she has been the most difficult of the children. There's a lot there but I'll summarize with the fact that she has a lot of mental health problems and issues with addiction. There were plenty of days I didn't think we would ever even get to 18, but here we are now. She tends to make impulsive decisions and was under guardianship until just a couple of months ago. I still see her regularly and talk to her even more.

Then we have Jenny. She has always functioned as the oldest. Seriously, even Samantha will say Jenny has always been her big sister. Jenny is 19. She has a husband, Will. He is an amazing guy and exactly the type of man I would have wanted for my daughter. In October 2024, Jenny got the same stomach virus that the other kids were passing around and it triggered the onset of chronic health issues. She says she now sees all the ologies and we are still working for a definitive diagnosis but know it is autoimmune in nature. Even with her struggles, she is a fighter! She still finished high school and tech school in Early Childhood Education. She works with Will (that's how they met) and we all work to support her in being able to do what she wants to do while still accommodating her health issues. Because her health requires a lot of extra support, Jenny and Will live here with us as they save for a house and look for something near their support system.

Nicci is next. She is 18 and about to graduate from the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics. OSSM is a boarding school for super smart kids. She has been there since the beginning of her Junior year so she occupies a space something like Schrodinger's cat where she both lives here and doesn't. After graduation, Nicci will be moving to San Antonio to attend Trinity University as a Biochemistry major before pursuing her doctorate in Pharmacology. It's hard to think about her being so far away, but it's also exciting to watch her soar. 

Houston is the oldest of the boys at 16. He is a great student as all the kids are and is about to finish his Sophomore year in high school. He is active in the choir. He is also very active in the church he attends and will even be leading some Sunday School lessons and preparing to be able to preach over the summer. He plans to join the Army after graduation and wants to pursue a career in law enforcement. Being from a blue family, I support this fully but also know the risks in pursing this path. He is outgoing and energetic. You never really know what he's going to say which is part of what makes him fun. 

Elli is the youngest of the girls at 14. We are at the end of her Freshman year. She is the girl of the girls. She loves purple, pink, unicorns, and big bows. She is currently having some health struggles of her own, likely related to the incident when she was a baby, but she never lets it stop her. She is active in the choir, loves reading, and crafting. She has a huge heart and loves her friends and family deeply. Elli talks about attending tech school in her Junior year to pursue Early Childhood Education and vacillates between wanting to be a teacher or a therapist when she grows up.

Rex is 13 and in 7th grade. He is active in band and choir. He is the quiet one of the bunch. He loves gaming and being outside which is an odd contrast but somehow works for him. He was the youngest for a long time and will tell you to this day he still doesn't want a little brother.

Finally, we have Denny. He's 6 and in Kindergarten. He is very bright and also a bit of a trouble-maker. His teacher this year has been letting him work on advanced skills so he already reads and does math at a 2nd grade or higher level. He is independent and funny. I think in part because his siblings were all so much older than him, he really seems very grown for his age and I often say he has been a teenager since birth.

So there you have it, a brief introduction to the 8 people who are the biggest part of my life. I'm certain you'll come to know them all better over the course of my writing, but at least now when I say a name, you'll have some idea of who I am talking about. 

Early to Rise

 Yesterday we celebrated Mother's day for a lot of practical reasons. We don't all go to the same church, Jenny also has a husband whose mother also needs to be visited, restraunts were way less crowded, Nicci didn't have other plans, and the list could go on. I have said repeatedly I have plenty of stuff and all I wanted was their time. So, we all went to lunch. We tried somewhere new. Although it wasn't great food or service, sitting there with 6 of the 7 kids was amazing! 

This morning, I woke up to this. I don't even know which of the kids set it here, but I know it brought tears to my eyes. Not because they spent a ton of money or even because I collect teddy bears and now I have another one. It's because I felt so seen. This wasn't wrapped and presented by the purchaser. It simply sat on top of my laptop on my desk. That may seem like an odd choice, but for me it was the most logical for someone who sees me.

See, the way I have gotten through school to date and still managed everything else in my life is through a structured routine. My coffee pot gets preset every night to auto brew at 4am. Every day my feet are on the floor by 330am and by 415am, I am sitting at my desk, coffee in hand. This has been my routine since April 2022 when I began going to school. It gives me the quiet I need to focus. It allows me to still be present for the day to day functions of a large family. Because this has been the routine for 4 years now, someone knew that sitting it there would make it the first thing I really saw today.

And, it's more than that still. It reminds me of the type of people I am raising. People who think about others and know the value of the small things in life. People who see others not just in what they do for them, but as individuals with their own thoughts, needs, and personalities. 

It makes me think of an exchange that I had with another parent in our school district a few years back. We live on gravel roads and I was about a mile from the house when I realized my tire was flat. There was no way I was making it home. This was the first flat I had had in the sedan I was driving, and my jack was not going to get the job done on that section of gravel road, there just wasn't enough clearance to get that style of jack under the car. Someone came out to help (I do love that about country neighbors) and we struck up a conversation about our kids. He said his daughter also went to the school and was in the same grade as one of mine. He asked if my daughter knew his. I said I recalled the name but wasn't certain how close they were or if it was even the same girl. He told me I would know if it was his daughter because she wore a prosthetic and that's the first thing anyone ever mentioned. Based on that, I said I didn't think my daughter knew his. When I got home, I asked my daughter if the girl she had mentioned several times by name had a prosthetic limb to which the answer was yes. I told her about the encounter with the girl's dad and my surprise at the information. It was in that moment that I saw a real glimpse of the people I am raising. My daughter responded with "well, I never mentioned it because it never mattered to what we were talking about." She had not used the girl's disability as a mark of identification. She just knew the girl. The prosthetic wasn't how she saw her, but a part of a whole person. Because none of our discussions surrounding the girl had been related in any way to her disability, it never got mentioned. 

I say all the time I have amazing kids. They are bright, caring, people who haved really been predominantly as easy as any parent could ask for. But moments like this long ago exchange or finding a teddy bear seated on my laptop serve to highlight that all the more for me. I have been raising kids that see people as they are, past the narrow lense that the world may hold, to what makes them who they are. There have been many days I have questioned my ability as a mother, whether I was making too many mistakes, if I was doing this right at all. Parenting is hard and I certainly didn't have a good example, but in these moments, I feel like I haven't done too bad even for all my mistakes.

It's Been How Long Exactly?

Wow, I had rather forgotten I even had this blog. If I had not been working over the last couple of days to clean up my social media, I may have not remembered it still. It has been just over 8 years since my last post. That is forever in the digital age, and yet these years have flown by at a speed that simply boggles the mind. So much has changed! 

When I started this blog, I was a 32 year-old married stay at home mom of 4. But, I was so much more even then. I was one of the millions of people in this country who was in a domestically abusive relationship. I lied, a lot. I hid it well. He would tell me when I tried to challenge how I or the children were treated that we could not be being abused because look at all the nice things we had. Um, yeah I forgot that's how that part works! If you read my last post from May of 2018, you know something about how this story continued to unfold. By May of 2015, I had 6 children between the ages of 2 and 10, and I reached a breaking point. I realize now that even in that 2018 update, I still had so much work to do. I thought I had healed, figured it all out (which is the funniest idea of all looking back), and knew the trajectory of my life. I see that I still avoided any real conversation about what life was like leading to that day, or what exactly happened that started changing everything. I know that's a story I still need to tell, to share with others who may find themselves in a similar situation to where I found myself that day in 2015. I know this will sound like avoidance, but it isn't because if I share everything today, this one post would be about a novel long!! 

So, this is my statement of commitment to get it all out there over the next few weeks, but for today, I want to provide a new and more honest introduction than the one I have shared in the past.

My name is Harli. I am 47 years old. 

I have 2 babies in Heaven and 7 here on Earth. My babies in Heaven have been there for 25 and 10 years. My babies here are 21, 19, 18, 16, 14, 13, and 6. In other posts, I will tell you all about each one of them, where they are now, what they are doing, etc, but for today, let me stay on track with my introduction.

In February 2025, I married the first truly good man I have ever been in a relationship with. Our story is as messy and complex as most any other part of my life, but it's also so different than my previous relational experiences. This is a man who loves and supports me as I continue to change and grow. He loves all the children as if they were his own and I am thankful every day to have found him. As with the children, this is a story for another day, but it will be told.

I am a Christian. That's something I never thought I would say. Over the years I have looked at most every religion one could imagine. In the end, I decided the very concept of God was a lie because no all powerful, just being would have laid out the life I had lived for anyone He supposedly loved. I had embraced atheism in name, but in my heart I was just incredibly angry. How that changed is also another story for another day. I feel like I will be saying that a lot in this post!

I am a survivor! I have suffered an assortment of abuses from my very earliest memories, yet here I am still. Not only have I lived, but as I have healed and changed, I thrive. 

I am a college graduate and also student. In May 2022, I returned to school to begin pursuing my BS in Psychology Pre-Counseling. I earned that degree in March 2022 and in April 2022 I began my MS in Marriage and

 Family Therapy. I earned that degree in March 2024. I have maintained a 4.0 throughout the entirity of my journey to date. In just 9 days, I start my PhD in MFT program. If all goes according to plan, in 2031 I will graduate with my Doctorate. 

I am currently waiting on the results of my national licensure exam. I am in the process of licensure in 2 states, Oklahoma and Texas. As soon as I recieve my passing score, I will be finishing the process and will hold an LMFT Candidate/Associate license in these states. Once I have my licenses, I will return to working at The Center for Christian Counseling and Care where I completed my internship.

I am a plus-sized woman. I'm nowhere near the size I was when I was last talking about my weight and constantly beating myself up over every ounce, but at 5'3 and 190 pounds, the label still fits. 

I have physical disabilities. I am certain that the abuses my body has endured over the years is a contributing factor as well as the large amount of weight I carried for so long. I have arthritis in many parts of my body including my spine. There are days when even getting out of bed feels like a challenge, but I have faced and overcome challeges before so I get up every day, regardless of how painful it may be. 

I'm a tattoed nerd! I currently have about 40 tattoos reflecting many of my passions. If you see my ink, there's not really any doubt of my nerdiness, lol My ink reflects my love of my family and fandoms. I attend comic conventions and cosplay. 

Even all of this is just a small glimpse of who I am and who I am becoming. This life was built on the remains of who I was and the healing I have done over the years. I am excited to be back at my keyboard and sharing this journey. I look forward to walking this path wherever God leads me. My hope is that in sharing this, you may find strength, hope, and inspiration. 

The Day The Force Was With Me

Today is an anniversary.  It's one that is very emotional for me from both positive and negative sides.  I try to stay focused on the positive aspects, but that isn't always easy.  I figured the best way to handle it was to get it out of my head and onto my blog since that really is why I started this whole thing anyway.

May 4, 2015 started out like most any other day with an alarm clock going off at 5:00 am.  I rushed out of bed and scrambled to pack a lunch made up of a sandwich on home baked bread, chips, Powerade, and a cupcake.  I then quickly heated a sub par breakfast of a frozen croissant sandwich and had everything sitting on the table by 5:15 am.  I walked into the living room and booted up my laptop, make sure his work bags were packed and sitting by the door then returned to the bedroom to make the bed.  He gave me instructions on what work I needed to get done before he arrived at work and walked out the door.

The morning was so ordinary.  Like a million that had come before and what I fully feared would be a million more to follow.  By 5:30 am he was on the phone with me asking constant updates on where I was with the grade book.  See, I may not have had a "real job" but everything that was done outside of the confines of the classroom were my responsibility.  It was my job to make him look good, competent, and exceedingly well prepared at all times.  I did my job and I did it well.  

Throughout the day, as always there were constant emails and check ins.  God forbid I not answer my phone or respond to a text or email within about a minute.  I also had housework to do, 10 kids to homeschool, and this year, I had been sneaking around and gotten a work from home job so I could make some money he didn't know about.  He had found out once that I had money hidden away and told me to quit immediately.  I also had to surrender the money tucked away in the work account.  He was very forceful in his request.  I'll leave that there and not go into detail.  Anyway, I was still sneaking and still working.  So, I had a deadline of my own to meet.  A post that needed to be up because it was May 4th, Star Wars Day.

Flash forward to the end of a very long day.  12 hours after I got up and at a full run all day.  My post is still not up.  In fact, I'm still working on it and he walks in the door.  Busted.  This lead to yelling, screaming, crying.  Him telling the kids how negligent and worthless I was before taking them outside with him.  In that moment something snapped.  I realized I was more afraid of him coming back into the house, of confining me in the bedroom, of what would follow than I was of dying.

I walked back into the bedroom and wrote out a detailed note.  It is amazing how calm and unemotional the whole thing was for me.  I talked about how much I loved the kids and how much I would miss them but mostly it was all business.  Passwords, websites, and due dates for bills so that it wouldn't be too hard to keep the house running without me.  I then took about 2 weeks worth of medicine in the space of 2 minutes or less.  I won't go into detail on what I took but I will say that I had done my research and this was no cry for attention.  All my research had shown this was a no fail method.  For a few minutes I just sat there.  Then, I was washed over with fear.  Not about what would happen to the kids without me there so much as what would happen if one of the kids found me and they were all alone for the day.  I couldn't bear the thought of that.

I walked out onto the porch in the back and told him what I had done.  It was all so calm.  Then I walked back into the house and climbed back into the middle of the bed to wait since I wasn't sure how long the medicine would take to work or what would happen when it did.  He started calling people.  The first call wasn't to 911 but to some people from church.  One must appear properly concerned after all.  As the children came in trying to figure out what was going on, I told them how much I loved them and said my goodbyes.  I refused to leave the bed.  I didn't see any reason why I should.  Eventually, someone from church with medical training convinced him that because I was refusing to get off the bed and into the car, he had to call 911.  In a different situation he may have well tried to force me to comply but with an audience, as always he was the picture of care and concern.

Police and EMTs finally arrived.  EMTs checked my blood sugar, heart rate, etc and found me to be in no immediate medical danger and therefore had to walk out the door because I was refusing medical treatment.  The police were a whole different story.  With the note and no denial of what I had done, they could take me into protective custody as it were and insist on medical treatment at the local ER.  I continued to refuse.  At that point I was told that if I didn't get up and walk out with them, I would be cuffed or tied and physically removed from the house and forced into the police car.  The thing that the officer said that got me to move is that he was sure I didn't want the kids to see me dragged out of the house in cuffs.  He was right, I didn't want that to be their last memory of me.

I walked out of the house with officer on either side fully expecting never to walk in again.  Once I was out of the house, I had no intention of being compliant and besides, my research had indicated that even with going to the hospital, there was little to nothing doctors could do to keep me alive once the medicine started working.  During the ER time, a police officer sat with me constantly and they wouldn't let him come back.  When the doctor and nurses wanted to do labs and other assessments, initially I refused.  The officer made it clear that I would be restrained and the hospital staff would be allowed to do what they thought was best regardless.  Some of the woman I was before the years of abuse popped up likely because at that point I felt I had nothing to lose anyway.  I literally told the officer I had never worn handcuffs when it wasn't for fun and hated to break my streak now.  

Shortly after, a most unexpected thing happened.  I threw up in a major way.  That isn't all that unexpected but the fact that all the pills I had swallowed were still completely whole all that time later was.  Over the course of the entire event, I was never in any danger although they did keep me overnight and monitored my blood sugar very closely.  I was moved from the ER to a regular room, still with police supervision and the next day I was transferred to a Crisis Center on a minimum of a 72 hour hold.  Before the police car left, I handed my wedding rings to him and told him I was done.  In that moment, I knew I couldn't survive any more of his abuse.  In that moment, I was confident I meant it.

I look back now and wonder if the next couple of days had gone differently if I would have been able to stick to what I was saying and feeling right then.  I was one in the past who was often too quick to judge others who were in an abusive relationship and didn't leave.  Or worse, those who left one and then came back to it again and again.  I didn't understand the power the abuser held, how they lived in your head even when they weren't there, until I was fighting it myself.

But, instead, God or the Force or whatever you believe in did for me and the kids what I don't know I could have done for myself or them at that time.  May 4, 2015 became a day that changed my life for the better.  Yes, it could and should have ended very differently than it did but it still freed me and the kids from him.  I think I will wait and go into more details on that in a couple of days but for now, I am feeling less emotionally raw and more in control of myself so this seems to be a very good place to stop for now.

Unwanted Memories

You ever come to a date and it triggers a memory that you don't necessarily want even if it's not a a bad memory per se?  That's where today is.  It's not so much that the memory is unpleasant as it is unwanted. 

On this day in 1997, I got married for the second time.  Anyone who wants to do the math can look at how young I was and also note that I said second time.  I don't regret it, but I do also acknowledge that I was very young.

The day was so full of excitement and promise.  Even now, 21 years later, I remember it in every detail.  But, though there was much good in that period of my life, there was also much heartache and all those promises were broken.  More than broken though, obliterated.  It became more than a pain, more than heartbreak.  It left me scarred and a different person than the one I was before.

Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for the experiences.  The things I learned have added much value to my life.  At the same time, I am also wise enough to know that is the perspective of a 39 year old woman who has finally found the other half of her soul which is far different from the perspective of the girl I was at the time. 

The truth is an older, wiser me would have never married him in the first place.  But, older, wiser versions of ourselves often don't see the mistake ahead no matter how obvious it is to the rest of the world around us.  And, it's not like I would have listened to what anyone had to say anyway. 

He and I had known each other as small children.  I used to kill his GI Joe men.  I don't mean in a cute, let's play war way.  I would literally behead them and then try to melt them with my EZ Bake Oven.  Yeah, I was that sort of kid.  I moved away and that appeared to be the end of that story.

Flash forward to high school.  I was sick one day and that is the day lab partners were assigned.  I got stuck with the partner no one wanted.  Yay me.  But, that lead to a relationship, my first marriage, and my reconnection with my childhood friend.  See, his best friend was my old playmate.  Of course, I didn't know that at the time and it was quite a while before the connection was made in part because of a childhood nickname very different from his real name.

Even without knowing that old connection, the attraction for me was instant and intense.  It was the first time I even thought I might be in love.  Some may wonder if that is the case, how he was my second marriage and not the first.  There are so many details that probably don't need to be shared on that tangent and so many choices that were made from youthful impulsiveness.

With everything that came before the wedding day including the fact that we weren't even dating like 2 weeks before we got married, again I will state a wiser, older me would have never done it in the first place.  But, the me back then thought I was in love.  As is not unexpected, things just deteriorated over time.  The last few days we were in a house together were brutal.  And, in the days following the end, I wasn't always sure I would make it through.  But, as I said in my last post, I am a survivor.

Throughout my life, big changes always come with a theme song.  At the end of the marriage which lasted officially just over 4 years, my theme song was Trisha Yearwood's I Would Have Loved You Anyway.  It was fitting for so many reasons and even more fitting for even more reasons looking back across the years. 

About a year ago, I reached out to my ex on social media.  We talked a few times, some apologies were made, and some old wounds finally closed completely.  It helped heal the last traces of heartache.  Do some of the memories still hurt?  I suppose they do in a way but mostly they are just old scars that you feel sometimes when the weather is just right.

Today, I as I reflect on it all and as I sort through old files that have come unasked for and unwanted into my mind, I am glad for what that relationship was.  It taught me a lot and helped make me who I am now.  I am also glad that it ended and gave me the chance to move on, and make other mistakes. I know that without everything I experienced and learned in that relationship and the ones that came afterwards as well as before, I would not be the woman I am today.  I wouldn't have six amazing children. I wouldn't have the life I have found by traveling on a smooth and easy path.  Perhaps that is the real why of those unwanted memories, to remind us of just what it took to get to who and where we are now.