I've waited. I've hoped for a sign. I've wanted to share the contents of my interior world--so much of it is interior--and now all of a sudden, I know that there is nothing left but to share it all.

It sounds dramatic. Maybe it is!! I am, like I think many would be, shy in this situation.. But then no one goes online and lays her life bare on the internet in pursuit of shyness, do they? I had wanted to wait til I had the right organization for telling my story. I wanted to be sure that I would own my words, that no Google affiliate would end up with rights to what is mine...but it will always be my story, no matter what Google does or does not do. And it won't even be told if I don't make an attempt to share it. So here it is. (I know. Incredibly boring so far!) So here's the deal.

I am scared. Perhaps there is no reason, I don't know. But as they say, fear is a great motivator. I certainly find that to be true tonight. I am honestly not sure that I want anyone to know what I am going through now--I always thought I did, but then I did always have stories that were private, stories that I wanted to remember, but that I would not share with the entire world. I guess I will have to reconcile myself with those issues. LOL

So. Here I begin.

I am 43 years old and a woman. My parents had met in medical school and required a lot of me and my siblings in school. They had both grown up poor in Arkansas, babies of the Depression, really.

My father had one sister and was raised by his grandmother and his mother along with a cousin he considered his brother. His father died when he was young--maybe 12. He'd had a disabling stroke and finally died two years later. My grandmother was a nurse and supported her mother and the children just blocks from the high school that would later make history in the fight for segregation.

My mother is the oldest of 10 children, born into a German Catholic family in a small Arkansas town. She helped raise her siblings, and very much of who she is comes from her upbringing.

I have 3 brothers and one sister. I grew up in northern Illinois, a child of the 70's and 80's.

It only gets worse from there.