Author: vanessa joie

little letters

February 17, 2014

dear spring,
please hurry up… please.

dear california,
i can’t wait to see you again.

dear house,
sorry you’re always such a mess.

dear old car,
thanks for hanging in there.

dear longer days,
thank you for the extra sunshine.

dear vegan/gluten free cookie dough,
thanks for keeping my sweet tooth in check… mostly.

dear harlow,
thanks for being the perfect pup.

dear pinterest,
i cannot quit you.

photo credit info unknown

moon river

February 17, 2014

saturday morning i woke up sobbing and i have no idea why. waking up means i must have slept and that’s a good thing and i don’t remember having any upsetting dreams but there i was bawling like a baby while harlow sat on my chest and stared at me. we were both confused.

the only thought that my sad brain could focus on was that i wanted to watch breakfast at tiffany’s.

i haven’t seen it in a few years and lost most of my dvds in the move but fortunately it was on netflix and i immediately turned it on. two things – 1. moon river made me cry more  2. i do love that movie.

what are your go-to movies when you need a pick me up?

random fact: did you know you can still buy the sunglasses that audrey wore in the movie? They’re Oliver Goldsmith’s Manhattan sunglasses.

August 10, 2013

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” -Roald Dahl

photos from the greys garden collection

August 9, 2013

 In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. … not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

Rainer Maria Rilke

what are you worth?

August 1, 2013

i am vanessa and i am not what happened to my body.

one of the things that’s been hard for me is keeping a feeling of self worth and of value. dealing with any kind of abuse tells you that you are worth nothing in the eyes of your abusers messes and changed the way you see yourself. these days my self confidence is not what it was and some days it doesn’t exist at all. in its place there are great big storm clouds of doubt and fear and shame. i remember all through middle school and high school listening to speakers and teachers go on and on about the importance of high self esteem and being self confident. i think those motivational talks were important and even worthwhile but life gets tough and can push pretty hard.

so when your self confidence or self esteem take a beating, then what?

i think it’s easy to take the best or worst experience of your life and think of yourself only in terms of that event. for me at least that’s proven true. but whether the experience is good or bad it’s probably not accurate way to measure yourself. maybe other people are better at dealing with it but for me it’s been hard. when i think about what happened i use words like evil, disgusting, degrading, shameful, and dirty and it’s hard not to apply those words to me as a person. separating myself from that event has been incredibly hard. little by little it’s sinking in that i am not the one who’s evil or disgusting. 
self esteem is a tricky thing. it’s subject to so many outside factors and really is not to be trusted (unless you’re a super pro at then please give me some pointers asap.) how others treat you, how they talk about you, a first date, a break up, your finances, a fight with a spouse or a friend, your job, an awesome hair day, a horrible hair day, how many likes you got on instagram, your family, a compliment, a criticism, the number of followers you have on twitter, your mood, a promotion, how much sleep you got, your material possessions, your health, whether or not you have a zit, an awesome blowout… any number of things affect your self confidence.

and then there’s self worth.

ages ago i read a story of a man who saved for years to give his wife a pair of diamond earrings. when she opened them she inwardly knew they couldn’t be real diamonds because of their financial situation. thinking they were fakes she wasn’t always careful with them. sometimes she’d forget where she’d taken them off or leave them near the sink or was careless with them. one evening she mentioned to her husband that she’d misplaced them and was not able to find them. the husband was frantic. he began searching everywhere for the missing earrings. as the wife watched her husband search she realized that the diamonds had been real and she joined in the search for the missing earrings.
the point is the worth of the diamonds never changed. they were always of great value. and their value did not change based on how they were treated. 
the same is true for me. and for you. your worth, your value as a person, as a child of god or of the universe, as a living, breathing human being does not change. i believe each of us was created intentionally and purposefully and have infinite worth. i guess that includes me. your self confidence might change but you’re worth as a person and a spirt does not. a friend of mine summed it up like this: “there are days when you might be treated like crap and you might feel like crap but that does not make you crap.”
what happened to me has changed me. it’s changed the way i think and the way i live… but it has not changed my worth. every single day i fight to remember that. it’s probably what i struggle with the most. my worth has not changed. i wish i could have it tattooed on the inside of my eyelids or something so i’d remember it. there are days when i’m overwhelmed by the memory of what happened and by fear of the future. but i am not what happened to me. i am not the choices made by those evil men.

so what am i? 

i am a daughter, a sister, a niece, an aunt, a granddaughter and a friend. i am funny. i am grumpy. i am hopeful. i am a worker. i am a private person. i am hopeful. i am an avid nail painter. i am a daughter of god. i am frizzy-haired. i am a writer. i am a painter. i am a spanish speaker. i am an ice cream eater. i am a photographer. i am a pizza lover. i am a terrible singer. i am stubborn. i am a road tripper. i am a peace keeper. i am a future french speaker. i am a member of the church of jesus christ of later-day saints. i am a coconut lover. i am opinionated. i am a return missionary. i am clumsy. i am reserved. i am right handed. i am a shortie. i am a dreamer. i am a traveler. i am a sunscreen wearer. i am a doodler. i am a book reader. i am a blogger. i am a california girl. i am a teacher. i am a dog person. i am near-sighted. i am a cardigan wearer. i am a giraffe lover. i am a temple goer. i am a sunshine lover. 
i am vanessa and i am not what happened to my body.
image from tiffany & co.

little letters

July 23, 2013

dear blog readers,
you’re the nicest.

dear red lipstick,
you brighten my day.

dear pugsleys,
i’m so sad you’re moving.

dear neighbor,
thank you SO MUCH for mowing my lawn.

dear harlow,
thanks for being my dog.

dear ice cream maker,
i’m glad i got you out this week.

dear forever21,
thanks for having $8 sandals.

dear kids next door,
her name is harlow, not carlos.

ok so it’s only monday and i don’t want to jinx it. i have an interview tomorrow for a job i really, really want so i’m crossing everything i’ve got.

temporary

July 21, 2013



the other night i came home from a barbeque at a neighbor’s house to find that my power was out. i walked in, flipped the switch, and nothing. 

it was literally my worst nightmare.

i mentioned before that i have nightmares on a pretty regular basis and they aren’t any fun to put it mildly. a lot of times they’re flashbacks about the assault and those are the worst but often i don’t remember what they were about – i just wake up panicked. one nightmare that i have repeatedly is about a light switch. sort of. in the nightmare i’m trying to get away from something. i don’t know what it is it’s just this vague, scary “thing”. so i’m running and i find a safe place to hide and i feel so relieved. i go in, close the door, and turn on the light. but when i flip the light switch instead of getting lighter the room gets darker. in that moment all i can feel is cold terror, a sinking feeling in my stomach and then panic. in the dream the more i try to turn on the lights the darker and scarier it gets. 

what does this have to do with anything? 

sometimes i feel like that’s how my life as been going since the assault. this awful thing was forced into my life and more than anything i wanted to get away from it, to move on and to feel better but nothing worked. it seems the harder i’ve tried, the worse i’ve felt. the first therapist i saw was the wrong therapist for me and i felt defeated. i confided in a church leader when i was in california and they unintentionally made me feel worse. i saw doctors who were unsympathetic and cold and i felt ashamed rather than helped. after telling one of my closest friends she stopped speaking to me and i felt worthless. i moved to utah to start over but living by myself has been scarier than i expected. nothing was getting better. the light that i so desperately wanted to go on seemed to only get dimmer no matter how hard i tried. but here is the tiniest, faintest silver lining – on good days i can look back now and see that those things and feelings were only temporary. i eventually found a therapist that i feel comfortable with and can trust. my bishop here has been patient and kind. i found a new doctor who showed concern and care and helped me feel safe. despite the one friend who didn’t want to or wasn’t able to be supportive i have many friends who have stuck with me no matter how crazy or boring or depressing i must seem sometimes. even living by myself as gotten a tiny bit easier. 

one of the things that i strongly believe is that this life is not all there is. i believe that there is something beyond this that we are striving for. that knowledge helps me understand that most things that happen in this life are only temporary. having said that it’s important to say that things don’t always FEEL temporary and that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that happen that aren’t extremely painful or scary or heartbreaking. there are hard days when i can’t imagine what life will be like on the other side of all of this pain and fear and doubt. there are nights when i am so tired and i feel like i will ever get a good night’s sleep again. i find myself wondering if i will ever sleep more than 3 or 4 hours at a time. gosh i hope so. there are moments when i think about the future and i’m completely overwhelmed by so many unanswered questions. 

but what gives me even the tiniest bit hope is that those moments and days have always, eventually, passed. the night my power was off was long, painful, and frustrating and involved a lot of crying and a lot of praying. it was awful and i hated every single minute of it. but eventually it ended. not to sound completely cheesy but the sun eventually came out and i was able to get a little sleep, take a walk and get back to work. clearly i don’t have this all figured out yet but i’m writing this as a reminder to myself. i, maybe more than anyone, need to remember that these things are temporary. i have a dear friend who waited ten years for an answer to a prayer and i’m sure that while she was living it those days and weeks and years felt endless. the thought of spending even one year feeling like i do now seems horrible let alone ten… but even ten years is vastly different than forever. 

so this is my reminder to me for the next hard day or hard week or sleepless night. it’s only temporary. 

photo by me – my first ever polaroid.