Beyond Survival

🚨 BEYOND SURVIVAL CHECK-IN 🚨

Let’s talk about gaslighting—because sometimes the hardest part of surviving narcissistic abuse is realizing you were being trained to question your OWN reality.

Have you ever heard:

💬 “That never happened.”
💬 “You’re too sensitive.”
💬 “You’re overreacting.”
💬 “You’re crazy.”
💬 “That’s not what I said.”
💬 “You’re making things up.”
💬 “Everything is always your fault.”

👇 LET’S PLAY A LITTLE GAME…

How many of these have you heard?

Drop a number in the comments ⬇️
OR tell us the one phrase that instantly takes you back.

And remember:

✨ You don't have to prove your experience to someone who benefited from you doubting it.
✨ You are allowed to trust yourself again.
✨ You are not alone.

Beyond Survival 💜
Real women. Real healing. Brighter tomorrows.

My Testimony: Beyond Survival

For a long time, I thought surviving was the same thing as living.

I have walked through things I never thought I would survive. I have experienced loss, heartbreak, trauma, disappointment, motherhood, battles in court, battles with my body, and moments when I questioned how much more one person could possibly carry.

But somehow, I kept getting back up.

My story didn't begin with everything falling apart. It began much earlier, with a little girl who learned far too young that life could be hard and that sometimes the people who were supposed to protect you couldn't.

I spent part of my childhood in foster care. I learned early how to adapt, how to protect myself, and how to keep going even when I didn't understand why things were happening to me.

As I got older, I carried those experiences with me. I became a mother. I built a family. I worked hard. I became a massage therapist because I wanted to help people feel better—not just physically, but emotionally. I wanted to create the kind of safe space I had needed myself.

Then life started asking more of me.

I became a mother who would fight harder than I ever knew I could fight.

My children became my reason to keep moving forward when I felt like I had nothing left. I learned that being a mother isn't always about having the answers. Sometimes it's about standing in the middle of uncertainty, fear, and exhaustion and saying, "I'm still here, and I'm not giving up."

I've had to fight battles I never imagined I would have to fight.

I've sat with paperwork, court documents, evidence, questions, fear, and uncertainty. I've had to advocate for my children and myself when I would have much rather been able to simply live a quiet life.

There were times I felt angry.

There were times I felt broken.

There were times I cried because I was exhausted from always having to be strong.

And there were times I wondered if God was really listening.

But looking back, I can see something I couldn't see while I was in the middle of it:

I was never standing alone.

My faith has not always looked like having perfect confidence. Sometimes faith was simply getting out of bed and trying again.

Sometimes faith was crying in the car and saying, "God, I can't do this anymore."

Sometimes faith was taking one more step when I couldn't see where the next one would lead.

And somehow, one step became another.

My health has brought its own battles. I've spent years trying to understand what was happening inside my own body. I've sat in doctors' offices, had tests, appointments, scans, procedures, and unanswered questions. I've experienced symptoms that affected my everyday life and had to learn how to keep going even when my body wasn't cooperating.

I've had surgeries.

I've had pain.

I've had fear.

I've had moments where I didn't recognize the person looking back at me in the mirror.

But my body failing me did not mean my life was over.

I am still here.

I am still fighting.

I am still becoming.

I've also experienced loss that changed me.

Losing my mom left an emptiness that words can't completely explain. Grief doesn't follow a schedule. Sometimes it sneaks up on you in the middle of an ordinary day, and sometimes you can feel it sitting quietly beside you.

I've learned that you can miss someone and still keep living.

You can grieve and still laugh.

You can hurt and still love.

You can carry someone's memory without allowing your grief to become the end of your story.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something important:

I don't want my story to be defined by everything that happened to me.

I want it to be defined by what I did with it.

I want to take the things that tried to break me and use them to help someone else feel less alone.

That's where Beyond Survival comes from.

Because I don't want to spend the rest of my life merely surviving.

I want to live.

I want to heal.

I want to laugh loudly.

I want to love deeply.

I want to be a mother my children can look back on and say, "Mom never gave up."

I want to build something meaningful.

I want to use my voice for women who are still afraid to use theirs.

I want to remind women that their trauma is something they experienced—not who they are.

I want women to know that starting over isn't failure.

Setting boundaries isn't selfish.

Asking for help isn't weakness.

And becoming someone new after everything you've survived isn't betraying the person you used to be.

It's honoring her.

Because that little girl who survived things she never should have had to survive deserved better.

That young woman who kept going when she was hurting deserved compassion.

That mother who fought for her children deserved support.

And the woman I am today deserves the chance to finally live beyond survival.

I don't have a perfect testimony.

I don't have a story where everything suddenly became easy.

I still have hard days.

I still have questions.

I still have things I'm healing from.

But I also have proof that I can survive hard things.

I have my children.

I have the people who truly love me.

I have a voice.

I have a purpose.

And I have a story.

Maybe that's the greatest thing my pain ever gave me—the ability to look at another woman who feels completely broken and say:

"I understand. I've been there too. You are not alone. And this is not the end of your story."

I spent years learning how to survive.

Now I'm learning how to live.

This is my story.

This is my testimony.

And this is my Beyond Survival.

🔥 LET’S TALK ABOUT THE PART NOBODY WARNS YOU ABOUT…

You can survive the abuse.
You can leave.
You can rebuild your life.
You can smile again.

…and STILL have days where the past comes knocking.

Healing doesn’t mean you never get triggered.
It doesn’t mean you stop being angry.
It doesn’t mean you forget what happened.

It means what happened to you no longer gets to decide who you become.

And listen… 👀

Some people are going to be uncomfortable with the version of you that finally learned to say NO.

Let them be uncomfortable.

You spent enough time making yourself small so everyone else could be comfortable.

This is the season of becoming.

Not who they wanted.
Not who trauma told you to be.
WHO YOU WERE MEANT TO BECOME. ❤️‍🔥

Welcome to Beyond Survival.

🖤 You survived. Now let’s talk about how you LIVE.

Marked safe from DV since Jan. 2017

Some of us are surviving things nobody knows about. ❤️

Beyond Survival is a place for the real stuff—life, trauma, healing, motherhood, relationships, starting over, and everything in between.

No judgment. No pretending. Just real people, real stories, and real support.

If you’ve ever felt like you were the only one…

Come sit with us. You belong here. 🫶

What are you learning about yourself in this season of life? 🪷

🦶💚 HEALING UPDATE! 💚🦶
Little by little… I’m getting there. 🥹💪
This healing journey has definitely been a process, and I’ve had my share of pain, swelling, frustration, and moments where I wondered how long it was going to take.
But today, I’m Celebrating a BIG Little Victory. 🥳
I’m starting to bear weight on my foot and take steps as tolerated! 🦶✨
I’m not saying I’m ready to run a marathon just yet 😂 — but being able to slowly put weight on it, get up, and actually WALK a little is something I’m incredibly grateful for.
The pictures show where I’m at right now… still swollen, still healing, still stitched up, and definitely not back to normal. But compared to where I started, I can see progress. ❤️
I’m learning that healing doesn’t always happen overnight. Sometimes healing looks like taking one tiny step at a time—literally. 🥹
So today, I’m choosing to celebrate the progress instead of focusing on how far I still have to go.
One step. One day. One victory at a time. 🦶💚
Thank you to everyone who has checked on me, prayed for me, encouraged me, and put up with all my surgery updates 😂❤️. Your love means more than you know!
Beyond Survival means learning to celebrate the little victories, too.
And today… walking is my victory. 💚🦶✨
💚

💔 Sometimes healing means letting go of what you love… to make room for what's next. 💕

Wednesday I walked out of KU Medical Dermatology in Kansas City with a whole new list of DOs and DON'Ts—and honestly, some of these new orders are going to completely change my life.
My doctor truly believes that if I listen to my body and follow these new instructions, I may have a real chance at getting my dermatitis and constant flare-ups under much better control. The goal is to calm my system down, reduce the constant reactions, and hopefully reach a place where I am not living in a flare-up all the time or constantly relying on long-term medications.
But with that hope comes some really hard changes.
One of the biggest?
I have to step away from my massage career 100%. 💔
For now, my life needs to be as free as possible from the things that may be triggering my skin and immune system.
That means saying goodbye to so many things that most people don't even think twice about:
🚫 Essential oils
🚫 Fragranced oils
🚫 Perfumes
🚫 Lotions and products with fragrance
🚫 Air fresheners
🚫 Candles
🚫 Fragranced deodorants
🚫 Incense
🚫 Dove products
🚫 Pork & seafood
🚫 No Nails -nail salon
🚫 No Fake- cheap jewelry
🚫 No processed foods
🚫 Unnecessary exposure to products and chemicals that could trigger another outbreak
And the list goes on.
If you know me, you know massage therapy wasn't just a job to me. It was something I loved. It was part of who I was. I loved helping people relax, heal, move better, and feel better in their own bodies.
So yes… this is emotional. This is hard. And honestly, it feels like grieving a piece of myself.
But I'm also trying to look at this differently. ❤️
I'm not giving up on life. I'm changing directions so I can have more life to live.
I am still chronically ill. That doesn't magically disappear. But if following these changes can help calm my body, give my system a break, and keep me from constantly living in painful flare-ups, then I owe it to myself to try.
And maybe this is where my next chapter begins. ✍️📖
I'm going to pour more of myself into writing my books, sharing my story, and continuing to build Beyond Survival into the safe, loving, judgment-free community I've always dreamed of having—and being a part of.
A place where people can show up as they are.
A place where new friendships don't cost anything but kindness, understanding, love, and a little bit of grace. 💕
I've spent so much of my life surviving.
Maybe now it's time to learn what it looks like to create a life that allows me to heal, grow, write, connect, and truly thrive.
This isn't the end of my story.
It's a major plot twist. 🖤✍️
And if you've been here with me through the hard parts, I hope you'll stick around for this next chapter too.
Because we're not just surviving anymore…
We're building something Beyond Survival. 💕

Dad ofc spoiled Mom on the way home with a treat.

Here is the prompt I used in the comments, what does it look like? Let's get to know each other !
Happy Tuesday

✨ SURGERY UPDATE! ✨

Well y’all… I survived surgery! 😂🙌🏼

My surgery went well, and now I’m officially in the rest, recover, and try to follow the doctor’s orders stage. 😅 (Those who know me know that last part might be the hardest!)

Recovery may take a little time, and today I’m definitely feeling it, but I’m grateful to have this part behind me and one more step checked off on my journey toward becoming stronger than I was before. 💪🏼❤️

Because that’s what Beyond Survival is all about, right? It’s not just about getting through the hard things—it’s about healing, growing, and continuing to move forward even when life forces us to slow down.

So while I’m recovering, I want to check in with YOU! 👇🏼

💬 What’s something you’re currently healing from, working toward, or pushing through?

It can be physical, emotional, mental, or just LIFE in general. 😂 No judgment here—this is a safe space!

And if you’ve got any funny recovery stories, drop those too because I could definitely use the entertainment while I’m stuck resting! 🤣👇🏼

❤️ Check in. Share your story. Encourage someone else. We’re all Beyond Survival together.