Thankfully Chewed Up and Spat Back Out!

That's me sitting in my grandfather's lap - grandma to the right and my siblings standing in the back row  This afternoon I sat at my kitchen table snapping fresh green beans memories of my grandmother flooded my mind - Before I knew it I was telling my children, my two boys, the memories I had of my youth...a replay of events that once happened thirty-five plus years ago...however...then it was my sweet little German grandmother telling me about her childhood growing up in a land once known as Prussia. As I recounted those days to my children I also, by happenstance, explained to them something so simple yet so many today take for granted - how to cook - what to look for in that bean they were snapping, how we were going to prepare them for a fresh green bean salad to go with our dinner tonight - and then how lucky we were a friend gave us those beans enabling us to be able to eat a healthy fresh meal for a very low - next to nothing - impact on our budget. It was s

Today is a significant day in my life. Today is five years to the day...date and day of the week...that my life changed forever - Five years ago today, August 13, 2007, my estranged husband - the man I was married to and with my entire adult life, decided for the last time to exert physical and emotional abuse against me and chose to do by sexually and physically assaulting me in front of my children. It is a day that for the past five years has played over and over in mind. Every minute  - every second of it. I can still recall the morning I had that day...the way I rushed around to get some work done to the minute he walked into the house...my room...and the dread I felt in the pit of my stomach that something really bad was about to happen. From that point my children and their safety became my priority - we needed to get out and through it all...alive. My life ...I....changed. Looking back over the last five years can at times feel numbing. Combating rumors while people