Last Friday the pain I’d been enduring for many months suddenly grew unbearable. I canceled my nanny jobs for this week and prayed that a week in bed would calm down the Crohn’s flare I’d been fighting for nearly two years now. By Wednesday night, however, I was...
April 8th, 2020 I awake to a warm breeze coming from our bedroom deck door brushing against my cheek. It’s a beautiful morning. A momma duck is keeping her baby eggs warm just a few feet away from our deck, the trees are bright purple with tiny flowering buds, and the...
Dear Readers, Surprise!! Tonight, during a fifteen-minute ceremony over a candlelight bridge in Loose Park (the same bridge I was proposed to just one month ago), Joshua and I vowed our love and faithfulness to each other. This tiny, no-frills, nearly impromptu...
1,604 Days That’s how many days I have been fighting in a court for legal justice against my ex cult leader, Bill Gothard. One thousand, six hundred and four long, exhausting, treacherous, grief-filled, gut-wrenching, heart-stopping, healing, redemptive, beautiful,...
“Your courage was not wasted or in vain.” Today I received this beautiful, hand-crocheted lavender lap blanket and encouraging letter from a woman I have never met. Her sentence quoted above instantly brought tears to my eyes. This is not the first gift I’ve received...
One year ago today I gathered every ounce of courage I had and did something that would forever change my writing and public story. I went live on NPR and for the very first time, publicly named my second sexual abuser — my father. Until that day I had been very open...
After a two-hour long scavenger hunt with love letters and clues hidden at all our most memorable date locations (check my previous posts for live video updates!), I finally ended up at one of the prettiest places in Kansas City, a park where Joshua first asked me to...
I’m currently reading a new book released just this past week, “Woman Rising: A True Story” by Julia McCoy. This memoir is the incredibly raw and vulnerable depiction of the horrific abuse the daughter of a cult leader endured throughout her childhood, and then how,...
Joshua and I are back in KC now after driving to Alabama over the weekend to see my Crohn’s doctor. The news was not what we had hoped. We have some difficult decisions to make in the near future. As I’ve been trying to process what the future might look like for us,...
Happy Birthday to the Love of my life!! ? I’m so grateful for this man who stayed by my side all last night and who offered to work from home today so he could care for me as I recover from my stem cell transplant. I am in a lot of pain and I’m unable to walk and can...