In the last post I explained how hard it has been to accept friends and emotions. When I found out my grandmother had a stoke, I called 3 friends, “Stacy, Ann, and Joy” who knew I buried emotions and asked for help. These friends whom I have helped, felt like they would help, and they said they would.

Family in town consists of mom, dad and I. My parents have a farm with a cat, horse, many dogs, many chickens, vegetable garden and a berry patch both getting ripe. I have 2 cats, 2 dogs.  We also were afraid it’d be a double funeral with my grandaddy going shortly after.  A possibility existed we were going to need help.  “Stacy,” friend of 30 years promised to help.  Ann said she’d help, Joy said I’d be ok.

June 13th Granny died. June 14th I took mom to the airport, becoming a farmer June 15th.  Dad was on overtime, plus I needed the distraction.  Naturally we had a early heatwave.  That night Stacy calls needing help with her kids at the fair. I told her the day before, again that night to find someone else I was overwhelmed… but the third call she begged she “had no one else.” Her kids are my weakness. Reluctantly I agreed, thus spent day 2 of farm life completely exhausted.

June 18th was the start of a seminar. Friends (including “Ann”) had my ticket, I’d have to pay for part of a room (Thank you Elaine, Martha, Kate), food and drive 4.5 hours… each way. But my budget was shot, my nerves were shot, my mom was not home which meant drive in Sat night to leave the next from a high energy seminar to be a farmer Monday.

Saturday night I was at home, alone, the first break I had. Suddenly it all hit.  I wasn’t able to talk to mom about family, we normally talk almost everyday.   Her family lives in a tech phobic town and mom could be at any one of 4 homes.  (no wifi, little internet, cells don’t work until you drive 10 minutes away!) My grandmother being dead. A family member taking granny’s stuff. August weather in June.  Missing the seminar.  Mad at feeling too exhausted to safely drive 4.5 hours to Austin.   Choking back tears too much too call, I sent a text to Stacy.   She was “going to church.” 90 minutes later “at the store” 90 minutes later “in bed, turning off phone” at 7:30.

Thus I focused all my pain, anger and frustration at the 6 shrubs that needed removing.  30+ year old shrubs are stronger than my 18v reciprocating saw, but they could not match someone who was mad and had a pair of loppers. I chopped off every limb, leaving the stumps. I took pictures for Facebook, so I could have pictures before, during and after.   A friend “V” 730 miles away whose little children were going to bed started sending texts “are you ok?” my pictures worried her, and she checked on me regularly to keep me from getting too carried away with the shrubs.

On Tuesday while driving to the farm I called Ann. She lectured about not pushing myself to drive to the seminar and that is why my business was not succeeding. Note: a few weeks before I did 2 hours of WordPress work for free for her.  That night, 3 days later, Stacy sends a text “figured u’d b ok, I needed sleep.”  I was not happy, but dismissed my anger and did not respond. Only to have a mutual friend, who doesn’t talk to Stacy, chat with me that I shouldn’t be upset, that Stacy has a lot going on.

Well, months before during Stacy’s divorce, since she “was going through a lot” I didn’t get upset over her phone call that would make a sailor blush. (replace all stars with bad sex or cuss words) She told me the only reason guys would ever want me was to  (bad words)   *** then she screamed disgusting sexual names at me ****** She called my boyfriend names **** screaming and chewing me out because all he wants is ****  A few months later she called me childish names for driving a go cart slow when my 4 year old passenger was in tears for going too fast.  I will not terrify a 4 year old to make an adult happy.  I blew these off, because she had a lot going on… now I had a lot going on. She wanted my help at the fair days before but she couldn’t help me, this was the final blow.

To keep from calling Stacy while furious, I watered the rock hard ground & 30+ year old hedges.  Using a shovel and loppers to cut major roots I tore them out of the ground. The last one torn out well after dark. At least my destruction was on things needed doing.

What only my mom and one other person knew until now, is here June Chaos a Photo Journal. July 3rd was fast approaching, I wanted to be in New Mexico as my boyfriend and I agreed, for a reunion of the first day we met, yet there was no money to get there.

June 30th. A miracle happened. There was enough money to make it to NM.  My new coaching program had people raving, leaving me confident and assured when I got back I’d have at least 5 clients, probably 10.  It’s a 10 hour drive, so the next morning was quick.  Pack and dash off an email asking various online friends to please email their lists as I had already done. The class was awesome and I was leaving “on faith.”

It was a wonderful trip, a nice break … Driving 10 hours home full of LOA (Law of Attraction) goodness. Thinking about sales lined up, new friends coming, that I’d take the WordPress world by storm so I could have some time to write the book on my heart.  Seriously how could I not?  Look at Elephant Butte below.

Instead of coming home to multiple PayPal emails, I came home to an email from Joy jumping me, again, about “my bad attitude” & to not contact her again.  Maybe if I practiced LOA good things would come to me.  Catching up on Facebook, another friend who said I was too negative had become best friends with someone whom she had called extremely negative.

~~~

Since then I have done a lot of thinking (and writing for multiple contests)  Thinking about business and business direction.  Visions, dreams and friends.  What I want and what I need.   A recurring thought, I have always wanted people to want and love me for who I am.

Last weekend grief hit me about all this.  I want to know what to believe?

Should I reach to the 2 friends I trusted? I forgive them but how can trust again? Stacy was not there when I needed her.  She sent me texts but hasn’t called.  Ann hasn’t contacted me since Un8.

In the dust of June and July… I find myself down several friends.  Many other people online (Thank You) who have stepped up but I don’t know as well as I would like. But how do I judge the real friends from the others?

Follow your passion? I love writing about WordPress, online tools and I would love for them to grow so I can give freely to helping people who are trying to get over emotional and mental abuse.

Do LOA? Believe you have support lined up to help you deal with a double funeral and find they won’t help you with one. Believe with all your heart over a whole weekend & 20 hour drive you will have friends and business success, instead get another person grinding your heart in the ground.

A great deal of my friends online are proponents of LOA. I know they are into passion.

Well, here is the truth people. I love writing about WordPress and online tools. I want to be able to support myself, and to travel. Also to follow the growing desire to reach out and speak in conferences to help people find their strength that too many try to kill. I want to have friends to call and will talk instead of saying I am busy. (To friends I don’t call, this is why; I am scared.) It would be awesome for my phone to ring with someone telling me the wonderful stuff that happened in their day.

This was supposed to be a short rant…

I guess not.

Hey but you know what… I still have faith. Despite the above. Despite people are going to blast me for a negative post. Despite people mistaking my being serious and studious for being upset, (little secret when I sound studious I am probably researching or making plans, which means I am very happy.)

I have faith. I believe my life will reach others, I want to reach 10 million lives and unleash their inner strength and beauty because I know my inner strength and beauty has been buried and bruised and it’d be easy to allow it again after June… but I will fly.

Live ♥ Laugh ♥ Love
~ MJ Schrader

P.S. Did you notice this blog theme changed?  It went from black and grey to beautiful white with red. 🙂

PPS I still believe if we embrace Live, Laugh, Love, life would be better