welcome to my new house

April 13, 2020 - 
Okay, A LOT has gone on since the first inception of the princessshredder.com website started in September 2016. Old patterns from my life were in complete alignment with the consistent starts and stops of projects I have been dreaming of and attempting to accomplish throughout my life. 

Oftentimes what happens is I get a great idea (usually an amazing idea because I am pretty good when it comes to ideas that are realistic and achievable) and then some kind of traumatic event happens that derails me from my hopes and dreams. I have too often found myself torn away from the positive and uplifting parts of being alive and shoved back into my place. That place being The Trauma Reaction Place. 

The amount of work it takes to navigate my way through The Trauma Place is so much that everything else I want to do or dream of doing must either be completely abandoned or set aside indefinitely. I like to tell myself I can always pick my projects up one day when I am feeling strong enough to focus on them again. When one is in a constant state of trauma, it is very difficult to concentrate on life-affirming things such as doing regular yoga, working on personal projects that could help improve one’s life, or even eating and brushing one’s teeth regularly. 

In November 2016, I was living in what I thought was my dream apartment. It was a live/work studio in an amazing part of town and I never wanted to leave. I was highly productive in my film photography endeavours and I was hopeful for my future for the first time since I was reonovicted from the place I thought was my forever home, as promised by the landlord who then evicted me. I had lived there for nearly 4 years and my chosen uncle lived there for 29 years. They wanted to build a lane house behind the rental building my uncle and I each had suites in. In order to do that, they had to kick us out. They promised we’d get first dibs when the renovations were complete. 

That renoviction caused my homelessness for the first three months of 2016. Then I found the live/work studio and lived there until I became unexplainably ill that November. I fled in the middle of the night as though the building were on fire. My body was in agony and my dog was stiff and unresponsive, her eyes white and glazed over as I held her and tried to find out where she was hurt. I was homeless again for all of December until I found a temporary apartment to stay in while I tried to fight the management company for damages. I lost. And was homeless yet again. For almost all of 2017, I was inexplicably sick and homeless. Except it wasn’t an inexplicable sickness, it was radiation poisoning. 

I don’t want to get into that right now because it is still affecting me. Though I am much recovered and doing well, it still is incredibly upsetting to talk about. Especially for my first post about what I am very excited about right now. And that is my website relaunch. I just wanted to give you an idea of what caused me to stop focusing on the original version of princess shredder.com, other than it was a terribly user-unfriendly site that made trying to work on it impossible for me. 

The site you are looking at right now, is the reincarnation of the website I wanted and paid for in 2016 but did not get. Luckily for me, I married the greatest human on the earth in November 2018 (more on that later). My husband is talented and supportive and built the website of my dreams. He wants to see me succeed in my work and this website is testament to that!

My current goals for the website are to write regularly about my experiences living in a trauma life, as I grew up and well into my adulthood. I will be writing more openly about the coerced adoption of my two beloved children in 1991. I will be writing about my life as I experienced it. No longer willing to hold myself hostage to fear of being attacked by anyone from my maternal family over what I speak that is my truth. I will exorcise myself of this agony that is sewn into me with perpetual bonds of terror and fear for my life. 

Today, I am re-welcoming you into my home – the parts of my home that are my mind and heart and emotion. It excites me to feel as supported as I do right now in life. I feel safer than I have ever felt before. It’s not to say the trauma no longer exists, because it does. It very much is real and not to be toyed with because I know, I know first hand how it can knock me back on my ass when I get too ahead of myself.

princessshredder.com may provide insight to my way of thinking and seeing, through my film photography and writing. 

Thank you for showing up today to see what I offer to you and to the world. 

Thank you for coming back if you were there the first time around.
Thank you for still being here in my life, if you are still here with me right now. 

Deepest Gratitude and Love and in Recovery,

princess shredder