In the beginning...

     Hi, my name is Kim and I have never "Blogged" before, so I hope I am doing this right. I have decided to start this blog to try to reach out to others whom are in the same situation that I am. I want to provide support while being supported. I want to educate while being educated. And mostly I want to join the mass amounts of people that are living with these diseases while still having to try and have a fulfilling, somewhat normal life. I want this blog to be a place that people can come to and feel safe. I want this to be a place of kindness and truth. I want to be able to post without being judged. And at the same time, I want people to be able to come here and talk without being judged. And I will try to be as honest with my life and feelings as possible.

    My life in a nutshell (up till the sickness): I am a 35 year old mother with 3 teenagers. I always considered myself to be a caring, fun loving, and hardworking person. I started having kids very young. By the time I was 20, I had 3 babies and 2 miscarriages. I married the father of my children at 15 and by 21 we were divorced. We had a very immature marriage and it ended rough. Even though times were tough with us and ended on a bad note, we have put our hard feelings aside and become friends for the happiness of our kids. I was married again about 4 years later. I married a childhood friend that had just come out of a relationship and was not ready to be involved again. He became a severe alcoholic and got more violent as every year passed. We were together when I was ages 24 to 30. Our relationship was very violent and I was in counseling for 8 months afterwards for battered wife syndrome. It was not all bad, and we shared a lot of loving moments, but the abuse far outweighed the good. He had 4 kids that I loved so much. I still talk to them and I love them just like my own. I am really blessed that their Mother and I were able to become friends and I can still be close to all of them. And then there was the one man that I thought was my soul mate. There is so much to this story that I could probably write a short book, so I am just going to give you the basics.  About 2 or 3 weeks after I left my 2^nd husband I ran into an old friend. We started talking on the phone daily for about 2 months when I decided to see if he wanted to hang out. Well, that was it. I fell so deeply in love with him and I thought we would be together forever. In my heart I was building a life for him and I, and all of our kids. (He had 5) We were even looking for our first house together. Little did I know he was also living a life with his ex.  According to him, he was torn between his kids or me, so I decided to make him leave so he didn’t have to be confused anymore. I had no idea how hard it was going to be to live life without him. I was so extremely heart broken. It has been about 3 years and I can still imagine the smell of his skin. I had no idea at that time the turn my life was going to take. It was around this time that I started becoming sick. There is a lot more to the story and to my life but that was then and this is now.  And I am choosing to focus on the now and what my future will be.

      Thank you to everyone that takes the time to read this. I feel like Lupus and other life sucking autoimmune illnesses are just completely ignored and the people that have them are very mistreated by people simply because they cannot understand. But if we all ban together we can fight this killer wolf inside us and hopefully make the future better for the next generation of fellow auto immune survivors. Gentle hugs and many prayers to everyone.  -Kimmy