Transform Yourself
I have short hair. It’s by default. Because it’s thin, fine, and wispy and grows at a snail's pace I have yearned for long hair since I was 11 years old and ogled my classmate Kathleen's long thick locks. I imagined myself wearing a wig - it was the only way I could see myself …
I changed my hair for you. I started growing it out, and I quit dying it funky colors 👩🎤 because you didn't like it short and pink. I got a manicure topped off with gold gel nail polish💅 to be more feminine, to try and please you. I quit ordering ethnic food because you said …
My hair is short. I don’t shampoo it. I don’t always wear a bra. I usually keep my nails cut short. I like wearing black eyeliner. I will spend a lot of money on good shoes and jackets. I get Botox sometimes. I’ve thought about getting some form of plastic surgery but haven’t. I don’t …
I want to share something about myself you may or may not know: I am a recovered alcoholic and drug addict. And I have 2 sobriety dates. Why? February 1, 1999, is the day I came back to AA and I have been clean and sober since then. I have not recreationally used alcohol, marijuana, …
For Valentine’s, I blocked him 🚫 And in doing so, I chose myself👩❤️👩 I blocked him- not out of spite or malice- but out of protection of my own heart💓 Because by continuing a toxic connection, I was in essence blocking myself. Every time I compromised, every time I allowed, made a concession, justified or …
I got pregnant on New Years Eve, 1998. I was drunk.I still remember cheering NINETEEN NINETY-NINE like a madwoman outside the bar as fireworks went off at midnight.My full bladder didn't like all the jumping and screaming, so I made the drunken decision to keep celebrating and empty my bladder at the same time.I brought …
Four days before Christmas 2020, my job of almost 13 years gave me shocking news: that if I did not move back to the US from overseas where I’d been working and living for 8 years, that I would no longer have a job I considered the proposal for about 10 seconds. Everything in me …
Continue reading "My Nightmare before Xmas that turned into a Miracle"
My heart hurts. 💔 It’s an agonizing feeling that is so familiar, yet still so uncomfortable. It comes from loss of connection with another person- usually romantic, but also friendship, or loss through death. This feeling has followed me from youth. When I was 11 years old, my family moved from Texas to South Carolina, …
HOPE IS HERE. Prayers do get answered. If you need hope that you can recover – please read my “Diary of a Dry Drunk” below, written in 2008 at almost 10 years sober. It is sad and unsettling for me to read how I was suffering and in self-pity that I couldn’t see. I was …
It was my senior year of high school, two Thursdays before Thanksgiving. I was slouched in the rear bucket seat of my mother’s red Camaro, headed to my second rehab in two months. Nine hours and an entire pack of cigarettes got me to Nashville, to Last Chance. I had just finished thirty days in …
Natalie Speakman 