Lifestyle Journal Entry #1: When Stress Get’s in The Way of My Healthy Lifestyle

Let’s Catch Up: Having My Son as a Single Mom

I LOVE my son. Don’t get me wrong, but the first child-bearing experience of mine was traumatizing. I was 21, and immature. My then boyfriend was also not yet mature enough to handle the emotions of my pregnancy. I looked unwillingly for a job, and quit them quickly when I had them due to my anxiety and all that comes with being pregnant. Many other jobs didn’t seem to want to hire me because I was pregnant. So, I gave up and gave in to my anxiety and belief that I “shouldn’t have to work because I’m pregnant”. That was a silly belief. He didn’t take it well.

Our lack of maturity, and the subsequent fighting and lack of support led me to leave him while I was still pregnant. I moved to Utah where my mom was. Hiking the mountains and visiting waterfalls gave me some semblance of happiness. Obsessed with the Twilight Vampire books at the time, I daydreamed about lying in a meadow of flowers with my soul mate. I saw a couple come back down off a trail by a waterfall, whom looked like they had just gotten married. I was overcame with sadness. I wanted love!

I moved in with my grandma, moving back in Florida. I don’t remember doing very much besides watching lame Lifetime movies and playing lots of World of Warcraft. 🤣 I also had a teddy bear with Quin’s heart beat sound when you squeezed it. I’m embarrassed to admit I hugged it like it was my boyfriend every night. I needed to feel that.

Then my mom and I moved into an apartment in Oviedo, FL. I worked hard to get back into the University of Central Florida (I was previously kicked out for my grades) and because I was a single mom I was able to get more funds to manage help pay bills. My mom started going to the community college and was single too. She had gone through a divorce with my dad when I was 16, was married since 19, and so subsequently had a lot experiences she had missed out on that she was now trying to experience. My mom was my best friend. After giving birth, we had lots of fun – too much fun in fact!

I wanted to undergo natural childbirth with Quin. Why!? I was worried about the drugs and the cold experience of a hospital, but honestly, I just wanted to feel like a badass.

When I had Quin, it was a horrendous experience. I was in labor all night until the morning. It started in a birthing tub in a house-like birthing center and I ended up being transported to a hospital by an emergency vehicle. Quin had his head cocked and decided he wasn’t coming out!

In triage, I had to wait. Between losing consciousness and having painful contractions (I felt like I was going to DIE). They tried to read all of the precautions of an epidural to me and all I could say was “just give me the damn epidural” over and over! Once I finally got into a hospital bed and given the epidural, I was on cloud nine… of course the drugs would do that. However, the doctor came in and suggested a C-section. They cut me open and I didn’t feel a thing. They took Quin out and they took him away from me. My magical birthing experience was a disaster.

Subsequently, I was desperate to breast feed but the milk didn’t come in for ten days.. and I felt like SH*T. I was grateful to have my mom during that time. Eventually, I was able to breast feed and it wasn’t without soooo many challenges. I’m grateful I did it though! While it felt like a part-time job, it was an incredible experience.

In the early days of my son’s life, I had him most of the time, though grandma on his father’s side would take him Sunday’s. I think Quin’s father had a hard time in the beginning, due to shock or immaturity. I’m not quite sure. I wasn’t perfect either though. We started to share time and there were a couple months where I shared less time. I was going through a lot of depression and partying a little too much. We have since shared time fairly equally most of the time. The coparenting relationship has been rocky over the years, but is great right now.

I was mostly single for several years. I mean, who wants to date a young single woman with a small child!? I was desperate for love, and tried to find it in the wrong places. I mean there were a lot of creeps. I went through some crazy dating experiences.

I dated the wrong people, because I wasn’t the best person I could be at the time. After dating a former heroin addict going through a nasty divorce, I decided that I wanted to show myself more self-love. I deserved better than this, and a little while after, I met Rick.

I found someone I dated for two years that I thought I was going to marry. This is when I made very poor lifestyle choices and got to my heaviest weight. He got bad with drugs. One day he told me “I don’t want to be a step father” and I had to leave him.

Thank God that’s all over. My husband now was well worth the wait and he’s incredibly loving and supportive!

Let’s Catch Up: Anxiety and Mood Disorder

Some back story: I’ve struggled with mood disorders and anxiety since I can remember. I say “mood disorder” ambiguously, because the psychiatrists can’t seem to agree on what exactly it is. What I have noticed, is that I am very sensitive to hormone fluctuations and changes in routine. I also confidently know that I have more anxiety than many others. The social anxiety is the most debilitating when it comes to relationships and work. Get me out in public though and somehow it just melts away. It’s the leading up to it that gives me anxiety, and it seems I’ll never get used to talking on the phone, even with a family member. I think I actually present myself very well to others. You can tell me otherwise, but I’ll probably get offended. 😅 One of the major underlying problems is a lack of self-compassion toward not being “perfect”.

Let’s Catch Up: My Niece

I don’t speak out about this often, because I really don’t intend to put down my sister. I love her even though she thinks I stole her daughter and that I’m Satan himself (or herself?). She doesn’t cease to tell me I’m going to hell and how horrible of a person I am, so often, it’s like a broken record. In spite of this, I truly wish one day she can find some inner peace. She clearly feels intolerable pain.

She struggles with her mental health and alcohol problems. This ramped up early in her life and I took a lot of abuse from her then as I do now. She got pregnant at 16 and had my niece Chloe. She married a guy I really liked at the time, though certainly not perfect; but, they divorced shortly thereafter and he for the most part was out of the picture. Today, he has to my knowledge been in and out of jail and veterans facilities in California. My sister moved around with Chloe a lot and had many boyfriends come in and out. There’s so much messed up sh*t that happened, but here I’m going to close my mouth as much as possible. Trust me, it hurts.

Things got really bad with her and she was Baker Acted a few times. We were all watching the situation with Chloe for a while, unfortunately, waiting for it to get worse. It finally did. I hired a lawyer, but then the state stepped in. We had been dealing with so many court visits; and frankly, sometimes intrusive oversight and personal evaluation for nearly two years. I now have permanent custody. Chloe goes to see her mom when she is doing well – which happens in cycles.

I love Chloe dearly, and I believe she is happy. I think beyond trying to do the right thing, a part of me felt like in saving her I was saving my younger self. The younger me endured so much abuse from my sister. She really affected my (and my family’s) whole upbringing. I couldn’t let Chloe, who was at such a vulnerable age, have to go through the roller coaster and turmoil my sister tends to constantly bring into others’ lives.

So we’ve “acquired” a teenager – we like to say. A “bonus” daughter. It really threw us for a loop. We’ve never raised a teenager before. Though as of today, we think she is the sweetest teenager there is. We are lucky. God, please keep it that way! LOL

Let’s Catch Up: Our Blended Family

Rick and I met just over four years ago. He had two kids and I had one. I thought then that finding someone with kids would give me all the kids I need. I didn’t think I wanted to go through a pregnancy again. Haha – I guess not.

Early in our relationship, I wanted to be candid with him. I told him it was possible that one day in the near future I would be taking in my niece (which later did happen). I feared this might be a deal breaker. To my surprise, he had no issues with it and even told me he once almost had to step in to help take in kids in a similar situation. I realized we have similar values! I fell in love not much later. 🥰

Our kids met when we knew things were getting serious, and my son was difficult from the get-go. He never wanted to share his mommy, and he wasn’t used to having “siblings”. We are still working on that to this day. My approach to parenting has also had to evolve, and my availability, so it’s no surprise that also has affected him.

Coparenting with three other sets of parents is often heart-wrenching and a logistical nightmare. Blending families is very challenging, but I have the most supportive husband ever!

Speaking of being my husband, we got eloped this past June 2nd in Yosemite National Forrest with our kids. It was the magical wedding in front of a waterfall that I had always hoped for, and it went perfectly! With the exception of the kids giving me a cold and hacking up a lung mid-reception, LOL. That’s family vacations!

Let’s Catch Up: Careers

With anxiety and mood disorder, I’ve struggled to stay happy at a job. When I was in my 20s, I still remember a job I had where I drove to work and didn’t leave the car. I was suddenly overcome with immense anxiety to continue working there. I wrote them an email quitting and telling them it was because of my anxiety. In all honestly, that was true; but, like just about every other job I’ve had, someone offended me (real or imagined) and I just couldn’t take it. Again, over two years ago, my then fiancé told me to quit my UX Lead at a cyber security startup job because I “wouldn’t stop b*tching” about it. I had been working there for nearly seven years. Little did he know what he was in for.

I dreamed of being an entrepreneur since early college. I tell myself it’s fueled from chasing an ideal lifestyle and feeling free from the constraints of a “rat race” society. Sit in an office for eight hours and get three hours of work done? Drive across town and back in traffic? Leave kids in daycare? Deal with bureaucracy and politics in the office? Hell no! I‘ve always had a painfully rebellious attitude about it. To this day, I’m still plotting and planning slightly rational and irrational solutions to get out of trading hours for dollars. It’s much more though. Though many probably wouldn’t have guessed… I struggle interpersonally with other people. Critisicm – might make me cry. A side eye from a coworker – he must hate me. A boss is telling me what to do – you don’t own me!

I had started Clean Cooking with Caitlin on YouTube actually, back in 2019 (maybe…?), inspired by a massive lifestyle change and transformation. You can read more about that in About Me. YouTube is sooooo much work, and with our young kids present, recording with some semblance of quiet was near impossible and extremely frustrating. I quickly ended up starting this blog and shifting my focus to it instead. It’s much easier for me to maintain, especially since I have a background in website development.

When Rick told me to quit, I promised I would finish my Precision Nutrition certification, get my nutrition coaching business up and running, and get a job if it didn’t work after a few of months. And I got a handful of clients in my group weight loss program, so it seemed like it could work! FREEDOM!

Not so fast… group coaching didn’t work out so well from the get-go. People seemed to really need 1:1 to shift their lifestyle, and I have too much social anxiety for that. Every phone call was excruciating for me. Put myself on camera for possibly tens of thousands of people – no problem. 1:1 – scary as hell.

It was also so discouraging that it seemed people were looking for some magical solution from me that required no lifestyle change. Nope – sorry. No silver bullet’s here, or anywhere else that’s sustainable (so stop trying to get away with doing nothing about your health issues). With my Precision nutrition certification, I’m instead trying to coach others for free through my content, along with delicious recipes. I only got into cooking when I changed my lifestyle.

So, I didn’t fulfill my promise to Rick, and I felt guilty for the next two years as I desperately tried to build this blog, YouTube, and Instagram as fast as possible. There was at least one incidence of crying under the desk and one in the closet. You can’t make your audience grow overnight. I’ve finally made peace with that.. well, for the most part.

Now I’m managing a more practical business while building up this one – Spacebar Sorcery. It’s helping others with their websites and other digital media. That’s what I went to school for and practiced since before 2013, but became burnt out. It’s good money, and there’s no shortage of incoming clients, but often at times stressful. While I’m happy to help other people with their businesses, I know I went to school for this to make my own digital business dreams of residual income come true. I have to remind myself that I haven’t failed. Things take time, and I’m not known for being patient. That’s where I’m at today, so let’s get back to the journal entry…