your life. your time.

If one more person tells me my life resembles a Hallmark film or Lifetime series, I may just have to hire a film crew.  All I can think when these comments are frequently tossed my way is "you have NO idea."

About Lifetime

Lifetime Networks is a diverse, multi-media company, committed to offering the highest quality entertainment and information programming content that celebrates, entertains and supports women. Through its award-winning public affairs initiatives, the Company also advocates a wide range of issues affecting women and their families.

Mother. Advocate. Writer.

That's the public persona I put forth but am also known as animal rescuer, momager and autism advocate and single mom who you best not f*ck with.

I've worn quite a few hats in my lifetime and have never been known for being patient.  I dreamt of being a mother as a very little girl - wanted eight kids including one set of twins and a redheaded little boy (I shit you not, ask anyone).  I wasn't encouraged to "dream big," hell we got in trouble if we even took naps, but I don't remember being discouraged from participating in activities as long as I could find a ride.  I was a latchkey kid of the seventies and don't have many memories of my youth other than some of the friends I shared my life with.  I remember my brother and sister fighting a lot and both of my parents working full time.  I remember being the "good kid" and always kept my room clean (because my sister was screamed at for the opposite) and getting good grades (because my brother got such poor marks).  My parents were good about consistency but that consistency included them being gone a lot.

As a child I played softball, competed as a long distance runner (by six because I was so hyperactive), danced and was a songleader.  I got good grades my entire educational career but was always in the principal's office for talking too much and mouthing off to authorities.  My lunch table was always the last to be excused and one of my dearest friends still makes paddle jokes since his last name was one letter off from mine and he was perpetually dragged to that office with me back in the good ole days of corporal discipline.  The main thing I recall about my childhood was to be told "to sit still and be quiet."  Raising very energetic kids now, I understand that I was annoying and exhausting.  I look at my own three and feel tired at times but would never squelch their spirits enough to ask them to change the essence of their beings.

Having been too lazy to put the photo albums away just yet I sat down and perused them this morning.  The kids' baby books, my albums that I'd put together on trips I've taken and my pageantry years... a little stroll down memory lane which, with my new found healthy outlook on life, lead me to be more introspective than I've been before about that paths I walked down in my life.

I've always been drawn to animals, as long as I can remember so becoming a rescuer in my thirties wasn't a huge shift or change from the little girl who'd take in "lost cats" (hint: they weren't lost) and sit on the porch all night til their owners returned to claim them.  Begging, for years, to my parents for my own dog which I finally acquired on my 18th birthday (I had him for thirteen years, RIP Rex).

I fell into my first job as an aerobics instructor at fourteen.  Maybe it was from being told that I "have too much energy" for so long but it seemed right, normal and natural to ride my bike to the gym after school where I'd sit and do my homework until classes began. They had no idea how old I was when they hired me.  I didn't lie, they just didn't ask, until new owners came in to clean up the act of the place and realized they had a seasoned instructor who had only just turned sixteen on their hands.  I became a certified instructor, attended annual conferences and training seminars to make sure I was helping, not harming, as well as educating my students who were almost always twice my age. My college major was Physiology and I entered the Adaptive Physical Education program in my second year. I wanted to work with individuals who were disabled (little did I know how this education would help me years down the line).  I retired from that field at the ripe old age of 23 after spending thousands and thousands of hours as a gym rat.  Imagine me, a gym rat. Kinda funny now isn't it?

Life doesn't run in sequential order, nor does it work in straight lines.  During my sophomore year in high school, after not having my period for nearly a year (and my boyfriend freaking out that I might be pregnant despite the fact that we'd never had sex) my mom took me to the doctor.  A relatively routine visit that would end with a referral to an endocrinologist that ultimately lead to the statement that I'll never forget and can recite verbatim: "The WORST case scenario is she'll need brain surgery."

This is where my statistics began. This is where the series of unfortunate events earns its "established in..." (and according to my spiritual counselor, the year I was cursed). This was when I realized I wasn't going to have a normal high school experience and that my childhood just ended.  This is what my friends on Facebook from high school remember and this is what I looked like for the next five years.  I heard rumors about "dying from a rare blood disease" to "man, have you seen how much plastic surgery she's had?"  Entertaining to say the least but truth is I was diagnosed with a rare disease that only seven people in a million are diagnosed with; even less recover fully if at all.  To my knowledge, they still use my case as an example at UCLA medical school.

I was one of the lucky ones but it wasn't a short story in my life, it is a novel in itself.  I am fortunate to be one of the few, if not the only, individuals to have been completely cured of Cushing's Disease but not quickly and not easily. Two neurosurgeries and one residential treatment at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland later, I would turn 19.

As fate would arrange it, exactly a year to the day of being released from the hospital in Washington DC I would compete and win my first beauty pageant.  To this day, I like to think that I won because of my story not a silly evening gown or swimsuit competition.  Because I had a level of depth in my soul that only comes from facing a disease in your youth.  I'll never know why they chose me but this period in my life lasted a while and I had some great adventures, met many interesting people and lead down an interesting road with lots of great stories and pictures that I'm just now beginning to share with my children.


I learned quickly that sex sells but had the smarts to back it up and was often hired for my ability to "walk and talk" which lead to me making a really good living as a should-be starving college student.  I do fear that this was the stage at which I came to believe that all I was good for was my body, not my mind. I struggled with it often and allowed myself to be used in ways that no young girl with a brain should.  This is the stage I look back on and pray that I can avoid for my own daughter.  I think back to my childhood of essentially raising myself, being permitted (if not encouraged) to go away for the weekend with my nice but rich boyfriend as a very young teen. I worry that my self worth was based on men's opinions of me.

But when I think about these things - this frivolous, self-aggrandizing, if-you've-got-it-flaunt-it lifestyle - and was asked "who are you, really?" by my love interest recently, I stopped and pointed out that I've always been the girl that I am today - at least in my soul, the core of me.  I have essentially had the same thoughts and feelings and reminded him, maybe myself, of who I really am: compassionate, vocal, energetic and non-judgmental.

This wasn't a picture of me posing with an Special Olympics' wheelchair bound guest attendee at the Miss California pageant. This was my boyfriend whom I met at one of the gyms at which I worked.  The one thing that will get my shackles up is if anyone ever refers to me as shallow or says something to the effect of "well how would YOU know? You've always been pretty."  I don't consider myself extraordinary or special but I am drawn to individuals who are.  So yeah, I get a bit defensive with those remarks.

I spent my early twenties being hired by distributors for Budweiser, Miller, traveled the country a bit doing trade shows for clothing companies and even had a segment on a Long Beach cable television show as a hostess for Straight Talk with Art Levine (I believe the show still airs today). I met and interviewed many interesting people along this path including my favorite story to share which was Donny Osmond singing Happy Birthday to ME on my 21st birthday.  The best full-circle story I have from this chapter was being able to introduce and watch my brother tour with his favorite artist, Brian Setzer, during the orchestra days.  The people whose homes I've entered (Danny Elfman), the dinners I've had (Joe Stummer, John Fogerty), the celebrity that called me a bitch after being invited into her dressing room (Chrissy Hynde) to the one that asked if he could use one of my lines in his next film (Welsey Snipes); meeting athletes from Kareem to Marcus to Reggie (who's a total jerk by the way).  There are others and some pretty cool stories (please note that I have intentionally left off the athletes and celebrities that I have dated out of respect, well kinda...). There are times I even allow myself to sit back and think I've had a pretty cool life thus far but that life included many late nights and many bad decisions ultimately leading to getting kicked out of my parents' home.

Homeless at 22, disowned and estranged.  I was in a relationship with a "black guy" and that just crossed the line for my Catholic upbringing.  I admit I was a real pain in the ass, but the choices I made to not "sit down, be still and be quiet" lead to yet another opportunity to prove whether I was resilient or a quitter.  I found a studio apartment in a shitty neighborhood in Long Beach and rode my bike to my jobs each day. Made ends meet as needed and ignored the stabbings that occurred through the window of my kitchen in the alleyway.

Life as a spokes-model ran its course and after being asked to do a test shoot for Playboy I decided to try a little harder yet I went to agent after agent and was told I was "too short" to ever work in Hollywood.  I was fast approaching 25 and desperate to settle down and start a family but didn't have a person in my life who was interested in the same.  I gave up on Hollywood and was ready to settle into a career and get going in my life.  That's when I dropped out of college in my third year despite having a full academic scholarship.  During this period I was engaged twice, yet never made it to the alter.  Lived with two separate men (not the ones I was engaged to), who are the types that wholeheartedly believed in the idiom "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" or in one of their cases free pet-sitting while he was out on tour.  Luckily only one domestic violence charge and minimal physical scars since the pattern seemed to flow in pairs.

I went on to work in customer service and sales and learned enough to make a lucrative career for myself, the wrench I threw into my own plans would come from an accidental pregnancy, on the pill, with twins no less.  Everything I ever wanted was right in front of me but far from the way I'd dreamed about it as a little girl.  I was 28, working full time and single.  I didn't consider tossing these future souls into a sink as many had suggested I do, I refused the offer from my parents to move back home and make it work, I did the only thing I could think of and walked through the doors of an adoption agency.

Fast forward and clearly I did not follow through with that decision and now sit here today reflecting back on my life that had no real direction, just forks in the road that I chose to follow.  Sitting from the perspective of mother I believe, in hindsight, that I might have made different choices if I had better guidance.  I try not to blame, criticize or judge just recognize the things that may have lead to bad decisions, impulsive behaviors that always lead to more pain than joy, and know that I am here, now, who I am today because of the paths that I followed.

I have adopted a new saying "it is what it is" because truthfully this path lead me to many extraordinary experiences which ultimately lead me to:
Mother
Rescuer
Advocate
Writer

I am daughter. I am sister. I am aunt. I am mother.  These are my most treasured titles in this world. I wish I had focused more on these and "sat still" to appreciate them more often but there's still time.

With all this perspective, wisdom, experience and knowledge I think I may finally be ready to head down a path with direction, with purpose and with a sense of pride for all I've overcome. I say this frequently because I feel that it's true:

"If God wanted me to come back home, he's had ample opportunity to take me.  If I'm here, it's for a reason."

Time to find out what that reason is, don't ya think?

 (This was, thus far, the most difficult blog post I've written.  And this is only part of my story.)