Hey, friends! I have an important announcement about some new direction for my content!
For years, I’ve been writing off and on about my marriage to my husband Scott, who was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 disorder at the age of 16. Since 2015, I’ve tried to write from a faith perspective, as a wife and mom, in order to demonstrate the role it has played in getting me through our unique set of circumstances.
Since then, I’ve shared testimonies of God’s faithfulness in our marriage and family. We’ve been through a LOT! The Lord has brought us out of so many seemingly impossible situations, and I thought it was worth sharing.
I even started a podcast to accompany the writing. My goal was to specifically share how the Lord brought our family into a safe place.
I don’t know about you, but personally, I’d take a good story over a sermon any day. I want to see and/or hear about the ways God meets people in their lives. If you’re going to tell me how good God is, tell me how bad it was! Why did you need Him? How did you feel? How did you get through it? What did God do? How did you get from there to here? I want all the tea!
I figured if I felt that way, then maybe people would want to know just how bad things got for me and my family, and how God made it good. What did we go through? Why did we need Him? What was I thinking when Scott walked out the door? How did I make it through all those years of uncertainty? Why have I stuck with Scott all this time? I wanted to share my spiritual journey with the Lord in dealing with all these things.
Since there seems to be a growing interest in serious mental illness, I thought our story and my spiritual journey could provide some hope and encouragement.
So for several years, I’ve been attempting to do this with my writing and blogs and podcast and whatnot.
But I’ve had a problem.
I haven’t been sharing just how bad things really were. In all of my years of writing and posting publicly about things we’ve come through, I haven’t been telling the whole story.
There’s sooooo much more to our story than just Scott’s battle with mental illness. I’ve alluded to it several times, talking about a “traumatic memory” that kicked off years of crisis. I’ve talked about how Scott had a flashback to some pretty horrific abuse in his childhood. But, I never went into detail about what it was, and the full impact on all of the things that happened afterwards. It’s not that I’ve been lying. In all honesty, I just didn’t know how to handle this part of our story.
Yet, I feel like I need to be sharing it, because everything will make much more sense in the context of this one thing.
The Tea…
So here it is. *Deep Breath*…
Not long after Jasmyne turned two, in Dec. 2005, Scott started to have flashbacks and images of horrific, ritualistic occult-themed abuse at the hands of certain family members, during a relapse. These images included human sacrifice, black magic, black robes and hoods, spells, incantations, circles, candles, darkness…unspeakable things.
Things were never the same after that. Over the next several years Scott’s mental health continued to decline, culminating in him leaving twice: the first time for a year, and the second time for 4.5 years. It has taken us years to recover from the havoc these revelations have wreaked on us.
It has been (and still is) a journey of epic proportions in many ways…spiritually, psychologically, mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, financially…in every way possible. The impact has been profound.
And the journey is far from over.
Scott has his own path of healing and dealing with these issues that pertain to him. He has his own story to tell when he’s ready. However, I feel compelled to open up my spiritual journey through this maze of mystery, madness, and trauma; how my quest for understanding has led me to some unexpected places, and how it has impacted my marriage, parenting, faith, and every other area of my personal life. I’ve had so many questions over the years. Mainly, “is my husband saying these things because he’s mentally ill? Or is his mental illness a by-product of this alleged trauma?”
It’s a way for me to process and heal from my own trauma from all of this, and perhaps not feel so alone. It’s a way to share what it’s like to be in, and sustain, a marriage to someone who is “different”, and document our ongoing road to healing. It’s a way to showcase God’s faithfulness in the absence of clear answers. I am blessed to have Scott’s support in this.
And, you can discover with me how it all turns out! Because I still have no clue.
I’ll be honest, I’m a little nervous about stepping out like this, but…I can’t help but feel like I’m being less than honest if I didn’t share it.
I’ll still be posting free content, and free podcast episodes at some point, as well as continuing my mental health advocacy. For the real tea, however, will require a paid subscription. Obviously, I’ll be venturing into strange waters that can get quite intense and personal, so that content will be exclusive. I would love for it to lead to deeper engagement with a community of others who are perhaps on their own weird and wild journey through trauma, mental illness, and mysteries of faith, so we can all heal together.
The journey begins with this first post here that I’ve made publicly available. If you’d like to continue with me on this epic adventure, then please consider a paid subscription for access to the exclusive posts that explore this part of our story. If you’d like to support us in addition to or in lieu of a subscription, consider buying a coffee or two. Your support will help me keep producing content! You can also go back and read all of my archived posts with this back story in mind and it will help you get to know me, Scott, and all we’ve endured, with way more context.
Thanks for your support and consideration!