About Me

This is me.

My name is Veronica and my life has been full of color.  Some colors have been vibrant and fun and hughed in joy, while other colors have been dim and grey and hughed in sadness.  Right now, I'm trying my best to see the bright colors again, but all too often, I can only see things through a very dusty and clouded lens of grief.

I married my best friend at the tender age of twenty-two, and became a mom eighteen months later.  We added another four children in seven years and they are each as unique and different and brilliant as there are infinite blades of grass on the earth.  I loved being a mom.  It was something I threw my entire self into, and there was nothing I wouldn't do for my babies.  My whole world was devoted to them, and nothing mattered more than my family.

And then one day, I found my youngest baby, my sweet Garrett, floating face down in my parents' swimming pool.  I did everything I could to save him.  My breath went into his lungs.  I pressed on his chest.  I broke his ribs. My other four children stood in horror and watched the whole thing unravel.  I pleaded with God during those ten minutes of CPR to spare Garrett's life.  To take mine instead.  To forgive me for all the wrongs I'd done and not to punish my precious boy, but to save him.  

It didn't happen like that.

Our lives were forever changed that day.  On July 13, 2014, Garrett left this realm and ventured into something else.  I don't know what lies beyond this mortal existence.  I don't know if there's anything at all, but I try to make heads and tails of it.  Most days I barely get by.  I'm not the mom I used to be, but I'm trying.  I fail again and again, or do I really?  I keep getting back up, so maybe that's me not failing, but it sure feels like failure most days.

I'm a writer.  I write books and essays and short stories.  Some of my writings I publish, allowing others to step inside my world, but a lot of it I keep for only me.  I do graduate work in cognition and neural science and I guess it's because I want to better understand why my brain operates as it does.  School is only a band-aid for my broken soul.  Just below the surface, there's a pain too unspeakable to even voice.

But I try, and I don't quit.  My hope is that even if my children come out of this completely scathed, that they'll at least be able to view their formative years in hindsight and have compassion on their mother and know how hard she tried to keep their world moving forward, when everything inside of her wanted to give up. 

In the meantime and when I'm trying to live life and not merely survive, I thrive on music.  I play the guitar and piano and both provide me great therapy.  I have the most fierce Scottish Terrier named Angus. I am most at home when I'm hiking through the mountains, and least at home in any kind of urban place.  I love Superman and some might say I'm a little obsessed and think Clark Kent (aka Kal-El) is closer to Jesus than Jesus himself. I love to get outside and work with my hands.  I love to read, but lately I have little time for anything not related to school.  My hope is to leave the world a little better than I found it, but so far, I don't think I'm doing a very good job.

Pull up a chair, grab a cup of tea, and stay a while.  I'll do the same.