Turkey Meal Options

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Another week down hitting my fitness goals for protein and a more balanced diet as well as working out 5 days out of 7. The images above show just a few of my meals this week. Image 1 is where I replaced my pasta with zucchini noodles and used turkey sausage instead of burger as my protein. I also found this great sauce option where Ragu partnered with Hot Ones and I do love spice! So far, I have tried the middle option and it was amazing (ordered a new set already to have a spare one ready to go when this set is gone). No special replacement health wise but not everything needs to be swapped and some things just need to be enjoyed! Around 400 calories, including a half slice of sourdough and 25 grams of protein. I also included mushrooms down over the zoodles.

Image 2 was something I saw made online that required smashing 4oz of ground turkey onto a low carb tortilla and frying this on the stove. Toss tomato, onion, and spinach with some vinegar and seasonings and put some down over the burger. Add some tzatziki sauce down over, fold into a taco and enjoy! I also had a side of baked broccoli seasoned with salt/ pepper and a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. 350 calories, 30 grams of protein. Certainly, room to bump this one up with a side of potatoes. I ended up also having some fresh fruit after dinner.

The last image is a simple Turkey lettuce wrap made with ground turkey, onions, jalapenos, and laughing cow spreadable cheese. I also threw a little chipotle ranch on there. I had a cup of fat free cottage cheese to go with it. Around 400 calories with 43 grams of protein.

Morning Tradition

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It’s currently 6:32 on a Sunday morning and I’m sitting on the couch, fire going, iced coffee in hand.. waiting to hear the pitter patter off a little boy’s feet on the stairs as he comes to find me in the morning for our daily coffee snuggle. Our new weekend morning tradition is my favorite. I love the quiet of the wait… and, there is nothing better than the sound of his footsteps ❤️

Start To The Day

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5oz cold brew coffee concentrate, 7oz water, 2 scoops of collagen peptides protein powder, splash of creamer.

100 calories, 5 carbs, 18 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat (from the creamer).

I start my morning with this every day but this is NOT my breakfast. I find it’s a great start to my day! One of the hardest things for me to get used to about two years ago was cold coffee but it was a change that I had to make when I went through a still unexplained health ordeal with my bladder in 2022. It’s two years later and I have not been fully diagnosed but have been on medication for overactive bladder that entire time and have had to make dietary changes. One of those is that I cannot drink hot coffee. The acid flares everything up. I never thought I’d like cold coffee but I absolutely prefer my coffee that way today.

The Most Important Thing

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I took this image a little over a month ago of my breakfast, feeling pretty good about my veggies and cold brew. Not a lot of calories right there– eating healthy! I’ve spent the past couple of months working on my health. Working out is something that used to be very important to me but when my son came along in 2020, I just didn’t find the time. The last thing I wanted to do was get up earlier than 4am to make it happen before work or hop on the elliptical as soon as I got home and was already concerning myself with what was for dinner and how we were going to go about the bedtime routine that night.

Flash forward a few years and I was struggling! Not so much in the way of weight– yes a little extra around the middle but I am 37, have given birth, and my body is not the same as when I was 27. Mostly, I was feeling tired all the time, sleeping terribly, and getting sick A LOT (partly can’t be helped when you have a little one in daycare). So, I started working out about 10 weeks ago.. a little at a time with cardio first, followed by weightlifting built in more and more each week. My work outs are now flipped from 10 years ago with cardio making up about 1/3rd of it and the rest strength training.

Next came my diet. Breakfast is what you see above when I initially started working out but if I am going to build muscle, this won’t work. I wasn’t getting much out of it. I have now turned my focus to proteins and building those in where I can. The cold brew now contains protein (it was initially difficult for me to wrap my brain around adding calories to my coffee). I now put together a breakfast bowl of a cup of hashbrowns, an egg, and something lean like venison to create a balance of protein, carbs, and healthy fats. I have been also trying a lot of new recipes and foods for lunch and dinner and will likely share some here as I continue my journey.

I think what I am really hoping to articulate is that I have not done anything super special. I have not joined any groups, hired a personal trainer, bought expensive special supplements aside from my protein powder (not expensive – from Walmart) and making sure I take daily vitamins. I have not gone all in from day #1 as I used to be able to do in the past when I was in my 20’s and I had more time (and energy) to just focus on myself. I have eased into a new way of going about my day and it is becoming my new normal.

Most important of all, I am doing this for me. Yes, I love watching as my 4.5-year-old son comes to hang out with me and “work out” alongside me. He is my biggest cheerleader and I hope he is viewing how important it is that we take care of the body that we have. I love sitting with him in the quiet of our living room on Saturday morning– me with my protein coffee and he with his “coffee” (actually milk) in his little yellow mug– just the two of us, chatting about the start of our day. I love all of that but at the end of the day, through some of these moments in life, I have found the hardest person for me to love has been me and yet, it’s one of the most important things I can do.

Doors

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Sometimes life just leads us where we are meant to be. Tough to see in the moment? Absolutely. My life was about to take a turn this time 12 years ago. A family tragedy, my heart set on fire.. and it would be another 8 or 9 months before I took the step forward completely outside of my comfort zone to move away from all that I knew. I left the city by the river to a place in Wisconsin that would propel me forward in every aspect of life but mostly in matters of the heart.

“Call it karma, call it fate. You can call it luck or cosmic intervention. Either way..”

So Will I

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I really lost sight of some things for a couple of years. Given my past, much of my early adulthood was one spent feeling just incredibly grateful for every single good moment, good memory, and good person to come my way. There were the moments that still broke me for a time until I could regain my footing and focus but my faith held me strong to my core. I never felt overtaken… until then– Sept 2022. I see the pictures from that time and know the internal battle brewing before it completely boiled over. A battle that was not visible to anyone other than myself and the thing I could not control at the time– my health. And, in the span of one month, I could not see how to move forward in a positive way. I could not see past the current day and how to get through it. I was lost.

I sit here now, in 2025, just incredibly grateful to once again see so much more than the current day. The past 2.5 years have taught me a lot about patience and the value of the slow dance. I say this knowing that I am not 100% where I want to be on a personal level just yet– I guess we never truly are and should be working towards something, but I have my goals for the short term and long term and there is a lot of work yet to do. I used to think that I needed to hold my partner or son up as the reason for the hard work but have quickly discovered that my reason why has to be me or it won’t work.

I have some things to share with you in the future as I begin the work to go through my mom’s old papers over the coming months and take the journey to get to know her inner dialog. I will read them now in a really good place– one of acceptance and forward thinking. Over 2024, I reached out to my mom’s long-term partner after my dad as well. This was something that I had once felt the need to close the door on but as I now work through my own motherhood experience, I found that my needs changed. While awkward and strange in some ways, this has been a positive step for me.

2022 represented a significant pause for me and was one that carried into the following two years, and I hope that 2025 will be one of important steps and growth. I do not leave that difficulty behind me but carry it forward as just one of the many things that have shaped me into who I am meant to be. I will however, leave the darkness behind.

“And as You speak
A hundred billion failures disappear
Where You lost Your life so I could find it here
If You left the grave behind You, so will I”

September 2022

Hello Again

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Well… it has been a moment, hasn’t it? Eight years of building life, moving forward, of highs and lows, and beautiful moments. Life has led me through all the things– marriage, starting a family, moves, promotions, health journeys, my mom’s dementia diagnosis, losing myself and working hard to find myself again. Through it all, I have missed the thing that meant the most to me growing up and beyond– writing.

If you’re reading this, you can expect to hear more from me again here going forward and no matter where this goes, that’s okay too.. because, I just miss the thoughts into nothingness if only to get them down in the way that used to be my salvation growing up. I miss writing.

I can offer an update that while I wrote a lot in the past about my new relationship and the struggle to learn to build trust in another person, I did in fact marry that man and am now mom to one 4-year-old son. You may find that I will want to share a lot around what the parenting role is to me, my journey to find better health after becoming a mom and finding how easy it is lose oneself, and the work I am doing internally to understand and accept my mom’s own health crisis. If any of this is helpful to anyone else, feel free to reach out and comment!

Hello again! It’s nice to be back.

Never forget.

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Elephants don’t forget.. or mostly they don’t. It can be a bit of an exaggeration. I have always been highly interested in the concept of how much they likely remember though and the connections they maintain throughout their lives. Elephants can live for many years during which they follow a matriarch. They are far more likely to follow a 50 year old matriarch over a 30 year old one. They prefer to follow one who is experienced and wise. 

Last night,  I could barely sleep at all. I must have tossed and turned the entire night and when I finally did fall asleep, I woke up early and laid in bed next to him for hours. The whole house was so silent and all I could think about was the burn of a new tattoo on the back of my neck. Something had stirred within me all night.. and my past– my journey– was burned on the back of my neck. I can’t explain it. Through my relationship with him over the past two years, I have had to really stop and confront my demons and it has been so painful at times. Sometimes I even feel ugly for my insecurities or unlovable. For awhile, I struggled with having them at all. I wanted to be perfect, the way I am sure that he thought I was when we first started dating. But I am not perfect and I shouldn’t try to be.. and he loves me anyway. I am learning that too. 

And for all of the times that I feel ugly for the anxiety inside as I work through all of the baggage that I’d hidden in a closet somewhere instead of dropping off on the side of the road as I should have, this tattoo is a beautiful picture of that struggle. It’s a reminder.. my reminder.. of all that I have come from and all that I have to look forward to. My experiences only make me stonger.

“Forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you.” 

Exception

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Love is.. a look, a feeling, and a conversation. It’s still butterflies on a hundredth date, a favorite meal prepared on a special day and favorite meal prepared on an exhausting one—for you, when the last thing you want to do is make it yourself.   Love is believing.. in someone apart from yourself. It is believing that someone other than you will care about your dreams as much as you do and will push you further than anyone else has ever dared, further than you can even push yourself.

Love is trusting.. that there will be fights and catastrophes and shit moments. The sun might be hidden by clouds for months, friends might come and go, family may feel non-existent but none of it matters because you still have that one and you will always have that one.

Love is knowing.. that you are cared about every. single. day. Even on the ones where you feel unlovable.

Love does not inflict pain. It will never tell us we’re not good enough even in our lowest moments when we could give more if we only had it in us. Love is not bruises and bite marks or waking up and just wanting to go back to sleep at 3 in the afternoon.  Love does not leave its mark on our body but on our soul as it sets it on fire in the most amazing way possible.

Love is that one exception who just walks in one day when you least expect it and you thought you had every window closed, locked, and bolted down.

Everyone deserves their exception ❤

All I can do.

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                                                    tho3sojnnz

568 days…1 year, 6 months and 19 days. And I have loved you for every one of them. And it scares me sometimes. I have waited for you my whole life- emotionally, physically, spiritually. How do I make you sure? How do I make you see? How do I contend with a history that was never mine? I can’t. All I can do is love you more.