Category: Recovery

Mental Health Amplified by Simone Biles & Update on Me!
Life Lessons · My Thoughts · Patriotism · Recovery

Mental Health Amplified by Simone Biles & Update on Me!

Larada Horner-Miller2 Comments
Mental Health

Mental health issues—our own great Simone Biles amplified mental health at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo! So far this year in Paris, she has won three medals and will win more, I’m sure. She has won a total of ten medal—seven gold medals. So many people criticized her for her choice in 2020, but I admire her for raising the level of awareness about mental health in the world. I have had my own personal experiences I would like to share and then I will update you on dog attack.

2020 Olympics in Tokyo

During the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, with the world’s eyes on Simone Biles, she made an unorthodox choice—she dropped out of the competition after experiencing “twisties” in the first event she competed in.

“When Biles stepped down from the vaulting podium after getting lost while attempting a two-and-a-half twisting vault in the women’s team final, she knew she couldn’t keep competing.

She had a case of the ‘twisties’ – where a gymnast’s mind and body fall out of sync.”

https://olympics.com/en/news/simone-biles-bravest-act-choosing-herself

In Tokyo, Simone later rejoined the competition, and the USA women’s gymnastic team went on to win the silver medal as a team, and Suni Lee stopped up and filled the gap and earned the gold medal in the women’s all-around. Many wondered about the future of Simone in professional gymnastics—some said horrible things about her, but she worked hard.

2024 Olympics in Paris

After four years of self-care and training, Simone has taken Paris by storm on her “Redemption Tour.” In 2023, she has married Jonathan Owens, a professional football player for the Chicago Bears. Just look at her now—she’s glowing! She has won three gold medals this Olympics and has the possibility of two more on Monday. Obviously, the choice she made in 2020 was the right one. Her emphasis on mental health encouraged other sports stars to share their personal struggles with mental health issues, making them more authentic!

Simone, A Mental Health Heroine

Self-care - mental health

When Simone decided to take care of herself above all else, she became a major heroine to me. I have done a variety of therapy in my life and know that I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t. In recovery, we call that “self-care”—taking care of yourself ahead of everyone else. If I’m wounded and haven’t healed, in so many ways I have nothing to offer a relationship or the world. Yes, it’s scary to make that first call, to walk through that door and sit down, to open up about your deepest, darkest secrets. Doing this has given me the life I have today, a life I couldn’t have imagined.

Struggling with Mental Health Issues?

Struggling mentally - mental health

So many people choose not make that first call for a variety of reasons. But if life is crushing in on you right now, don’t hesitate. There are so many options today, especially with the internet tool, Zoom! Take a breath and look deep—self-care can save your life!

Finally, Lin and I have sat here and cheered our USA athletes on. This afternoon, we screamed and hollered when Noah Lyles won the 100-meter race by such a close call. Because of my injury, I’ve been a captive audience but I love it. We celebrated all of Simone Biles’ victories. My parents loved the Olympics, so I was raised in a family who watched them faithfully. Over the years, I’ve gotten too busy sometimes, but this year has ignited a deep passion in me again for them.

Thank you, Simone, for having the courage to step away in 2020, for expressing your deep concerns about your personal needs and for letting the world know it’s okay to seek help for mental health issues and to heal.

Dog Attack Update

Update - mental health

On Friday, I had the stitches taken out, and it hurt. Lin kept preparing me for it by saying it wouldn’t hurt. Then when he was holding my hand as the stitches came out, he said, “I lied!” The doctor did a close examination of the wound and showed Lin what she saw as an optimistic sign I might not need a skin graft. I have an appointment August 15 with the Wound Clinic and they will decide there about the skin graft.

I continue to have swelling if I’m on my feet for any time. The pain continues, and the nerve sensations and pain attacks come and go with no predictability. And I continue to cry!

Check out my recent interview at Southwest Writers.

Buy My Audio Books:

This Tumbleweed Landed

This Tumbleweed Landed audiobook cover

Let Me Tell You a Story 

Let Me Tell You a Story audiobook cover

Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Memoir Audiobook

Hair on Fire: A Heartwarming & Humorous Christmas Memoir audiobook cover

Enjoy my interview on the podcast, The Writing Table

My Spiritual Father: A Priest and a Friend!
Christianity · My Thoughts · Recovery · Spirituality

My Spiritual Father: A Priest and a Friend!

Larada Horner-MillerLeave a comment
Father dancing with little girl - Spiritual Father

My spiritual father? Does that sound strange? I would say it’s a man who contributes to the growth and nurturing of my spirit, someone who touched my life deeply. As I thought about Father’s Day this week, I knew I’d already written about my dad and other key men in my life. So, I wanted to share about my spiritual father!

I met Fr. Tom Weston, a recovering Jesuit priest, thirty years ago. Here it is Father’s Day 2022 and I want to honor his work in my life. He contributed to my spiritual growth over the last thirty years in a variety of ways. I attended many retreats in Albuquerque after the Mesilla retreat identified below. After hearing him the first time, I have bought eleven recorded cassette tapes then CDs of his teachings. Then, during the coronavirus pandemic, Fr. Tom offered monthly Zoom retreats since April 2020 (or that’s when I started).

My First Experience

In the spring of 1993, I attended my first Serenity Retreat for recovery. A new friend in the program invited me to go with her to Holy Cross Retreat Center in Mesilla, New Mexico, outside of Las Cruces for the weekend. She had raved about Fr. Tom often, and I needed a shot in the arm. I had been dealing with some heavy-duty stuff.

So, we took off at noon—both of us taught our morning classes and away we went. From the first talk on Friday night, I saw Fr. Tom’s amazing talents. He had me laughing one minute and crying the next, then laughing again. He provided a refreshing picture of recovery and Christianity that I needed.

On the drive down, my friend forewarned me Fr. Tom held ten-minute private counseling sessions on Saturday and sign up early because he filled up quickly. She knew the woes I had been going through and felt I needed an extra boost, so I signed up.

When my time came on his packed Saturday schedule, Fr. Tom suggested we walk around the pecan orchard next to the retreat house. I shared my current trauma that had my life topsy-turvy.

Calmly, he said, “I have no experience with your issue, but how about finding a tree here to connect with and something might come up.”

So, I followed his instructions and parked myself under near a tree with my journal. Immediately, memories flooded my mind, and I knew Fr. Tom had known my God and the trees would help me. This became a pivotal point in a deep healing for me.

Fr. Tom Grew to become My Spiritual Father

From then on, I became a follower of Fr. Tom, attending multiple retreats at the Dominican Sisters Retreat House in the South Valley and then off of Coors Boulevard in Albuquerque. Every retreat, I signed up for the one-on-one time with Fr. Tom, keeping him updated with my current life, and I loved the connection we made.

Over the years, listening to his teachings, Fr. Tom expanded my belief in my God from a punishing, judgmental white guy sitting in robes on the clouds to a peaceful, accepting personal God I could talk to and have a personal relationship with. And he did this through a variety of instruments: through an inclusive Mass on Sunday at the retreats and reading part of the Mass in Hebrew to connect me to our Jewish roots, through Rumi’s delightful and resounding poetry, through simple Buddhist reminders to stay present, through Fr. Anthony de Mello’s humor and stories and through Mary Oliver’s nature-focused poetry and especially her blue iris poem about prayer, “Praying.” With each retreat, I looked forward to his literary references peppered throughout the weekend.

Once, while listening to one of Fr. Tom’s recorded retreats, on one of my hundreds of four-hour trips north to Colorado to visit my folks or my southern trip to return home, he shared a very risky prayer. Immediately, I pulled over and jotted it down, shivered at its possibilities and put it away for many years. I felt if I prayed that prayer, the world would turn upside down.

Then he shared it again recently on one of his monthly Zoom retreats, and I embraced its truth and now pray it daily. Here it is:

Father Robert Egan’s Come Holy Spirit (Pentecost) Prayer

  • Come, Holy Spirit! We pray
  • Rattle our cages
  • Break into our locked houses
  • Water our parched land
  • Undo our bends and twistedness
  • Awaken our hearts
  • Help us overflow with kindness and
  • Give us unending joy.
Marked up Bible - Spiritual Father

Fr. Tom gave me the freedom to open my heart up to a larger God than I had ever known before and, with that, I have returned to my Christian faith and my religion of choice with a deeper acceptance and renewal.

In conclusion, your spiritual father may be the father that raised you. Mine wasn’t. My dad had little interest in spiritual matters. My spiritual father came many years later in life, in God’s time, and I am so grateful.

Do you have a spiritual father? Was it your dad? If not, who was he? How did he affect your life?

Fr. Tom’s website: https://www.innerlightproductions.net/fr-tom-weston

~NEW INTERVIEW on Chat & Spin Radio, Friday, June 24 at 1:00 PM. Join us for a lively discussion of my books!

~MY FIRST AUDIOBOOK IS AVAILABLE: Go to Audible to buy my first audiobook, Let Me Tell You a Story. I’m working on Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? but have gotten stalled with shingles.

~Do you listen to podcasts? Here are three podcasts with interviews about my new book & some Flippo stories:

Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flippo meme

~Have you bought a copy of Flippo’s biography yet? Believe it or not—it’s been two years. Go here for your hardback or paperback: https://www.laradasbooks.com or at Amazon.

~For me, it’s Christmas all year long! Here’s a variety of Christmas greetings from Flippo & Neeca, featuring his song, “When It’s Christmas Time in Texas”: https://youtu.be/mpJCUGffU3A

Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? meme

~What happened to you in 2020-2021 during the coronavirus pandemic? Do you care? Are you on a spiritual path? Do you want to heal from the horrible effects of the pandemic of 2020? Visit my website to find out about my new book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? and my other five books and three cookbooks: https://laradasbooks.com

Confusion About My Womanhood? A War Raged!
family · My Thoughts · Recovery · Sexual Abuse

Confusion About My Womanhood? A War Raged!

Larada Horner-MillerLeave a comment
Confusion about my womanhood

I experienced major confusion about my womanhood for many years. A silent war raged inside me, yet I didn’t understand why. Many women suffer from this same silent killer, and I feel my story is appropriate as the USA again becomes divided over yet another issue—Roe vs. Wade.

You may wonder why I choose to talk about my internal battle on this Mother’s Day. In 1993, my mom played a key role in healing my heart over this tumultuous experience, and her response changed my life.

Let me state my position early so you can decide whether to read on. I am ProChoice. Two family members molested me as a child, causing this stance. I do not support abortion as a means of after-thought birth control, but I support it for mother’s health reasons, rape and incest cases.

As an incest survivor, someone damaged my femininity, confusing me about my womanhood, at an early age. With one perpetrator, this abuse started when I was about four and continued until I was eight or nine. It began with him touching me inappropriately and it ended with him forcing me to touch him. God protected me when the government drafted him, which magically took him away and ended the abuse. I’m sure the next step for him was the rape of an eight years old!

I just did the math and realized he stopped when I was eight or nine. I had always thought it lasted until I was twelve. It seemed to go on forever!

As I’ve read similar stories this week—one little girl pregnant at eleven by her uncle, I had to respond. I’ve spent this week pondering this subject and its effect on me. Specifically, I wondered what would have happened to my family if that person had raped me.

We lived in a small rural ranching community. Everybody knew everybody. At eight or nine years old, I was in the second or third grade, more interested in riding my bike, doing well at school, talking to my girlfriends, and playing with dolls.

Because I would have been so young, I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant. But had the rape happened to me, me and my family would have been destroyed. Yes, the molestation damaged me, but I kept it secret for thirty-five years. The rape would have been a different story, with immediate outrageous repercussions.

Why do I open this dark curtain to one of my deepest pains? Incest and rape wound little girls, grown women, whatever their age, setting them up to be the victims of rape. If forced to keep the pregnancy of a rape, every day the victim would face their perpetrator, looking at that child and the rape would happen again and again. We can’t let that happen.

Women in a line Confusion about my womanhood

Women, we must unite and stand up for our sisters whose lives have been so damaged by the violent act of rape and incest. We cannot punish the victim of this hideous offense by demanding she keep a baby, the result of violence against the mother.

This message seems especially important and poignant on this day, set aside for mothers across our country. We need not force motherhood upon a woman who is the victim of a crime against her.

Let me share the gift my mom gave me and why I want to honor her today. After I got out of CoDA treatment in 1988, when I first confronted my parents about what had happened to me at the hands of family members, they sat shocked. It totally affected how we met together as a family from then on.

Later, I mustered up the courage to ask Mom about a time I remembered her coming into my bedroom, and I was being molesting and she turned around and walked away. She said she didn’t remember.

In 1993, my confusion of my womanhood, caused by my incest/molestation issues, raged out of control, so I went into Sexual Trauma treatment. The counselor gathered information from the clients about key areas that needed discussion during the family week for healing. So, during that special week, my second husband, Mom and Dad attended. I talked to each about pressing issues. When I got to Mom, I told her about her denial of that incident in my bedroom. She sobbed and sobbed, and said, “I am so sorry.” Her admission healed something so deep inside of me, and our relationship zoomed to a different level after that.

My confusion about me as a woman placed me in many compromising situations. I suffered domestic violence at the hands of my first husband. During my drinking days, my confusion put me in many risky situations, doing things I never thought I would do. Luckily, no one raped me, but after I sobered up, I wondered about my promiscuity. It all tied back to being a little girl robbed of her precious identity as a female and wounded until I sought healing. It has taken decades to resolve this issue for me.

Many wounded women, victims of incest and molestation, aren’t as lucky as me. They fall prey to predators that rape them and leave them to face the choice of what to do with the results of that violent act. Roe vs. Wade gave them an option. With it gone, they have no options.

Finally, I share my intimate story to, hopefully, open your eyes to whom many rape victims are—woman confused about their womanhood, possibly wounded at the hands of a childhood predator and then once more, attacked and victimized as a rape victim. I pray my story makes you think differently about the repercussions for these women with the loss of Roe vs. Wade. We need to protect these women, not victimize them once again.

I want to provide some resources for incest, rape or domestic violence victims:

~NEWEST PODCAST to be released Thursday, March 17, 2022, discussing my new book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? : Live on Purpose Podcast at https://liveonpurposeradio.com/category/podcast/

~MY FIRST AUDIOBOOK IS AVAILABLE: Go to Audible to buy my first audiobook, Let Me Tell You a Story. I’m working on Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? but have gotten stalled with shingles.

~Do you listen to podcasts? Here are three podcasts with interviews about my new book & some Flippo stories:

Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flipp meme

~Have you bought a copy of Flippo’s biography yet? Believe it or not—it’s been two years. Go here for your hardback or paperback: https://www.laradasbooks.com or at Amazon.

~For me, it’s Christmas all year long! Here’s a variety of Christmas greetings from Flippo & Neeca, featuring his song, “When It’s Christmas Time in Texas”: https://youtu.be/mpJCUGffU3A

Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? meme

~What happened to you in 2020-2021 during the coronavirus pandemic? Do you care? Are you on a spiritual path? Do you want to heal from the horrible effects of the pandemic of 2020? Visit my website to find out about my new book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? and my other five books and three cookbooks: https://laradasbooks.com

Try Gratitude—I Challenge You!
family · God · Gratitude · My Thoughts · Recovery · Thanksgiving

Try Gratitude—I Challenge You!

Larada Horner-Miller8 Comments
Gratitude tuns what we have into enough

Try gratitude! My challenge to you is to be grateful this week—about all the blessings of your life. Thanksgiving always makes me think of gratitude. But do you really know what gratitude is? Have we heard it connected to Thanksgiving so often, it’s lost its meaning?

Positive psychology defines gratitude in a way where scientists can measure its effects, and thus argue that gratitude is more than feeling thankful: it is a deeper appreciation for someone (or something) that produces longer lasting positivity.


https://positivepsychology.com/gratitude-appreciation/

Gratitude changes people, attitudes and just about everything it comes into contact with! In recovery, I learned the power of gratitude. I often hear people comment about making a gratitude list. We have a phrase, an Attitude of Gratitude, I’ve heard often. For many, negativity supersedes positivity or gratitude habitually, so the habit has to be changed. And how to do you do that? Practice, practice, practice!

Gratitude Log

So, I created a Gratitude log to chart three things to be grateful for each day this week. Click here to download my Gratitude Log, and start today. It is a Word document, so you can record your list on your computer or tablet. Decide whether to do it in the morning or evening, then commit yourself to that time each day. Maybe put a reminder on your calendar on your phone or tablet.

Email Family Members and/or Friends

To go along with this log, if you are listing people, shoot them off an email. I provide a sample below. If that person doesn’t do email, drop a card in the mail. That would be a shock! Just imagine the double blessing it would be—to get mail from someone other than the ridiculous junk mail vendors and then to open it to a beautiful note about your thankfulness about him/her.

To make it easy for you this week, I know you’re busy, busy—copy this email and send it to people to brighten their holidays.

My Email Example

Dear (Name),

I have deemed this week to be Gratitude Week, and I wanted you to know you are on my list. As I focus on all the good things in my life, I think of you and here’s why:

  • Add one thing reason you are grateful for this person
  • Add one thing reason you are grateful for this person
  • Add one thing reason you are grateful for this person

Just know I love you dearly and felt like I needed to let you know. (Pass this email on to anyone and bless their day!)

My Gratitude for My Recovery & My God

Gratitude is the best attitude!

So, each day this week for the Ultimate Blog Challenge, I’m going to identify people, places and things I’ve grateful for.

My recovery, which led me back to my God, tops my gratitude list. After many years, I have been given, because of recovery, a life I could never had dreamed of. Because of recovery, I came back to a God of my understanding who blesses every day. I had turned my back on the God of my childhood and young adulthood for many years, but because recovery offered me a God I could work with, it all changed.

Finally,

I often need to add something to a holiday to ground me amid the insanity of our world. Being grateful always centers me once more as I head towards Thanksgiving and then Christmas.

So, can you join me in this challenge and be grateful this week? Email or write someone a note to let them know why you are grateful for them? Try it again next week and the week afterwards? What do you think? Let me know below.

Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? meme

Visit my website to find out about my new book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better? and my other five books and three cookbooks: https://laradasbooks.com

Check out Cyber Week Specials at my Etsy Shop, Larada’s Reading Loft, on select books!