#BrookeUnbroken

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve put my feelings into words. I saw this post this morning upon doing a little soul searching and I couldn’t help but become confused.   I’ve been in both places. Grudges. The old me...circa 2016 and back...100% held a grudge. It’s all I knew. Or maybe it was what I was forced to know. What it did was cost me my first marriage, and countless mistakes after that. Then one day my wife (new marriage) told me it, along with my bitterness for life, it was one of the things she hated most about me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Along with the wondering why she married me to begin with, so many questions flooded my existence. Circumstances had made me that way. The many years of continuous hurt and betrayal from so many people I had given my heart to had turned me into stone. What a reality check and more importantly an awakening.  And so I committed to myself, and those I loved, to change. And I did. I absolutely changed. I let all the negative th

Be sure to check out Rashawn’s video below before you read ⤵️ Rashawn Copeland He talks about the emptiness feeling...and explains it unequivocally well. It’s the words that I’ve searched for in trying to explain that lowest of low feeling that I feel so often. Just to make people understand...those people that have judged my suicide attempts. Or anyone else’s for that matter. Those times when all I want to do is not feel...period. It’s never about the actual problem. It’s never about the people you love. Or being selfish. It’s about the pain...and wanting it to simply stop. One of my many faults is the profoundness in which I feel. Whether it’s love or sadness, I feel passionately. It’s never just on the surface. It’s fiercely, almost uncontrollable. And I hate that about me! I get so sick of people trying to tell me that I need to change the way I feel. Like he says...people telling you to just “be positive”. Listen folks you can’t just change the way you feel! If it could be

Happy Pride month! A month dedicated to the LGBT community to celebrate love, seek understanding and solidarity, hoping to one day be able to live in a world where their lives are valued just as much as the heterosexual life. If you know anything at all about me, you know this sits near and dear to my heart. As I watch so many friends celebrating this month, I decided to take a walk back in that time in my life and share what “that side of the fence” as most call it, was like for me. I’m finally at a place where I can talk about my life with her, and semi-not-cry.   I still get the question a thousand times...”how did it happen?”. How did I fall in love with a woman you mean? It’s hard for many people to even say that out loud, and that’s ok, because it was just as hard for me at the beginning too. It wasn’t something planned. It just happened over time. We had been friends for years; since high school. Years would go by, we would see one another and hang out like we had never m

What’s the most important thing you’ve done this year? For me...it’s that I survived. One year ago today I sat in the garage, put the keys in my ignition, turned it on, and sat there screaming in sheer pain. Calling out for her, but she never came. I sat and pounded the steering wheel, grasping at my chest because it hurt so bad. The physical pain...it was just too much for me to take, and I wanted it to go away. This was my only answer. But as I sat there, uncontrollably crying, something made me turn off the ignition and open the garage door. It wasn’t that I wanted to live, but whatever it was, it was stronger than me or the pain.  For me that night...I was desperately trying to end the pain and conquer my problems. I could not bare to live my life without her. It was simply unadulterated desperation.   Depression. It’s living in a body that fights to survive, with a mind that wants to die. The suicide attempt(s) have become a trauma that I have had to learn to deal wit

It’s been a while since I had a day like today. A day where there were more tears than none. A day where I could physically feel the pain from a broken heart that lingers inside of this chest. That pain that physically makes me sick. A day where the pain came out of nowhere and felt like it was caving in on me. And I’ve spent the day in between a place of being...and not being...in hopes of just not feeling. If you’ve never felt that way then don’t judge. But I needed to dig up this letter I wrote to myself as a reminder...that’s it’s ok for me to fall down and lose my spark (and I do...ALOT)! But tomorrow I have to get up, brush my shoulders off and try again...and rise as the whole damn fire!  A letter to me from me