Greetings my lovelies,

As promised, I am ripping out the roots.

It’s a beautiful day here in Tucson—only 80°F at the moment. As I sit here sipping on mushroom coffee—yes, mushroom—it truly feels like a new kind of magic potion. I decided it was time to move from magic beans to mushrooms because they are simply healthier for me. Between the adrenal support and the way they help my body handle stress, it’s a choice for my long-term health, a way to nourish the woman I’ve become rather than just fueling the woman who is trying to survive.

As I look across the table at my love, Ronnie, I finally know what true love feels like. But it was not always this way. To understand the peace I have now, I have to be honest about the war I was born into and the “lessons” I had to unlearn. Here we go, folks… the brutal, unvarnished truth.

The Highlight Reel

I was raised on a highlight reel of Americana: the Sussex County Fair, the scent of fried dough, and my parents—two beautiful teenagers frozen in a neon halo of destiny. It’s the “Small Town Romance” trope we see in every movie and TV show. The Ferris wheel turns against a velvet sky, and we are told that this fleeting, sugar-coated moment is the bedrock of a “happily ever after.”

But a highlight reel is just a clever edit—it’s the art of leaving out the blood and the bone to keep the image pretty. It’s the visual propaganda of a family that preferred the myth to the mirror. They didn’t just tell me this story; they used it as a psychological sedative. The Ferris wheel wasn’t a symbol of rising love; it was a cycle of repetitive trauma, spinning in place while the ground beneath it was rotting. They needed me to believe in the neon halo so I wouldn’t notice they were using the light to hide their own cowardice.

It’s a lie. It’s always been a lie.

The Poisoned Honey

For a young girl, that lie is a poison disguised as honey. I grew up believing that love was supposed to look like a movie poster. I was conditioned to look for the “Technicolor spark” and the grand romantic gesture, believing that if the beginning was beautiful enough, it could justify a lifetime of misery. I was taught to romanticize the struggle, to see the “Bad Boy” as a project and the “Sanctuary” as a prize.

Because I believed in their fairytales, I spent my youth waiting for a Ferris wheel that was never going to turn for me. I looked for the beauty of love in the shadows of their dysfunction, thinking that if I just held onto the “magic” hard enough, I could make the reality fit the script. I planned my life around a myth they used to save their own skins—and in doing so, I almost lost my own sense of what real, grounded, healthy love actually looks like.

The Mirror Image

I was tricked into loving the evidence of my own exploitation. I was so well-trained in their forgery that I went out and found a mirror image of it. I married my first husband who was a bully, much like my father—exactly like him. He was the “bad boy” with a Jeep, the carbon copy of the myth I had been taught to worship. I thought I was destined to be with him because he fit the script I’d been handed since birth. I thought the “storm” he brought with him was just the whirlwind I’d been told preceded the “happily ever after.”

What a fucking lie.

I wasn’t following destiny; I was following a ghost. I was a young woman desperately trying to make sense of a forgery, so I went out and found a man who could play the part. I chose the Jeep for the same reason my mother chose the wrecking ball: because I didn’t know that love was supposed to be a safe harbor, not a battlefield. I spent years trying to polish a bully into a prince, just like I’d watched my mother do, never realizing that the “Bad Boy” archetype is just a fancy name for someone who breaks you to make themselves feel whole.

I was tricked into believing that being a “shield” was my purpose in a relationship. I traded my peace for a movie-poster romance that turned out to be a horror story, all because I was still trying to live out the cotton-candy lie of 1970.

The Real “Fair Story”

I want to be clear: I’m not saying the idea of a fairytale marriage is an illusion. I’m saying the version I was sold in 1970 was a counterfeit. Because the truth is, I have the fairytale now. I have the “fair story” with Ronnie.

But unlike the one in the highlight reel, mine didn’t start with a tactical maneuver to avoid a war. It started with a friendship in 1989 that grew into a partnership in 2002, and a marriage in 2004 that has actually stood the test of time.

It’s funny how the universe works. For years, I thought I was looking for a “Bad Boy” who looked like a movie poster. But Ronnie has been my “Bad Boy” since the first day I met him. And let me tell you what that really means: A real “Bad Boy” is not a bully. He is not someone who tries to dim your light to make his own look brighter. That’s just a coward in a leather jacket.

The real “Bad Boy”—the kind I have in Ronnie—is a rebel because he refuses to follow the script of toxic masculinity. He has the heart of a big kid; he’s funny, he’s gentle, and he is the kindest soul I know. He is secure enough to be soft. He is strong enough to be the safe harbor I was told didn’t exist.

My fairytale with Ronnie doesn’t need neon lights or fried dough to make it look sweet. It’s sweet because it’s real. I’m not bitter about love; I’m protective of it. I’ve learned that a real fairytale isn’t something you’re born into—it’s something you recognize once you finally stop believing the lies of people who were too cowardly to be honest.

I am breathing. I am loved. And I am finally, vividly, Rae.