Life Stories By Shel

I have a daughter in Lgoogle.com, pub-2115235636283523, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0google.com, pub-2115235636283523, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0aw who knows how to give good gifts.  She is such a fantastic gift giver that she will gift you with a present that you didn't even know yourself that you wanted, nor did you know that you needed it. I swear this girl is so good at gifting presents that, if there was a place called gift giving heaven, she would have already achieved nirvana. I received one of those glorious presents this past summer for my 52 birthday.   My youngest son and daughter in law gifted me a membership to Ancestry.com.  This very special gift opened up a whole new world for me.  With my new ancestry membership in hand, I began a journey of self-discovery that would lead me to some faraway places and bring me into contact with some very interesting characters. I've always understood that I was a citizen of the good ole USA.  I knew where I fit ...

My path toward discovering my authentic self started many years ago.  I'd like to say that it started  around 1966, but in all serious, I was just at the beginning of life that year.  I was focused on eating, sleeping and waking up my parents every two hours to feed me. My real journey toward finding my authentic true identity started in the early 80's.  I was a young women burgeoning on the threshold of adulthood  when I began to ask my self the age old question "Who Am I?" Truth be told,  I'm still trying to answer that question some 52 years later. I have realized that you cannot define your true authentic identity without first finding out about the people around you.  That leads me to tonights blog.  It's Christmas Eve 2018.  While most folks are gathered around their Christmas trees, I'm home in front of my computer reflecting on this epic, heartbreaking, anxiety riddled fifty second year of my life. The beginning of this year sa...

Dysfunctional Santa. Every family has their tales of Christmas mayhem and foolishness.  Some of the greatest all time Christmas movies are based on family dysfunction.  Think about the movie Christmas Vacation.  Everyone has over the top family members and a multitude of family disfunction.   My family was not any different.  Well, maybe a little bit different.  You see, It all happened one night a long time ago.  It was 1990 something.  Our family was having our typical good ole fashioned family Christmas.  There we stood elbow to elbow.  Sweating our butts off because we had 30 to 50 people crammed  in to a house that could only hold about ten comfortably.  we stood stuffing our faces with  delectable goodies like Uncle Joe's famous pasta and potato salad..  My aunt Doris would make her famous cheese ball that, well, looked a little bit like she rolled it in freshly...