HTLABW: The Re-introduction

Hello All!

I know that I have spent a significant amount of time away from you all. And your support from the very beginning to still being here now is incredibly unwavering and so amazing.

I have been spending time getting to know the new me. Who is this new Nia Renee? I have been thinking on that and during this journey I have been asking myself a lot of questions. I have been in survival mode and trying to preserve my emotions. And to be quite honest I think that is has been extremely important for me to not just allow my emotions to just float away and be ignored because they are never truly gone until you deal with them head on. So, that has been my main focus over the last several months. And I can admit that I have learned so much more about myself, my strength, the power I hold within myself to truly realize that I can get through anything! And sometimes that scares me because I think to myself, “if I can get through anything and get through what I have been through before what the hell else life is going to throw at me to make me handle?” (negative thought I know, but hey after all I do have PTSD, it is a natural response).

I am currently writing this at 1233 am on April 6, 2020 because it is one of those nights that I just simply cannot sleep (shout out to all of my insomniacs or just everyone who cannot sleep because they think too much like me!). With the raging Coronavirus and all of the anxiety that surrounds this has made me truly think about what is important to me. Me, now having to put myself first in everything that I do because my life depends on it, it is very important that I learn to apply to other places in my life. And to be honest, being selfish (in a healthy way that isn’t hurting other people) I realize that it is the most important thing that I have ever learned to do. So what brings me here today?

To reintroduce myself and HTLABW to you all. Because so much of my life has changed I am in the process of rebranding what HTLABW means to me and what my new life means to me. A lot of people don’t know why I say a new life as if the life I lived before wasn’t my old life. My old life consisted of struggling mental illnesses including depression, PTSD, and anxiety. My old life also included of me writhing in continuous pain and several doctors not taking me seriously as a person and as a patient. I was pushed to the side so many times in life and not taken seriously and that made me realize that I needed to take things into my own hands and fight for myself. The only way I was going to survive the things that were trying to kill me was if I faced them head on and advocate for myself. And not only did that teach me how to handle my physical disabilities but my mental disabilities as well.

I decided that along the health journey of my physical I needed to address my mental and emotional as well. 2019 was the journey of establishing boundaries, exploring my past demons and getting them under control, and allowing myself the gentle love that I always craved from others and decided to give it to myself. I made a decision that was not easy. None of that was easy. I was in EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) with a male doctor because I wanted to teach myself how to trust men again. And so I went to EMDR and I was able to reprocess 20 years of trauma and teach myself new ways of coping (I will do a youtube video on my review of EMDR very soon).

Alongside the mental and emotional I have faced a new challenge with my weight. Before my brain surgery, ankle surgery, and septum surgery in 2019 (the year of surgeries) I weighed an unhealthy weight of around 130-140 and before my brain surgery I was 5’8 so my weight should have been around 160. Well, now I weigh about 175 pounds and I am currently 5’7 1/4″ (they removed a portion of my vertebrae when I had surgery). With my prior surgeries, mainly my ankle and my brain surgery, working out has changed and I still struggle with ankle strength so doing a lot of cardio is very difficult for me. I am now having to accept my new weight and find creative ways of maintaining it due to my physical restrictions. Which has created a new mission for HTLABW.

I am still going to discuss and explore life after abuse and what I am doing to work through my abusive past. I however will be expanding my brand to dealing with life with invisible illnesses (Brain disorders, Connective Tissues disorders, PTSD, Anxiety, and Depression), life after abuse, and body positivity. I am so excited to extend what I do to work through each of these different topics because it creates such a diverse world of conversation. I am in the process of learning how to love this battered woman who has surgery scars all over her body. I am learning how to love these new pounds and my back fat. And I am learning how to navigate life with a new perspective and many mental deficits. I have other health anomalies that are going on and I am in the process of getting to the bottom of solving those as well. This is a completely new journey for me and I am very excited to see where it takes me and where it takes HTLABW.

SO… this is the reintroduction of Nia Renee and HTLABW.

My name is Nia Renee and I am a survivor of invisible illnesses and navigating a world where body positivity should be far more discussed and taught how to love.

Welcome to the new HTLABW. I love you guys #batteredhearts