What I did with the first half of my life

Crippled by total emotional devastation including destruction of most of my sexual capacity
Grew up moving from place to place as an Air Force dependent
Grew up in a large family
Ran for student body president
Lived in Canada, England, Belgium
Visited Luxembourg, Jamaica, Hawaii
Visited or lived in New York, Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, Mississippi, Texas, Colorado, New Jersey
Experienced poverty and wealth, being pious and being completely secular, republican and democrat, married and single
Experienced 20th century Mormonism to the hilt.
Gave birth to four children
Had one miscarriage
Enjoyed space invaders and tetris
Had a spectacular car crash and lived to tell the tale
Experienced mainstream American culture in the years when technology and cultural change were swiftly accelerating
Experienced love
Experienced being cheated on
Worked for an unsuccessful dotcom startup
Experienced braces and jaw widening after age 40
Saw Yosemite when no one else was around
Saw a president impeached for lying about sex
Participated in a peace walk with 100,000 other people
Saw the home of the free and the brave turned into a totaliarian dictatorship
Diagnosed with dysthymia (being an unhappy person), PTSD, Bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder
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Read a lot of books, more fiction than nonfiction
Taught myself to play the piano
Achieved Young Womanhood recognition in the Mormon church
Made good grades in school and won a National Merit scholarship to BYU
BS cum laude in psychology
Stayed at home to raise four children
Homemaking “degree” requiring making sourdough bread, yogurt, pocket bread, crumpets, and other “difficult” items from scratch
Made complex items of crochet and many other varieties of needlework.
Made a good number of quilts
Operated an unsuccessful business
Graduated from dragon tiger mountain tai chi chuan in only two years
Married twice, divorced twice

Took psychiatric meds for 12 years
Had a house with a large shade tree in front and a birdbath in back
Painted interior rooms
Finished a couple of pieces of furniture
Came out as bi at the SF gay pride parade
Had Lasik surgery
Walked across the Golden Gate bridge
Tried several times to grow a garden
Went to Burning Man
Experimented with learning languages including Esperanto
Experimented with belly, ballet, modern, west coast swing, 5 rhythms, pole, aerial and freestyle ballroom dance, feldenkrais
Experimented with paganism
Experimented with love, intimacy and sexuality
Experimented with playing the violin and recorder
Experimented with bike riding, karate, yoga and whitewater rafting
Experimented with cannabis, ecstasy and mushrooms
Tried house sitting and cat died of old age
Regularly fluffed pillows for a swinger party
Webmaster for Sex Reachers Outreach Project and Democracy Now for a while

Incorporated meditation and writing into my life
Worked in IT.
Made a salary in 99+ percentile of world at a stable job
Learned to program my thinking and choose freely
Grew back a healthy sexual capacity after it was almost completely destroyed
Repaired damaged relationships
Bought a home
Kept houseplants thriving
Attended Oaksterdam U. Helped with Cannabis garden
Removed myself from psychiatric meds
Learned to cook good beans