lifewitharwen
Kristal Klear never asked for the severe abuse she suffered at the hands of multiple people growing up, people she looked to for love and protection. That gave way to domestic abuse as an adult. After breaking free from all of that, Kristal does not identify as a victim. With her faith and determination, she…
Read More
Coming down from her first panic attack, Kelsey Erickson knew something was wrong. She thought she’d landed her dream job, but the physical feelings of discomfort she was ignoring proved correct. Her whole body was telling her that something wasn’t right. On the outside, she appeared to be successful. But she wasn’t finding purpose in…
Read More
48 hours after coming home with her newborn, Arwen thought she nearly killed him. As sleep deprivation was increasing, and in her weary-eyed stupor, she accidentally left the space heater on at maximum heat in the baby’s room. By the time she realized what happened, the temperature in the room was over 100 degrees and…
Read More
While pregnant with her firstborn son, lifelong workaholic Dr. Linda Travelute was diagnosed with preeclampsia – a life-threatening condition caused by high blood pressure that can lead to the death of both mother and child. Even as she was about to give birth, her nurses were begging her to stop working, but she simply couldn’t…
Read More
At the age of 40, Kristen Brokaw was told by her doctor that she could potentially lose her vision when she found out that she had unknowingly exposed herself to toxic mold. With permanent scarring and vision loss, she didn’t just learn to see the world differently–she also found her mission. After her diagnosis, Kristen…
Read More
When she was 23 years old, Fahren Johnson learned that she was born of rape to a mother who was institutionalized with severe paranoid schizophrenia. Her mother’s condition resulted in Fahren being a ward to the state with no contact to her biological family. From there, she bounced from home to home in the foster…
Read More
In 2009, when the Becker’s 4-year-old cat, Lewis, was attacked leaving him with a broken jaw, the entire family faced a very difficult decision; find a way to fund a $5,000 bill in the midst of the greatest financial difficulty of their lives and with no guarantees, or put him to sleep. The commitment and…
Read More
One day around the age of seven, an extended family member told Jen Du Plessis, “You’re going to be just like your father, you’re going to be worthless, you’re going to be poor, you’re going to be an alcoholic…you’ll really basically amount to nothing.” And just two short year later, she walked in the house…
Read More
After growing up with an alcoholic father, Debbie Page was told in college “If you have alcoholism in your family, you’re going to be attracted to that in a partner.” Being a very level-headed woman, whose father got sober when she was 16, she thought that was ridiculous, until she met her gregarious, fun-loving future…
Read More
Marcella Allison was told that a “glorified bookkeeper with an English degree” does not become a venture capitalist after she enthusiastically approached the guest speaker in her MBA class. He continued to tell her that since she didn’t get her MBA from Harvard, didn’t have a 4.0, wasn’t captain of the lacrosse team, this was…
Read More