To the Me of 2025: The Year I Walked Away and Finally Woke Up

Dear Heather (the 2025 era),

I used to think this would be the year everything finally made sense.

The year where freedom felt light.

Where the hardest chapters were behind me.

Where healing meant peace.

Instead, 2025 became the year I lost almost everything I thought I had — and learned, painfully and unmistakably, what was never really mine to begin with.

I started this blog thinking it might be my don’t-give-a-fuck era. The scorched-earth version. The burn-it-down-on-my-way-out story.

And while I won’t pretend I didn’t feel that rage, what this year was actually about was something far quieter and far braver:

I walked away.

And I chose to start over.

The Life I Tried to Save

For years after my marriage ended, I fought to hold onto the life I believed I had built. I fought to keep my place in rooms, at tables, in communities I once helped bring together. I told myself that if I just tried harder, stayed kind, stayed neutral, stayed involved — I wouldn’t lose everything and I would prove to myself that my friendships, non profit involvement, social life, and so much more was something that I had because of who I was and not just because of what my name was. 

Part of that fight was my decision to write and share My Recovery Journey. Not out of vengeance. Not to punish. And not to burn anything down. I wrote it because silence is where abuse survives, and because I knew there were other women quietly questioning their own reality the way I once had. I believed — maybe naïvely — that telling the truth could be an act of service. That honesty could coexist with dignity.

What I didn’t understand at the time was the cost.

There were moments this year when I regretted everything — asking for help, telling my story, calling 911, opening my life to public scrutiny. There were days I wished I had just stayed quiet and unsafe if it meant keeping my life intact. Because the “payback” for choosing truth was real, calculated, and nearly complete.

I was once warned that if I ever tried to leave, I would be made penniless, homeless, and run out of town. At the time, I didn’t fully believe it. I do now.

Watching those words come frighteningly close to reality broke something in me — not because I was weak, but because I finally understood how power actually works when it’s wielded with intention.

I went from being the bright, shiny penny — welcomed, visible, included — to being quietly turned away from organizations I had loved, supported, and in many cases helped introduce into our lives in the first place. Doors didn’t slam. They simply stopped opening. Invitations didn’t come. Conversations went unanswered.

The silence said more than confrontation ever could.

This year forced me to make a choice I didn’t know I needed to make: authenticity over access. Real connection over transactional loyalty. Depth over optics. I no longer wanted a life built on “you pat my back, I’ll pat yours.” I wanted relationships that didn’t disappear the moment I stopped being useful.

That choice cost me almost everything I thought I had.

But it gave me clarity.

The Illusion I Didn’t See

I was the second wife. I didn’t understand at the time that nothing in that marriage happened by chance. My role, my visibility, my silence — all of it was intentional. What I believed was partnership was, in reality, positioning.

The life we called “ours” was never a shared asset. It was a benefit I received for fitting the image.

Looking back, the signs were always there. On our first date, he spoke about his future with absolute certainty — about wanting to become a senator before retirement and needing someone who would be along for the ride. I once heard that as ambition, inclusion, even romance. Now I understand it for what it was: a quiet contract offered before I knew I was signing one.

I mistook being chosen for being valued.

I didn’t yet understand that “along for the ride” meant the destination, the pace, and the power had already been decided — and my role was to support it, not shape it.

So when the image cracked, so did everything attached to it.

The access.

The stability.

The visibility.

The hardest truth I’ve had to face is this:

That life was never mine — and it should never have been.

The Truth About Money

And then there was money.

This is the part that still catches in my throat, because it took me the longest to understand — not because it wasn’t happening, but because it was happening so quietly and for so long that it felt normal.

I truly did not understand how deeply financial control had shaped my perception of safety, choice, and reality. I thought I knew. I didn’t. I grew up as a woman inside that marriage, learning adulthood and partnership through a lens that was already distorted.

From the beginning, money was positioned as care. I was added as an authorized user on a credit card within weeks of meeting — something I once interpreted as trust, generosity, maturity. Trips were booked. Gifts were given. Experiences were provided. I believed this was what a “grown-up relationship” looked like.

I was young, only 25 when we met, and I didn’t yet understand the difference between generosity and leverage.

What I didn’t see was that access was always limited. Control was always centralized. Every account that was “ours” existed in name only. Even before we were engaged, money flowed into joint accounts I didn’t have direct access to. I wasn’t responsible for paying bills. I wasn’t encouraged to understand balances or obligations.

I was insulated — and I mistook that insulation for security.

It wasn’t until years later, during one of his affairs in 2017, that I finally got access to our joint account — not as empowerment, but as necessity. By then, the structure had been in place long enough that I didn’t question how abnormal it was.

I had been trained not to.

When the illusion collapsed, so did my understanding of how life actually works when you don’t control your own resources.

One day in Spring of 2023, following my filing of divorce legally in the courts, I was standing at the sink, watching the water company turn off the water in front of my eyes as I looked out the front window, and I frantically called him telling him that this was happening and after the normal dozen or so reasons why what was happening was my fault, the call would always end with, okay, well, since you were nice and called I will make a call and get the water turned back on. 

Recognizing that promises once made had quietly become threats — and then promises kept.

This year stripped me down to a place I had never been before. Technically functional. Socially visible. And quietly terrified about food, transportation, health, and survival.

I am not sharing this for sympathy. I’m sharing it because it changed me forever.

I have now lived inside the reality that so many people exist in every single day — the constant math, the impossible choices, the shame, the fear. It shattered my assumptions and expanded my empathy in ways nothing else ever could.

Financial abuse doesn’t always look like deprivation at the beginning.

Sometimes it looks like provision — until you realize the cost was your autonomy.

As I felt my life beginning to unravel, I found myself where I began to question my safety, then, after being gone for a weekend and coming home to an unexplained (per the police investigation)  pellet gun hole in my bedroom window, I took that as my opportunity to just decide to move and make sure that my home location stayed anonymous after the Peoria Journal Star published where I resided in the paper after one of the many articles that unfortunately followed our divorce trial.

Choosing Peace Without Forgetting

I needed to make that change and I think it is the best decision I could have made for myself.  It's hard to live in a town that you have always loved and given your life to, and yourself be left out of gatherings, and meetings, normal every day things that I always took granted for doing, some things that I involved us in to begin with, because the host was “just trying to keep the peace.” The hate spewed at me at the downfall of our marriage was destroying my life, long after our marriage was over.  

Then, on Thursday Nov. 6th, 2025, I received a call from my attorney that I won my divorce appeal. 

I WON.

It was decided by the appellate court that the judgment that was made needed to be overturned and now we have to go through the trial all over again. Which I am honestly not excited about but regardless, I won.

Winning the appeal gave me something I hadn’t felt in a long time: hope. Not certainty. Not victory. Just the possibility that my future might finally be built with some assistance of the life I have already worked to grow, instead of getting so low it's impossible to recover.  

I don’t know exactly how this chapter ends. I know what I hope for. I know what I fear. And I know that whatever comes next will be built differently.

I am no longer interested in fighting. I don’t want to throw stones. I don’t want to rewrite history as only pain. I am choosing to honor the love that once existed — because it was real to me, even if it didn’t last.

I will always remember the good memories alongside the hard ones, and I refuse to let the ending erase everything that came before it. No matter how everything burnt down at the end, we were both at one point, two 25 year old's that loved to go to Mexico, were parents to Teddy, Wrigley and Izzie, had big dreams and both wanted to have a family and put good in the world.  

I am sorry for the pain my leaving caused, I was just so tired.  I tried for years and never had an investment back.  Every time there was a big scary fight I would accept your apology, along with all of the time you suddenly wanted to spend with me, to the gifts you would shower me with and the weekend away you always wanted to take.  These weekends were where you would promise things would change and I always truly believed you, I always wanted to. I begged over and over again for therapy to be taken seriously, for affairs to stop, for lies to end, for patience, for time, for a family.

I never wanted to hurt anyone. But I had to choose myself. My physical health. My mental wellness. My sanity. My safety. I had to choose a life where I could breathe again — and I will never apologize for choosing to live.

I want you to know that I forgive you.

Forgiveness, for me, is not forgetting. It is choosing not to carry this weight forward.

It is choosing peace over punishment, healing over bitterness, and adulthood over endless conflict.

I want the chance to start over fully. And I want that for both of us. So, let's be kind to one another, and be grown ups this time and treat each other as both of our late mothers would have wanted us to. I am making this decision to move forward positively and I would love the same respect in return.

What I Leave Behind — and What Comes Next

As I close this letter to the me of 2025, I am choosing to be very clear about what I am not taking with me into 2026.

I am not carrying forward the hurt feelings.

The anger.

The resentment.

The grief that hardened into hopelessness.

The fear that convinced me I had to stay small to stay safe.

I release the version of myself who believed survival was the same thing as living.

I am done carrying stories written about me instead of with me. I am done letting misinformation, speculation, and public narratives dictate my worth or my future.

I am a private citizen who lived through a deeply personal chapter — and the impact of public coverage, incorrect information shared by the journalist, and the sharing of my personal details during trial proceedings had real consequences for my mental health and my sense of safety. 

It influenced where I lived. How I moved. And ultimately, my decision to choose a quieter, more protected life.

I hope — sincerely — that moving forward, two adults ending a marriage can be allowed the same privacy and grace afforded to anyone else.

As for me, I am choosing something new.

Joy without justification.

Kindness without self-abandonment.

Peace without pretending the past didn’t happen.

I am stepping into 2026 lighter, clearer, and more intentional — not because everything worked out perfectly, but because I finally learned what matters.

This chapter closes not with bitterness, but with resolve.

And the next one begins with a choice.

Part Two: To the Future Me of 2026 — Choosing Joy, Truth, and the Life I Actually Want

coming Tuesday January 6th, 2026.

That story is about rebuilding.

About happiness that doesn’t depend on approval.

About creating a life rooted in authenticity, safety, and quiet confidence.

This is where my second act truly begins.

And this time — I’m not taking with me what no longer serves me.

I go into 2026 with positive and authentic intentions, the desire to stop trying to force what no longer works, striving to find joy in every day and to live a life by design that I am proud of. Nothing changes unless something changes. Here's to growth.

With Love,

Heather

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