I’m Yessica Reedy, author of the Crushing the Chrysalis Blog as well as Warrior Dragon Slayer, the book.

The book came from a few blog posts, so feel free to dig around and see what that means through search.

It was about meeting someone that I could see as an equal. It’s about taking the life I’ve lived and breaking it down to each failure and triumph, and showing you that I’m a Warrior Dragon Slayer but also letting you know that you might be one too.

Shop designs by Yessica on clothing and coffee mugs inspired by quotes from the books. Show off your badassery or poudly proclaim your Snark Goddess. There’s a product for everyone, including that Spoiled AF baby in your life.

Life is a journey of pain avoidance and that often looks like searching for love. Before becoming a Warrior Dragon Slayer, she was lost in a world of pain.

These poems walk a journey of depression, grief, and longing.

There’s a trail of heartbreak that walks through co-dependency, addictions, and emotional abuse.

She finds her peace in the freedom of imagination, and her strength in the anger of divorce.

She learns self love and setting boundaries.

These poems weren’t created in a healthy place, but the heartache she shares is deep and genuine.

Yessica Reedy has learned to transition victimization and weakness into strength, but she’s not alone.

Memoirs of a Warrior Dragon Slayer breaks the silence of abuse. She gives her experiences with boundaries as the door to domestic violence with her continued struggle with C-PTSD. Childhood sexual trauma and the gray areas of date rape are given with transparency.

Her blunt force approach to mental health will take you through her battle with depression and suicide, and the steps she took to break the cycle.

As a stay at home Mom, she learned to advocate for her children with autism. She helped families conceive as a 3 time surrogate mother, later suffering her own miscarriage.

When her marriage ended, she learned what domestic violence was, after experiencing how it felt. She gives you the language of emotional and financial abuse. Her transition from a welfare mom in poverty, to becoming a businesswoman is a journey that she’s not alone in.

Memoirs of a Warrior Dragon Slayer: There’s Room for More touches on many issues facing modern women with vulnerability, transparency and hope.

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There’s a cost associated with the life we get to live. I’ve had to learn to be resilient, and resourceful. I’ve had to learn to be adaptable. In the end, I’ve learned how to boss up in my life. I know that my life is a result of the many choices I have and continue to make. I know that staying in the choices that no longer serve me is a choice. I can choose differently.

I have boys that follow my lead. I have parents that have relied on my abilities as a business woman. For years I’ve transacted business, negotiated deals and supported those that needed it. For weeks, it’s finally landed that I am a businesswoman. It’s a mindset. It’s the ease with which you get things done. It’s knowing the answers, but knowing you can find the ones you don’t already have.

It’s knowing we receive what we accept and that we can always raise that bar.

Photo by Ryan Riggins on Unsplash

Sometimes making it happen means you compromise your wants for your needs. Sometimes it’s finding ways to get support through low income discounts with utilities or applying for programs designed to help people in your exact situation. For me right now, it’s about a side hustle. I’m a single mom in Los Angeles. If not for my mom, I’d be homeless. If not for my tribe, I’d have it worse than I do. If not for my hustle, I couldn’t survive.

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

In 2004 I found out that autism was living in my house and it had been there for a few years. There isn’t a handbook. I’ve looked. There is a community but this means you have to open your most private insecurities as a new parent to the judgement and opinions of the world at large.

It’s about IEP’s with the school district, and IPP’s with Regional Center. It’s finding services and supports like respite care. It’s maneuvering through SSI and IHSS. It’s learning that workers are supposed to help you while not telling you all that you have access to.

It’s becoming an advocate while making sure you meet your children’s emotional needs, and hopefully you have space for your own emotional needs.

It’s learning that every document matters and you have to find a way to organize it all so you can find that one assessment you were given while wrangling your child into their stroller.

Photo by J W on Unsplash

One of the hardest things about starting over after having someone make all of the decisions was knowing my budget was up to me. I was the responsible party and that was terrifying.

Debt can be its own kind of trauma. It affects so many areas of your life and can set you back a few steps, even when you’ve started pulling yourself up.

The impact of debt on your mental health and emotional wellbeing can be staggering.

Start a budget. The amount you can save on late fees is worth the extra time of marking due dates. I used to use a calendar, but I mainly use spreadsheets now. The one linked is just an example of what mine looks like. If you copy and create your own, the formulas are fairly simple.

Work on paying off your debts aggressively. The interest you pay in an annual interest rate could be growing as an annual interest yield instead. Fund your dreams and the bank savvy enough to charge you for your own money. Good credit is important. It’s also important to make sure you are in control of your credit card debt and your debt isn’t controlling your life.

Know you are not your debt. You are not your net worth. You are the person that shows up for others in life. You are the person that is worthy of all of your dreams.

I wouldn’t be doing my duties as a broker without sharing about life insurance. It’s important if you have a family that relies on your income. I do.

One of my favorite things about starting over after my marriage is the part where I get to fall in love again.

There were crushes.

There were situationships.

There was love that looked a lot like what love used to look like. Abuse. It looked like abuse.

I wrote about surviving that first wedding after your marriage ends.

I wrote about that first crush.

I wrote about online dating and how to spot a Catfish.

There’s life after marriage and it’s pretty sweet when you decide to love yourself first.

Photo by Laula The Toller on Unsplash

As a teen, I believed domestic violence was black and white. If he hits you, it’s abuse.

Financial Abuse looks like control. It’s maxing out a credit card, then refusing to pay for it. It’s not allowing you to have a separate bank account. It’s living in the home but refusing to contribute to the food and utilities they use.

Emotional Abuse looked like being called names and being told I was a terrible person because of all of the ways I failed what they wanted of me. It’s isolation. It was telling me he didn’t like my friends or making me feel bad for wanting to spend time with other people. It’s monitoring where I was, so I would have to check in every hour, even when going to the grocery store. It’s humiliating me, then convincing me it was my fault, or I was overreacting to them being playful. It’s being accused of cheating out of the blue. It was telling me what I couldn’t wear outside of the home. It’s cheating on you, then making it feel like their inability to remain faithful had something to do with you.

Sexual Abuse and Coercion isn’t always forcible rape. It’s being guilted into sex you really don’t feel like having. It’s being held down and hurt in the name of passion. It’s being insulted in a sexual way for being a sexual being or for not being interested in sex.

Reproductive Coercion can look like being forced to have children you don’t want. It can be a refusal to wear a condom or other forms of birth control. It can be removing or breaking a condom during sex, and is called, “stealthing.”

Digital Abuse can look like limiting the people you can be friends with. It can look like sending you hateful messages online through posting on your walls or sending direct or private messages to hurt you. It’s stalking your activities online and putting you down in their status updates. It’s stealing your passwords to spy on you or pressuring you for pictures. It’s sending unsolicited dick pictures. It’s tagging you in pictures to hurt or upset you.

You have the right to firm boundaries. You can get help.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline https://www.thehotline.org/

RAINN https://www.rainn.org/

Domestic Shelters https://www.domesticshelters.org/los-angeles-ca-domestic-violence-help

Photo by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

I find the liminal spaces between what I want my life to look like and what it actually looks like can be the hardest seas to navigate. I have been pushed and pulled by hormones. I have been pushed and pulled by what I felt was expected of me. There’s hope.

I find the best ways to learn to cope is to ask for help. Whether you see a therapist that helps you find tools to get through a bad day, or a psychiatrist that can prescribe medications, you have to decide you want to live. You get to ask for help.

I’ve learned that the only thing I can control is my reaction.

I’ve learned that sometimes shifting my perspective is all I need.

I’ve learned that the spaces I occupy can make all the difference and often find calm while watching the ocean, or a sunset, or even birds or butterflies in flight.

I’ve learned that you have to keep asking for help when you need it.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention https://afsp.org/

Suicide Prevention Resource Center https://www.sprc.org/

Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash

Fertility has always amazed me. In my early adolescence, I became an egg donor. In my marriage I would carry three sons. I would also become a surrogate mother three times, carrying four more children to help other families grow.

In 2017 I would suffer a miscarriage. It was a surprise pregnancy that I didn’t want at first. As my pregnancy survived a gallbladder removal one heartbeat became two, I began to dream and wonder and plan for my children. Then I lost them. The waves of grief still hit me at the most random times and with marketing magicians that will remind me they should be having their first birthday, even if I know they won’t.

There’s support. Lots of support. Want to be a surrogate mother? Let me refer you. Want to know about the process of egg donation or IVF, been there, and posted it.

I’ve shared about the loss of my children because it’s a topic most grieving parents rarely feel safe enough to share. Most sites cover the science of it but what about the pain of it?

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash