Tag: abuse

Routes

Kristine Binder
I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me.

There are some drives that are more than just getting from one place to another. Some roads carry memories in the pavement. Yesterday, without realizing it, I took one of those drives.
I don’t believe in coincidences. I never have. I think things show up when we need them, even if we don’t understand why at first.
Yesterday I had to take my fur-baby to the vet because he’s been limping again. The same vet who did his surgeries years ago. I had never been to this office which meant an hour drive each way, so I plugged the address into my navigation app and off we went.
What I didn’t expect was that the route would take me straight through pieces of my life I haven’t visited in years. Past the community college where I earned summer credits. Past the church where I got married. Past the YMCA where I took swimming lessons as a little girl.
Road after road that I hadn’t driven in forever somehow came back like muscle memory. Every turn familiar. Every landmark holding a story. And honestly? It was exactly what my heart needed.
At the vet, we waited for what felt like forever. Once everything was cleared and I was told it was age and arthritis….just like his momma….the vet and I were talking afterward, I could feel myself sitting right on the edge of tears the entire time. I told him I know my dog is getting older. I know that day will come someday. But not now. Please not now. And then I cried.
I told him how I recently lost both my parents and how strangely cathartic this drive had been for me. He asked where I grew up and I told him. Turns out he lives in that same small town now.
Ten years. I’ve been going to this vet for over ten years and I’m just finding this out now? Such a small world.
As I left, my GPS routed me home a different way and about a block from the vet was the marine store where my family spent so much time when I was growing up. Boats. Water skis. Snow skis. Equipment lined up everywhere. So many Saturdays with my dad walking through those aisles. So many summers built around the water. So many winters built around the snow.
And in that moment I wanted so badly to tell someone those stories. To laugh about them with someone who remembered. But the people who shared those memories with me are gone from my life now. Those memories belong only to me. That realization is both beautiful and heartbreaking.
As I drove, Grateful Dead playing through my speakers, I found myself smiling at every little thing I remembered. Each memory healing something in me. Tiny stitches closing up parts of a broken heart. It’s funny how grief works.
When your parents die, the good and the bad goes with them. They are the only people who really knew you from day one. The only people who knew every version of you. Every phase. Every family story. Every triumph and heartbreak and embarrassing moment and inside joke. And then suddenly that connection is gone. And sometimes when parents go, the connection to siblings and extended family changes too. The glue that held everyone together is gone. The person who softened tensions, organized holidays, insisted people stay connected, covered the cracks… they’re no longer here.
That grief is its own kind of loss too. The grieving of it all is layered. But like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences. I think those roads found me yesterday for a reason. I think my soul needed familiar places. Familiar turns. Familiar memories. I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me. I carry the family lore now. I carry the history. I carry them.
And somehow that feels both unbearably heavy and completely priceless at the same time.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Complicated

Kristine Binder

I recently found a necklace after my mom passed. I was drawn to its simplicity and felt comfort in wearing it, though I could not explain why it felt different or where it even came from. I put it on and have not taken it off since. Lately, I catch myself reaching for it when I am anxious, twisting it between my fingers without even thinking, and I did not really understand why.
Today, on Mother’s Day, I was looking through old photos and found one of my mom and me on my First Communion day. And there it was. The necklace. I do not remember the necklace at all, but I remember the dress vividly because my mom made it for me. I remember how proud I was to wear something she created with her own hands. Proud that my mom made it just for me. Funny that I found that photo today. Mother’s Day. 
Mother’s Day has never been an easy day for me. Not as a daughter. Not as a mother. And now, especially not without my mom here. I think there is this expectation that Mother’s Day is supposed to feel soft and warm and easy. Beautiful cards. Perfect brunches. Matching smiles in photos. Everyone calling their mom their “best friend.” And if that is your story, I genuinely love that for you. But it has never quite been mine.
I did not have the quintessential mother-daughter relationship. My relationship with my mom was complicated. Layered. Heavy at times. Beautiful at times too. I loved my mother deeply. Fiercely. I admired her more than I can even explain. She was brilliant, accomplished, talented, respected, and capable of making absolutely anything feel elegant and intentional. She taught me to notice beauty. To appreciate history. To understand that there is value in tradition, in details, in doing things well. But being her daughter was not easy.
Her expectations were always high. Sometimes impossibly high. It took me years to understand that no matter what I achieved, accomplished, fixed, managed, or became, I would never fully make her happy in the way I desperately wanted to. That realization is painful to admit out loud because I know she loved me. She did. Absolutely. But love is complicated sometimes. People love from the places they know, and sometimes the way someone loves you is not the way you need to receive love. That has been one of the hardest lessons of my life.
Still, she shaped me into the woman I am today. Both because of her love and in spite of it. Because of her expectations and despite the weight of them. I carry so much of her in me. The good. The hard. The beautiful. The impossible.
Mother’s Day itself was never really about me. It was about honoring the mothers and women in the family first and foremost. The expectation of making the day special was always there. The planning. The pressure. The responsibility of making everyone feel celebrated and cared for. It was never about me. Ever. And honestly? I know how heavy that can feel. Thus I never want my own children to carry that kind of emotional obligation for me. I do not want them to feel responsible for my happiness. It took me years of therapy to figure out that I am responsible for my own happiness. I do not want my kids to spend their lives trying to earn love or approval or peace from me. That cycle ends here if I can help it.
And the truth is, I have not been a perfect mother. Not even close. There are moments I wish I could redo. Seasons I wish I had handled differently. Choices I made from fear, overwhelm, anger, survival mode, trauma, exhaustion. None of those are excuses. They are simply truths. I have apologized to my children, and I will continue to apologize when I get it wrong because I think mothers should. I think accountability matters.
I have always done the best I could with who I was at the time. And sometimes that version of me was struggling more than anyone realized. The reality is that each of my children got a different version of me as their mother because I was a different person while raising each one of them. Youthful. Older. Wiser. More wounded. More healed. More patient. Less patient. More financially secure. More emotionally exhausted. Every child enters a different chapter of our lives, and motherhood evolves whether we want it to or not. That does not mean the love was different. It means I was. And maybe that is the part nobody talks about enough.
Mothers are not perfect humans. They are simply human beings trying to carry the enormous responsibility of loving and shaping other human beings while often still healing themselves. We are flawed and fabulous all wrapped into one complicated package.
So today, Mother’s Day holds all of it for me at once. Love. Grief. Joy. Sadness. Gratitude. Regret. Admiration. Anger. Compassion. Longing. And maybe that is okay. Maybe motherhood was never meant to fit neatly into greeting cards and social media captions. Maybe the most honest thing we can do is tell the truth about it.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Character

Kristine Binder
People always show you who they are.

There are seasons in life when we are barely holding ourselves together. Grief, illness, loss, divorce, heartbreak…. those moments when simply getting through the day feels like an accomplishment. They are the most fragile seasons of our lives. And in those moments, something becomes very clear: people reveal exactly who they are.
Just because people process grief differently does not give anyone permission to be cruel. Cruelty during someone’s most vulnerable moment isn’t a misunderstanding or a mistake. It’s a choice. And that choice tells you everything you will ever need to know about a person.
We are often told to be kind because we never know what someone else is going through. That is good advice. Kindness matters. Compassion matters. In life we are also often encouraged to assume positive intent, to start from a place of believing that people mean well.
And I do believe in starting there.
But life also teaches you that there are moments when positive intent becomes impossible to assume. There are people who take advantage of kindness, who see someone grieving or struggling and instead of protecting that fragile moment, they exploit it. They take advantage of your diminished capacity, your vulnerability, your exhaustion, your heartbreak. Not because they misunderstood, but because they could.
There are some things in life that should be sacred. Untouchable. Off limits. Someone’s darkest season should be one of them. When a person is sick, grieving, broken, or simply trying to keep their head above water, that is when the people around them are supposed to step closer. That is when compassion should show up. That is when kindness matters most.
But sometimes the opposite happens.
Sometimes people see vulnerability and they don’t feel empathy…. they see opportunity. They see someone who is too exhausted to fight back, too overwhelmed to defend themselves, too heartbroken to protect themselves. And they take advantage of that moment. They say things they would never say if you were strong. They behave in ways they would never dare if you were standing firmly on your feet.
That is not simply poor character. That is the absence of humanity.
The wounds from that kind of cruelty run deep because they happen at the exact moment you needed support the most. You were already drowning, and instead of throwing you a lifeline, they pushed your head further under. You were already shattered, and instead of helping you gather the pieces, they stepped on them, crushing them even smaller.
I know this not just in theory, but in lived experience. I saw it during my divorce, and I have seen it again in other seasons of loss. Something about grief and hardship has a way of revealing people. When life cracks open and everything feels fragile, the masks fall away. In those moments, people show you exactly who they are.
And over time, you learn that people are not judged by a single sentence they say or one moment they regret. People are known by their patterns. By their behavior over and over again. By how they treat others when things are going well, and when everything is falling apart. By how they treat people when there is nothing to gain and no audience watching. And by how they behave when they do have something to gain. I have seen the worst of humanity in people who were once very close to me. The kind of cruelty that shocks you because you never imagined it could come from them. But I have also seen the absolute best in people, those who quietly step closer when life gets hard, who show compassion without needing credit, who protect others when they are at their weakest. They sit with you and, often saying nothing, help you feel safe.
In loss, people reveal themselves.
And that is how you learn who to trust. I am not a vengeful person, but I do believe in karma. Not the dramatic kind people talk about, but the quieter kind. I know that karma may simply be that some people have to live with the person they chose to be. They have to sit with the choices they made and the way they treated someone who was already hurting. And in the end, that may be consequence enough.
I know that through those seasons I stayed in my lane. I did the best I could with the strength and clarity I had at the time. When I made mistakes, I owned them. I apologized. I worked to correct them.
But cruelty? That is different.
Cruelty is intentional. And when someone chooses cruelty toward a person who is already wounded, it is not something you forget—not because you are holding onto anger, but because you learned something important.
People always show you who they are.
And if you are paying attention, those moments help you see more clearly. They show you who is safe, who is kind, who will stand beside you when life gets hard. In the end, those lessons don’t just protect your heart….
they guide you toward the people who truly deserve a place in your life.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Becoming

Kristine Binder

Your past does not define your future. Not the good choices you made, not the decisions you aren’t proud of, not the moments that brought you joy, and not the experiences that tore you apart. All of it happened, all of it shaped you, but none of it gets to decide what comes next unless you allow it to.
For a long time, I carried my past like a verdict. I treated certain choices as proof that I should know better by now or that I had somehow failed myself. I replayed moments that went beautifully and moments that broke me open, trying to figure out what they said about who I was and what I deserved. I gave the past far more authority than it ever earned.
What I’m learning, over and over again, is that the past is information, not destiny. It can teach you. It can inform you. It can offer wisdom if you’re willing to listen. But it does not get to write your future on your behalf.
I’ve also come to understand how deeply belief shapes experience. What we expect, we prepare for. What we fear, we rehearse. What we believe we deserve, we either make room for or quietly push away. The energy we carry, consciously or not, has a way of finding its way back to us. What you believe, you receive.
This is a lesson I am still learning. Some days I catch myself slipping into old narratives, bracing for disappointment, waiting for the other shoe to drop, assuming the next chapter will be harder than the last. Other days, I notice that pattern and choose something different. I remind myself that change doesn’t require perfection — it requires progress. Small shifts. Better questions. A little more trust than yesterday.
Calling in the good doesn’t mean ignoring what hurt or pretending difficult things didn’t happen. It means refusing to let pain have the final word. It means allowing joy to arrive without immediately questioning how long it will last or what it will cost. It means making space for possibility instead of living in constant state of anticipatory grief.
I don’t want my future to be a reaction to my past. I want it to be a response to who I am now. The mistakes I’ve made don’t disqualify me from what’s ahead. The joy I’ve experienced doesn’t trap me in nostalgia. And the grief I’ve carried doesn’t mean more loss is inevitable.
So this is what I’m practicing now: choosing progress over perfection, loosening my grip on the past, and intentionally calling in what I want more of. Not perfectly. Not every day. But with awareness, patience, and intention.
Because the future isn’t something I inherit. It’s something I help create. And I’m learning, one step at a time, to call in the good.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Eight

Kristine Binder

Eight years ago today, I signed my divorce papers, walked out of that building, and took my name back. It wasn’t just the end of a marriage—it was the beginning of a whole new life. Divorce is often painted as tragedy or failure, but for me, it became the doorway to freedom, healing, and becoming my truest self. Here are eight things I’ve learned since that day.
1. Freedom has a price—but it’s worth paying.
The road to my freedom wasn’t easy or cheap, in dollars or in emotional cost. There were lawyer bills, sleepless nights, and moments when I thought I might break. But the peace I have now, the ability to live authentically without walking on eggshells, is priceless. Sometimes freedom means losing things you thought you couldn’t live without—and realizing you can. And then realizing it is so much better!
2. Karma has its own clock.
I used to want to see instant justice, for people to “get what’s coming” the moment they hurt me. But I’ve learned karma doesn’t work on my timeline. It works quietly, steadily, and with perfect timing. You don’t have to seek revenge—life has a way of balancing the scales when you focus on your own growth instead.
3. Strength isn’t built in the easy seasons.
I didn’t realize how strong I was until I had no choice but to be. The days I thought would destroy me were the ones that built my backbone. Strength doesn’t mean you never cry or break down—it means you find the courage to stand back up every single time….and say, “ try again….” 
4. Resilience is a muscle.
I’ve had to start over more than once since my divorce—financially, emotionally, even in how I saw myself. Every time I rebuilt, I found I could do it better, smarter, and stronger than before. Resilience grows with each challenge, and now I trust myself to survive whatever comes next.
5. Shame loses its power when you speak it aloud.
Divorce carries a shadow of shame in our culture, as if ending something that’s hurting you is a failure. I carried that weight for a while, worried about what people thought, until I learned this: shame grows in silence, but it shrinks in the light of truth. Telling my story not only freed me—it helped others feel less alone in theirs.
6. Taking your name back is more than paperwork.
Changing my name wasn’t just about identification—it was about reclaiming my identity. It was a reminder that I belong to myself. My name is a symbol of every step I’ve taken away from who I was told to be, and toward who I truly am.
7. You can fall in love again—in all sorts of ways.
Love after divorce isn’t just about another person. It’s about falling in love with joy and with life itself. It’s about my rescue dog, Lucky, who reminds me daily what unconditional love looks like. It’s about my people—the friends and family who show up, lift me up, and make me laugh until my face hurts. It’s about sunsets, music, and mornings where I wake up grateful for the quiet peace of my own company(which I rather enjoy!).
8. Divorce no longer defines me..
The things we go through can define us if we let them, or they can simply be one chapter in the book of our lives. For a long time, my divorce felt like the headline of my story. Now, it’s just one part of it—important, yes, but surrounded by so many other chapters filled with joy, love, growth, and possibility. I get to decide what defines me, and I choose everything I’ve built since that day.
Eight years later, I can say this: I didn’t just survive my divorce. I thrived because of it. Every step forward, baby step or giant leap, carried me here. Forward has been and always will be my pace.
Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace