I’ve gone back and forth on whether to share the truly personal sides of my life. There’s always that internal battle of how personal is too personal when you have what may be viewed as a business blog. Perhaps that’s true, but one thing I always respect – whether on blogs, in people, businesses… whatever – is transparency. Yah, this blog represents my company to a certain extent, but it also represents me, Adele.

The last two years of my life have been one heck of an emotional ride. I’ve gone through a divorce, the death of a pet from extremely devastating circumstances (RIP Sock-a-Roonie), leaving a pretty decent paying job, a period of feeling homeless (I wasn’t but I didn’t have a bed to call my own for some time), buying a condo within 3 weeks because I was so desperate for said bed, meeting the man of my dreams, discovering my pop had terminal cancer (he’s currently in remission – yah!), losing friends due to circumstances beyond my control rather than losing something else on the other side (gotta love that double-edged sword)… the list just goes on.

Anyways, back to that man of my dreams. Those words sometimes piss me off. I often resent them to no end. Why? Because shortly into our relationship I discovered he had brain damage. He was born with a condition called ARND (Alcohol-Related Neurodevelopmental Disorder) which falls under the FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder) umbrella. Perhaps some of you know of it, for those that don’t, to cut it short, his maternal mom (he’s adopted) drank alcohol while pregnant and this essentially damaged his brain permanently. You wouldn’t know it to look at him or be around him, he’s extremely smart and we’re fortunate in that he’s considered high-functioning, but I won’t get into the clinical side of this. Quite frankly, it often confuses me. All that needs to be said for now is that the section of the brain which allows the left and right side to communicate is damaged which causes a myriad of challenges.

So ya, sometimes when I look at the man of my dreams, I get pissed off. Not so much because I view him as “damaged” but because it could of been prevented. If the alcohol hadn’t been able to destroy him before he was even born, our life would be oh so different. I get pissed off because “someone” (god, fate, whatever floats your boat) put him in my life to go on this wonderful ride only to later tell me that that to make this work we’ll have to face challenges most would run from. I wish I had the words to describe these challenges, so rather than try, I’ll share with you a song that brings a lot of clarity to me when things are fuzzy.

Truth is, we’ve been on this huge mountain climb since the day we met. Sometimes the trip up it has been exhilarating – memories I’ll always remember – and sometimes we’ve stumbled and slid down the mountain a little. Yet we always got up, dusted ourselves off and starting climbing again. Even when our pain and fears were too heavy to carry, we kept climbing. I don’t know if we’ll ever reach the top of the mountain together and perhaps along the way one of us will be too tired to keep climbing, but hopefully, one day, we’ll both reach the top to experience it’s beauty. I’m told it’s the most amazing feeling of freedom there is.

P.S. I don’t know if I’ll keep this post up forever. Perhaps one day I’ll wake up and decide it is too personal. But for now, this is me, my life, the life of the face behind this blog, Adele, not modernemotive, but Adele.

P.P.S. I know in the grand scale of things, we’re pretty lucky. There are much worse battles to face, this world ain’t perfect, but sometimes, just sometimes, you have to be a little selfish and only think about your little world. You live in it after-all.