I’m Still Here: Forward

Today I sat down to write a testimonial about my service dog.

Somehow, I ended up writing about my entire life.

And maybe that was exactly what needed to happen.

Because Jericho isn't the whole story.

He's a very important part of it.

But ultimately, God is the story.

Before Jericho

Before Jericho, my world had become very small.

I was very suicidal.

I woke up screaming from night terrors.

I didn't socialize.

I didn't want to be around people.

If I needed something, I ordered it and had it delivered.

Even my food.

I pretty much lived locked inside my house.

Alone.

With the things that haunted me.

But the story didn't start there.

It started much earlier.

I survived Lake Superior.

Eight hours.

I was the only one who came out alive.

I lost my first husband.

I lost my daughters.

They were nine and five.

I lost my little boy.

He was three.

And then I had to learn how to live in a world that continued moving when mine had completely stopped.

People talk about "moving on" after loss.

I don't believe in moving on.

You don't move on from losing your children.

You don't move on from losing the people who were your life.

You learn to move forward.

And as a veteran from Wisconsin, that word means something to me.

Forward.

Not backward.

Not away from the people I've lost.

Forward.

Carrying them with me.

When I knew something had to change

I had a pet dog before Jericho.

He wasn't trained as a service dog.

I never asked him to be one.

But after my trauma, he changed.

He stayed close.

He seemed to know when I needed him.

He watched out for me.

I knew it.

Somehow, he knew it.

After a major life change and a move, I made the heartbreaking decision to let him go live with my neighbors, who were growing their family.

I knew they could give him a life I wasn't capable of giving him at that time.

I knew he would be happier.

But I lost something too.

I lost that constant presence beside me.

And eventually, things reached a point where I knew something had to change.

One night, I found myself holding a razor blade and realizing I couldn't keep living the way I was living.

That was when I started seriously searching for a service dog.

Finding Jericho

My search took months.

I have severe allergies, so this wasn't as simple as finding a dog and bringing him home.

I researched.

I handled dogs.

I waited.

I tested.

I made sure I could be around them without having a reaction.

And eventually, I was almost ready to give up.

Then someone told me to take a leap of faith.

So I did.

And somehow, at exactly the moment I had almost lost hope...

There he was.

Jericho.

And there was Patriot K9s.

It felt like everything fell into place.

I chose Patriot K9s because it felt like going home.

I had to drive across Wisconsin for training, but it was close to where I had been born and raised.

It was familiar.

And then I realized I was surrounded by people I had served with.

When I was already outside my comfort zone, living with anxiety, fear and hypervigilance, there was something incredibly comforting about being somewhere that felt like home.

Training wasn't just about the dog

Training was tough.

Emotionally tough.

You take people who are already fragile and put them in a classroom where they have to learn how to work with another living being.

And all the while, there's that voice in your head:

What if I fail?

What if I can't do this?

What if I get dropped from the class?

But the training was amazing.

Thorough.

Productive.

And the people were kind.

They gave us grace.

There were days when they could see I was reaching my limit.

They didn't judge me.

They didn't make me feel weak.

Sometimes they would simply tell me to step outside.

Take a break.

Come back when I was ready.

That mattered.

More than they probably know.

I still get emotional thinking about the kindness they showed us.

Because they weren't just training dogs.

They were helping people learn how to function again.

And then there was Jericho

One of the most profound changes has been my sleep.

Before Jericho, my night terrors happened probably 90% of the time.

Imagine waking up from a trauma-related nightmare completely disoriented.

You're sweating.

You're screaming.

Your heart is racing.

Your body is in total shock.

You don't know where you are.

You don't know what to do.

Your mind may know you're safe, but your body doesn't.

Eventually, you calm down.

But by then, you're awake.

Sometimes it feels like you've been awake for hours.

The rest of the night is gone.

Now?

Maybe 1% of the time.

And when it does happen, Jericho is there.

Right there on top of me.

Licking me.

Soothing me.

Reminding my body that I'm safe.

I calm down much faster.

And instead of spending the rest of the night fighting my way back to reality, I can ease back into peaceful sleep.

That isn't a trick.

That isn't a convenience.

That is life-changing.

Jericho didn't fix me

This is important.

Jericho didn't make my trauma disappear.

He gave me a way to live with it.

He didn't do these things for me.

He gave me the confidence and security to believe that I could do them.

That's a very different thing.

Because I still struggle.

I still have hard days.

I still sometimes have to work myself up to go shopping.

I still get anxious.

Networking can still be hard.

Public speaking can be overwhelming.

But I do it.

The woman who once couldn't leave her house now owns a business.

I work.

I network.

I speak publicly.

I meet people.

I leave my house.

I'm building something.

And I'm doing it myself.

My business has grown by more than 538%—and I've done it entirely on my own.

No employees.

No big team.

No one doing it for me.

Just me.

Showing up.

One day at a time.

The woman who once couldn't leave her house is now responsible for a business that requires her to walk out the front door.

That's a pretty incredible turnaround.

But there is still grief

Life didn't suddenly become easy.

I remarried.

I became part of another family.

And now I find myself watching another child struggle.

Trying to help.

Trying to understand.

Trying to be there.

While carrying my own history.

My own grief.

My own trauma.

My own struggles.

That's the thing about recovery.

You don't graduate from being human.

You don't reach some magical point where nothing hurts anymore.

You simply learn how to keep moving forward.

So why do I get so upset when someone challenges Jericho?

This is the part I wish people understood.

When you see me in public with my service dog and question him...

When you stare.

When you make comments.

When you challenge whether he belongs there.

When someone makes me feel like I need to defend his presence...

You may think you're challenging a dog.

You're not.

You're challenging something that helped me leave my house.

You're challenging something that helps me sleep.

You're challenging something that helps bring my nervous system back when my body believes I'm in danger.

You're challenging something that helped me learn to function in public again.

You're challenging a partnership that has helped me build a life.

And you don't know any of that.

You don't know what happened before you saw us walk through the door.

You don't know what happened on the lake.

You don't know what I lost.

You don't know the nights I screamed in my sleep.

You don't know how many years I spent inside my house.

You don't know how close I came to not being here.

You don't know what that dog means to me.

And that's exactly why ADA literacy matters.

Service dogs are not pets.

They are not accessories.

They are not status symbols.

They are not something someone gets because they think having a dog would be nice.

And a person with a service dog does not owe every stranger an explanation of their disability.

Sometimes the person walking past you with a service dog has already fought battles you couldn't imagine.

Please don't make them fight another one just to walk into a store.

Because I am still here

I think that's the phrase that keeps coming back to me.

I am still here.

Those are such small words.

But they carry so much.

I survived the lake.

I survived losing my family.

I survived the years afterward.

I survived the nights.

I survived the isolation.

I survived the moments when I didn't know if I wanted to survive at all.

And I don't say that because I'm some incredibly strong person who did all of this by myself.

Quite the opposite.

I couldn't have done any of it without God.

He is the story.

He is the reason I am here.

I believe He brought me back to life in that lake for a reason.

He gave me back a life.

Not the life I had before.

A different one.

A life I now have the privilege and responsibility to live for Him.

And somewhere along that road, He put Jericho beside me.

God didn't necessarily remove every mountain.

He gave me something beside me that helped me keep walking.

I AM Justified

Not because I survived.

Not because I built a business.

Not because I'm strong.

Not because I've helped people.

Not because I've accomplished anything.

I am justified by Him.

That is the story.

Everything else is a chapter.

The lake is a chapter.

Loss is a chapter.

Trauma is a chapter.

Jericho is a chapter.

My family is a chapter.

My business is a chapter.

The people I get to help are chapters.

But God is the story.

And so I keep moving forward.

Not moving on.

Forward.

One minute.

One day.

One step.

Trying to do the best I can with the life He gave back to me.

Trying to help whoever I can along the way.

And if there is someone reading this who is sitting alone in their house right now...

Someone who thinks their world has become too small...

Someone who thinks they can't possibly keep going...

Someone who has lost so much that they don't know what life is supposed to look like anymore...

I don't have a magic answer for you.

But I can tell you this:

Keep moving forward.

You don't have to figure out your whole life today.

You don't have to be strong every minute.

You don't have to know how you're going to get through tomorrow.

Just keep moving forward.

Because sometimes the most powerful testimony isn't:

"Look at everything I've accomplished."

Sometimes it's simply:

"I'm still here."

And by the grace of God...

I am still here indeed.

And I'm going forward.

❤️