Subliminal Wife Training

…It’s about the motion of the ocean, right? I’ll withhold any particular viewpoints on that matter in the sense of bedroom sport. After all, it’s more fun to keep you guessing…LOL

On to serious matters, though. Apparently size does matter. Especially as it pertains to business models and monthly flow. So, let me lay out the latest. In my previous post I mentioned that I was switching payment processors, and this is true. However, there is a little backstory to this. January 27th I was notified by paypal that in spite of 6 years, their approving our original business model back when Dave started it in 2015, so much money in transactions and less than 1% dispute or customer chargeback over that period of time, they were limiting my account for terms of service violation and shutting my business account down. I won’t say how much they are holding for up to 6 months, but needless to say, after being a highly rated, above board seller with them, I’m a bit nonplussed at all of this. What is even more frustrating is that in my search for another merchant processor? Size matters. So much. It matters in how people treat my account and the priority they assign it. For instance, I’ve jumped through all the hoops with this new payment company, EMS. They have even had site inspectors come to my house and verify all of my information. The issue lies with the company processing my account for EMS, which I won’t name out of professional courtesy. They are highly recommended, and yet–I’ve been in direct contact with EMS and know that they are waiting for two documents from me to finish the account. My contact person in the processing company claims that they haven’t heard anything, which means they are either lying or have not been in contact with EMS. To say that I’m frustrated is an understatement. My first inclination is to go all trauma unit coordinator on them (a past life) and say “Hey, I don’t know what the issue on your end is, but I’ve been in contact with the Merchant Systems Company and they want documents x,y,z. Why have you not asked me to submit that information?” Clearly I am already low on their totem pole and I’m worried that confrontation and request for accountability will result in my account application being put in a coma or permanently round-filed. So here I wait. If anyone reading my blog happens to have a payment processor that they would be willing to recommend? At this point I am all ears. I’ve lost so much income this month. In addition to bills I need to pay? This has slowed down my planned growth for the site to a halt.

That said, I’m still selling files. If you contact me at my site email, I offer different payment options while the cart is down. I’m set up to take Zelle, Cashapp, Venmo, and I also take amazon gift cards. How it works is this: You contact me and tell me what files you want. I will confirm that I received the email and include my contact info for the payment method of your choice and as soon as I receive payment I will generate your order and send your download links to you. I also understand that this isn’t something everyone would be interested in. If you’d rather, I can also add you to an email list and let you know when the cart is back up and running if you contact me at the link above.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been learning and getting ready to grow the site. I’m also kind of shocked by the devastation: So much of our original content has been lost. I don’t know if Dave had a file or a drive he forgot to tell me about, or what has gone on. While I can easily download the files up on the site, the missing information and programs comprise the “building blocks” of my files, making the creation of new ones difficult right now, including the customs, which I was hoping to be offering again by March 1. I remember that Dave leaned on the generosity of our community once before when we needed new audio equipment to upgrade our file offerings. I am going to do that again today and post a crowdfunding link in the attempt to be able to keep moving forward, even as I am waiting for our processing approval to come in. Don’t feel obligated to contribute, but if you are willing and able, it would mean the literal world to me and help me grow the site. Anyone who contributes and messages me? I’ll have a special coupon code I’ll email for your generosity. Thank you so much! I’ll keep everyone in the loop as this continues to play out. I’m hoping to be up by the first part of march. Please put good energy and vibes out for me!

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-swt-with-elements-and-equipment?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf+share-flow-1

“Ground control to Major Tom…”

*Walks in, trailing fingers over surfaces dusty from misuse*

“Ground control…this is Major Tom. I’m back.”

Well, this place is a mess. It’s been virtually self-sustaining for four years now; like all things, eventually it runs aground and needs some major repairs and facade work and sweat equity to get it back to its original glory. That time has come for SWT. I don’t know if you’re one of the original group that helped SWT go from a start up to what it’s become–and in the process, become a dear friend who has helped me through the hardest times of my life–or a new or potential customer. It doesn’t matter. Pull up a chair if you like…I’ve got some things to tell you.

First, I’m not giving up on SWT. I had never planned on neglecting it this long, either. The problem is, life doesn’t come with a guidebook, and when you’re a young widow with young children, it seems like that puts you even more outside the “norm” and in some ways, on the outside of society. People stand back, smiling nervously, hands in their pockets or checking their phones, looking for the first opportunity to get away from their own discomfort. Which is fine, it just means that you’ve gotten even less support than usual. Until just a few months ago, no one told me just how much of a process trauma like losing Dave really is. I was left to my own devices. I self-insulated, focused on keeping myself and my kids surviving (there was no thrive at this point) and we just moved forward in the day to day. Days turned into weeks into months, and then finally…years.

In 2019 I met an amazing man. We’ve been together since September 20 of that year. He has mental health issues, much like Dave did, and I felt myself begin to crawl out of my shell, because by helping him, I was learning to help myself, also. In August of 2020 I became a Reiki Practitioner, and by doing that felt a block of weight just lift off my heart. I actually enrolled in a school in September of 2020 and became a Licensed Massage Therapist in June of last year. Ironically, after thinking that my body was done, Dave was gone, and that chapter was over? I found out I was pregnant the day after Graduation from school in February, and we welcomed a beautiful little girl, baby #5, in October. I know that the term “rainbow baby” is typically reserved for families who conceive after miscarriage or infant loss, but our family had weathered a storm no less brutal in its intensity, although different in nature, and she came, and the clouds parted, and there was sunshine and happiness and joy again. Her name is ancient Hittite and means “To bring enlightenment” or “Illumination” and she has done just that. Cast light in the darkest corners of our grief and chased the shadows away. Her presence has brought healing and wholeness to all of us (she is absolutely adored by her siblings and doted on endlessly) that I had begun to give up hope we’d ever find.

My new partner in crime has challenged me, through his mental illness, our different cultures (southern vs. pacific northwest) and our very different pasts that brought us to this joined path, to step outside my comfort zone and challenges me, daily, to be the very best person I can be. I started this journey with Dave’s death, scared out of my mind at what all changes and challenges and discomforts that would entail–into a person who is proud of her personal evolution, who has discovered her inner strength, and is proud of not only who I am becoming, but the things that have brought me to this point. I miss my husband’s soul more than I can put into words; yet I’ve also come far enough that if I could go back in time (and be the person I was then) I’m not sure I would make the choice to do that.

Which brings me to SWT. I could not force myself to physically sit my butt in my chair, log in, and do anything more than troubleshoot problems with the purchase interface and respond to odd emails. To sit and force myself to put keystrokes on this page was admitting to myself with a deafening finality that Dave was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. Even writing this now, I feel the beginnings of PTSD creeping up on me: the tunnel vision, a slight roaring in my ears. I have been seeing an amazing therapist for a year now and she’s taught me how to identify the symptoms as I work *through* the triggers, and I’m doing so much better than I was, and here I am. Just as I’ve evolved personally over the years? I’ve read each and every email that everyone has sent to me, even if at the time I wasn’t capable of responding, and I’ve noticed a strong shift in the clientele that have visited this website. My clients don’t just want happier wives and marriages; they are now asking me how can they be better, happier husbands also. As I restart SWT, clear the cobwebs, and begin crafting my own mark on the legacy my hubby left me? I’ll be changing up some things. All the old files are still available. I’ll also be adding new here in the near future, that address couples, husbands, and even some files that reinforce positive self-image and appreciation of one’s partner, as these are two core issues that seem to consistently be at the center of marital disharmony. I hope to be offering custom files by late spring (it’s a software issue) and I will make an announcement as soon as I am able to do that.

In the meanwhile, I want to assure you that the site is very much loved and being cared for. You’ll notice changes in posts, in the appearance of the site itself, and how the interface is set up. I’ve also had issues with my payment processor, paypal, for almost as long as we’ve had the site. Emails with downloads not getting generated due to poor communication with the paypal site–the list is long and virtually all inclusive. Now that I am “back in the saddle” I have been shopping around for a better merchant processor and have decided on Host Merchant Services. As I get that figured out and the proper plugins/APIs installed & tested? SWT’s shopping cart will be temporarily down and purchases will not be able to be made. I hope that all of that will be resolved by this weekend, Monday at the very latest. We will be celebrating by having a huge sitewide sale just in time for valentine’s day! Thank you all for sticking with me, and holding space until I was able to find myself again and move into it. Words can’t express my gratitude and appreciation for each and every one of you, whether you’ve been here since 2016 or just logged on yesterday when google brought you here. I am so excited to work with you all again!

As I am getting all of this figured out, I would love to hear from you! Ideas, thoughts, requests. Send them all to mistresstrainher. Ciao, my dears!

Hi all,

I have so much to write. But i am Not in a position to write it right now. I’m learning (slowly, but progressively) trauma is a process. I am still working on SWT but the honest to God truth is, working on something that Dave poured his heart and soul in to–it hurts. It cuts to the quick.  Missing him is a physical pain that feels like someone is squeezing my heart, tighter and tighter.  working on SWT is acknowledging that loss, and acknowledging it’s just myself at the controls now; he isn’t coming back in this life.

 

Allow me to share something I wrote on a different forum to commemorate the year since he passed (10-25-17) and my dear, dear lovelies, thank you for your words and support and understanding. No point in bringing drama on to this page–but you’ll never realize how alone the kids and i truly are, and how much you have helped us.

Hell Week: Typically defined as the final week that separates the candidates who will succeed as a Navy SEAL from those who won’t.

So I guess I could say that it separates those who will survive from those who simply can’t hack it?

This is the beginning of My “Hell Week,” folks. Today was the day Dave and I had been prepared to go to Little Rock for his preop workup. We were literally loading up the car when the call came in that an emergency case had bumped Dave’s surgery, and everything was being pushed a day out.

So we shrugged, and left the suitcases by the door…and did beautifully mundane things together for that day. Things like shoe shopping. I had extremely bad plantar fascitis that wasn’t resolving and Dave was extremely concerned. A long nap wrapped up in each other’s arms in the middle of the afternoon.

I believe that deep down, he knew he was likely to not survive the surgery. He made several comments to that effect. He bought nice things for the kids, “at least if I die, they’ll have something good to remember me by.”

The weather was finally starting to cool this week last year, and so we also spent some time picking out more winter appropriate clothes for K and D. Pants, jackets, things like that.

Isn’t it funny how it isn’t the big things that set you off? I have a couple PM & hospital pics on my phone of Dave and i can look at them all day long and just marvel at how handsome he was, and wish with all my heart I could keep him with me for always, but my mind can reconcile an inanimate figure. It can guard much less safely against the memories that the million little things still connected to him in my day to day can evoke without warning. A Thousand little deaths, that can be died over and over.

Last night the official “kick off” was pants. The tiny little pair of 2T navy blue sweats we bought for K a year ago. I was folding them into the hand me down pile for D’s winter wardrobe and it all hit, like a freight train against a brick wall without ever attempting to brake.

Pants that Dave and I bought, that he never got to see K in. My two youngest babies getting a quick hug and kiss from their daddy on the morning of a routine surgery, and never seeing him again. I sometimes wonder what trauma exists in their little minds from that, what things they think but can’t express to me. Tantrums and tears are routine for toddlers at their ages, but is K’s fear of me walking away spurred by Dave’s disappearance? He was never like this prior to his death.

The memories…awash in memories i can’t stop or even control the direction of. Times like these my photographic memory is a curse, as i flash from one memory of us to another, and i can hear his laugh or his quiet voice, or remember the feel of his skin or his clothes as it touched me, and i ache, in the way you double over and cry so hard you are still crying, but you can’t make sound anymore.

D is his mini me. All of the children favor me more, personality wise. D, though…with those dark, wild curls, and her brown eyes that are his twin; when she smiles at me it is looking at pictures from him as a little kid. She is the most like him personality wise, as well–things she enjoys (like movies) to foods she likes, the whole nine yards. Sometimes it is painful to watch her as she moves about, navigating her childhood, because of their similarities. I am also blessed to have that little piece of him to hold so close to my heart for always.

I find myself wondering why this wasn’t a trial deal. Ok, this year really sucked even worse than i thought it would without him; so I learned a lot of good lessons but i want my husband back, now. Please. Then it slowly sinks in, there isn’t any going back. This is a forever deal.

Dave’s passing has been multi-faceted and nuclear detonation devastating in its impact on the children and I. The hardest thing that i have had to face is taking the impact of the awful news broadside, to protect the kids, as it came crashing at us like waves in a Cat 4 hurricane. I mentioned months ago that i chose to have an autopsy performed on Dave because the information that I was provided at the “post failed surgery” family conference did not match up with what i knew to be accurate physiological functioning.

The results took about two months to come in and the ME I assigned Dave’s case to, to generate the final report. The report brought me to my knees in tears: there is officially no doubt that medical negligence occurred and that Dave’s death was preventable. That said, because of the extremely conservative nature of medical malpractice law in Arkansas, the case would be almost impossible to prove. After several rejections from different law firms I have chosen to let this avenue go. I was never hoping to profit from his loss, but hoping that attention being brought to lack of standardized “best practice care” would force the facility Dave was at to amend their practices and potentially prevent other tragedies. Unfortunately, this view seems to be anathema to the medical field here, and rather than continue to body slam myself into a wall, i find it better to redirect my energy and efforts into myself and the kids.

Recieving the autopsy report was the most devastating part of this entire year journey, though. Not for the information it contained, but because of the horrible, synapse-short circuiting reality the simple existence of those pages represented: No matter what Dave officially died of? No matter what the autopsy confirmed or left blank, there was one bitter truth I had to swallow. Dave, the man whose life path I had aligned myself with, my best friend, the father of my children, my rock, my literal everything…was gone. Legally no longer in existence, and nothing I said or did, or asked others to do for me, was going to change that.

Irretrievably beyond my reach until the next realm. I can’t explain how watching our children grow up is the most poignantly painful beauty; to hear K start really talking and wanting to share the world and interact with it, or D run down the hall towards me, her little ghetto booty (Dave had one, too LOL) just going side to side a mile a minute and her little voice as she cries “mama!” with a huge smile and puts her arms up. S growing up, navigating his way into adulthood…and A with her cheerful demeanor and intelligence and sense of fun, and to not have him to turn to and share all of this “now” and the joy of the coming years with…that is a hard life sentence.

People tell me i am so young, i can start over. I don’t understand the meaning of their well-intentioned advice. I am aware every single day that I have had something happen that almost no one else can relate to. In many ways, this has led to feeling displaced from my life: In a world of late 30-somethings getting divorced from their spouses and itching to be free of their marital obligations? They simply cannot wrap their heads around the concept of losing a partner one had no intention of separating from; try as they might, they simply don’t relate to that loss or that pain, and it is isolating. I feel sometimes like i am a caterpillar who completed her metamorphosis to a butterfly before any of her friends…and so I am still trying to hang out with the caterpillars and pretend I am the same, and failing miserably.

I AM different. I’m a 37 year old widow who lost the love of her life far too young. Who doesn’t understand why people act like being widowed young is some sort of consolation prize…that not even being chronologically at my half life means i may live another lifetime and a half without the man i loved more than my life by my side. A true life sentence, without him or i having ever committed a crime.

So here we are at a year. I’m alive, and I am getting stronger, and the pain is lessening because i am getting used to it as my constant companion in Dave’s absence. I am finally coming out of the fog and pulling the pieces back together and lovingly smearing copious amounts of putty into the cracks, and then epoxying the whole mess, trying to keep it all from falling apart again. I try to keep Stitch’s words in my mind and heart “My family is small and broken, but still good.”

We are smaller by one critical person, and the kids and I are cracked and dented and fractured…but we are still good. We are still here, and still moving forward. That in itself is a huge accomplishment for us at this point in time.

So i cry. I ache for Dave, but I keep putting one foot in front of the other…if nothing else, knowing that each footfall on this path called life carries me one step away from our physical time together, but one step closer to my soul being reunited with his.

“Embrace the storms in life. Rain makes things grow.” I love you baby. I hope you’re pleased with the new growth after the terrible storm we’ve all endured.

 

I had a quippy post planned for you all, but all I can say is :

SHIT. We had a fire.  Everyone is fine, Our stuff is mostly fine, (smoky and gross) but there is (as you can imagine) a LOT of cleaning and reorganizing to do right now. Thank god we caught it almost immediately and were able to get it put out.  I am also immensely thankful that we were cleaning the house out for new furniture, and that it hadn’t arrived yet.

This will set me back, but it will not defeat me.  I will return soon, and stronger than ever (if mopping the ceiling doesn’t kill me, first.)

In the meanwhile, I have had requests for an email notification system for new files, updates, the works.  If you would like to be on this list send me an email **From the email you want to be notified at** and just make “add me” your subject line.  I hope to have a bit of fun with my email list here in the very near future.

In the meanwhile, here’s a coupon for 25% off: Burnitdown18

Thank you for all you do, and your support!

 

 

Ok, ok…I know I said no more public facing posts  until January.  What can I say?  I can’t stay away from you guys….!  LOL

Seriously, though–I made mention in my last post that changes were coming as I transitioned the business away from SWTs umbrella and got everything situated under mine.  So to update you all:

1. paypal transactions will now show up as processed to unlimitedpo.  That is my business name, Unlimited Potential Technologies.  That way you all know no fraud or strange, shady happenings are occurring.
2. Paypal and amazon have decided to break,for some reason known only to the universe itself.  This means that links are not being generated with purchases.  I will try to keep on top of these orders and will email links to all purchasers once a day in the evening, until I can figure out what in Hades happened and get it working right.  I apologize for the inconvenience this represents to all of you!!  I will have it back on track ASAP, I promise.
3. The new email is mistresstrainher@gmail.com.  I have this email linked to my mobile devices so I can keep an eye on what is going on in real-time and try to nip these annoying issues in the bud.

Any questions?  Email me!  I really do love hearing from you all for anything and everything.  I’ll do my best to answer within a day.  Take care and all of you, BE SAFE and have a happy holiday!!

 

 

 

The best part of Christmas is spreading that holiday cheer and glow to those around you, right?  I’ll be adding my address at the end of this post for those of you generous enough to send me various libations to make sure I’m feeling that warm glow through the new years…:)

Send me your sexiest “What I want for Christmas” story, fantasy, etc–and I’ll make sure Santa puts something extra nice in your stocking when he visits Christmas eve!!!

 

~mSWT