You Changed My Life

CHALLENGE:  Pick ONE PERSON who has changed my life.  Hmmm...This amazing opportunity was given to me by Pattie McBride and her incredible company, Butterfly Nautilus.  The mission is truly amazing.  The company makes beautiful charms that read, "You changed a life".  A customer sends the charm to someone who changed their life, and also posts the story on the Butterfly Nautilus Website!!

For me, the challenge was picking one person.  SOOOO many people in my life are angels to me who have radically changed my life for the better.  Soon however, a name came to me, of person who has positively changed my life multiple times.  She is the fabulous Coriann Bright, my very dear friend, and owner of Bright Living: Home Organization and Design.  www.brightlivingnow.com

Rewind to my freshman year in college, the year I met Miss Bright.  My first year dorm roomie (we will call her Abby) was a force to be reckoned with, and I tried very hard to see the goodness within her harsh exterior.  However, this proved quite a challenge.  Abby called me a bitch for seemingly no reason, punched a hole in our wall fracturing multiple bones in  her hand, tried to sleep with my first college boyfriend, and was addicted to cocaine.  Whew!  Meanwhile, our room was an absolute pigsty because neither of us cared much about keeping it clean and our messed up relationship and negativity was dripping from the walls.

Yet, I continued to try to make this living arrangement work.  I definitely chose the "martyr" mentality.  I was known to exclaim, "Well if I don't live with Abby, who will?"  I didn't want to foist her on anyone else.  However, things became pretty personal when I got her a job at the same gift basket store where I was working.  She slept with the boss's brother, and we were both immediately fired.

I continued to live with Abby, to the chagrin of my loved ones.  It was a bit of a co-dependent relationship.  Rather depressed myself, I tried to focus my attention  on someone else's problems. I egotisically thought I could "save" her.  It was a rather abusive situation.

Then came the mid year opportunity to change roommates.  I decided not to apply for a new placement based on my misguided savior/martyr complex.  Around that same time, on a normal afternoon at Whittier College, I walked into my dorm room, to find all of my items (clothes, bedding, phone, etc) GONE.  Abby was sitting on the floor laughing maniacally. My assumption was that in a cocaine-induced frenzy, she had tossed all my belonging out the window, or sold them. 

Abby  looked at me with the hatred that I was oh so used to seeing. "It was your STUPID friends," she said.  Just then I looked down the hall and there were Cori and Katie, two of my closest amigas.

"We moved you out Cora.  Katie's old roomie just left and you can live with her," Cori said.

I think I cried. I know I'm crying right now.  I later found out that they called residential life pretending to be me and made this whole scheme happen. It was an intervention!! An intervention that literally saved my life.  Truly, I was reborn after I moved in with Katie.  My depression lightened, my living environment was incredible, and I learned what it means to choose my own family.  I also learned the importance of standing up for myself and being my own advocate, even when I am  nervous about possibly hurting someone else's feelings.

Coriann and Katie are my angels.  They picked me up off a ragged and dangerous path, dusted me off with hope, love, and some Clorox wipes, and put me back down in the dorm room of my dreams!:)

Yet, I tell you Coriann has changed my life a second time!! This time she swooped with her company Bright Living Now www.brightlivingnow.com and taught Ben and I incredible apartment design skills and organization strategies.  Our last apartment was a bit of disaster.  We hid it well, but it was still frightening.  Our new apartment is our dream home thanks to Coriann.  She also taught, while she transformed our apartment.  We both learned so much about keeping our apartment simple, classy, and with little or no clutter.  She taught us amazing strategies that we continue to use.  It is true! When we de-cluttered our home,  our lives elavated to a whole new level of quality.

Check out the before and after pix:

 Bedroom: BEFORE

Bedroom: After

Kitchen: BEFORE

Kitchen: AFTER

Coriann, you have positively impacted my life over and over again.  As a designer, an organizer, an advocate, a wise guide, and as a soul friend.  Thank you for teaching me that I deserve the most incredible and loving living environment,  that I can and should stand up for myself and my needs, and most importantly, that family is truly who we choose in our lives.  Thank you for being my sister.