Trisha Brandhorst
Bio
I’m 41, happily married and have two boys& a step daughter. I love to write, spend time With family, travel & meet new people. I love animals. The beach is my favorite place in the world.
Stories (8/0)
Blurred Lines
The Beginning. I don't even know where to start, except for at the beginning. The beginning before my life changed, before it became what it is now, before I became who I am now. Little did I know then, that my life would forever change when I turned 23. I had my life all planned out for myself for as long as I could remember. Then something happened that tore my world apart, and forever changed my perspective on everyone and everything.
By Trisha Brandhorst 5 months ago in Fiction
Searching for a true friend
"Searching for a true friend." I used to think that friends were friends forever never to part, maybe in distance but never at heart, who was I kidding in this world so cruel, to think that someone would care back enough- boy was I the fool, to begin to trust someone enough to even call them a friend, only to find out they weren't ever really one in the end, no calls-no messages no hi how are you, no what's new-what's going on why are you so blue, why can't someone care back as much as I do them, Why must I always feel like I am being condemned, Just once my wish is for
By Trisha Brandhorst 7 months ago in Poets
The father he didn't have to be.
I have never really had a father figure in my life for the most part. My real father was more of an abuser and just bad man. I was put into foster homes at age seven because of his abuse. I was molested when I was seven years old. I wasn't sure what was going to happen to me at that age, and I was terrified. After that, it became hard for me to trust most men and almost everyone else. I was still friendly, but standoffish. Every foster home I went into, only drew me that much further down the rabbit hole. My real father got visitation rights here or there up until I was ten, then he decided to sign his rights off. That left me, scared and alone....in the foster care system. As a ten you old you come to learn that the older you get, the chances of you actually getting adopted are pretty slim. All in all, I was in eight foster homes, all abusive except for three. My last two foster homes were a blessing, as I learned that there were actually people out there that DID care and could treat you well. When I lived in my second to last home, they found my biological mother and began the process of me being able to live with her. I was nervous, scared, anxious, confused. I had come to love the home that I was in, and I knew that they loved me as well. Everything worked out for my biological mother, and I moved to Texas to live with her. She was married then to a nice guy, but they later parted ways. After that, I met the man I now call my Dad. At first, I couldn't fathom the thought of him and my mother being together. I hated the whole world and I'm horrified to say that I didn't exactly treat him very well. In short, I was a brat and made him feel bad quite often. After three months, I started realizing that he wasn't going anywhere and I started to warm up to him. I was still a teenager and plenty of a handful. But, we got to know each other and eventually he and my mother got married. I remember while he and my mom were married, one year he rented out a whole skating rink for my birthday and only two people showed up. It was such a sweet gesture looking back now, but I was so upset that day. My dad and mom handled it very well and we became closer. Sadly, their marriage wasn't meant to be. They parted ways but stayed close friends. My mother moved us to Kansas to be near my grandmother. My dad went back to Texas. He would come visit and occasionally I would get to go visit him in Texas. I wound up going to Job Corps for schooling and he came to get me one summer for vacation. I remember going to Texas to stay with him and his new girlfriend. I really liked her. They had a house by lake Ft. Worth and we got to go out on a boat. Dad even let me drive!!! (I almost accidentally made him fall out of the boat when I took a turn too fast). So life went on, my dad and I stayed in contact and talked quite often after that. Eventually, I wound up marrying my first husband, didn't really tell anyone much about it. He was a military guy and we wound up staying married for five years. During that marriage, I had moved to Wisconsin and had a baby boy. We had our son in Kansas, then moved up to Wisconsin shortly after. My ex husbands family lived in Wisconsin and I was persuaded into moving there, even though I didn't really want to. After we split, I moved into my own townhome apartment with our son. He was still active duty, but got discharged shortly after our separation. We were divorced Aug 2006. I moved on with our son, he got to see him on weekends and we switched arranged schedules so both parents were involved. I didn't have my family near me here, and I was alone without much support. I worked and still managed to provide for my son and myself. Time passed, then I met my second husband. We dated for 6 years before finally marrying July 2010. We had a little house we wound up renting and my son lived with us. Again, sadly this marriage didn't last. I found out he was unfaithful (just like the first) and decided to move back home to Kansas. I wanted to be back around my family. During the time that this had all been going on, my dad had decided to move from Texas to Kansas. I decided that since my son was currently in school at the time, that I would let him stay with his grandparents in Wisconsin until school was out for the year. I would come back in a couple of moths, and bring him home then. Sadly, that never happened. I got moved back to Kansas, wound up staying a couple of months with my dad until I found a place with a friend of mine. I tried to contact my ex in laws to move my son to Kansas, but was thwarted and blocked at every try.
By Trisha Brandhorst 9 months ago in Families
Summers to Remember
Everyone has fond memories of certain things that will forever leave a lasting impact on them throughout their life. One such instance for me is something so simple, but life changing in and essence. I was raised up in Oregon state and when I went into foster care, a family I was placed with would always take us on road trips and camping trips. One staple always stood out to me....the Smore. Epically delicious, fun, cozy, sweet and always dependable. Smores are a favorite for almost everyone, unless you don't like chocolate or marshmallows. In the case of chocolate, there are new innovative things that you can incorporate into a smore. We will touch base with that later. Back to where I was. Trips that would run all along the California-Washington coast. I was about ten years old when I was placed in this family. Life hadn't actually been particularly kind to me up to this point, so when I was placed in this family and learned that they ACTUALLY cared about the kids in their care, as well as their own children. I wasn't used to that. Being with this family was amazing. The foster mom was a nurse and the dad a cop. They loved nature and history and learning new things and exploring. We would often go on day trips and camping trips. When we went camping, we would go hiking, swimming and learn about nature. In the evenings we would eat, and then after we would get a special treat. Smores!!! We always ate them the traditional way with the graham crackers, marshmallow, and chocolate. They were always so melty, sticky, gooey and amazing. They tasted like campfire and dreams. Anything was possible when your a kid sitting next to a fire roasting a marshmallow. The fire even became magical, and the forest around us suddenly became so much more intriguing. I loved sitting next to the warm fire, eating smore and just talking, singing, having fun. Literally some of the best memories in my life have came from sitting next to a campfire, roasting marshmallows, eating smores. I learned around that campfire, I bonded, I grew up, I came to respect nature more and life more around that campfire. Such fond memories. Now I'm a mother passing on the tradition to my kids. My 6 year old little boy just loves it when we gather around the fire, just him, my husband and I. I pull out the smores items, and his little face just lights up. Something about them will always be magical. Now, we have never really deviated away from the traditional way of eating them, with one minor exception. I have tried with Reese's peanut butter cups and they are truly EPIC!!! I am now learning that you can make them with Samoa cookies, any candy bar or candy really, fruit, other types of cookies, brownies, ice cream, and even make a smores dip!!! NO way man!!! I'm sure that would be delicious as all get out. My challenge to myself is to try a few new ways of eating this yummy treat. Strawberries, Andes mints, Samoa cookies, and brownies all sound pretty yummy to me. I'm going to be doing some research and finding out some other ways as well. I know my home bakery makes a smores flavor of cookie and fudge. They are delicious. I look forward to passing on these traditions to my children and making lifelong memories with them, getting them to be a little more adventurous in trying new things, and just having a blast. Life is too short and it's only what you make it. Why not choose to make it just as sweet as the treat we've all grown up with? So get out there, grab life by the marshmallow and go make some sweet memories!!! Take care.
By Trisha Brandhorst 9 months ago in Families
A Grandmother's love.
When I first met my grandmother (Alta Grace), I was only 12 years old and thought I knew everything. Typical teenager huh lol? She came to Texas, once I had finally moved in with my mother and her husband. She came to visit with my aunt Kathy and my cousin Chandra. I didn't know it at the time, but those three women(besides my mother) were going to become the most important and influential women in my life.
By Trisha Brandhorst 10 months ago in Families
Things you never knew
From the start, my life was complicated. My biological father took me away from my birth mother at 8 1/2 weeks old. I was raised by him and my step mother. I never knew about my real mother until I was close to 9 years old. One day I came across a picture in my fathers desk, and I saw a very beautiful woman with a baby. I just knew that the baby was me. So, that meant that she had to be my mother, not the woman I was currently calling mom. My step mother for one....had red hair, I do not. I tried to confront my father about this, he verified she was my mother; took the picture from me and told me to never ask about it again. That was the end of that, never again did I EVER hear anything about my birth mother while I was with him. Before this, instances had happened that changed my life forever. My father molested me at 7 years old. He also consistently did drugs and beat my stepmother. On one such day, the cops came and I was put into my first foster home. She was an older lady, very nice. The courts decided from there to try home visitation, and let me go back to my stepmother and father. At age ten, he decided that he couldn't do it, and signed off his rights on me. I knew even then, a child at that age rarely gets adopted out. Anotherwords, my future was now pretty bleak. I went through 8 foster homes in all, some more than once. My first and second foster homes I was put into on more than one occasion. The first was nice, the second was not. The second home was a HUGE farm with other 3 other foster kids, 2 parents and her own children lived there also. I got treated fine to start, but the foster mothers daughter walked in on me using the bathroom one day, and ran to tell her mother that I was "being inappropriate" in the bathroom. From that point on in the system, I was treated badly and differently. They thought that just because I was molested, that I would mirror things. Totally not the case. I went to school like most kids, tried to find some normalcy there. I joined choir, but never got to go to the concerts. I tried to fit in at the house and often put on little talent shows to get some kind of attention. I was looked at with care only in those times. Me and one other girl were constantly kept busy with chores, made to swim in irrigation ditches where the cows were instead of the big pool they had in the back yard. We were often fed expired food. I was very thankful to leave that place. The next place I went to had one girl leaving, and two little kids coming in shortly after me. We were outside playing on a hot day one day, and a lady came by offering us ice cream. I took it and shared with the little ones. I never heard the end of that one. Because of it, we all had to take epicac and it made us all extremely sick. I was then locked in my bedroom and only let out for baths and to go to the bathroom. My meals were served to me in there and if I didn't eat, I was verbally abused and physically abused. After this place, they put me back at my second home for a while. They went on a vacation to California and I got to stay with a friend of theirs. I wish I could've stayed there forever. They were nice and taught me about Jesus. The lady was very kind and didn't treat me like an outcast. Her and her husband were younger couple without any children. But it was short lived. I went back to my own personal hell for a while longer. After that, they put me in a place with a nurse and a cop. They had a blind daughter, and were extremely nice. Did I get in trouble there? Yes. Was everything always perfect there? No. But they were the first family that ever took me in and showed me love and tried to teach me what it was like to be a part of a real family. I would help them with their blind daughter all the time, we became fast friends. During my time in this house is when they found my mother. I was scared and excited and sad all at the same time. Would she like me? Did she want me? What about the family I was currently with? They said they wanted me and what was going to happen then? Would I ever see them again?
By Trisha Brandhorst 10 months ago in Psyche
Ancient Awakenings
There weren't always dragons in the valley. They didn't always flourish and have a common presence like they do now. At least, not like they did in the ancient days. Now days, they were very much alive and breathing. But alas, I'm getting ahead of myself. My name is Orion Matthews. I am 16 years old and I live outside of a town called Lancaster. For the most part, i'm your typical 16 year old guy. I go to a normal high school, have normal friends and do normal things. That's me..Mr. Predicable and normal. Nothing extraordinary had ever happened to me a day in my life. That was....until I turned 17. I need to start at the beginning to try to explain everything. Even then, you probably won't even believe me. That's ok though, you will eventually.
By Trisha Brandhorst 10 months ago in Fiction
