
"There was a time in my life where I was partying a whole lot. Maybe too much. In some ways it was fun, but I had had a bunch of terrible things happened to me in a very short period of time.
My husband died unexpectedly just a few months after my sister-in-law was murdered. After that, I nursed my mother-in-law though cancer but she died a couple of months after that. The upshot was that I ended up with a house, a bunch of money, and a lot of friends who liked to party but nothing else of value.
One night I was out with a dear friend who had similarly difficult situations in his life. His wife had left him and he had a devastating motorcycle accident. We stayed up all night long talking about what tattoo we wanted to get to make a statement about our life. We decided we wanted something old school, and we decided on a rose. The rose however, would have to be black.
We stayed up until the next morning and went to get the tattoos done. Life is much better now, but I will always have this reminder of a time when I was playing and laughing outside, but crying on the inside."
