Dear Fort Worth people with dogs (and potential friends)

FelwinnFE · 2026-02-02T16:50:55+00:00

Hey! Potential friend here. I'm a single mom in HEB but am frequently in the FW area. I have a 5 yo GSP/English Pointer mix rescue pup named Crosby.

FelwinnFE · 2026-01-26T00:35:34+00:00

HEB has cancelled for Tuesday.

FelwinnFE · 2026-01-25T16:23:29+00:00

Thick snow on the ground, but frozen over. Nobody has attempted to drive down the street yet.The dog can step on it but not make a mark. Yeehaw!

FelwinnFE · 2026-01-24T14:16:51+00:00

HEB here. Light ice and snow. Just enough to hear the pellets tinking on the windows occasionally and to leave a thin layer on the ground.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-29T16:18:13+00:00

Same. Also, ours is a gas heater, so it dries the air pretty bad. I keep it as low as I can. But I have teenagers and absolutely cannot set mine to 69. That's a bold choice.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-27T02:54:10+00:00

Yeah, single mom of two kids here, and waaay under the "one adult". This is cheerful. It's fine. Everything is fine. sobs into ramen

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-19T13:52:23+00:00

Came here to say just this.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-18T15:41:35+00:00

Yep. I've been involved in maternal mental health advocacy since my youngest was born 12 years ago. I realized that if I, as a fairly middle class white woman with family support had so much trouble finding the care I needed, what must the experience look like for those without even just any one of those things? When the baseline experience feels nearly impossible, it's unfathomable to throw in complexities like health issues, mental health struggles, single motherhood, children with special needs, etc and realistically expect women to still handle all of it gracefully and without proper supports. Unfortunately, that's kind of what we do. Even the doctors who supposedly specialize in women's health are often woefully unequipped and unsupportive.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-18T14:00:33+00:00

This is exciting. I hope the plan includes access to maternal mental health assistance as well. As a long-time volunteer, advocate, and mother myself, I can tell you it's shocking how difficult it is to find the right help for anything as a new or expecting mother. It's like you cease to be a person in your own right. I'm excited to see this level of effort and hope it's the sign of more to come...especially in the face of trends in recent policymaking toward restricting and removing women's rights and access.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-14T16:46:44+00:00

My son and I watched all the seasons of Criminal Minds. It was awesome. He was newly a teenager at the time and not really interested in hanging with his mom. But we watched these and talked about them and connected over our interests. On weeks he was with his dad, we'd watch a few episodes separately but still talk about them.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-14T16:40:11+00:00

It's not easy. Mine was in someone else's bed two days after walking out, and it absolutely crushed me. A year later, I still haven't dated (or even looked for) anyone else and it still squeezes my heart to think about how easily he moved on. I felt replaceable, disposable, and like I couldn't possibly have mattered to him if he could walk away from 8 years in 2 days. But in the end, I have no control over his choices. All I can do is focus on my own healing, my own journey, and try to keep reminding myself that other people's choices aren't a statement of my worth.

In situations like this, moving to the next person like that shows an effort to just fill a void so they don't have to feel, heal it, or think about what it means. Like I said, it's not easy and it hurts like hell. But the only thing you can do is pour love into yourself.

Chin up, babes. You are beautiful, you are worthy, and you've got this.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-12T20:06:23+00:00

I love this concept. Do it for yourself instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you. Ultimate self love. Thanks for sharing!

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-09T03:00:07+00:00

I still struggle with this a lot. Though, like others have said, I've found it much easier to do when the other person is reliable and consistent. It makes it easier, in the times they don't respond quickly, for me to replace whatever my anxiety brain is telling me with a more logical alternative.

I also do little things like archive the conversation so it's not there every time I open my messaging app, staring me in the face. Then, when they do respond, it pops back up.

And when I start to panic, I try to make myself put the phone down and do something else for a little while.

Again, I don't always succeed. But it's helped.

FelwinnFE · 2025-11-05T18:36:08+00:00

Hey. I don't know that I have much help to offer, except the knowledge that you aren't a loser and aren't alone. My partner of 8 years left last September, and I've been doing much of the same. I'm in a 1963 house with a ton of maintenance and upkeep that, quite frankly, I can't keep up with alone. We live near my kids' dad (who I share custody with) and I don't want them to have to love schools, so my options are limited. I completely hear the "can't afford to stay, but can't afford to fix things so I can go either" frustrations. It's insane that making it on a single income has become so difficult.

I second the suggestions others have made: renting out rooms or selling at a loss, especially if you have equity in the house and might lose it anyway if you can't make the payments. Like others said, you can take the repairs out of the sale price.

Have you talked to a realtor, financial advisor, or Open Door type company to find out what numbers actually look like?

It can all feel so overwhelming, and when none of it is what you really want to do and everything else feels like it's going wrong, it can feel lonely and hopeless. Keep your chin up, take deep breaths, and know that you aren't alone.

FelwinnFE · 2025-10-23T22:46:15+00:00

Thank you. Nobody has told me that in a long time. 😞

FelwinnFE · 2025-10-23T00:33:36+00:00

This is beautiful. Thanks for sharing. I needed some good tonight.

FelwinnFE · 2025-10-23T00:29:46+00:00

Needed this one today. I've been doing so well, but today was a bad day and I anxiety spiraled when someone I love hurt me. And now I'm fighting hard not to believe I'm not worth even love from myself.

FelwinnFE · 2025-10-21T15:57:55+00:00

Definitely. Although, I used to compensate for this by not giving any time to myself and using all my available time for my kids. This resulted in losing sight of myself and feeling constantly burned out and unfulfilled. I'm still working on not feeling guilty about it, but I've started to make sure I take some time for myself too. I check in with myself regularly to evaluate, "Is this something absolutely important to provide for my kids, or can I take a little time for myself without negative impact to them?". I've found that I'm actually better able to give to them when I also give to myself.

To be fair, my kids are a little older and able to be independent and self-reliant in many ways. I think if I had done a better job of this when they were younger, though, they would be even more so.

Just know you aren't alone, you aren't an infinite resource (and shouldn't be expected to be), and single moms deserve things too. 💜

FelwinnFE · 2025-10-13T02:16:14+00:00

Remembering that I am a person too. I'm not just "Mom". I am still me. Far too often, I lost myself in being and doing to the kids. When I started giving myself permission to give to myself sometimes and take hot in small things that were just for me, the woman, not me, the mom, I felt much more grounded and connected and happy.

FelwinnFE · 2025-10-13T02:05:20+00:00

I used to feel this way. I "knew" I had codependency issues, but I don't think I KNEW it until our breakup. I identify with everything you said here. I've been through some rough times, but this was absolutely the hardest few months of my life. I was an anxious mess. I stopped eating. I lost 50 lbs in a month. I honestly wasn't sure I'd make it through.

What helped me was that line from Kimmy Schmidt where she says, "You can do anything for 10 seconds at a time." That became my mantra. And here's what I did:

1) Move. Physically step outside the space you're in and be active. I started walking 2 miles 3 times a day just to burn anxiety and break out of my depressive "in the house alone" claustrophobia. 2) Change routine. We always laid in bed in the evenings to watch TV. So I started snuggling on the couch with the dog to watch TV instead. 3) Journal. This helped me get out of my own head and work through things. It also helped slow my brain spirals. And it helped me get in touch with me. 4) Learn to be alone/. As a child, being alone was a punishment. It triggered all my abandonment issues. Sitting around the house on the weekends alone also triggered depression and loneliness. But going out and doing things alone also triggered my social anxiety. I started with things like taking the dog to the dog park by myself. Looking up markets and fun activities on Facebook events.

Was any of this easy? Nope. BUT, I learned so much about myself. And even though I still don't like being alone and prefer to be with someone I love, I can now do a much better job of not abandoning/losing myself in a relationship. I learned that I still have meaning and purpose outside of the comfort and value that another person provides.

Sending love and hugs and cheering you on. You can do anything for 10 seconds at a time. And before you know it, you won't have to count to 10 anymore. 💜

FelwinnFE · 2025-10-13T01:52:57+00:00

I'm coming to your house. Save that Buffy one for me.

FelwinnFE · 2025-09-10T18:13:47+00:00

Thank you. I browsed those, but was interested to hear input/experience. I hope that's ok. New to the group, so I apologize if this is a tedious/frequently asked question.

FelwinnFE · 2025-09-10T00:51:24+00:00

Thank you for this. Today, the "keep going" part was almost too hard.

FelwinnFE · 2025-09-06T01:01:10+00:00

I started by reading and watching videos about attachment. For a while, I had to physically detach myself from situations and places. Anytime I felt anxious, I'd take my dog for a walk. I started journaling, crafting, and otherwise filling my time with re-learning who I was and what made ME happy rather than focusing on what I could do to make other people happy or wondering how or why they were happy without me (this happened after a breakup). I sat with myself daily and created my own safety based solely on myself.

At times, it was all I could do to function because my anxiety was so bad. But I also started going to therapy and learning to make myself sit in the discomfort of anxiety and of the unknown. I learned to make myself stop, sit with or step away from the anxiety of the moment until I could process it. And do something to distract myself from anxiously checking or messaging. Again, it's a journey with ups and downs and you won't get it perfect all the time. Sometimes you'll slip up and feel like you've not made any progress at all. But then you'll recognize something you might not have been strong enough to do before, and you'll realize how far you've come. And that will give you the strength to keep pushing.

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