We all live behind white picket fences, right?
Or at least we think everyone else does.
We all believe that everyone else lives a sheltered life and that ours is the only one screwed up, right? A few years ago, I went back to college to learn Spanish.
One of my assignments was to write about my childhood in Spanish.
This translation was not the easiest, so I asked my Senora for help after class one day.
As I shared my childhood memories with her, she just kept turning to me from her dry erase board and saying,
“You know this isn’t normal right, this just wasn’t right?”
During this same time, I observed two younger girls discussing their ambitions; I was saddened to hear them not expect greatness from themselves, focusing only on the bare necessities to raise their children.
This is when I decided to write my book, How Far Will I Run.
I felt the need share my story for all those that live off their stories as a means to take advantage or use as an excuse to live at the BARE MINIMUM of life.
The Narration of my story is told in hopes to raise the bar on accountability and contribution in each individual’s community.
As I was growing up, I became dependent on my story of my childhood as an excuse to treat people with disrespect.
To be a taker of energy for my own advantage.
What ended up happening was, my story got tired.
I had played it out and it stopped working for me.
When I realized this, I purged it.
I sat down and rewrote my script.
That’s so great about cleaning out our fish bowls…
I liken humans to fishes living in gleaming bright fish bowls and as long as we maintain our environment, ie. Mind, body and spirit. Our Fish bowls stay gleaming.
When we get comfortable though or complacent, our fish bowls get murky and stinky, right?
And we live in our fish bowls full of crap and get used to it. Until we can’t bare it anymore.
Then we clean out our fishbowls, promising ourselves to maintain it, and for the most part we do.
Or we think we do…
The great thing about cleaning out our fishbowls is we can choose how we want it to look.
Or how we want to see it.
Hence, rewriting our script.
We can choose to see our experiences as victims or as survivors
We can choose to hold onto our murky water or grudges.
Or we can choose to start fresh and clean, free of any judgment of others
Free from our own forgiveness’s.
We can blame others for where we stand today.
Or we can thank others for where we stand today.
We can realize that people treat us the best way they know how.
AND we can accept this as THEIR truth.
Or we can blame them for OUR reaction.
Everyday, we wake up and we make the conscious choice to live our lives with responsibility or with blame.
I was raised by my mother, who had me very young. I met my biological father when I was in my early teens at his home at Joliet Federal Prison after speaking to him on the phone for only a season
or two beforehand. That is the last time I saw Tommy, my biological father. In my younger years before I started school, I stayed with various family members while my mother struggled with depression and loving
an older married man with a heroine addiction.
Through the confusion of my babysitters, molestation became a common occurrence with me at an early age.
My mother married and divorced that same married man twice after he left his first family, raising her children in the chaos of addiction, poverty and abuse. My mother has always struggled
with low self-esteem, jealousy and trust issues. When I exposed “her love of her life” of drug dealing, using and molestation, she decided “she wasn’t ready to be a mother”
even though she had two more younger children by my step dad and found out later he had molested them also.
And so it turned out that she didn’t want to be a mother to ME anymore.
Giving me away to the County, kicking me out of her house and physically abusing me became a common occurrence until I filed for emancipation and was granted judgment of an emancipated
minor at the age of 16.
This began my life of raising myself.
Just as my mother did me, raising me the best way she knew how.
My numbness and anger spun me out of control, feeding off of drama throughout my twenties and into my early thirties.
Crashing me to a halt, when I realized I was accountable for my RESPONSIBILITIES.
Accountability stopped me dead in my tracks when it came time to answer to my son, Christopher.
I chose to make a conscious choice to be the highest version of myself for my son.
I chose to make amends with my story and learn from it, not to live in it anymore.
I came to appreciate my childhood for what it was and the opportunities that have brought me to where I am today.
Because at the end of the day it is and was MY childhood, the only one I knew. So it is mine.
I forgave and I overcame my addiction to drama.
I quieted the constant mind chatter that numbed me out of dealing with my own reality.
I changed my environment to project a positive mental spirit, creating a space for growth. I do not condone nor applaud my mother for my upbringing.
I don’t blame her.
I just simply accept my experience with her as what it is and love her in the best way I know how.
Carl Jung said, “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”
This is the space I live in today.
With each new day, I wake up with a clean slate. Opening my meditations with prayer, asking God to rise me up above judgment and to help me focus on forgiving myself for my mistakes and others,
who I think have wronged me.
This is my story as I choose to rewrite my script with each new day god presents to me.
