Having a goal to work toward has always been important to me. Before I escaped my childhood home, it was a simple as just getting away. It gave me a sense of hope, of purpose, resilience, and determination. This determination drove me to desperate measures for young girl. Later in life, it drove me to break free of the invisible chains and of the labels that people put on me to satisfy their own agendas.
I was on a mission to decide who I was, what I wanted to be, and how I would live. One of my goals was to be happy. Sounds simple, but it's not. It's hard to soldier on with your goals when the people around you complicit in your abuse pretend otherwise. When they volunteer to rewrite your history to clean their slates, to assuage their guilt which they've never admitted but for the revision they offer without request. It's like having your very existence denied. "No, that's not what happened, this is," they serve with your coffee.
One day, many years into my recovery, I just knew. I would never reach my goal...I'd never be happy with this type of acceptance of their stories. Because passivity-even my passivity-is really complicity. On that day I made a choice to never be bullied into their version of events again. It cost me dearly. But I gained so much more. I started becoming the strong, determined, clear-eyed woman I am today that day. I'll never forget it. You can read the whole story in my memoir.
My book, Redeemed, A Memoir of a Stolen Childhood will be published June 25, 2024.
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