While most of what I will be sharing on my page will be my poetry, I will also be sharing some of my personal essays. This is the first one I've posted so far and I hope that you enjoy it. 🙏🏽✨
I went out my front door the other day with the intention of taking a short hike through the hills near my home. I am extremely lucky to live in an area where walking paths are pretty much right out my front door. And as I started to climb, the birdsong became more audible and the sounds of cars and barking dogs faded further away with each step. I felt my shoulders begin to relax and my chest start to expand. Because for me, nature is deep therapy. It wasn’t long until I was surrounded by trees and gentle breezes, and my legs continued to carry me from one trail to the next. Before I knew it, I was atop one of the nearby mountains, Mount Ascension. I looked out over the valley that I now call home and smiled broadly. I was surprised at where I found myself, but was also thoroughly satisfied.
Now I could leave it there, with the image of me staring out over that open vista. But this unexpected hike had brought to mind a conversation that I had recently with a dear friend just weeks before. She had said that I inspired her by how I made goals and then set out to find ways to accomplish them almost immediately thereafter. And while that was something that gave me food for thought, what struck me most was when she said that I didn’t go about it in a grand production. But instead went quietly and in baby steps. And when she said that, it took me a minute to realize how well that described the process of manifestation that I have constructed for myself over the years. I reflected back over just recent events that fit her description of me doing things in purposeful baby steps, slowly and one at a time. Similar to how I set out for a short hike and climbed a mountain instead. And it has been the construction of this process that has helped me to navigate and survive a life that has had me on my knees more than once.
I could spend hours telling you of my pain and of the years full of sorrow and despair. Telling you of the depression and anxiety that filled many of my formative years. But instead, I want to tell you about what happened after I chose to build a future instead of just surviving my past. When you have been a victim, and this may be hard for some of you to understand, it can be extremely hard to leave that part of you behind. For so many years the abuse and neglect of my past were what I used to define myself. It was how I identified with the world around me and more importantly, how I determined my place in that world. There were two distinct factors that led me to desire more. The first was the death of someone very dear to me and the second was when I became a mother. I didn’t want my child to grow up with the woman I had become, afraid and dismissive of her own worth. Instead I wanted my child to see the woman that I knew existed somewhere hidden away deep inside of me. And that thought process, that undeveloped spark of wanting more, that was my first baby step. At the time, I was heavily medicated for depression and anxiety and was in a marriage that no longer was healthy. So the idea of making any change, let alone one so massive, was absolutely terrifying. I had no idea how I was going to manifest that woman. But I had voiced it. I had given life to an idea, to a possibility. And in that moment, that was enough.
Before I go any further, I want to clarify that this is me speaking of only my own experience. In no way, do I think that this is everyone’s story. Each and every survivor has an individual landscape of their abuse. Each as unique as the other. From my very earliest memories though, I remember feeling inadequate. That somehow, I was less than what I should be. Physical and mental abuse started very early and followed me throughout my childhood. And I tried to understand as a young girl why this was happening to me and not to my friends. What made it acceptable to hit me or tell me that I was a bad girl? What I came to believe and what was reinforced by my parent’s words and actions was that the fault lay at my feet somehow. I was the reason for their disappointment, it was something lacking in me that made me unworthy of their love. This was only reinforced when I was later placed in foster care and moved from home to home. Not good enough, not loveable, not whole. And as so many before me, this experience led to self-inflicted harm, abusive relationships and deep depression.
I look back at my younger selves and I want nothing more than to open my arms and scoop them all up in a loving embrace. And actually, part of my toolbelt of selfcare is to do just that. I speak the words of worth and love out loud to the windblown haired and bruised little girl inside of me. I speak words of acceptance and respect to the silent and closed off teenage girl inside of me. I speak words of wisdom and support to the survivor, who was going to make it on her own no matter what, young woman inside of me. You see, they were all still there. Waiting for protection, for validation, for love. And it wasn’t until that baby step moment I spoke of before, of wanting to become something more, that I was able to start seeing them.
It’s not easy talking about this time in my life. I truly had no idea what I was going to do. Imagine what family and security would mean to someone who had been abused, neglected and abandoned their entire life. What finally having a family to protect and love and create a safe space for would mean to someone like that, someone like me. To have a child of one’s own to love and cherish, to have an opportunity to break familial cycles and patterns and then replace them with something new. What would it take to walk away from that? For me, it was when I realized that if I stayed I couldn’t promise myself that I’d be alive long enough to see my child grown. It was when I realized that if I stayed, my child would grow up thinking the marriage I was in was what love looked like. And finally, I realized if I stayed, my child would never really know the true me. The mindset of an abused person can become a prison, because you don’t have a frame of reference in your life for anything other than what you’ve survived. And so, you stay in situations that are harmful. Because the fear of the unknown, of being rejected once again, is terrifying. But the power of speaking my desire to search for something more, with no guarantees other than it would be me making the decisions, that allowed me to break through those walls one at a time.
When I look back at this time in my life, I’m speechless at the bravery and strength I had to make the changes I made. My child was 1 ½ when I left my marriage. I had never thought there would be a time when I wouldn’t be there for every little first, for every tuck in and story. But what I had vowed in making this life change, was that I wasn’t going to uproot my child for my comfort. I had found a place to live but I didn’t have a job or a very big support system. And I wasn’t going to put him through all of that when I knew he would be loved and cared for by his father. I cried every day for the first year of leaving him. I had chosen to move out of state for a time. Because I knew if I was closer, my partner would try and get me to come back, and I honestly didn’t know if I had the strength to say no. It was as if my skin had been peeled off, every breath hurt. My heart was broken into a thousand pieces from being separated from my son. My family and friends back home thought I had lost my fucking mind. Why had I left my marriage, how could I have left my child? And in some cases, my past was used as an explanation for my decision. “Well you do know her history, don’t you?” I’ve never been as devastated emotionally, spiritually and physically as I was those first few years of being on my own. It took everything I had to wake up each morning, to get dressed and to go out into the world. But I did. Day after day. I even started to make friends and find activities that I enjoyed. For so many years, I had based my likes and dislikes on what those around me enjoyed. I wore a different mask for every person. It’s a very common survival skill that one develops when trying to fit in. But now I was discovering my own hobbies, my own goals and my own identity. It was overwhelming and yet at the same time, so freeing.
I enjoyed this period of self-discovery, but I also took it very seriously. I knew that since my son was so young, I had only a certain amount of time to do the work I had set out to do before he would start to remember things clearly. I immediately stopped taking the anti-depressant medication I had been on for years. I wanted a clear mind, not the fuzziness of over medication that had been my reality for so long. I began a regiment for my body and mind of regular therapy, massage and acupuncture. I started to search for a spiritual path that fit the woman I saw myself becoming. I also started building a support system of friends and family who saw the work I was doing and the spirit behind it. All of these were significant factors in the growth I was able to achieve in those few years. It was the most ground breaking and challenging work of my life thus far. And it was done entirely in baby steps. At the end of it, when my son was old enough to say to me, “I miss you Mommy”, I knew that I was ready to come home. My sense of self-worth and self-acceptance had been transformed into something solid and formidable. I was not the same woman I had been when I made that return journey back to my home state. I was reborn.
And now I’ve been back for almost 6 years. And while I still face challenges and continue to work through my past, I am more centered and clear of who I am than ever before. I have found that I look back less and less and instead purposefully turn my intentions and heart towards what lies before me. And I do this with the utmost gratitude, because I know that freedom has been fought for with great determination and paid at an even greater cost. I have been asked many times if I would do it over again, knowing what I know now. Knowing the pain, the sacrifice and the moments lost. And I answer yes, every time. Because even though those experiences were challenging and painful in ways I could never have imagined, it was what led to my freedom, to my rebirth, to becoming the woman who stands before you now.
Image Credit: April Lemieux
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