This is a portion of what I call my “Love List, My I Am” list. I believe we all have one deep within our hearts just waiting to step out and be acknowledged by us, nurtured, and then sent out to embrace the world around us.  

 

But this wasn’t always how I saw life.

 

And this is my journey:

From the moment I entered the world my life faced challenges.  Within days of my birth my mom and I were separated.  She was transferred to a specialized hospital due to an illness that was not only engulfing her mind but her body as well leaving her spirit crushed and broken. With my mom in the hospital and my dad a truck driver on the road for long periods at a time I began life in the loving home of my dads older sister and her family. For the next 4 years my mom was in and out of the hospital. This began a trend of being shuffled from my parents to family members to foster homes. I like to call it the roller coaster years of my life full of uncertainty, confusion and trust issues. By this time in my life my programming-all the information that you are given about yourself and the world at a very young age, usually from your primary caretakers from the time you were born, until approximately the age of five; was becoming set in stone or solidifying with each passing day.  This is where I believe my abandonment issues and sense of insecurity began.

 

At the age of 4 my dad stepped into a new relationship as my mom would no longer be coming home from the hospital. As time went on I began to struggle with finding where I fit: where I belonged in my family, in school with my peers, life in general seemed to have handed me a nightmare I just couldn’t wake from.  For the next 15 years I suffered every kind of abuse imaginable.  The verbal and the emotional abuse ate away at my self-esteem, self-worth and most of all … my spirit.  The physical abuse put me on guard all the time. I was always in fight, flight, fawn, or fear mode.

 

At the age of 6 my mom passed away in a horrible accident dashing my dreams of her ever coming to rescue me from this terrifying nightmare. 

 

By age 16 I was being sexually abused by 2 male family members. This felt like the final blow to knock me spiralling down into a life that only knew abandonment, fear, rejection, loneliness and self-hatred.

  

At the age of 18 I began dating and searching for love (unbeknownst to me at the time) in all the wrong places.  Barely past my 19th birthday God blessed me with a beautiful baby girl!  But I was terrified!! I was now a single mom in a time in life that unwed mothers were frowned upon. Now I had adding shame and guilt to the list of what seemed to be defining my existence.  

 

At the age of 20 I married a man that I thought would love and cherish me the way I wanted to be loved but the honeymoon phase was short lived and came to an end after the birth of my second beautiful baby girl. Before I knew it the abuse began all over again. This time with the emotional abuse being the most prominent, verbal and physical becoming a close second and third. While all of this was happening I developed a severe anxiety disorder. My mind, body, and spirit just couldn’t cope anymore. 

The marriage lasted for 7 years but the disorder spanned over the next 30+ years only to reinforce my feeling of  “I didn’t matter.”  No one seemed to love me was the recording that played over and over again in my mind. I felt I was a burden to everyone around me (I believed this stemmed from being shuffled around a lot). I would constantly ask myself why doesn’t God love me? You see I believed at that time that if God was as loving as everyone says he is then I must have been one of his misfits or mistakes.   Or maybe all of the terrible things in my life were my fault. If I had been a better daughter, sister, wife or mother maybe these things wouldn’t have happened to me. Had I sinned? Was it my sins that were the cause of all of life’s obstacles and traumas?  

 

Do you see where I’m going with this? The concept of “Loving you, Embracing Yourself” was something that was very foreign to me and self-care was something I could never have imagined learning from all of my experiences to this point in my life.

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By the time I got to my mid-20s I was what the world called an Agoraphobic. I avoided every thing, person, or place where I was certain I couldn’t cope or would have an anxiety attack. My life was a mess. I was remarried to an amazing man that loved me and had 2 beautiful daughters.  BUT….. I was full of fear, self-hatred, and felt stuck on a run away train to a very dark place. I was drowning in depression and anxiety and  had no idea of how to step back into the light, especially the light of Gods love. Finally I had come to the end of myself not knowing which way to turn I found myself face down in the carpet on my living room floor. This was my plea to God “ either take me home or place me on the path you have chosen for me because I’m done! I just can’t go on anymore!” 

 

From that day forward my life gradually began to change.  I searched the internet and began reading and learning everything I could about how to handle anxiety and the issues surrounding it. I was introduced to a man that is very dear to my heart today. A minister that guided me through a program called “Deeper Life Meetings”. As I walked through this process of facing my past head on and forgiving  others, my mind and spirit began to heal.  A close friend introduced me to a herbalist and naturopathic medicine and with taking tinctures my physical body began healing as well. My anxiety attacks disappeared along with other minor ailments I had.

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Through the years I have learned many strategies and coping skills that have brought me here today. 

Each step of the way God opened one door after another.  He walked beside me and many of the days I faced I know he lifted me into his arms and carried me (even though at the time I didn’t realize it).  Only looking back from the future do I now see he was there…..he was there all along. He was turning my mess into my message! But there still seem to be something missing. And one day I read this verse in my Bible: