<-insert Xena's warrior cry here->

I need to talk about just how messed up I was up until not even a year ago.

It amazes me that I could be an inspiration to other people, such a help to other people, while simultaneously hating myself.  It amazes me that I was so out of it, so off-balance, that the only self-worth I could garner came from trying to please everyone else.

This face about sums it up.

For context, in case you haven't read my earlier blog posts, let's summarize my childhood with a single word: abuse.  Let's summarize my young adulthood with another word: rape.  Okay, I can summarize my life up until November 2010 with one word: victim.  Or, survivor.  Depending on how you look at it.

Becoming a mother was the beginning of healing for me, though things got a lot worse before they got better.  In June 2008, at the age of 27, I found out I was pregnant.  At the time, I was in a co-dependent "friendship" with a woman who conned me out of $14k over the course of six or seven years, who was also mooching off of me, living in my apartment with her then-boyfriend. 

I discovered my unplanned pregnancy the same week that I was laid off from my job, high school teacher, the thing I had always wanted to be when I grew up.  I had just started a new relationship, but was impregnated by a different man, the only "friend-with-benefits" I'd ever had. 

The moocher "friend," a woman I trusted and loved with all my heart, took off a few months into my pregnancy, leaving me a 10 page letter about what a horrible person I was and how sorry she was for my child because she was sure I'd be a horrible mother.  My baby's sperm donor had no interest in our child.  My boyfriend started treating me like crap early on, but I had already broken the lease on my apartment and moved in with him.  I felt helpless.  I felt trapped.

Don't we all look so happy together?

I tried to focus on the positive.  I had my heart set on a happy ever after...with a misogynistic deadbeat who sexually assaulted me every single night for two years - and I didn't recognize it as sexual assault until last month, when a friend who had read my memoir called it what it was!  I kept making excuses for my ex, to myself as well as to my friends, until the night he left me and my one year old son penniless and homeless, in November 2010.

Hello, rock bottom.

I was an exceedingly lucky homeless person.  I didn't have a home for a few months, but I always had a bed to sleep in, people to help me search for work and to watch my son while I searched, people giving me whatever they could spare, even if it was just love and support over the internet.  My son and I never had to sleep on the street, never went hungry, and never went without knowing that we were loved.

It still amazes me how empowering an experience it was for me.  There were dozens of people helping however they could, many of whom I barely knew, all cheering me on, encouraging me, telling me I could do it, pushing me to prove to myself that I could.  I couldn't let myself fall to pieces or give up, because I had a precious toddler depending on me.

It probably goes without saying that I was depressed as all hell during all that.  I was so scared, and so angry, but I suppressed all my negative feelings as well as I could.

Holding it all in was killing me.  The optimistic, light-hearted, playful, affectionate, nurturing woman I had been locked herself away in some hidden corner of my heart.  I felt like a hollow automaton, just going through the motions, doing whatever I had to do.

My love for my son, and my determination to give him the best possible start in life, kept me from killing myself.  My beliefs about positive, conscious parenting drove me to seek out methods of self-healing so I could be the best mother I could be.  My spiritual path and experiences provided the tools I needed to put myself back together, piece by piece, and pure Divine Love provided me with a home in the last place I ever would have thought to look.

In this home, I am loved, supported, valued, and given the space I need to heal.  Gratitude really isn't strong enough a word to express how I feel.  I truly am blessed beyond my fondest dreams.

Now, having finally learned to love myself, having finally healed to a point that I feel like a whole new person, no longer either a victim or a survivor...now I have too many friends suffering the same kinds of crap I suffered.

My inner warrior princess is shrieking her battle cry, ready to throw her chakrum and cut through all their chains, if they would just hold up their wrists at the right angle.

I want to help.  I want all that I suffered and all that I've learned from that suffering to help others, to empower them.  I wish I could just hold them in my arms and overwhelm them with self-worth, confidence, and determination to make their lives even better than they can imagine.

But I can't.  I can't make anyone feel, think, or believe anything.

All I can do is offer my unconditional love and support, guidance when they ask, and keep praying that one day soon when they look in the mirror they will see themselves as the beautiful, loved, powerful beings that they are.

But...dammit, people!  Life is too short to waste on misery!