<-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!

My Birth Story (Excerpt from my thesis, "Birth of a Mother")

My Birth Story – Excerpted from my memoir, Birth of a Mother

Me as a newborn with my proud parents.

     "I spend a couple of hours in the tub, alternating positions from reclining on my back to squatting, to lying on my tummy, getting restless. My three hundred and twenty pound body does not fit as well in the deep plastic tub as I would have liked, and I start letting my legs hang over the sides to stretch my calves and feet to keep them from cramping.
     As endorphins and other hormones flood my body, relaxing me, opening me, and preparing the way for my son's entrance, I want nothing more than to go to sleep. After every rush, I relax against the tub and close my eyes, feeling like I could start dreaming if I wasn't afraid I'd drown in the meantime.
     The nausea hits me without warning. Then my entire body feels flooded with restless energy, even though I simultaneously feel heavy and unable to move. The sensation suddenly morphs into feeling like my body is about to split into two, or explode. I remember from Gaskin's books that just before the pushing phase, mothers “transition” into it by experiencing feelings ranging from nausea and discomfort to panicking and losing confidence in their ability to survive the birth. To relieve the tension, and head off the panic, I facetiously announce, “Well, this must be transition, because I feel like I'm going to die!”
     As Kelli and Maggie burst into laughter, Kelli's assistant, Kristie, walks into the room, also laughing. “I knew she'd make me laugh as soon as I walked in the door!” she says, grinning at me.
     I appreciate Kristie's presence in the next moments, first because she rubs my feet while Rose puts a cold washcloth over my eyes, and Maggie has me sip more juice from a straw. Transition passes, and my body moves itself into squatting position without my conscious effort, and with the next rush, my bellow turns into a grunt, and I find myself pushing.
     Kelli looks up from knitting my son's hat and stares at me a moment, before asking, “Am I going to finish this in time?”
     My laugh is cut short by another rush that ends in pushing.
     I'm vaguely aware of my sister running around, helping the midwives and encouraging me, following their lead. I hear her telling the men in the other room that they need to watch the way they feel or think, because I might pick up on their worry or tension, and my heart overflows with love and pride for her, but I am too far gone in labor-land to tell her so.
     The urge to push is relatively weak at first. I roll onto my side, my other side, to my hands and knees, squatting and leaning over the tub, and squatting and leaning back against it. The last three positions feel best. A couple contractions even find me on my back, because my legs are cramping, and my feet are wrinkled and numb, yet throbbing. Someone rubs my feet and calves at some point, which feels like a wonderful release of blocked energy.
     After pushing for what feels like twenty minutes, Kelli checks me with her fingers, and finds a little bit of cervix still holding back my son's head. She pushes at it while I bear down, and it's much easier to figure out what muscles with which to push when I can feel her fingers. We get the last of the cervix away in that fashion, and the endorphins are making me crave sleep again. I hear myself saying, “a nap would be heaven” after every contraction, and finally, I decide to move back to my bed so I can rest between pushes without inhaling water.
     In a flurry of activity, all the ladies run around me, moving the birthing stuff back into the bedroom on the other side of the house, while Kelli helps me out of the tub. I notice my birth team blocking view of my body from the men as we make our way through the house, and feel like that was thoughtful of them, though I couldn't care less about being seen naked right now. Before I went into labor, I had a birthing outfit picked out, but once labor really started, naked was the only way I wanted to be. I am no longer ashamed of this large, incredible body, the body that conceived, housed, nurtured, and protected my baby as he grew.
     On the bed, I discover that lying on my side makes the contractions hurt, so for the most part, I stay in the chest and knees position, which lets me rest between contractions and almost sleep. I feel so out of it that I can't figure out how to sustain the pushes to move my baby out.
     I become frustrated, and the sound of the men talking in the other room distracts and irritates me, so I ask Rose to shut the door, not realizing that Dolphin is standing in the hallway.
     Kelli says, “How about we move you to the birthing stool, and let gravity help?”
     I stare at her like she's speaking in tongues for a moment, and when my foggy brain finally deciphers her question, I say, “Okay.”
     The birthing stool looks like someone turned a rocking chair on its side, but cut off the chair part, and then cut handles into each end of the curved runners. It's sturdy, though, and gives my birth team much more room to help me. Maggie and Kristie help me spread my thighs as far as they will go, and Kelli kneels between them, while Kristie contorts herself on the floor with her head under my butt to keep a hot compress against my perineum with one hand, and wipe away fecal matter with the other. They are all my heroes, and I am grateful at the matter-of-fact comportment of these experienced ladies, keeping me confident in my most vulnerable moments.
     On the birthing stool, with Kelli's assistance, I finally figure out how to push effectively, and then how to sustain it. I ask Kelli to use her fingers to guide me, so I can focus on pushing against them. I smell clary sage oil punctuated by occasional whiffs of my own feces at different points, and feel impressed all over again at how efficient the ladies are at keeping me clean and the floor and bed covered. I am so grateful that I feel so comfortable with them that I can poo on them and not feel bad or embarrassed about it.
     They know I can do it, and encourage me over and over. Incredibly attentive and intuitive, they know what I need and want before I do, half the time. Rose is also a huge help, just by helping them. She becomes an active member of my birth team, even though she's never witnessed a birth before. I could burst with pride for her.
     […]
     In the last fifteen minutes, the pushing urge becomes all consuming. I grunt louder and longer than I ever have before, pushing until I think I can't possibly push anymore, surprised when my body adds an extra, stronger push at the end of what I thought was all I could do. My throat is raw and I taste mucus from the grunting, as if I'm coughing up phlegm rather than vocalizing as I move my baby's head down my birth canal.
     I don't feel the infamous “ring of fire” when he crowns, just an itchy, stretchy feeling. My birth team sets up a mirror so I can see his head, but my glasses are still in the kitchen, so I reach down and touch him instead. His head feels like a slimy hairball, and I almost laugh, but suddenly, I can't think or do anything but push. My body totally takes over. His head comes out, and Kelli wipes his nose and mouth, then turns slightly to put down the cloth, whirling back around just in time to catch my baby as he shoots out of me, seconds after crowning. I almost laugh again at the wide-eyed expression on Kelli's face, which is the only face close enough for me to see without my glasses.
     But then she puts his warm, slippery body on my belly, and I cradle him to me, and the rest of the world ceases to exist. His head is covered in short brown hair, looking darker in the birth gore. His eyes are dark and almond-shaped, his nose flat and round, his lips full and perfect in his scrunched up, beautiful face. He could be any ethnicity in this moment. He is the entire human race, the past, present, and future. He is the entire universe, my universe, the overwhelming precious answer to every prayer I'll ever make.

Letters to My Younger Self - Three Rules to Live By

Dearest youngling,

Listen to the words of someone who's gone through things you will hopefully never go through.  I'm going to lay down some ground rules for your life.  If you follow them, your life will be a million times more wonderful than mine has been.  This is just the first three...more will definitely follow!

Rule Number One: NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR YOUR FEELINGS.

Your emotions are the mechanism your spirit uses to tell your mind that something is good or bad for you.  If you feel good about something, trust that.  If you feel bad, something is wrong.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about your feelings...your feelings are yours.  They are your private language with the part of you that is also God, the part that loves you unconditionally and wants you to be happy and healthy.

No one gets to tell you how you should feel.  Which leads me to...

Rule Number Two: NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL.

No one makes you mad.  No one makes you sad.  No makes you feel dumb.  Thinking that others can make you feel gives others power over you.

But that 2 year old made his mother mad, you say?  Does a 2 year old really have power over a grown woman?  Only if the grown woman decides that the 2 year old should be in charge!  You are responsible for your own feelings; and pretending otherwise is making yourself a victim when you should be the hero.

So if you feel angry, accept that you feel angry, and find the real reason why.  You aren't angry because that person said something mean.  You are angry either because you are afraid that person is right, or because you feel out of control and want to control the other person.  Which leads me to...

Rule Number Three:  YOU CANNOT CHANGE ANYONE EXCEPT YOURSELF.

If you are not happy, figure out what's wrong, and change yourself.  You will never find another person who can make you happier than you can make yourself.  You know you better than anyone else ever can.

You can't make another person care about the same things you care about, but you can find other people who are more like you.  You can also examine those things, and see how important they really are to you.

You will change throughout your life.  The only constant in this universe is change.  So you have to decide whether you are going to change for the better, or for the worse.

Love,
Someone Who Wishes She'd Known These Things Decades Ago

Beacon

During a lovely, fun, feel-good Litha celebration with the other ladies of the house (resident males were on the road, playing video games, and taking an incredibly late nap,) I prayed for inspiration and creativity among other things.

And here is the first poem I have written in many months, nine months I believe, composed mainly in my head as I watched Elmo in Grouchland with my toddler. :D



Beacon
by Ashley Rae Curran (if you steal this, invisible faeries will cause malfunctions in all your electronics until you repent and give credit where it is due. Just so you know.)

Though layers of darkness
block the stars, the moon, the sun;
though the fat, the lies, facades
drape like salted bandages over festering wounds;
though doubt, shame, hate
reflect in every window, every mirror;
I choose to be a beacon,
radiating love without limits,
guiding the willing towards the light;
offering hope,
for peace, for joy.

My Ideal Lifestyle

I am ready to love my life to the fullest, and in that spirit, last week I took my notebook to the park, and between pushes of the toddler swing my son insisted on riding, I wrote a detailed list of every thing I would like to accomplish on a daily basis.

It's a long list, but totally doable.

Every day I rise with the sun, get tea and breakfast started, and perform a devotional followed by daily guidance divination. I want to rise with the sun because sunrise is beautiful. Tea is important because I rarely get enough sleep and coffee makes me jittery. Breakfast is important for nourishing my brain and body. My devotional is my prayer of gratitude, talking to the Divine, and my daily guidance divination is one way the Divine talks back.

Every morning I write until my son wakes, after which I spend time seeing to my son's needs, including a fresh diaper or assistance using the potty, lots of cuddles, food, and drink. Then I take him outside, so every day we get fresh air and have the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful world.

Every day I sing to myself, my son, my family, and the people on the road beside me fortunate enough to also have no air conditioning. Singing is one way I express the beauty of my soul. It heals me, and helps me radiate love and joy.

Every day, I make something beautiful. Maybe a new craft, maybe a poem, maybe organizing stuff in a more pleasing way, or maybe just a beautiful presentation of the food I cook, as long as every day I contribute to beauty in the world.

Every day I nourish my body with plenty of water and delicious, nutritious, vegan food. Every day I break a sweat by working my muscles, getting my heart pumping, and expressing love for myself and joy for life in yoga, dance, or play.

Every day I learn something new, whether from reading, observing, or experiencing something in a whole new way.

Every day I say I love you, and every day I talk to a loved one.

Every evening, I make a delicious, nutritious dinner for my family, and encourage each member to talk about their day. This is my way of showing gratitude for their love.

Every night, I greet the moon, remembering how huge she is compared to me, and how tiny a space she holds in the enormity of the universe.

Before bed, I clean the kitchen and pick up the common room and my bedroom, because cleaning is an act of love, and waking up to a (relatively) clean house is a wonderful thing.

Before bed I clean my body, brush my teeth, moisturize my hands and feet, and rub my neck and shoulders, because I deserve to feel loved and pampered.

Before sleep I do my affirmations, co-creating my world with the Divine. I write and work after getting my son to sleep, and any time I can throughout the day, then nourish my mind, body, an spirit with six to seven hours of sleep before greeting the dawn.

I was spanked, and I'm NOT ok.

Let's start this off by saying if you believe in your heart and soul that there is absolutely nothing wrong with hitting a child, don't waste your time reading this, because nothing anyone says can open a closed mind, even when the mind is only closed off by denial.



I was spanked as a child.

Yes, I am a good person. I am loving, respectful, considerate, generous, responsible, and confident.

No, spanking did not make me any of those things.

I loved and trusted my parents. Like any child, I trusted them to do what was best for me...at least until I was old enough to understand that they were only human.

When they spanked me, I felt powerless, degraded, shamed, betrayed, hurt, and angry.

When I grew up, no matter how much I educated myself, no matter what I believed or practiced, I loved and trusted people who I let manipulate me, degrade me, shame me, betray me, hurt me, and piss me off. I didn't do it on purpose; I didn't even know I was doing it until the end of each relationship. But the reason I did was because from the time I was a small child, I was taught that love was something that happened between a bully and a victim.

The fact that people survive violence, neglect, and trauma and go on to do great things does not prove that violence, neglect, and trauma cause those people to be great. The fact that you were spanked and you are not in jail, or you know someone who was not spanked who DID go to jail, doesn't mean that spanking teaches respect for the law!

Respect is pride in oneself, and recognition of the inherent value of others. Respect is NOT fear of retribution.

Responsibility is self-control and desire for the good of all, NOT obedience.

Consideration is the willingness to work with others to create harmony, NOT the sacrifice of one's own needs in order to make other people happy.

Love is an exchange of encouragement, acceptance, and joy - NOT a power struggle!

I am almost thirty years old. I figured out all of this when I was in high school, I've been trying to heal myself ever since, and I am still struggling to reprogram myself, so that I don't pass on these learned behaviors to my son, or my future children.

Is spanking the only thing my parents did wrong? No, of course not. Someone who spanks out of anger, or worse, while calm, has problems. Spanking is not a technique, it's a symptom.

Spanking is a symptom of feeling a need to control, rather than cooperate; to dominate rather than educate. Spanking is a symptom of believing that children are less than human, and do not deserve the same respect and consideration that their parents expect from them.

To illustrate this concept, imagine you are a police officer, and you witness a stranger in a store get mad and throw something. How are you going to respond?

a) Walk up to him or her, calmly bend him or her over and pop him or her on the butt, while saying in a firm voice, "No! We do NOT throw things. Use your words!"
b) Get angry and proceed to beat the living crap after him or her. Maybe afterwards you'll apologize. Or maybe you'll threaten to give him or her something to cry about.
c) Arrest him or her at once.
d) Roll your eyes and walk away.
e) Ask him or her to clean up his or her mess, and talk with this person until you are sure he or she is calm. Then, teach him or her some techniques to recognize frustration before it becomes anger, how to cool his or herself off before the frustration reaches tantrum level, and make him or her laugh so you know they will remember this lesson.

Okay, there are a lot of other options. the first four options are what happened to me most often when I was a child, and what I witness most often among other parents who do not practice conscious parenting or positive discipline. The fifth option is one example of something I would do for my child. There are many, many other examples of turning conflict into a teaching tool, and into cooperation.

If you believe in treating others how you would like to be treated, and you want your kids to grow up to do the same, then spanking is counterproductive. Unless you allow your children to spank you when you make a mistake. Actually, even that can not possibly replicate the emotional and psychological damage that you cause your children when you hit them, because you will never believe that your children know what is best for you, and even when they are bigger and stronger than you, you will never be as vulnerable to them as they are to you.

Discipline means teaching. What are you teaching your child? What kind of adult do you want to populate the world with? Obedient ones, who will follow all rules without question, and let more powerful people make their decisions for them? If so, you are probably Republican.

Couldn't help myself, sorry. Okay, political jokes aside...

I want my children to grow up able to love themselves, able to give and accept love, able to say no to people, things, or activities that feel wrong to them. I want them to grow up knowing that we never stop learning, that learning is fun, and that growing up is a lifelong process - there is always something new to learn, and that bettering ourselves should be the main focus of our lives. I want them to be happy as their norm, with punctuations of stress, and the ability to understand and trust their emotions and intuition. I want them to accept responsibility for their accomplishments as well as for their mistakes, to value themselves and their contributions to the world, and to know themselves, their likes and dislikes, their hopes, dreams, and nightmares.

I intend to teach my children these skills by practicing them myself. When I lose my temper or make a mistake, I apologize. When I want to change their behavior, I show and tell them exactly what I want them to do and have them practice the new technique, and then make them laugh, keeping in mind that play is how humans and all mammals learn best. I set limits as teaching tools, and as boundaries for harmonious living, and I explain the reasons for the limits at an age-appropriate level. I read a LOT. I talk to other parents, and more importantly, observe their children and their parenting, and see the results.

I don't have to spank my two year old, or put him in time out, or yell at him in order to change his behavior. All I have to do is calm him down and show him what he should do instead, and then show him how happy I feel when he does the appropriate behavior. The times that I have lost my temper and yelled at him proved to me beyond a doubt how useless anger and violence are as teaching tools. He was too scared and hurt to learn anything until I calmed myself down and then calmed him down. He learned to give me kisses when I start getting upset, to make it all better, like I give him kisses when he is crying.

I believe that abortion should be a woman's choice. I believe the government has no business telling adults what they can do to their own bodies, or to force us to to put something into our bodies or the bodies of our children that we or they do not want. I believe the purpose of the government is to keep order so that millions of people can live literally on top of each other with as little conflict as possible - and part of that immense job is to protect us from other people's behaviors that cause bodily, emotional, and psychological harm.

Assault is threatening to hurt an adult. Just threatening to hurt an adult can put you in jail. Why is it legal to threaten and strike children, who can't defend themselves, who depend on us to protect them, keep them healthy, happy, and strong, and teach them so that they can do all of that for themselves when they are adults? How can that possibly be considered okay to a sane mind?

My Dream Guy

I decided my PARTNERS entry was just too trite to continue existing.

I have been thinking a lot about my ideal future, and that means also thinking about my ideal partner. While I am bisexual, which I define as falling in love with A PERSON, not their gonads, and not more than one at a time (that's called "polysexual," btw,) I have a dream of being in love with a man who is in love with me, who is as amazed and humbled by the processes of pregnancy and birth and child-rearing as I am, who would sing to our child while she was still in my womb, care for her and me after the birth, and be an equal partner and parent in every sense.

I dream of being serenaded by my love, spontaneously and on romantic occasions, and singing with him at home and on stage.

We will play together, laugh together, celebrate together, do rituals together, be best friends, explore new places and hobbies, learn together, teach each other, respect each other, and love each other unconditionally and without limits.

We will support each other in our individual goals, and trust each other. We'll go on adventures as a couple and as a family, and we'll have loads of stories to tell our grandkids, and great grandkids.

We'll leave each other spontaneous romantic surprises, be affectionate and sensual with each other, and know each other so well we can speak with our eyes.

Okay, Dream Guy, where are you? <3

letting go

A few years ago, one of my best friends left me a ten page letter detailing just how horrible a person I was.

The problem was that some of what she said was true. Of course, all of it was true as far as she was concerned at the time, but the parts that hurt me the most were the parts I couldn't argue with, the image of myself shown to me through her angry/hurt/fed-up eyes.

I kept that letter and reread it from time to time, at first in order to remind myself why I could never trust her again, why I should be angry with her for all time. Sometimes I read it because I was trying to understand how the one person whom I thought understood me better than any other, could misunderstand me and lash out at me so badly.

Today, I reread it because I was packing up my stuff, and needed to decide what to keep and what to let go.

Today, it didn't hurt. I could see the truths among the misconceptions that had hurt me before. I could see why she thought I was lazy, inept, manipulative, and hypocritical. I could see how some of the behavioral patterns I had when we lived together, and before, have led me to the place I find myself now.

Some people would probably consider the situation I've created for myself to be “rock bottom.” I'm a single mother, out of unemployment benefits and student loans, with no childcare, no car, no place to live, no income, and everything I own either being kept at a generous friend's apartment or behind me in this very overloaded car as I type this. In the last few weeks, I came very close to losing everything that matters to me, even my son.

But this is not the lowest point of my life.

If I were to choose a “rock bottom” out of every trauma I've experienced in my life, well...I guess it would be back in September of this year when my fiancé of 2 years dumped me, and then told me I had two weeks to get myself and my son out. I hit rock bottom then, when my heart shattered along with my root chakra, my sense of security, and my implicit confidence in the goodness in the world.

For two days I was a wreck, completely out of control emotionally, unable to take care of myself and barely able to take care of my child.

That was rock bottom.

Every night I prayed for guidance, and on the third day a seemingly random thought struck me like the proverbial two-by-four upside the head.

I realized that I believed in my faith, but that I wasn't living it, and hadn't been living it for most of the duration of my failed relationship.

I heard the voice of my spirit guide then, saying, “Remember unconditional love.” And as my bewildered one year old snuggled up to me, wiping my tears with his little hands and planting big wet kisses on my lips, I remembered.

The love that I have for my son is limitless and free. He doesn't have to earn it, and he can never lose it. Nothing he can ever do could possibly diminish my love for him.

In my faith, the Divine IS unconditional love. There is no judgment, no punishment, just actions and consequences. Just as I would never harm or bully my son, or make him suffer because he made a mistake, neither would my Divine Mother and Father make me suffer for the mistakes of my past. Everything that I have ever suffered has been a consequence of my own choices, and my own lack of unconditional love for myself.

Since I remembered unconditional love, I have understood what I need to do in order to heal myself. I started by letting go of my self-hatred, and my lifelong feelings of helplessness and worthlessness. I saw myself through the eyes of the Mother, with unconditional, powerful, all-encompassing love, and I let that love fill me and mend the wounds in my heart. Every night before I go to sleep, every morning and frequently throughout the day, I fill myself with this love, embrace it, and pass it on to my son.

I don't know where I'm going to live tomorrow, but I have faith that my son and I will be fine. I can honestly say that I'm not stressed or worried about the future. In fact, I feel peaceful, content, and incredibly excited about my future.

Today, I was finally able to let go of a painful chunk of my past. It felt good to watch that letter fall down the rubbish chute.