<-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!

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.

The Climb

When I was six or seven, my sister and I were having an argument in front of our mother, aunts, and grandmother around Christmastime. My sister was probably four, and she said something nasty to me. "I don't have to listen to this!" I hissed, and whirled around with intentions of making a dramatic exit. Grandma and my aunts all burst into laughter, and my mother grabbed me and set me back in front of my sister, saying, "Oh yes you do!"

I didn't know how to respond to my mother's action then, and I have no idea what she was trying to teach me now. Was I supposed to be nice to my sister because she was younger? Was I supposed to apologize for standing up for myself?

I responded by freezing and feeling helpless.

I learned that my feelings don't matter, and that other people have the right to be mean to me, and that it's funny when other people are mean to me.

I don't remember what happened next, but those lessons, and that response, stayed with me all my life. I am 29 years old now, and I still freeze and feel helpless when someone says something mean to me. Despite telling myself that I am valuable, and despite my friends telling me that they love me and are happy to have me in their lives, I still feel worthless and like my feelings don't matter.

Growing up, it was normal for me to feel worthless, powerless, and helpless. These feelings were enforced every time I was spanked, made to endure other forms of pain or humiliation for disobeying my parents, every time I was punished for expressing my feelings. I can't tell you how many times I was spanked because I couldn't stop crying. Or how even as a teenager and a young adult, just by mocking my feelings, my Dad could still crush me and send me into a spiraling funk that could take me weeks to escape.

Worthlessness, powerlessness, helplessness...these were my normal. These were the feelings underlying every thing I ever did, thought, and believed. They were the lens through which I saw the world, and the other people in my life. If people were kind to me, I didn't recognize the kindness because I didn't believe I deserved it. If things were going good in my life, I made friends with someone who was suffering and immersed myself in their drama, because drama was comfortable. I understood misery. Happiness, peace were scary and unknown.

Imagine being trapped in a huge cavern so far below the ground that even though there is an opening revealing the sky directly above you, you still can't see any light. All you can see is shades of darkness, all you feel is the cold void, all you hear is the echoes of your own sobs and cries for help.

You find your way to a narrow passageway that spirals up toward the light, a light that you know exists deep in your heart, but you still can't see it. Onward you climb, a little higher every day, carefully feeling your way in the darkness, aware that a wrong step could send you hurtling over the precipitous edge, back to where you started, or even to death...you don't know, you can't tell how high you've managed to climb.

One day, you feel a warm breeze, and smell wonderful, comforting scents that spark vague memories of peace and comfort.

Another day, you hear a child's laughter faintly in the distance, and you know you are getting closer to the light.

Time passes, and then suddenly you realize that you can see your hand in front of your face! You ascend more quickly now, less carefully, knowing the light is not far. But in your eagerness, you slip on some loose gravel, and slide to the edge.

You barely manage to grab the edge, and hang on with sheer force of will. You pick yourself back up, and begin your ascent again, slowly, carefully, longingly.

Time passes.

And one day, you step into the light.

It blinds you, but it's warmth reminds you of a time before memory, of absolute comfort and security, a time before you knew coldness.

As you eyes adjust, you realize you still have a long, long way to climb before you reach the surface. But now you are starting to remember the light, and what awaits you on the surface, and you are determined to get there.

The cavern is always below you, ready to catch you every time you slip or stumble. There are times when your struggle toward the light is scary, frustrating, overwhelming. At those times, it feels comfortable to close your eyes and step into the shadows, embracing the darkness. But at those times, you can't help but relive the pain, loneliness, and desperation. Those feelings and patterns of behavior are familiar. You don't like them; you thought you'd overcome them, but they are always a part of you, always waiting for you. It's up to you to decide whether you will seek the comfort and familiarity in their embrace, or if you will bravely trudge upward, into the unknown, the promise of joy, love, and peace.

I can't tell you where I am on that spiral, except that I can still see the light. I can tell you that I recently slipped, that now I am pulling myself back up, and considering climbing the face of the damn cliff because this long slow trudging is just taking too long!