Surviving a Narcissistic Family

There is small amount of people who can honestly say they had a loving and joyful childhood. They had parents who cared and loved them and siblings that were like their best friend. There was no such thing as lack, neglect, or abuse. To this day, I love to listen to their childhood stories because their stories are so different than mine. I often pretend that I am the one in their family receiving all that love.

Sharing our painful stories can be one of the hardest and most vulnerable things we can do. But it is in the truths that we share where healing ourselves and for others takes place. I want to share with you my story and even though it would almost seem impossible to put a lifetime into a few pages, I wanted to provide you with enough of the details to understand that those who are in or have been raised in a narcissistic family unit that you are not alone, and healing is possible. Don’t ever give up and most importantly, don’t ever lose hope!

Did I Volunteer to Serve in the War?

Growing up for me was like walking in a field full of landmines. Carefully watching my step and tiptoeing around. I never knew when things were going to blow up. Living in an abusive home is very much like serving in a war. It’s survival of the fittest day in and day out. I loved my dad very much despite his flaws. I have a lot of fond memories of dancing with him, putting makeup all over his face, and shopping for that one special Christmas tree during the holidays. However, I also remember in my early years of the physical abuse that happened and if I am being honest, it is those memories that really haunt me because they are the ones that burrow into your mind and resurface in the most inopportune times. I was lucky because the physical abuse came to halt when the court system got involved. I was a pre-teen when I remember walking into the giant courthouse to see if my parents were still going to get to be my parents. The judge decided that my brother and I would be fine staying in our home. So, we did, and the physical abuse stopped. I was happy that I would no longer be the whipping post for the family, but oftentimes what the courts don’t see is the harmful and most damaging abuse of all, mental and emotional abuse. That was my mom’s specialty.

As the years went by, my relationship with my dad became better and we began to get closer. As close as my mom would allow. I knew that he was also caught in the web of narcissism, but it still didn’t make what he did to me ok. You see, when you have a narcissistic mom, forming relationships among family members is very threatening to them. They need to be sure that they create a constant state of chaos within the family structure so that one person cannot take sides with another. However, I was the anomaly that my mom did not expect and that put me in a very dangerous situation. I became the target.

Baa, Baa Black Sheep

My mom discovered very quickly that I was a child that marched to the beat of my own drum. I was curious, adventurous, and very perceptive. I loved the idea of loving and caring for people, which made me extremely empathetic. Not to mention I was a highly sensitive and intuitive child and often was able to read people and situations. I was never influenced by what others thought. If it didn’t feel good to go right, I would go left. Being different from the rest of the people in my family made me the perfect target. It had all the ingredients that would make me the enemy of any narcissist. My mom, knowing this was clever and savvy.  She truly understood how to create a world where she could cause damage without looking like to the so-called bad guy. But to do this she needed a scapegoat, and I made the perfect scapegoat.

As I child, I never felt like I was part of the family that I birthed into. No matter how hard I tried, I never could form the connection with my mother like other girls my age had with their moms. My mom always kept me at arm’s length. There were moments when I thought we were making breakthroughs, but of course that was short-lived. Young girls look up to their mothers. They want to follow in their footsteps as they move from being a child, to a young woman, and then finally into a womanhood. Many learn to do this because of the love, encouragement and support they receive from their moms. This was not the case for me.

Growing up with a brother who was very much like my mom was not easy either. It was obvious that he was the one my parents favorited, and I quickly began to live up to the stereotypical black sheep. From a young age I knew that my brother was mentally unstable, but I never knew how unstable until one summer evening. At the age of four, I was quietly playing in my room, something I did quite often, when he came in demanding that I play with him.  He needed a second driver for electric race car track, and I was going to be that person. I was perfectly content playing with my Barbies alone and told him I didn’t want to play. He left my room mad, threatening how I was going to regret my decision.

One of the things I enjoyed as a child, was waiting and listening for my dad’s car to pull into the driveway when he came home from work. That day was no different. I heard the tires and excitedly waited for him to come into the house. Each day as soon as my dad would get home, he would always come to find me to say hello and hug me. Only this time he didn’t come to find me or at least not right away. Something was wrong. I continued to play, when I remember my dad throwing open my door and fury in his eyes. I was so confused. What had I done? Not understanding what was happening, he came into my room, grabbed both of my arms as hard as he could and began to shake me. He was shaking me so violently that my neck began to whip forwards and backwards. I thought it was going to snap right off. Then, he began to scream at me about the mess I made in my brother’s room and with that screaming came a series of hits. I remember feeling the pain in the side of my face as my check began to swell. Then, pain searing through my ribs and my legs. When was this nightmare going to stop? When I am dead?  Finally, he stopped and when he stepped back, I could see my brother standing behind him. Was there the whole time? Where was my mom? Why didn’t anyone stop this? In that moment, the look on my brother’s face revealed everything I needed to know that day and every day moving forward. In that moment, my childhood was gone. My brother had created the perfect manipulation that day. I knew that if I didn’t take care of his needs, my punishment would be far greater than I ever could imagined. I was right.

When time no longer stood still, my dad grabbed me by the arm and quite literally dragged me out of my room. As he took me through the living room, I remember seeing my mom facing straight ahead completely still as if she was oblivious as to what was occurring. Not turning her head once to look at me, it was as if I didn’t exist. Could she not hear what was happening? What I saw when I reached my brother’s room was abysmal. Every racetrack, every car (race car, hot wheel, monster truck) was thrown all over the room. His entire floor covered in a sea of toys and there was no carpet to be found. What did he do? My dad threw me on top of the mess and began to yell at me for destroying my brother’s room when he clearly told me he wanted to play alone. Wait a minute! That’s not what happened. I told him that I wanted to play alone. As my dad continued to scream and yell, my brother stood by with a smirk on his face, watching in amusement. My dad had given me one hour to clean up my brother’s entire room or I was “going to be sorry”. I didn’t want to be on the other end of that “sorry”.

The next morning, my mom refused to send me to preschool because of the bruises all over my body. I remember wanting to go so badly just so I could be somewhere other than home. I didn’t want to be home alone with the woman who wouldn’t help me. After my mom called the school to notify them of my absence, she dialed my dad at work. I could her describing the bruises I had on my face, my arms, my legs, all over my body. This was when I first experienced anxiety and mania that would remain with me for almost most of my life. I was so fearful of what was to come. What was he going to do to me when he got home? Would my mom standby and watch and ignore it all again? When I heard the tires from his car that night, instead of the excitement that I once felt, I was scared. He came into my room just as he had done the many other times as soon as he would arrive home. He came over to me and hugged me. Then, he began to look at my bruises. Are there going to be more? I remember the look on his face as he saw what he did. I could feel the regret and remorse. When I came out of my room, my mom looked at me in disgust. She didn’t speak or even look at for months. Never a hello, a smile, or even a grunt to acknowledge my presence. She would simply go through the motions that was required of being a mother, but it was as if I never alive.

As I said before, that was the pivotal moment in my life. I was no longer living what felt like a normal life. I needed to do whatever I had to survive. As the years past, I spent all my time protecting my brother for fear of what the consequences would be. I would receive calls late at night from his friends asking me to come get him because he was too drunk to drive and helping him as he would vomit all over my bathroom. I talked the police out of arresting him when he threatened his ex-girlfriend. The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, my mom was calling me a prostitute because she believed I was sneaking out of the house to meet boys and coming home drunk despite what I tried to tell her. And she knew what I was really doing because she had witnessed me trying to help my brother.

Never Going to Be Good Enough

Growing up, I was an overachiever, and it was something that came easily to me. I prided myself in taking the advanced high school classes and getting good grades. Nothing but an A would suffice. In school, everyone knew me, and I always made a point to get to know them. It became easy to make friends when I learned how to use my intuitive gifts to fit in. I was a natural athlete and loved playing soccer. Day in and day out I worked hard at perfecting my passion for the sport. Eventually, it helped me to receive a scholarship so I could attend college and earn my undergraduate degree and later my graduate degree. Of course, I wasn’t always perfect. There were moments that I too participated in what I like to call teenage syndrome. I rolled my eyes, talked back from time to time, did silly things with my friends (none of which involved the police or hurting another person). All in all, many would hear this and think positively about the things I worked hard to accomplish. Unfortunately, my mom did not see it this way. If I got an A, then it needed to be an A+. When I received my soccer scholarship, she told me that I wasn’t good enough because I should have had been given more money. To her, nothing I did was ever satisfactory and never met her standards or approval. And because she believed I wasn’t good enough; I believed the same thing.

As an adult, the drive to succeed didn’t stop. In fact, I became even more convinced that being seen as successful by my mom was the only way I would ever been seen at all. I worked long hours, so much so that I was making myself sick. Any promotion that came available at work, I went for it even if it wasn’t something I wanted or could do. I was constantly at the gym and if the gym wasn’t open, I was working out in a park or running around the city because to succeed also meant being skinny. Still, what I was ultimately trying to achieve was my mother’s affection. Again, I was a failure and she made sure to tell me every opportunity she got.

It’s a Boy!

Every 5 seconds a baby is born. In every culture, the birth of the child is one of the most precious things about life. People celebrate with reveal parties, baby showers, sip and see showers, and more. It is a happy time for brand new parents enjoy and cherish the new life they just created. Birth is truly a beautiful thing. Or so I thought…

I was 27 years old, when I became the ultimate failure in both my parents’ eyes. I became pregnant with my son and unmarried. It took me several months before I could tell my parents. Honestly, I was completely afraid. But the day had come where I needed to tell them and so, I made the call. My dad was not happy, but he was supportive. I think the idea of adding a little boy to the family excited him. He was even more excited when my son’s anticipated due date was his birthday (my son was born 5 days after his expected due date). When my mom decided to share her thoughts, what she said to me devastated me. She said, “Kelly, I hope you’re happy. You have completely ruined your life and you will never amount to anything. You need to get an abortion.” Then, the phone went silent, and I knew she had hung up.

During my entire pregnancy, my mom never spoke to me. In my seventh month, my dad asked if I would come see them in Arizona. I was living in California at the time. I made the decision to go in the hopes that my mom would see I was ok and would want to reconnect with me. For the ten days I spent at their house, my mom never spoke to me, she never looked at me, and she never left her bedroom.

It was 4:55AM on August 23, 2005, when I went into labor. When you are in throes of contraction after contraction, you begin to think “Why the hell did I do this and why would any woman in their right mind want to do this?” What they teach you at Lamaze class never prepares you for the real experience and pain of labor. My son’s father drove recklessly to the hospital while I was trying to breathe through the pain, when my dad calls just as we enter the parking lot of the hospital. I answer the phone for what I believed was going to a pleasant call, when he hears that I am in labor. Any pleasantries and niceness went right out the window. He begins to tell me how inconsiderate of a daughter I was to not tell them I was in labor and that he was the one who had to call me to find out. “Sorry dad, I am in so much pain I couldn’t call you”. That wasn’t good enough. My dad began to yell so loudly that my father’s son took the phone from my hand and hung it up. Even though I felt like my entire insides were birthing the spawn of Satan, I remember feeling a sense of relief because I did not have the mental capacity to be dealing with my parents’ chaos.

The happiest day of my life was on August 25, 2005. At 5:56AM, my beautiful son came into this world. His birth was rough. Again, an important thing they forget to tell you in Lamaze class. During labor, he wasn’t getting oxygen because the cord had wrapped around his neck making his pulse erratic. He was facing the wrong way, which caused his shoulder to become stuck during delivery. The only way they could release it was by beating on my stomach with the idea that the compulsion of the hits would allow it to come lose. Luckily, it dislodged causing his shoulder to dislocate. Due to the harsh delivery, my son was extremely jaundice. I had never seen such a yellow human being in my entire life. Those moments mothers have right after the baby enters the world, the one where they get to bond with them immediately as they are placed onto their chest, was not one I got to fully experience. My son was in such bad shape, I was only able to hold him for less than 30-seconds before he was rushed off to intensive care. I couldn’t see him until 2-days later after giving birth.

I was able to finally get some sleep after over 30-hours of labor and food in my stomach. Later that morning, I received another call from my dad. I answered thinking he would be so happy to know that his grandson was here. Before I could say hello, he began to yell at me once again only this time I could hear my mom in the background telling him what to say. As words of disappointment flew from my dad’s mouth, tears began to swell up in my eyes and all I could say was “I’m sorry”. Saved by the charge nurse, just before telling him I had to go the last thing I hear him say is, “So help me, if you don’t give that child our last name…” and before he could finish, I hung up the phone.

Several months after my son’s birth and trying hard to figure out the new single mom thing, I found myself begging my mom for help. Every new mom wants their mom with them.  I would ask her to please come spend a week with me to help and show how to care for my newborn. Each time my mom would tell me no. No, because she didn’t have the time (she was retired). No, because she needed to stay with the pets (she had my dad to help), and no because I got myself into this mess and it wasn’t for her to clean up. During the first two years of my son’s life, every time he cried or needed something that I couldn’t give him, I thought about how I did this to myself and how much of disgrace I was. When I would call my mom to ask about his gas bubbles or teething, I was reminded by her that I was a huge failing disappointment with the added caveat that I was now also a bad mother.

Housekeeping! Can I Come In?

One way that survivors survive is by becoming the over helper, the pleaser, the yes ma’am, I’ll do whatever you say if you see that I am a person too. The way I fell into that role was when my mom decided that I would become the housekeeper of cleaning up the family drama. But what I didn’t realize was the messes I needed to clean up were deep-rooted stains that never come out.

My mom and my brother were both excellent at creating chaos from nothing. It was quite impressive how easily they made it look and how easily they were able to push the responsibility and blame. It never failed, that responsibility and blame fell to me. When problems were created, I was the one who was forced to clean them up. Housekeeping… Would you like some fresh towels?  If I refused or if it ended in an undesirable outcome according to my mom’s rules, then my mom (and my brother) would do everything to make my life hell. Experiencing the silent treatment from people you love rips and tears at your heart. Being told how you amount to nothing more than the “crap” on the bottom of someone’s shoe breaks your humanity. But being told time and time again how much of a disappointment you are to the whole family destroys your soul.

My mom was an expert at destroying relationships with her lies and deceit. In particular, the relationship she had with her sisters (my aunts). I deeply loved my aunts and still do, but when you live with a narcissistic mom and hanging by a thread, trying to have a relationship with them was difficult. My mom would deliberately do things to stir the pot. Eventually, my mom’s behavior became so bad that it created a rift between her and my aunts so much that they stopped talking to each other. To this day my mom will say that was the best thing that happened to her, but I know otherwise. The fact that my aunts made the wise decision to no longer engage with her angered my mom. This was when she would tell me to call them and try to “fix it”. Housekeeping… would you like me to change your sheets? I loved both my mom and my aunts, so it was important for me to try to repair something that had become irreparable. When it felt as if I was starting to bring them back together my mom, again would create an even bigger problem to cause dissention among the family. Each time I would fail, and each time the punishment would become harsher and harsher.

Finally, I stopped talking to my aunts. It hurt me so much to make that decision, but it was for my survival. I could not continue to clean up my mom messes. My mental health was at stake. For many years, I lost contact with my aunts and each of those years left a void in my heart. I would daydream about reconnecting with them, and I would get lost in the energy of being with people who loved me. Then, that daydream turned into reality. The day we all reconnected; I remember being so scared of what they might say to me. Would they punish me too for wanting to choose my mom over them. Would they understand that I was fighting for my own survival? Would they use this time we planned together to tell me how much of a disgrace I was and that they never wanted to talk or see me again? Not at all. They embraced me with open arms and so much more love I could have ever imagined. There is such a thing as hope. Housekeeping… Please do not disturb.

Breaking All the Rules

In 2016, I was offered a job and moved to Sahuarita, Arizona where I continue to live with my amazing teenage son, and beautiful fur babies. It felt good to be away from the turmoil and hate of my family. Or so I thought. I quickly learned, distance, no matter how faraway you go, still clings onto you. Even though I was now over 350 miles away from my family, I discovered that the phone and email systems have an incredible way of keeping you attached to unhealthy patterns.

My son and I were doing very well despite the weekly call or email to remind me that I was still as useless as ever and any decision I made was the wrong one. I did feel a small sense of relief. Believing that I would eventually find some peace and maybe even freedom from the dark hole of narcissism, I found myself falling, falling, falling back into the blackhole.

In 2017, I had finally saved up enough money to purchase my first house. I was so excited because as a mom, I always wanted to provide my son a place to call home. A place where he felt safe to be himself without any conditions. It didn’t take long for me and my son to find the perfect house and before we knew it, we were in escrow. I hadn’t told my parents about what I was doing, but knew it was time to let them know. When I told them, my mom began to tell me how I would never make it work and that within months I would find myself in foreclosure. Then, she proceeded to tell me that buying a house was the second biggest mistake I ever made after the one of not aborting my son.

During the long 45-days of stress and hell of going through escrow, my mom began to prey on my empathy. She talked nonstop about my brother and all his problems. She talked about how he no longer had his drunk live-in girlfriend, but he was drowning in all the debt he accumulated because of her. She repeatedly told me about how his dead-end job can’t pay his bills or the trailer he lives in. Then it happened, she dug into the weak spot of my heart as deep as she could go and said to me, “All you’ve done all your life is help this person and that person and you are always saying how you just want to help people who need it. While you’ve been wasting all your time caring for everyone else you have neglected your own family. Your own brother. Why don’t you take all that energy you have helping others and instead, help your own brother. He needs to get out of the spot he is in, and I think it would help you both out, especially if you would let him live with you in that big old house you are buying.” Immediately I could feel my body tense up. But she was right. I did take care of others in my work, maybe I needed to help and take care of my brother too.

September 2017, my son, brother, and I moved into the house I bought. The first few months were great, and I remember thinking that this could work out. But as another month went by and another, financially I couldn’t keep being the sole provided for my brother. I had a house, bills, and my son to take care of and I asked my brother for a little help. What I asked for was not much. $225 a month for rent and utilities and he was responsible for the $300 cable bill since he wanted certain channels that were not in my budget. Even though he agreed, I could sense that he was not happy with this new arrangement. Soon after, my intuition was right. My mom began to call me upset that I would ask my brother for all that money when I knew that he was struggling.

In February 2018, my brother decided he would take it upon himself and move his female friend from California into my house. What he said would be a weekend visit suddenly turned into a month. A month of me supporting my son, my brother, and now his friend. Enough was enough, and when I confronted him about his lie he told. That’s when all hell broke loose. I told him that she was to immediately leave my house. The next day she was gone, but not the troubles she brought with her. My brother began to grow cold and distant. He began to become a little meaner and little more vengeful each day. When I would talk to my mom about it, she would dismiss me saying that I had issues with communicating with my brother and that makes an unfair living situation for him.

This went on for months. Each time I would talk to my mom, I would discover a new lie that he was telling my parents. And with each lie, they believed him more and more and more. Knowing that I needed to keep trying (or so I kept telling myself), the atmosphere in the house became very dense and hostile. My sociable son kept to himself in his room. My brother no longer saying more than two to three words to me at a time, would lock himself in his room and yet, my mom continued to lecture me about how unfair I was being. Everything finally came to a head during the Christmas of 2018. By this time, my mom and I were at complete odds. I was done listening and watching her enable my brother and encourage his spiteful behaviors. She was becoming mean and the more I stood up for myself, the meaner she grew. Then, they began to spew hateful words about my son. Why him? He has nothing to do with this.

Christmas came and went, and we were now heading into the New Year. I was on my way to California to drop my son off at his dad’s house for the holiday, I received a call from my brother. I could tell he was upset, but quickly it changed into anger. Anger towards me. He began to tell me that his guinea pig was very sick and that he needed to take her to the after-hours emergency vet. I asked what I could do to help, and he said nothing since I was in California. I told him that I was returning that night late, but I would be home to help him. Arriving home close to 11 o’clock, I noticed he was still not home. Even though I was tired from traveling all day, I decided to do whatever I could to stay awake so that I could be there for him when he got home. Not long after, he arrived home and came into the house like a tornado ripping through a town. He began to tell me that his guinea pig was sick and that I was the cause of it. I allowed the dog to bark too much and too loudly. I allowed my son to play his video games and be loud in the house. I refused to turn the heat up when he told me the pigs needed it (that was a lie because when the temperature dropped, I wrapped their cage in a towel and specifically asked him if we needed to turn up the heat for them, which he responded “no, they are fine”). Then, he proceeded to tell me that the vet bill was over $2000 and that he did not have any money left to pay his bills and that he was no longer going to pay the rent or the cable bill. I immediately told him that I could help and that I would ride down to the vet and put the bill onto my credit card so that we could pay it over time. He yelled it was too late and stomped into his room. This was more than a tornado that hit my house, this was what felt like the end of the world. Later, I found out the vet bill was under $500, and he had received a refund for paying over the amount that was needed. 

The next day I cancelled the cable and returned to Netflix. As I was finishing up cancelling everything, my other line rang, and it was my mom calling. I said my goodbyes to the cable guy and answered my mom’s call. Before I could finish the word hello, she began in on me about the so-called things that I had been doing to my brother. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He had told her that I raised his rent to over half of what I was paying for the mortgage. I did what? How I was completely irresponsible for never making my son dinner and that my brother must buy him something to eat every night. I did what? And I should have ever bought that house because I never clean or buy groceries for the house. I did what?  She said how she disgusted because I was behaving like a” whore”, leaving my son alone with my brother while I go out every night with a different man. For those that know me, know that since the birth of my son I have dedicated my life and focused only on raising him to be a good human. Then, it happened. She accused me of trying to kill my brother’s guinea pigs. The shock of it all rendered me speechless. Is this really happening?

Two days had passed since the incident. My brother was in his room, my son in his and I was in mine. Suddenly, the cable goes out and my Netflix movie disappears. Thinking it was an internet outage, my son came into my room looking rather somber. He begins to tell me how my brother disconnected the cable to the internet and refuses to give it back. Looking at my son rather oddly and in disbelief because why would a grown man do that, I of course questioned this. My son shows me his phone where my brother had text him. The text was full of hate and threats. I notice that this was not the only text like my brother had sent to my son. I continue to scroll through all the messages to discover that my brother has been sending him hateful and threatening text messages for months. Immediately, I go to my brother and keeping calm I ask him to return the cable. Furious he flies out his bed and before I could blink, he was screaming in my face. I walk away to avoid any kind of domestic scuffle and he follows me out of his room. He once again in my face, screaming and telling me to hit him. I tell him stop and he backs me up to the stairs. Not wanting to fall back onto the stairs because that would leave me in a vulnerable position and exposed, I push him away to gain distance between us. Before I know it, he is back in my face. He is so close that I can feel his breath on my cheeks. He begins to tell me to hit him repeatedly. I grab my son who is on the stairs and run up them to get away. I tell my son to put on shoes and grab the dog. We leave the house. Upset and not sure where to go or what to do I call my parents. No answer. I call them again. No answer. I keep trying. Finally, after close to 20-minutes my mom answers.

Freedom is Easy When You Let Go

When you are born into a family you don’t anticipate that it will be abusive. You come into life believing that you will be loved, wanted, seen, and heard. This is not always the case, but the beautiful thing is you can always choose how you want to live your life. The day Armageddon occurred was the day I made the decision of how I wanted to live my life.

When my mom finally answered the phone, she sounded calm and I thought to myself, “Oh, she hasn’t spoken to my brother yet, Thank goodness.” She proceeded to tell me that her and my dad just returned home from the store and was putting away the groceries which was why she couldn’t answer the phone. It was stuck in her back pocket, and she couldn’t reach it. With tears falling down my face, I ask her if she had talked to my brother yet. When she said no, I began to tell her all that had transpired. In the middle of my telling her, she interrupts me and says, “No, you are lying. That is not at all what happened.” Taken back by her words, I questioned how she would even know what happened if she hadn’t spoken to my brother and if what she was saying was true, she wasn’t able to reach her phone. Wrong thing to say… Her voice went from calm to aggressively angry as she tells me how I deliberately made every effort to destroy our family. She continued telling me how I am a terrible mother with an out-of-control kid that will be in prison by the time he is 18. What came next, forever changed my life with my family. My mom, with all the hatred she could muster says, “You are no longer our daughter. You never were and you will never be part of this family ever again”. The phone went dead.

As of today, I still have not spoken to my parents or my brother. I made one attempt to reach out to my dad with no response. In January 2023, it will be four years since I spoke to any of them. The first year of the estrangement was difficult. Always asking why, replaying every moment in my head, blaming myself for “destroying the family”. But then one day something happened. It was as if something clicked in my soul. Something beautiful and I made the decision to let go and heal. I choose myself.

Spirit has an amazing way of showing you that when one door closes so many more open. Another family came together and took me in as one of their own. They aren’t your conventional family with a mother, a father, and maybe even siblings. No, these people were my friends. They became my brothers, my sisters, my family. In the aftermath of everything, I was able to reunite with my aunts who I never stopped loving. Through the ups and downs of this healing journey they have been with me and have walked side by side with me through the good, the bad, and the ugly. What is even more important to me is that I can openly share my story with others and show them there is hope when we choose ourselves. Healing is real and it can happen for anyone.

Keep Your Head Down and Keep Going

Through all the hardships, one thing I never did was give up. For all the times I was stomped on, spat on, and run over by the bus, giving up was never an option. In fact, each time I was thrown into the fire it made me even more determined. Hope is a powerful thing. It carries very powerful energy behind it, in it, and all around it. It is more than just a word. It is a lifeline when you feel like everything around you begin to self-destruct and there is no way out. Hope lights the way for us. Illuminating a path so bright we are drawn to it like a moth to a flame. All we can do is keep our head down and just keep going until we are the fully immersed in the brilliance of it. Even when we feel all alone, the truth is we are not. The moment we choose ourselves we are telling spirit we are ready to be free.

In the moment of my self-destruction, when all seemed lost, and I felt like there was nowhere for me to turn spirit liberated me. Spirit carried me in their arms caressing me like a baby. Loving me like how a parent should love their child. I finally knew I was safe. No more fighting. No more struggling. That was the day I found true freedom and I began living my authentic life. That was the day I found home.

My healing journey isn’t over. Quite honestly, it may never be, but each time I choose myself I am coming closer and closer to the person I am meant to be. And that, in and of itself, is powerful.

“I survived because the fire inside me burned brighter than the fire around me” ~Joshua Graham