My Story

I was born in 1957, the first of two children, and at the age of 2 my Mother was diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia, although my earliest memory is at age 4.  As a child all I recall is that my Mother believed that I was the devil and always threatened to kill me, even pushed me out of a moving car when I was about 8, but typically she would pull a knife on me.  I can recall vividly trying to stay awake all night when she was particularly in a bad mental state, certain that this particular night is when she would kill me (especially when my Dad worked 11-7).  I really have no good memory of her.  The cycles were constant where she would try to end her life (either by overdosing or by cutting her wrists and cutting was her preference) go to the hospital, get back on meds, come home and before long she was spiraling down again.  I had a brother, 5 years younger than me, so I became a caretaker at a young age.  I was the one my Dad would get out of bed to clean up all the blood from her suicide attempts so that my brother would not see.

I always knew how messed up my childhood was but honestly thought for decades that I had somehow miraculously did okay … I was a straight A student, always worked, went to college, and basically a highly functioning responsible caring adult who was married with a home and 2 children.

At age 30 is when I started to realize I was not so lucky after all.  At age 40 I was diagnosed with Major Depression Disorder which was masked completely as anxiety and at age 50 I was inflicted by the Demon Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorders.  You can read about these under “My Illnesses”.

As for now, I am now on Social Security Disability and functioning much better.  I have learned lots of tools for coping and managing this constant state of anxiety my body is in.  I am still very limited to where I can go and definitely not where there are too many faces or too many strange places.  It takes a lot of daily effort to be mindful, aware, and self regulate to try to stay calm.  Definitely not there yet as emotion control continues to be a big hurdle and I am working hard on this.  I do hope to re-engage more with the outside   world and the sooner the better because the quality of my life pretty much stinks.

Now 5 years into this journey I am at a crossroad where I both feel and think that it is time to start working on healing my “inner child’ and take back the life stolen from her and live the life God intended me to have all along.

My purpose for the blog is to connect with others and share thoughts, feelings, and experiences.  I truly believe that one of my purposes here on earth is to advocate for children suffering from child abuse and as I watch the statistics continue to worsen I feel more and more pressure to be able to pursue this purpose.