Hushed Voices, Secrets Untold

Giving women a voice, one day at a time

Archive for the month “January, 2011”

Perseverance

I was speaking with someone the other day and they asked me, after everything I have been through, why had I not just thrown in the towel so to speak. They wondered why I wasn’t suicidal, nervous, on drugs, a mental case per se. I get asked that question a lot. My life has been hard, but not as hard as some I expect.

In 1975 I lost my father to suicide at age 9. I lived in a household where my father was abusive to my mother, was an alcoholic and he eventually died. His death was horrible and tragic and my mother did not handle it well. My mother then remarried.

When I was in high school, my boyfriend was murdered after he dropped me at home after a date. Later, in 1985 I married a man that would abuse me for 10 years before that marriage ended in divorce. In 1993 my beautiful daughter Ceara Alexa died. This for me was the most painful thing I have endured in my lifetime. Then in 1999 the night before Thanksgiving my brother committed suicide when he was 32 years old. In April 2010 I buried my last remaining parent, my mother. Grief and I are very familiar with each other; there has been a great deal of it.

Now, while all of these things are horrible and seem to just go on and on I have always reminded myself of five things:

Life is too short to be miserable, you must go on living and loving.

With God anything is possible.

Life is too precious to waste.

There is always someone worse off than you are.

Finally, my motto: That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I owe a great deal of my ability to persevere to my church and clergy, my faith has never let me down. Also, after my domestic violence ordeal, I owe a great deal to the people within the domestic violence organization, without them my life after my ordeal would not be what it is today. If you had told me 15 years ago I would be graduating Cum Laude with my Master’s Degree in a few short weeks I would have looked at you and told you, you were crazy, it wasn’t possible for me. Time changes things but so does your ability to persevere. If you are being abused, just have faith that you will and can change your life, this isn’t and doesn’t have to be forever. There are people here willing to help you. They helped me and I have persevered.

thegeekwife

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