Been There, Done That…Had the Smashed Up Face to Prove It leaves me raw and naked. It strips the flesh from my emotional bones and leaves the structural integrity of my life exposed for all to see. Making peace with that reality was the hard part of the process. However, not putting the book out there was never an option. I knew this story would see the light of day before it was ever written. I also knew I had to reach the point where I wasn’t ashamed of my life or I wouldn’t be able to do what had to be done. That took a little while longer.

I wish I could say I turned back to God, and, “poof,” everything wrong in my life was suddenly right again. While I do believe that’s possible, that isn’t how things happened for me. While I did get incrementally better as the years passed, and my faith grew, it’s only in the last year that I fully turned that corner from chronic shades of gray into the light.

I won’t say I don’t still have my moments. I do. My life is a constant battle to uproot the sneaky little weeds before they become deep seated issues. There’s nothing unusual about that. Life is a twisting, turning journey of discovery and growth until it is no more. What sets people apart is what we do with the lessons we learn. Do we use them for the greater good, throw them away, or hoard them selfishly for our personal benefit. That choice is up to you.

For me, there wasn’t a choice. The desire of my heart was, and is, to prevent others from going through what I’ve been through. That’s the reason I wrote the book and why I’m writing this blog in the first place. While I won’t deny writing my memoir was cathartic, it was traumatic as well. Much worse than I expected. I had to face a lot of ugliness head on and lay a lot of painful moments to rest. I experienced a lot of tears, anger, and generalized craziness in working through a lifetime of festering toxins that oozed through the emotional bandages I’d slapped over the gashes in my soul. Once all the pus was out, I no longer felt the crippling shame that leads to nothingness. Releasing the shame started me on the road to emotional healing.

While not being ashamed of the life you’ve led doesn’t sound like much, it’s a key to turning your life around. To turning the nothing you think you are into the something you’re meant to be. It’s the moment you accept you’re responsible for the actions you took that put you in a negative situation. It’s also the moment where you refuse to take responsibility for the actions of the person or people who chose to hurt you. Most importantly, it’s the moment you finally realize you own your life and that’s truly liberating.

Enough said.

Until next time,

Calla

I’ve already taken those first tentative steps by putting Been There, Done That on Amazon. I haven’t started advertising it or pushing it in anyway. I still have one or two things I need to do before I do that. One of them is to honor my initial promise to write about my life and the lessons I’ve learned on this blog. I could say, with Dorian looming, I wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with anything that serious. I’m not a liar; so, I won’t. The truth is it’s far easier to write about where I am now than revisit where I was then. But, I’m a big girl wearing her big girl panties, so I can only procrastinate so long. It’s finally time to bite that bullet. So, here I go. Well, almost.

Before I really start writing what I should, I need to say a couple of things. First, I’m not a supporter of movements or mind sets that think vengeance and unforgiveness make everything all right. Neither of those things undo what’s already done nor do they heal those jagged gashes in the soul. I’ve walked the unforgiveness path and it doesn’t work. It only makes you someone you’d never choose to be.

However, I’m also not saying criminals shouldn’t be punished for their crimes. Don’t think that for a minute. There’s a right way to do it. One that doesn’t destroy the survivor through bitterness and hate. Again, that’s my opinion. It’s one I reached after forty years of struggle when I finally found peace. You don’t have to agree. That’s what makes life interesting…the differences between us.

The second thing I need to say is I’m not a feminist – not as the term is defined today. I do believe in equal pay, equal opportunity, and a few other tenets I won’t go into here. I know, as a woman, I’m as capable and intelligent as any man. I don’t, however, embrace some of the more radical elements of that movement. I am feministic in the sense that I believe women can do anything. Survive almost anything. Live to fight another day when they’d rather die instead. I’ve been there so many times that mindset became boring. However, it’s why I’m still alive. I couldn’t give in. There was some spark deep inside that fought to live when the rest of me wanted to die. I tie a lot of that to the fact I am a woman and to the inner strength I learned from my mother and her mother before her.

You might wonder why I’m telling you all this, and I’m not sure it’s obvious. It’s because these are the beliefs that shaped my life and made me who I am. These are the beliefs that have allowed me to move past being molested, beaten, given to other men by a well-educated, white collar husband who should have loved me and almost destroyed me instead. The list goes on. And these are the beliefs that eventually allowed me to forgive my tormentors. But, more importantly, these are the beliefs that allowed me to forgive myself.

Now, that I’ve done the set-up, I’ll start posting what I need to say in the coming blogs. I’m finally in that frame of mind where the words will flow.

Until next time.

Calla