#56 My Mother's Inheritance?

It is difficult to separate my mother’s experience from my own when I look at my view of the world.

My mother’s childhood was filled with loss, sickness, poverty, and insecurity. Her mother died when she was just 7 years old and she tried to care for her two little sisters, but the Children’s Aid Society had to step in and remove them all from my Grandfather and put them in an orphanage for several months.

My father got sick when I was 7 years old and we left a very comfortable military life to live in broken down farmhouses filled with bugs, spiders, and dirt; without electricity, heat or bathrooms for the next 7 years. I was physically and sexually abused by people who should have been protecting me from these things. (I don’t know if my mother was abused or not.)

But she constantly told us that, “life isn’t fair,” and “expect that there is always a disaster coming around every corner and you won’t be disappointed,” and “we are not as good as other people so know your place and stay in it.”

Maybe because I was only 7 when things got really bad for our family, I swallowed these toxic messages like they were the gospel truth. I worry all the time, that whatever is happening, is the beginning of some awful catastrophe. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I know that I am not as good as/ as smart as/ as nice as/ as brave as/ everyone else I have ever met.

I am lonely, don't like myself and I am usually scared to death!