You are an inspiration in the way that you have turned your life around and you have not allowed your past (horrific as it was) to define who you are. I am smiling with you …



Several years ago while I walked a mall, an old man implored me to, “Smile.”

My ever-behaving inner child responded at his command, making the corners of my mouth turn up. At that moment I realized my sad pathetic life was in plain sight for all to see.

Though I took great steps to conceal the pain, mistakes and horrendous abuses that made up my existence, all anyone needed to do was peer at my face, gaze into my eyes. This gentleman couldn’t comprehend the actual web of horrors that entangled me.

Unwanted, neglected, and abandoned by my mother and father. At 16, as my parents divorced and married people whom I had never before met, my newly introduced stepfather’s actions cast me to the winds. Forced to find a place to live, a friend’s family took me in, but the father happened to be a pedophile. Oh, not so…

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