My story much like me is complex and can be seen from multiple perspectives, so to be fair to all involved this will be written to give you a clear understanding that this isn’t vengeance or for shame this is the truth of my life.
There’s only us to change it, those who have endured the pain and understand that there is a better way forward for all of us. If only we could see past shame and blame and begin to understand it from all perspectives.
Isn’t it time to step out of the box and start talking about the things we’ve been forced to keep in the dark. Let’s begin thinking about each other again, it’s time to release regret and open to love.
Where has humanity gone? Christmas 2019 my mother gifted me a ancestry and genetics kit. I found one of my ancestors to be Francesco Petrarca, commonly anglicized as Petrarch, he was a scholar and poet of early Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch’s rediscovery of Cicero’s letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Italian Renaissance and the founding of Renaissance humanism. Wikipedia. For me this is an extremely personal question.
See my mother didn’t just give me pain. She gave me the best she could with what she had to work with. I was fortunate at 8 years old we moved to Bellmore Ny into this big beautiful house, we lived in the basement apartment. The schools were great I suppose yet I couldn’t focus because of everything being done to me.
The truth of it all is my mother still tries, she loves me to the best of her capability and in the best way she knows how. It isn’t perfect but now after a long journey we are still trying to find a better way forward together.
This is simply me taking back my name.
8 was a good year for me! My little sister was born and it’s when my aunt Ray and uncle Ralph (who are also my godparents) took me to Disney world as a gift for my first communion. I had the best experience and it was all about me!! I was with my two favorite people, I remember feeling so safe and loved. I was a princess.
This is where I made Disney into a safe place and it forevermore became magical to me. I have loved Walt Disney and Disney World ever since.
What I took away from Disney are the teachings that any and every story, no matter how tragic can be rewritten into something beautiful. I took the magic, wonder and excitement of it all and it helped me when things got be to find hope.
So this is my journey, this is my story, this is my real life.
I was born to a teenage mother of immigrants she married my father who is a womanizer and manipulator. My father has children in multiple spots that’s his thing… wherever he went and felt the need to not use a condom, he created children he would abandon as was done to him. I wasn’t allowed to talk about him or ask about him, when I was little my aunt Ray gave me a picture of my dad my mom ripped it up when she found it and I got in trouble.
I met my father when I was 18. He had a beautiful life and told me it was an inconvenience to drive from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to pick me up and visit with my sisters. My mom asked my dad for financial help with me for college and they got in a fight he walked away from me without helping again. This time he was living a really good life.
I was 42 years old, my father told me he left my mother because she was crazy and abusive and she was neglecting me.
In that moment I realized how evil he was. My father admitted he chose to let me endure the abuse, he left me to figure life out alone with no support or help. His only concern was his pursuit of the life he dreamed of with no regards to those he created or destroyed. He now has a wonderful career and happy life.
Simply put I looked like and reminded her of the very thing she hated… Him. I paid for it often.
My mom was a fighter she would fight anyone her fists and anger were her answer when things got tough.
I was an emotional child who said I love you way too much and wanted this daddy to come to save her. I cried all the time, I was always in the way and I walked too slow.
My mother was also diagnosed with type one juvenile diabetes when she had me, abused sick and alone with a baby I could only imagine her fear.
She told me she knew I didn’t love her when I was little, that’s the furthest from the truth. Yes I did love her I didn’t trust her. I loved and trusted my aunt Ray and she saw that as a threat. I can’t blame her for this either, according to my mother, her parents would have the kids choose favorites. They were taught this way.
In reality she doesn’t know how to properly accept or believe she is loved. Which is why she causes pain.
I have to hold my father more accountable then my mother and allow me to explain. My mother provided and did the best she could with no help from him whatsoever, not child support or medical insurance, no visitiation.
My stepfather was emotionally and psychologically, mentally abusive, we will leave this list short…I was called every name in the book, I was made to know I was unwanted, a burden, fat, slut, whore, bitch, lazy. I was told that no one wanted me around.
I remember when my aunt Ray was pregnant with my cousin my step father made sure to tell me that, I was in the way and they didn’t want me around anymore. whenever he was confronted with anything he would laugh and said he was joking or playing around.
I remember wishing I wasn’t born. I wished my mom had that abortion with me like we always said she should have, the one my dad wanted her to have. That was my first thought of dying I just wanted to go away and never come back. They were the only thing making life worth living home was hell. At least he tried to do the best he could. It wasn’t all bad. He was also fun and I could drink with him and his friends. All the alcohol I wanted he would get it for me and then his friends Guy and Joey did as they pleased.
The combination of being raised by drug addict alcoholics and there friends should frighten you. It was however my reality growing up. I went to the studios my stepdad had his friends over. I had little restrictions no one cared.
I’m not saying my mom is terrible she is my mom I love her. She is toxic. I don’t believe it’s because she wants to be, I believe it’s the only way she knows how to be. With that being said my mother loved me the best way she could and I acknowledge that. However moving forward I will no longer allow toxicity.
Don’t forget life for our parents was different they raised us how they were taught it was done to them as well. Can you see the pattern??
I love my grandfather with all that am and I’m not placing blame, he grew up an orphan in Cuba with no real knowledge of family support or love. My grandmother was younger and high in society in Cuba. They got married and left it all to start a new life together in America. My grandmother died when her youngest daughter was 9, I believe so he raised 5 good children alone while working multiple jobs to make sure they were taken care of. To me that’s incredible.
There isn’t room for blame this happened to most of us, in some way. Generational trauma is handed down and It is a mix of not understanding, not speaking of emotions, a need for control to keep your home safe, unhealed traumas, and stress mounting. They called it discipline and sometimes discipline can get out of hand. Now we know physical discipline is abuse plain and simple. It the need to harm to gain control.
I was a victim of child abuse, geberational trauma and molestation by multiple people. One was a one time occurrence by people I was left with so my mom and her boyfriend at the time could go to great adventure I was 4 or 5, One of them was constant from ages beginning around 5 or 6 lasting until I was 14 years old. This was aunt’s husband Jose who molested me. I don’t believe charges were ever brought forward.
When I was 14 years old my uncle Ralph had a dream with my grandmother holding me telling him to protect me. Soon after he noticed something wrong and took me to his sisters house and I told him the truth. My uncle Ralphie saved me from my hell.
However the following year I attempted suicide because the family had found out and people treated me as a problem and my life went on a decline.
I now understand the full impact of what childhood abuse and molestation create in a child. I cannot live in peace without bringing light to it. The truth is abuse has damaging effects regardless of whether you wish to acknowledge it or not.
Until we can speak about it honestly and understand it’s why so many of us struggle. How can we ever hope to change it for those still suffering, simply because it’s not anyone’s problem? Isn’t it all of our responsibility to do the right thing for every child?
Those who survived the trauma were blamed and misunderstood, we were made to hang our heads silently while pretending that it wasn’t killing us slowly. We had people hurt us, blame us, accuse us and then walk away and tell us it was our fault we became too much to invest in anymore.
It may sound harsh but it’s the reality, what they didn’t take a moment to consider was how it was for us, how we had no concept of reality since everyone was manipulating our minds to use us to get what they wanted. We were mere objects for desire or pleasure a nice release from the stress of life for the adults in our lives.
The roles I played were many… they enjoyed me for sexual gratification. I was used for stress relief in the physical form sometimes you just have to beat something up, a punching bag may have been too expensive.
Emotional and mental torment was always fun. Psychological warfare was another childhood home regular as well as destruction of self-worth. Neglect we can’t forget how damaging it is to be denied love and affection but be handed pain freely.
The point is here we are not learning fast enough! We’re not doing better, we’re not understanding that all the reasons I became a problem, was because of what was done to me. We can stop this for others. No one else has to suffer this trauma.
We need to be open to the perspective of a child who was abused and manipulated in every way. As that child what I needed most was to know I was worth fighting for.
Those I needed the most abandoned me and I still don’t know why. I was highly overmedicated my entire adult life until 40 and on heavy narcotics and mind-altering substances to control my major depression disorder, my bipolar disorder, my agoraphobia, my suicidal past, my cutting, my overeating to compensate for the lack of love and support in my life.
My Bipolar, agoraphobia, PTSD, MDD, anxiety, borderline, my mania, my depression and my suicidal tendencies were a result of what had been done to me in my life. Yet my bad choices became the only things my family saw when they looked at me. Time went on they stopped looking and walked away.
I still reach out but I can’t control the stories they believe or what they’ve been told. Nor do I wish to. the truth is if they cared or considered me they will understand. This is not being done in bitterness or anger.
It is being done because I won’t sit around silent while another child gets hurt or another grown woman ends her life because she was a child destroyed by the adults that were meant to protect her.
Change starts somewhere and this is my contribution.
Now a few toxic abusive relationships later because!!! When you raise a child to be a victim that child grows into a woman who is easily manipulated, victimized and abused. Again now we know better we need to do better.
So I was in some really messed up versions of love. I was highly medicated by doctors and trying to raise my kids.
I always promised would never do to them what had been done to me and I would protect them absolutely. I did good and I failed them too by allowing others to speak and treat them as they wanted to because it was all I had ever know that was my normal. I grew up like that and so did a lot of my friends I didn’t realize it was abuse. It just was what it was. As messed up as that now is.
I had lost my voice and my way and I felt the world was against me. I was trying so hard to make a better life for us and I was being stepped on every step of the way.
I just didn’t know how. I tried to ask for help but I always got yelled at or a lecture. I tried to tell people but they didn’t care. So the medications kept getting added and soon I was a zombie 18 different psych medications and pain medications. I was stuck in darkness the only time I lived was for my children when they weren’t around I was a ghost.
I was also the mom that put her children above all. I was absolutely in love, totally obsessed with them and I would fight the whole universe for them, I always have and always will. That has been a constant. My children will tell you they know they’re loved and they felt smothered. I was so afraid of anything happening to them they were my reason to live.
We all know children don’t come with a user’s manual.
In the teenage year’s I surely could have used one
We have been conditioned to treat our children as if they’re our property. Not their own people and they are rebelling against it, rightfully so. Sorry guys it’s true and someone has to advocate for these kids. Yes, their approach was painful, unnecessary, and traumatic at times for all involved.
Understand they are doing their best as well, balancing things you don’t know anything about. Think of your own life there are things you tell others and things you hold within, it’s the same with them. These young adults are here to help us end the trauma of the past and find a better way forward. We are working for the greater good yet few have had the understanding to try and bridge the gap.
You may often find you feel as if you’re speaking different languages and don’t know how to communicate anymore. If this sounds like your reality ask yourself if it’s a possibility, that you could still practice toxic parenting skills that you learned in life? I know I was so when my 18-year-old rebelled and moved out it destroyed my reality. How could my son leave home all I wanted was to make sure he was prepared for life before he set off on his journey. It wasn’t my choice and I ended up literally losing my mind and being hospitalized.
My heart was broken and I had lost everything that ever meant anything. I just didn’t realize it would be the last time I would ever be allowed in my home with my adult children or all I have ever created again.
I also realized that I had accomplished the one of things I had set out to do, I raised a child who wouldn’t let anyone mistreat him including me.
While I was devastated I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that I was proud and even smiled, man he got me good.
What I didn’t mention yet is that I am and have always been highly spiritual. So when all of this was happening with my son, I was years into my deep healing journey, I was so open and connected to love, God, to source. I was having major spiritual enlightenments and more.
So yes I was absolutely bat shit crazy and just needed to process it all, I was arguing with my adult daughter and the police were called.
That’s another story, here’s the short- they lied to a judge and said they found me rolling around outside I was not. They found me walking out my front door to go walk in nature. This is absolutely on medical record recorded by the psych nurse. The admitting nurse asked why I was rolling around outside, I said what are you talking about? Her response shook me, she stated the involuntary hold was signed because I was rolling in the dirt and grass outside. Lucky for me the officer who I first made eye contact with when I was leaving my apartment walked by at the moment, I asked him in front of the nurse. How did you find me this evening officer?
He stammered and tried to ignore me so I repeated again this time a bit louder with more force. He responded walking of your front door. Again it’s on record and I was still held and forcibly medicated although I held my tribal card and begged them.not to. rape me with their toxic chemicals. They woke me up to for 6 or more people to hold me down and inject me repeatedly with their medications regardless of the fact that it is against my spiritual beliefs and human rights.
Yet while hospitalized my main focus was making sure everything was paid and the adult children were good. Once we got out and were told I couldn’t return home because of what happened.. My world it became dark, I had no idea me having a breakdown would mean I would be thrown out of my life.
I only wished I didn’t grow up believing that love and pain were synonymous.
Luckily I didn’t have to fight this next part of my life alone. This time I had love on my side. Through It all she never left me alone Tiffany stood by my side and Helped heal me with her love. I have been blessed with my best friend. I was so lost in the dark terrified, medicated against my will, traumatized and violated. The mental hospital had destroyed me as a woman and now a scared little girl remained.
Tiffany’s love and faith in me and our love saved my life. When I left Holly Hill I was a shell of who I used to be. I had to relearn basic skills again, I was so traumatized I would ask to eat and shower.
Don’t get excited yet… Remember I had a nervous breakdown, lost my home, career, family and Tiffany quit her job and we left so that I could feel safe.
So we were legit homeless and broke I don’t know how it happened but thank you GOD!!
Thankfully Tiffany came and like prince charming picked me the psych ward Cinderella up and we started out journey in search of a whole new world, somewhere safe where I could process and understand all that had happened in such a short time.
My body damaged and broken,my spirit crushed and my heart was in pieces.
Tiffany helped me clear a path back to myself, for the first time I was safe. Her love gave me the strength to love and fight another round for my life.
Thankfully the divine was on our side every step of the way! Great spirit led the journey and brought us to Florida! We stayed in Tiffany’s parents time share for 2 weeks I could barely even walk I was so bruised and broken.
We already had a vacation planned and had tickets to the park. Since covid changed life as we know it these were booked dates, paid for prescheduled and reserved, regardless of I was in a wheelchair we decided we were going to try. The absolute kindness and love we received when we arrived In Magic Kingdom restored my hope in humanity absolutely.
We lived for a year 6 minutes from Disney world. We were healing our inner children in the most magical place on earth.