Welcome to My World

To everyone who is following my blog and taking time to read my posts, I am very touched and grateful.

When I started this blog a week ago, I intended for my first post to welcome you to my blog and to tell you what it’s about and why I’m writing it. But then my son Lance got robbed at work, and my thoughts were all about him, and then my thoughts went to my dad, who rescued me from my mother’s abuse, and to my friend Sharon, who was murdered by her estranged husband 12 years ago. So here I am, 7 days later, finally writing what was meant to be the first post. Here goes …

Welcome to I Survived a Murder Attack — My Family Didn’t. Here, over the next weeks and months and years, I will expose the dark secrets of my past as well as the life experiences — both past and present, both bad and good — that have deeply affected, and continue to deeply affect, me and my family.

The purpose of this blog is not to gain sympathy; it is to share with others what I’ve experienced and learned. I have never felt sorry for myself for the severe emotional and physical abuse I suffered as a child at the hands of my mother nor for the rape, stabbing, degration, and beatings I endured from men in my adult life. I would never say “poor me.” The only thing that might bring me to my knees in self-pity would be if my husband or my child were killed. A loss of that magnitude would shatter my world like nothing else has been able to. But I’ll be damned if I am going to feel sorry myself for any other reason!

What it comes down to is this: I am not the first or last person to have experienced child abuse, rape, domestic violence, brutality, or a murderous attack on my life. I am not the first or last person to be betrayed, mistreated, and rejected by family members. All of us have suffered some sort of pain in our lives.

I have known mothers who were grief-stricken because their child broke a leg, suffered a concussion, or sustained some other injury while playing football when my husband Ronnie was a coach. As an event planner, I have worked with brides whose worlds came crashing down around them because the flowers for their centerpieces weren’t the right colors or weren’t available, convinced that the most important day of their lives was now ruined. I have comforted friends who’ve lost children to drug overdoses and loved ones to cancer, automobile accidents, and other tragedies. I have sat with a close friend whose child was stillborn.

Every person’s struggles, every person’s pain, every person’s feelings are valid. Who are we to judge what’s worth losing sleep over, or crying about, or fretting over, or talking about. Because if something happens that crushes you, it crushes you. But what crushes you need not destroy you.

I have not been destroyed by the crushing events of my life because I have not allowed myself to be a victim. That is one of the reasons I am writing this blog — to show other people that whatever  devastating blow life might deal you, it doesn’t have to destroy you. You don’t have to be a victim of the circumstances of your life. You can be the victor of your own life.

I didn’t always know that, and it took a long time and a lot of hard knocks and hard work to figure it out. I have had many people do very bad things to me, and I have done some bad things myself. I am not a perfect person, and I am a work in progress. But because of my strong spirit and my capacity to love and to be loved, I have become a good, loving, and lovable person.

The other thing I’ve realized is that I didn’t get here alone. No one does.

For nearly 20 years, I’ve had the love and support of a good man — my husband, Ronnie. My son Lance is the light of my life. Other loved ones and close friends have been loving and supportive as well.

Since May of this year (2012), I’ve also been in intensive therapy with a world-renowned psychiatrist who is guiding me on this journey to recover emotionally and to empower me to move forward and take away the power from those who try to destroy me. I just wish I would have found him sooner.

So this blog is not an exposé or a pity party. It is a platform for sharing, learning, healing, and transforming lives — mine, my family’s, and hopefully, yours.

Thank you for taking this journey with me.