Chapter 1 Day 3

1 year

12 chapters

365 new opportunities......

To write your story.

My life is my story. I will do my best to write it well and edit it as often as needed. You see my story is filled with broken pieces, terrible choices, and ugly truths. I pray it is also filled with a major comeback, peace in my soul and a grace that has saved my life.

From the beginning... I only know what I have been told. I was born in May 1976. in Panama City, Fl. To a mother who really didn't want me. I know this because she told me when I was 8. When I was a year old she took me to Lakeland, Fl to be with a man named George. I don't remember my time with him but I did get to meet him when I was 19. He came to see me in South Dakota and told me his side of this story and how I came to be adopted. He said that he had several suspicions that she was cheating on him and it finally came to a head so to speak when he got home one day and couldn't find me. She swore to him that she had just put me in the playpen and I was asleep. Only I wasn't there and according to the neighbor I hadn't been there all day. The neighbor said that I had toddle out the door about 20 minutes after George had left for work that morning. Also noted that was about 10 minutes after some other gentleman had walked in the door. She stated that Rhonda ( my bio mom) had never looked for me at all that day. 9 hours and she never missed me. In January ( i believe) Rhonda got a call to come home because her grandfather had passed away. She brought me with her. While she was here George called my grandmother and proceeded to tell her about how I was being treated and he feared for my safety after this particular incident. Rhonda told my mother she didn't want me. (her words not mine). So in March before I turned 2 in May, my grandparents adopted me. For that I am thankful. Over the years she would come around and act like things were different especially after she had my little sister. But when I was 8 she came to our house and was sitting in the living room and I asked her why she had given me away and had kept my little sister, I was 8 and I didn't understand. I struggle to this day to understand the next words out of her mouth and they have haunted me for dang near 38 years and have affected every single relationship aspect of my life. Her exact words to me were.... I didn't love you and I don't want you. Who tells an 8 year old that.

Over the years after that my brain became riddled with the thoughts that if my own mother who gave birth to me didn't want me then why would anyone else. To this very day I struggle with that thought process.

Several times throughout my life, I tried to make a relationship work with her only to be the one hurt in the end. I have been told stories from my little sisters family that she tried to give me away to them. One of them wanted to take me but what she failed to mention to them at the time was I had already been adopted by my grandparents.

One last time in 2011 I tried to be there for her. She had cancer and was getting a treatment and had to stay in the hospital. No one wanted to stay with her. So I did, there is a lot I have left out of this story about her. One main fact is that she was addicted to pain pills like nobody's business. Her husband had left her "medicine bag" with all those pills in it. She called me every name in the book that night because I wouldn't give her that bag. And as I was leaving the next morning the phone rang... she proceeded to tell whoever was on the other end that she wished it had been them that had been there because she knew they would have taken much better care of her. I did everything she asked of me and then some except for give her that stupid bag.

A couple days later she tried to call me. I refused to answer the phone because I was still so angry with her, because in her mind no matter what I did for her it would never be enough and I couldn't handle any more in that moment. A few hours later I would live to regret that decision for the rest of my life. Because the next time my phone rang about her it was to tell me that she had been in a car accident and both her and her husband had been killed.

I was so angry maybe parts of me still are. She took so many answers to her grave with her. So many questions that I had asked that she said she would tell me one day and that one day never came. So I still get to struggle with not being good enough. Those were her first thoughts of me and her last.

This year I am committed to confronting those thoughts and overcoming them. Part of the ugly truths and broken pieces I am hoping to heal with grace.

Writing My story and Chasing my Serenity,