Own It!

Forty-four years walking on this earth, my shoes have carried me into several different areas, an array of different titles, unfortunately, with that experienced a multiplicity of emotions.

In this entry, I’m going to share some of my past experiences with you. WARNING: to those that never knew the things I was doing in my younger days, (i.e. family and friends), please know that my intent and purpose is not to embarrass anyone.  So if you feel can not handle excerpts of my story please don’t read any further, or respectfully read on not letting what you now know about my past life, change the way  you think of me now as I am today. Because past experiences has given me to walk with a purpose and mission in my life and my vision is crystal clear.

There are many young women, girls, teenagers standing betwixt that sign saying “go this way or go that way”.  Allow me to share my journey so that others standing there at that sign, can perhaps learn what awaits them if they choose the wrong way.  In prefacing that statement, I had the most amazing family a girl could ever ask for. In fact as I often mention, I was chosen by my mother and my father as I was adopted at the age of 5 months old. And then at 7 years old my mother remarried, and her new husband adopted me and I have the best father and mother God could’ve ever-blessed me with.  My choices I made at the age of nineteen when I moved away from the safety of a small town and all of my family, to a large city, where I knew nobody and was free to experience whatever I wanted. Imagine the first time in a candy store and you just want to eat every piece of that colorful candy and chew every piece Chiclet gum that you see around you. Everything I’ve gone through, was because I had a choice, I take ownership for my decisions, the blame of outcome falls upon myself….

when the teacher in school goes around the room in the third grade room and asks, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you recall your answer? If your of the same generation as myself you may have responded with, “I want to be a teacher, nurse or a doctor or even a veterinarian”.  I didn’t raise my hand and say “I want to be a drug addicted, whore, a rape victim, a single parent, homeless, an emotional and physically abused wife, left with scars so deep that no other human can visually see when I grow up.”  No that was not my dream life, but it became my reality.

As a season turns, it’s not because of the date that you realize the season changed. You visually see a change.  You feel the climate shifting, you hear new things in the atmosphere. Birds begin to chirp or you notice the silence as the birds take to a new habitat for the colder season.  Experienced people or as I would look at it, when my mom and dad and me would stack wood and bring several logs into the basement while that was in the early fall months. As a child, I could not for the life of me understand why they had me out there doing that when it was warm outside and obviously this smart kid knew we didn’t burn wood in the summertime or even in the fall for the most part. Now as an adult I understand with knowing that a season will eventually change, there is preparation that must come with the changing season. I had no idea growing up we had a very nice large wood burning furnace that heated our beautiful lake front house all winter long where it would reach well below zero many days.  Now i find myself in this month of September, taking down the summer deck things and umbrella’s and soon the trampoline. And they question my sanity by asking, “Mom you know we can still jump on the trampoline in the winter! Why do you need to take it down?”.  They don’t understand that my answer was to protect it against those harsh elements that will soon come, that way you can enjoy it for years to come. Almost like clockwork with every answer to my responses they reply “well why can’t we just wait, it’s not snowing yet and i want to jump!” As I turn around, annoyed by the repetitive questions the corner of my mouth turns up and i softly say to myself “I get it Mom and Dad, metaphorically I understand”.

My next few pieces I will write over these few weeks, will pertain directly to those above mentioned experiences “I chose” to put myself in and somehow I made it out, I made it over those mountains. The main key I want to leave with you today is, FIGHT for yourself! You are worth a championship fight.

• Step 1: You must first own it.  To fix it you must first open your hand grab that issue, ball it up in your fist and say to yourself “I own this, I will not blame anyone else for my choices I’ve made, nor blame them for the outcomes.”

We will walk through this, step by step….Until next time, continue to LIVE while harvesting your own life lessons
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Peace & Blessings, Deborah