I must explain the caption above. This man I married has taught me how to laugh and made me feel safe. He taught me what unconditional love was. Something that I had never felt growing up. Many times, I gave him every reason to leave. He has suffered my depression and my self destruction.

He always said that we grew up together. Something my mother never understood. I knew what he meant. I met him when I was 20 years old and he was 23. We learned about life with all of it’s up’s and down’s. Life’s disappointments had led me to a very dark place. But he has always been there to lift me up even when he didn’t understand what depression was. We learned some hard lesson’s and made even more bad decisions, some we are still learning. Our ‘crimes’ have been our joy our sorrow and many of life’s adventures.

A month ago my husband was laid off from his job. We’ve been together for 28 years and married 26 of that. We have weathered many storms over the years from a separation that actually saved our marriage to bankruptcies, lost jobs, lost houses and cars.

To my surprise I really wasn’t worried this time. Maybe because in the last year I took a journey that lead to the very reason I am writing about today. We had been through this many times before. I know in my heart and soul, we will make it through, somehow. We always have.

By nature, I’m a worry wart. I have to control everything. And it has caused me great anxiety and 3 nervous breakdowns. I truly didn’t know any different. My mother taught me at a very young age to be angry at everyone and everything. She taught me how to worry incessantly about things that were never in my control. I had to have this control until 3 years ago, when the need to control started to fade.

I’m not saying that it vanished entirely over night. It was a process. One that I will forever battle. This was nothing I ever planned, I just didn’t have the desire or the energy to keep it up.

It started a couple months after my mother passed away. I had never realized how much control I had given her over how I lived my life. I was never a big drinker, only on special occasions or a night out with my husband or with family and friends. I would have a 12 pack of beer in the fridge for months and never touch it.

One night I had a craving to drink a beer. As I was drinking I looked at my husband and said, “I can drink and do whatever I want without feeling like my mother is hanging over my head judging me.” Then I yelled, “I don’t have to feel guilty anymore!” And this was the start of the process in letting go of every strict rule and judgement I had grown up with.

Remember I told you that it was a process that started 3 years ago. The guilt and anger I hung onto was a struggle to let go. It had been my shield. Honestly, I didn’t know how to let go or even if I wanted to. It became a constance in my life, something that was always there. I’ve always been great at condemning myself and holding on to my mistakes that I had made over the years. I went to counseling, group therapy and prayed constantly to God asking for forgiveness over and over about the same sins! But it led me to my freedom, my acceptance and forgiveness to myself.

I’m not religious, I don’t like organized religion. But 6 years ago I quit church and anything to do with it. I had been hurt and judged from the very people who proclaimed that they found Jesus’s love. I’ve always believed in God, but I couldn’t understand His love and especially not His forgiveness! It was hard for me to grasp because I had never seen it from the very person who was supposed to protect me, accept me and love me. My mother.

Just recently, something happened inside me and I’m so excited to share it! I forgave myself! And most important I forgave my mother! And in doing this, I let go of a lot of anger and pain. I never thought any of this was possible.

All of my life I had been told that my purpose on this earth was to take care of my mom, which led to a life of obligation. One that I grew to resent. I took care of both my parents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters. Which I did with a vengence, striving for acceptance and unconditional love from my mother. In the process of taking care of other people, I had never learned how to take care of me. I didn’t know what that even meant. It seemed like a very selfish thing. I continued this caretaker role into my personal relationships. Feeling obligated to help, take care of and fix.

After mom passed, my bother, 2 uncles, a cousin and some friends passed also. It was all too much to handle. I was suffering empty nest syndrome because my kids had grown into adults and no longer needed me, not in the way they once did. They still lived at home but I rarely saw them because they had started living their own lives. And I truly wanted that for them. But my husband was gone two weeks out of every month and I was incredibly lonely.

I know you are screaming…..”But how did you let go?” Because in my life, I’ve heard a few people proclaim that they too had been able to let go of anger and pain, learning to find love and acceptance in their own self. But they never said ‘how’. And I had been screaming the same thing you are right now! HOW?

For you to understand the ‘how’, I need to give you some details of my recent life choices.

A year ago, completely out of my character, I went to a bar. I was lonely, struggling with what the next chapter of my life event meant. I wasn’t there to make friends. Just some fellowship and I definitely wasn’t looking for an attachment. It was just an escape to help dull my pain.

After a couple of beers and probably a shot of tequila, a guy my age started chatting me up. I enjoyed our conversation. He wasn’t my type. He bought me a couple drinks, and probably more tequila. I got up to use the restroom. When I came out, a very tall woman who looked like she had never smiled a day in her life was waiting to kick my ass! She proceeded to tell me that the guy I was talking to was her on again off again boyfriend. And how in love she was with him.

As I apologized to her, thinking to myself that I had done nothing wrong. (and how was I supposed to know?) The guy got up and left realizing that she was ratting him out. This was the start of my bar career and a lot of destructive behavior like wrecking my car, taking drugs, benzo’s, pain pills, uppers and downers. I was detained by the police and given a DUI. I indulged myself with a tumultuous relationship with a very bad man. (And yes, I was still very much married!)

The woman outside the bathroom asked for my phone number. And I gave it reluctantly, after all I wasn’t their to make friends. And I definitely didn’t intend on putting my heart out there to be hurt. I had guarded my heart up until this point. I made sure early on in life that no one could ever hurt me so deeply as my mother had.

That woman called me obsessivly for the next three days. I ignored her phone calls. But eventually gave in to loneliness. Thinking that maybe I would give it a chance. I put my heart out and lowered the protective walls I had built.

That woman became my friend and my mission.

My mission. My project. She was something I needed to do to find my self worth. Apparently finding acceptance from someone else meant that I was an okay person. I was worth something. But I didn’t know at that time the choices I was getting ready to make in my life over that next year would bring me to today. To forgiveness and acceptance of myself………………….my peace. I have peace. I have PEACE! And it’s amazing!

The best and most dramatic of stories is still to come………………. It was my undoing. I desperately needed to heal my wounds. As I looked in all the wrong places, I could never see that it was going to take tearing down everything I had ever built up to protect myself and throw it away. I had to lose myself just to………..FIND MYSELF!