Have you ever been told that you are going to be crazy? Just as crazy as your mother? Think about it from my eyes, I knew exactly how crazy she could be far better perhaps than anyone as everyone else in her life had places to go to escape the wrath of my mom but I did not. I received this phone call at 7:30 in the morning just before I got on the bus to go to school. She informed me that she had heard from a reliable source that mom was locked up in the mental ward and she was. Ever sit and wait for crazy to come, what would I do, how would I react? Would I grab my head like mom, would I look at others as strangers? Would I no longer no my mom, dad, or Dave? If I cried would that mean that I was going crazy? I stood frozen in my inner being to reach out, to talk, to move as I did not know what movement or sound would make me go crazy. So many questions and only nine years old.

My mother was on locked wards at the University of Minnesota. Years prior I had been with my mother when she had her first nervous breakdown. I had seen “crazy” with my own eyes and it was not pretty. She spent years back and forth in and out of mental institutions. The electric shock treatments left all of us as strangers in her eyes. There were no counselors to tell us what was ok and what to expect. We were only left with unanswered questions. Can you imagine having your mother look at you as a total stranger when she has lived in the same house as you have? She shoved me away with the look of horror in her eyes, she did not want me anywhere near her.

At the age of six I became a victim of incest and later had three different perpetrators. The people who should have loved me did not. The people that should have protected me did not. This all lasted until the age of fourteen. I had to weave a childhood out of incest, mental illness, alcoholism, and drug addiction. My brother was an alcoholic by the age of fifteen and my uncle that lived on our place was also an alcoholic. My mother suffered from mental illness and drug addiction which led her to try and kill me. There was no one for me to turn to with the load of secrets I had to carry. I did not have a healthy working definition of what normal was or should be.

Nights were filled with fear and the days were filled with trying to survive the wrath of my mother when she was around. My mother did not know how to love or protect us as children but she was a master in using us and even sucking the life out of everyone around her. She used to make me watch her with other men and later made me promise to not tell dad about her affairs. It was I that did eventually tell my dad about her affairs.

The longest journey of my life was taken when I was forced to deal with all the years of abuse not just as a child but from all the failed marriages I had gone through. The journey was long and painful and frightening but it was the best journey I have ever taken. To learn who you are when you never had time to figure out who you were was like finding yourself for the first time. I had to learn to nurture myself and learn to love myself. It was I who had to look at me and tell myself that I was a worthwhile person, a person worth loving. Most children grow up knowing this and never have to question it. I found an inner peace and realized that God was with me every step of the way and gave me the grace and wisdom to survive and go from being a victim to victorious. It was not that God was not there for me but rather I had not trusted that God was there for me. I thought God cheered on only the sin free and the wealthy and the best dressed. I had to learn that God loves us all and it is God that will judge each of us at the end of our time. There is no one without sin and each of us is worthy of love and God loves each one of us if we let him.