It Isn't So Bad, Afterall...

Ok so I spent this past weekend with my parents, and I want to discuss something that my dad and I had a conversation about. We were talking about people, and depending on how they were raised affects the person that they grow up to be. My dad said this:

"What happens to a person does not make them who they are. What makes them who they are is how they learn to handle it."

This is something that I strongly believe and I am going to tell you why.

Most people look at me, and would think I grew up in an average household, with a normal middleclass income and a 'perfect' family. They are wrong. I grew up with divorced parents. I lived with my mother until I was ten. My mother is an alcoholic. This doesn't mean that I had a horrible childhood and it does not mean that she was always drunk, but we moved. A lot. I stayed in homeless shelters a few times, I can't remember all the boyfriends my mom had, and we were definitely not rich.. Most of my clothes came from the secondhand store. I saw my dad every other weekend, something I was always excited for.

Now, when I say my mother is an alcoholic, it does not mean that she was always drunk! She went through sobriety phases, and drunken phases. When she divorced, she would drink. When I was nine, she got another divorce.. Which pushed her over the edge. This is when I really start to remember her drinking. In the end, she lost custody of me and my sister Deidre due to drunk driving and child endangerment. This was 2 days after I turned ten, and also happened to be Valentine's Day, and a day I will never forget.

My sister and I spent the night in a police station. Deidre sang me to sleep, and my brothers step mom came and picked us up sometime in the middle of the night. The next morning, my dad came and rescued us, and we were on our way to Utah!

Unfortunately, the custody battle wasn't easy, and my mother fought, tooth and nail. My sister and I both had to testify against her in the trial- one of the hardest things I have ever done. How hard it was to, at 10 years old, convict my own mother.. I will never forget the look on her face.

During this time, she was not the most consistent at contacting us.. Months would go by before we would hear from her. She didn't call on my birthday, something that, as a child, I didn't understand. I thought she hated me.

As I grew older, I resented her for those things that she put me through as a child. How could a mother do that? How could she, the person who gave birth to me, who watched me grow, treat me in such a way?

I will not lie to you-I wanted to be done. I did not want to deal with my mother and her inconsistancy anymore. However, she was my mother, and no matter what she did, I would always love her. I kept in contact, and slowly, things began to get better. We now keep in contact through Facebook and texting, she owns an antique store, and is married to a great guy named Kevin. She is doing wonderful, and it feels so good to see her doing so good.

Now, like I said earlier, people look at me, and they would not think that this was my childhood. I will tell you, I did not include some of the horrors of my childhood, simply because they are too painful to talk about.

I have heard people say many times that they are the way they are because of their childhood or how they are raised. This is not true. I had a very different upbringing than most, I had depression and anxiety, I had stress induced acid reflux from a very young age. I didn't let this stop me. I wanted to be successful and happy, and I did not want that lifestyle for my children. I had counseling for my emotional issues-a few times.

I was not going to let my childhood determine who I was. Lucky for me, I had the help I needed and was able to overcome this. I chose not to let those things make up who I am. That doesn't mean it didn't play a part in who I am, it definitely made me a stronger person emotionally. I learned so much about who I want and do not want to be. I am grateful for my childhood. It made me strong.

I wish that everyone could see their situations as I do, not as a bad thing, but as something to learn and grow from, as something to be taken and made positive. I am so happy that I was able to do this, as were all of my siblings. We grew from this, and learned, and we have all become strong and successful people. We chose that because "What happens to a person does not make them who they are. What makes them who they are is how they learn to handle it."

Thanks Dad.