My Life in a Nutshell

I am a single parent of four children. By all accounts, I should not be alive to write this piece. I say this because I know that God has a special purpose for me to fulfill and therefore the enemy has been trying to keep me from my destiny even before I was born.

I was born August 23, 1967, premature and struggling for my life soon after I took my first raggedy breath. Born to an alcoholic mother, I spent a month in the ICU for infants. Finally able to come home, I was still not out of danger. I cried constantly. My mother, to this day, admits that she put alcohol in my bottle to help me sleep.

A close relative recounts the story of how she was led to St. Louis, not even knowing where my mother resided to save me from the grips of death. She later revealed how my mom, frustrated with all of my crying, seemingly for no reason, had contemplated putting a pillow over my small body and putting us both out of misery.

Fast forward to my teenage years. As a teenager, I lived a strict life. The man who raised me was not my biological father. He was an old fashioned man; a good man as far as I could tell. He provided for his family and worked well past retirement age. My sisters and I were not allowed to attend the parties and events that our friends did. My father passed when I was sixteen and that was the beginning of life as a wild child. I wouldn’t say that I was a bad kid as much as I would say I was a kid trying to find my own way. After my father passed, I felt like I had to catch up with what I had missed out on when he was alive.

I always felt that I was the ugly duckling of me and my two sisters, so when boys and eventually men started taking an interest in me, I was thrilled. At the age of seventeen, it was nothing for me to be in the company of a twenty five year old. Years later I would learn that I was the victim of sexual abuse because these men were illegally having sex with me.

I had my first child at nineteen. At the time that I found out I was expecting, I was attending college. Not knowing the first thing about motherhood or the life ahead of me, I dropped out of college. Two years later, I had my second child. This time by the man I would later marry and go on to have two more children with. Given my strict upbringing, the man that I married would not have been a prime choice. My life with him took me through a life of co-dependency with drugs and alcohol. When my second child was almost two years old, I re-entered school and received a certificate in the clerical field. After completing the course, I was offered a job that I stayed at for thirteen years.

Which brings us to the present. Today I am the proud parent of four children; two teenagers and two grade school age children. I am a homeowner, an entrepreneur and a published author. I have survived a divorce, life without child support and other unforeseen traps that the enemy had set before me to keep me from my destiny. But if you are reading this, it means that I am living out my destiny and that is to inspire the world through my writing.