I shared this on Notes back in the fall, and am feeling like some of us could stand to hear it now. ❤️
At 14 I got kicked out of my mother’s house and started the journey to foster care because my family couldn’t bear or tolerate my disclosure of long-term early childhood sexual abuse by my former stepfather, who was later convicted of sexual felony misconduct/abuse of his next stepdaughter. I thought I would die, but I didn’t.
At 24 I had my second of three babies, a son—and my past, which I thought was “resolved,” came roaring back. I worked hard to heal and started taking my writing seriously, stringing for local newspapers, sending personal essays to magazines and journals, writing a children’s book, editing a parenting magazine. I tried writing memoir but it didn’t work.
At 34, as a mother of three, my traumatic divorce was finalized and I became engaged to the love of my life while teaching full time in a consensus-based, nonhierarchical arts school where I learned more than I coul…