Footsteps To Freedom

Before I got help, that I knew I needed to work through my life issues, I often wondered why things happened to me and why I felt the way I did about certain situations. I could not understand why I made the same mistakes and error in my judgement. I could not be that stupid. It was not until I did the work and sought the help did, I realized my adulthood manifested when I was a child. The abuse I experienced, the domestic violence in my home as a child, the separation of my parents and always moving, no solid foundation proved to be all a part of my manifestation.

I never wanted to be a person who was insecure and always afraid. I never wanted to be that woman that made the men in my life a decision instead of an option. I thought I needed a man to make me whole, to make me a woman. I settled and dummied down to be with men who were never my equal. The ACE I experienced made me think I deserved the beatings. I always equated sex with love because I did not know any better. Your father should be the first man in a daughter’s life and a mother is supposed to be the first woman in a son’s life. My father was not there in my formidable years, not because he did not want to be, but because his alcoholism would not allow him to be the father, he wanted to be. I learned things from what I saw and what I saw was chaos in my family dynamic, therefore, chaos is how I lived.

I never wanted to be a survivor of intimate partner violence but as I did my work and started to research and understand ACE’s it felt inevitable that my life turned out exactly as it was supposed to.

But when you know better, you do better. I did my work, entered therapy, and spent years unlearning things that were simply wrong. Medical News Today described “an ACE  as a negative or potentially traumatic Trusted Source event that occurs before a person reaches 18 years of age. ACEs can damage a child’s sense of safety, stability, or bonding.

Examples may include:

• abuse, which can be emotional, physical, or sexual
• neglect, either physical or emotional
• domestic violence
• substance misuse by a member of the household
• divorce or separation of parents or caregivers
• mental illness of a member of the household
• having a member of the household go to prison

Associated risk factors:

• living in under-resourced or racially segregated neighborhoods
• frequently moving to new homes or areas
• food insecurity”

There is help for us who have an ACE. Please seek the help you need to become the person who were born to be. Get informed. Do the work and start living a peaceful life.