Published in segments beginning January 1st, 2026

From as early as I can remember, mom used to tell me regularly, and through gritted teeth, “You are just like your grandmother!” I didn’t know her, I had never met her, and I virtually knew nothing of her- except that based on the anger in my mom’s voice when she would accusingly say these things to me, the one thing I did know was that I would rather be anything at all except to be like her. I loved my mom and only ever wanted her to love me in return, though at so young an age, there was little to nothing that I knew how to DO to get her to love me though I would ultimately spend every moment of her life until she drew her last breath trying: still in the end, I would fail miserably.

What I did very quickly figure out was that my Daddy was completely over the moon about me, and I had to do nothing at all to earn his love, and he only ever smiled when he looked at me; in his eyes, I could do no wrong.

My parents had lost Daddy’s namesake not long before I had come along from what was called a “crib death”. And had been discovered early one morning.  They were both nearly inconsolable in their grief.

When I had come along so shortly afterwards, Daddy would not allow me to sleep alone in a crib at night but insisted that I be cradled in bed next to him every night, so that he could feel my breath and would instantly know if anything were to go wrong in the night. This logically didn’t sit well with mom, most especially given the fact that they both knew she had named me after his ex-girlfriend, whom she was still clearly having some very unhealthy memories about and feelings toward.

Mom had at some point simply made up her mind that we were all going to move across country, and leave all of our relatives, and everyone else we knew to start a new life where (this was her rational), so that they could both earn so much better an income on the West coast as opposed to in the “poverty stricken South”.  Daddy would have none of it, and I’m sure he knew her true reasons for wanting to pick us all up and get out of Dodge, so to speak.  Daddy always loved Mom and only had eyes for her from the moment they met, and he never looked back.

Truth be told, they were both drop-dead gorgeous, and being able to choose anyone they wanted, they had chosen one another; still, there was never to be a fairytale ending to the story for anyone in our family, even though we were together until the end.

On one fine day, not unlike any other I’m sure, while Daddy was off to work, Mom collected their children and her Mother, and packed us all up in the station wagon and simply left a note for Daddy saying that if he wanted to stay, he could stay, but if he wanted to live with his wife and children, then she would get word to him where he could find us once we got there.  

Daddy was a genuine man’s man, and was not about to be lead around by the nose by any woman, no matter how much he loved her, nor how beautiful she was, but... as soon as Mom had called to give him our new whereabouts, he immediately began sending most of his paychecks to her so that we would be well provided for, and he had moved out of our home, and in with one of his siblings family.

It had eventually taken me not a few years to come to what has only recently become the most obvious of all potential answers to a seemingly simple question which I had been asking God for decades. Although the answer itself was not a simple one by any means, God’s answer would prove to be the only thing that would have allowed me to keep moving forward for much longer; I had almost lost all hope of ever knowing anything that even remotely resembled a “normal” life.

If there had been a button, (I often mused), that I could simply push and it would have just put me out of my misery, and which would be neither bloody: gory, or which would have in any way traumatized anyone else- I was reasonably certain that I would have pushed it.

Although I had contemplated the traditional methods used for such a thing, I had always found a reason not to take those steps thinking that I was just a coward, and afraid of the pain of it all. I’m not at all sure why that worked in preventing me from going to sleep and not waking up, since I had long been trained through abuse of all kinds to build up a ridiculously high tolerance to pain. 

I had, however, never been able to escape the pain in my heart, and in my mind of knowing that my own mother didn’t love me; ending my life seemed for me a far less traumatic thing- in the grand scheme of things.

And so it was- that as I routinely became so completely overwhelmed with the life  that I lived inside my corrupted brain, and felt the pain in my severely damaged heart (which eventually led to both a five-day long heart attack, and multiple strokes), but more on that later; I would often cry out to God saying WHY GOD!? I know you haven't caused all of this, but I also know that nothing is able to touch me, that doesn’t first have to me- through you! Yes- I think I did realize that I was accusing God of cruelty in pointing out that though he could stop my mom from doing the things she did, as well as the things that would follow, and yet-- he did not; neither did he ever see fit to answer any of my questions- until one day, without warning- he did.

The long sought out moment finally came on a day that was seemingly not unlike any other- except that at that point I had been traveling the United States alone, for over ten years and had trudged through every kind of cold, heat wind, and wave, with only myself and the God I love more than my next breath,  without whom I would be terrified to go on; and yet in that moment I was entirely unsure that I could go on.  Suddenly I saw myself raising my arms into the air, and raising my voice to God- shouting... Why God!? Please tell me WHY!? What did I ever DO to so PISS YOU OFF!?

Suddenly, and without a moment of delay, I heard his answer LOUD and CLEAR; and this is precisely what he said:

No living being, situation or circumstance exists in isolation but is instead affected by many other variables which will ultimately factor into all that we are to become; as much as we might wish it were otherwise- none of us exist separate from situations, circumstances, and events that take place outside of ourselves.

“No man is an island entire of itself” John Donne

Although we were all originally created and known by God even before he had placed us into our mother's womb, who we are, and all that we are to become is not created in a vacuum

I loved BOTH of my parents as much as any child loved their own, and yet somehow, I still loved Daddy MORE. I could not help but forgive everything Mom had ever and would ever do to me from the point of my birth to her passing, even unto this very day.

I had made excuses for her behavior for as long as she lived, and I suppose that I still do- often revisiting in my mind- the horrors that I knew she had personally needed to overcome since her dad who had abandoned her mom and siblings, leaving her, and her most socially functional brother... to support the whole brood that was her family - alone.

None of them, (to my knowledge), ever knew, nor wanted to know anything about God, or his people, the body of Christ- who might have been both willing, and able to help them. In time things had only gotten worse for mom because of all of the “assets” that her mom had determined that she possessed-by way of my mom (given her genuinely remarkable beauty) ...

my grandmother had begun to corral a sordid collection of local men who had verbally “taken notice of mom”, and her own mother began arranging “dates”. for mom - her youngest daughter.

How is it possible then, that even from my birth, I had somehow reminded mom of her own mother to the point that she would begin telling me that I was “just like her” with face awash in hatred, and voice filled with venom from my earliest memory?

In the sum total of my childhood- The only photos taken of me by my mom was one of me crying with a disturbingly swollen, red face, looking to be slightly more than a year old.