Your Place

Today's Quote:
If you do not feel yourself growing in your work and your life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place.-- Orison Swett Marden

I think this is an excellent quote and instead of a normal post, (if anything I write can be classified as normal), I think I will use it as a prompt to explain my place... "Journey's End." This is a place of comfort to me, it's where I keep my soul. I read these words and recall the lessons learned and the people who taught them. I remember brutal situations and how I survived them, not with sorrow... every lesson has great value. I write so I stay centered. I could write in a diary... never showing my words to anyone, and receive the same balance. I post things here for others, because of a promise I made on December 11, 1995.

I'll make a long story as short as possible, but some things cannot be left out. Once I was a mentally and physically abused wife. That is fact... my awakening on Oct 30, 1993 altered that forever. But something that happened in the months before that transformed my life even more. I met a woman some years younger than me whose abuse was much more brutal than mine. We worked together, midnight shift... one deep look into her eyes and I knew we shared a secret. We were a great comfort to each other.

After my awakening my whole life altered, my image of self changed drastically... my abuser and I came to a place of peace and friendship. Love and respect was mutual. During this time I changed my place of employment. But I didn't forget my friend... I went back a couple of times to visit her while she was working and we exchanged letters. Her last words to me in person were that I was her hero.

She changed jobs too, and my husband finally got one, working with her... isn't life strange how it flows is such unexpected directions. She was working with the man who had abused me, who hadn't worked for over 10 yrs... but now he was completely different too. Through him we communicated, making plans to meet sometime soon. He shared with me that she was getting ready to finally leave a situation she couldn't fix and begin a life on her own. I was happy for her. She deserved a life!

Just a few short days after he told me that news, he was the one who gathered me in his arms, to tell me she was dead. Her husband killed her and then took his own life, while 5 children (4 of theirs and 1 she brought to the marriage) lay in bed, hearing heaven only knows what. The newspaper quote: "Although the children heard what was transpiring they apparently saw nothing that occurred in their parents bedroom." She was 28 years old.

My husband went with me to the funeral, then took me back later to see her headstone... I returned because I had a promise to make. Standing there I swore to her that I would tell others the things I had learned that set me free and the things that had ended her life. I had been her hope, now I had to be her voice. To stay silent would mean both our pain and her death would have no lasting impact on the world. So this blog is "my place".... my promise kept.

I was told the other day that what I had written people know by "our" age. I know the person had no intention to wound, but it did. Not badly, but I don't write for a specific age. I write for a specific ageless kind of issue.... to lift up, to remind, to comfort... I WRITE FOR TAMMY KAY HOWARD, GLENDA ALEXANDER (MAHAN), AND FOR ALL THE WALKING WOUNDED WHATEVER AGE!