So many times. Too many times. More years than anyone should give-and lose. With each try, with each step the rungs on my ladder fell away. I tumbled down and landed at the bottom, albeit not the very bottom. There was always a subfloor. Sadly, the basement below always waited to greet me.

I took another breath.

Each time I fell harder and harder, this spark within my soul would not let me meet my basement-bound demise. My soul obliged and I took one more breath. From within I managed to find sticks for timber and stones for insuring that spark could and would light the fire that never rested, and always smoldered within me. I didn’t know that later, it would light my way. I needed to take another breath.

“You were a mistake and we were going to abort you. We can’t love you until you change. Little girl, LOOK at what you wrote! Get over here, sit beside me and read your diary back to me NOW. You are really SOMETHING! I don’t care if you live or die.”

Take a long, deep breath…

A mother’s and father’s words, spoken to me ad nauseam. Their voices, the deplorable demands and horrific, rancid statements poured a cold, weighted blanket over my head. My soul shut down. It was like a light switch on a timer turned on- to turn off my reaction- until my soul signified it was safe to allow the shame to be replaced by intense anger. As the flicker became a flame, I felt strong enough to repeat my manifest; I will never become like them. The more they attempt to destroy me, the less I will back down. Yes, I fell down, but this glow from within lit a path to higher ground. Next time they will not step on me and stomp out my tenacity. I will go on and be me. There will be another chance for them to take me on but I WILL hammer on.

I took even one more breath, accompanied with the promise I’d made to myself; I will NEVER become like them. No matter what.

For more than 30 years and too many tears their rejections became a mainstay; the only consistency they and I shared. Their hatred towards me was the smorgasbord that fed their misdirected anger. For them it brought revenge. For me it brought 40 years of therapy, 3 types of eating disorders, 3 attempted suicides, and a determination to never become them.

I must take one more breath. These inhalations are becoming a life-saving endeavor.

For years I wished my mother dead. She forced my child and adolescent psychiatrist father to participate in my abuse. You could say that she abused him as well. Then my sinister sister joined in. How dare I had the audacity to ever have been born. I took a piece of her pie. She wanted to be their pride and joy; their ONLY pride and joy. Like Cinderella, I was banished to my bedroom. “I don’t even want to look at you! Go to your room.” Like a soldier at war, I dropped to my knees and crawled away. Her nasty gaze was a flurry of RPG’s precisely aimed in my direction. Crushing my soul like a bug wouldn’t suffice; she wanted me to never have been. I needed to vanish from her view-and her life.

She needed to go away. She needed to stop taking breaths.

Over the years, as my therapy kicked in and I checked out of the lives of my birth family. I eradicated them all from my being. I wanted to have as many children as possible so I could undo my childhood as many times as possible. Along with a husband who loves me beyond more than I will ever understand, and our five incredible children, my hatred turned to apathy. The more hatred that flowed out of my soul, the more room I had for love. And for life. And I somehow knew that the best final step in healing was to reach out to others to give them what I knew they needed; a match to light the fire they never knew they had. A blog with well over 100 posts and a book followed. Over 20,000 abuse victims visited my Facebook pages to find hope.

Each breath was a reminder I was a survivor.

Although I had finally evicted her from my head, her voice continued to echo heinous atrocities within the walls of my heart. I thought my mother would never die. “Not even God wants her” was my reaction when I reminded myself that one day even her voice would be deadened. Like the heavy door closing on a hurricane shelter, a simple gust of wind brought me to revisit the destruction from her hurricanes. Somehow my house was strong enough that shingles blew from my roof yet the walls of my entire being remained standing. Not even pictures of my newfound life that was worth living were shaken from the nail secured into my walls. The china in my antique cabinet didn’t even shake.

No more shaking accompanied the breaths that flowed easily- finally! My hope replaced her hatred. I peeled off the pain like a ski jacket on a scortching summer day. The curtains flew open and like a mad hornet, she flew out.

Two days before Christmas, the lights on my tree blew out along with my breath. God DID want her. She took her last breath and I lost mine. I also lost my gravity. Should I have tried one more time? Now I would never really know. It hurt to breathe. For me she died years ago. The many years of therapy that were the shovel for me to bury the last of her fell away. This wasn’t the end I thought and hoped it would be.

As hard as I tried it became hard to initiate another breath.

Miraculously, my little flame that could, DID! My little spark became a flame. When my breath returned, something unexpected happened. Her death was also the death sentence for my self-hatred that had remained woven into the fabric of my soul. But still I wondered what would have happened had I gone back one last time before she took her last breath. What if I stayed long enough to care for her in her old age? Perhaps she had softened, and would have accepted me. Would she have apologized for crushing my soul? What if I let her go and realized I didn’t need to revisit the queries that ended with a big question mark?

The exhalation of her last breath was the bellows that turned my spark into a roaring bonfire. She was reduced to dry kindling.

While I learned to care for myself, I gave her memory the space to grow old without the self-imposed pressure to have taken care of her when she failed to take care of me. This never happened before her last breath.

With her last breath came the truth I will forever hold onto with a deathgrip. Now it is clear to me she DID help me. Her last breath gave birth to my new beginning. With a full, intentional breath, I let her go without regret that she will be forever 6 feet under ground and lie still forever more.

Her final breath brought closure that she never needed me to care for her. It brought my realization that her refusal to care for me was the gift that made me who I am! She tried to bury me but never knew I was a seed. She was unwittingly the fertilizer that nurtured my tenacity, leading to artistic talent, song writing, and a book about all the things she taught me to never become. That final breath breathed life into me. I am finally free to live my productive, gratitude-filled life.

One final chance to release her wrongs and embrace my rights. Her ending wrote my new beginning-all with her last breath.