There are parts of my story I never thought I’d write.Not because I was ashamed of them but because they hurt too much to touch.
But healing, I’ve learned, asks us to stop running from the noise. And so I write. I lost my innocence before I even understood what it meant to be a child.
It was taken from me by someone who should have never been near me my mother’s boyfriend. And for too long, I carried that pain like a secret folded tight, tucked behind every smile, every silent nod of “I’m okay.”But I wasn’t okay. I was surviving. Day by day. Breath by breath. Until I learned that survival was not the same as living.
I became a mother at sixteen. Twice before I even walked across the high school graduation stage in 2005. People told me I’d never make it, that my life was over before it began. But I showed up anyway. For my kids. For my future. And I graduated on time.
The father of my children chose absence. So I chose presence.I chose to be the one who stayed up all night when they were sick.
The one who worked two jobs and still made it to parent-teacher conferences.The one who cried in the bathroom so my kids wouldn’t see and then wiped her face and kept going.I’ve been a single mom since I was sixteen years old. I’m 38 now, and I’m still standing.
My mother was a functional alcoholic always holding it together just enough in public, and unraveling behind closed doors. I grew up learning how to clean up emotional messes I didn’t make.
How to read moods like weather reports always forecasting the storm before it hit.But even then, I loved her. And that love taught me something powerful: That we are allowed to feel pain and still choose compassion.That we can forgive without forgetting. That we can heal without pretending it didn’t hurt.
It took me longer than most, but I graduated college. With kids, with trauma, with exhaustion in my bones but I did it. I kept my promise to myself. Because even when no one else believed in me, I was quietly planting roots.

And here’s what I want you to know:
Your story does not disqualify you from joy, from success, from peace.
Your scars are not signs of failure—they are proof of survival
You are not broken. You are becoming.

Yes, life hurt me.
But it didn’t end me.

I’ve learned to mother myself in all the ways I wasn’t mothered.
To speak to that little girl inside me with tenderness, to remind her she didn’t deserve what happened but she does deserve everything good that’s coming.

To anyone who’s ever felt like they were too far gone, too tired, too behind
You are not.
You are right on time
You are the hero of your own story.
And this? This is just the middle.
There is still joy ahead. Still laughter. Still magic waiting to meet you.
So keep writing.
Keep healing.
Keep becoming.

You are not your pain.
You are your power.

With all the love in my heart,
You.