OUR STORY ISN’T OVER YET

You made it…you’re still in one piece and alive so you did it. Your whole life you have only had two fears. The fear of dying and the fear of losing a child. Strangely enough you always worried that “losing” them meant death but never in your wildest dreams did you think losing them while they were still alive was even an option.
Then it happened, you got yourself out of an abusive relationship never thinking that someone would be so vengeful, so hateful, so spiteful, cruel and malicious that they would turn your own sons against you with horrendous lies. The same sons that you devoted your entire life to. People would say your whole face would light up when you spoke about them. You truly without any second to think would have given your life for any of them and to this day still would in spite of the fact that your heart is broken into a million different piece. How could this have possibly happened and how did you survive your worst fear coming true? I still marvel that you are alive after the thoughts that I know went through your mind on a regular basis.
There are days that I don’t even know how you functioned. Crying non stop as soon as you closed the door to the outside world I thought for sure would either break you or you would simply run out of tears. You lacked so much sleep, going to bed sick to your stomach and waking up the exact same way when you did actually fall asleep.
You walked out the door and the world never knew what was actually going on because you smiled and only you knew what hid behind that smile. Therapy, researching, support groups, reading books and reading more books until the words blurred with the tears and you couldn’t read anymore.
I don’t know how or when but all of a sudden you had the strength that I didn’t know was possible to go on. It was like you just picked yourself up one day and “put on your big girl panties” and knew the only way to survive was to not let that “evil” take over your life.
I always knew you were a strong woman but I honestly was not sure this time you would recover from this. You would never ever take anything away from anyone who has lost a child to death…that is a pain you/I cannot possibly fathom but losing a child who is still alive and the grandchildren that have come from them is a totally different pain that has no closure. Watching your grandchildren from a distance, having mutual friends that cannot understand how or why this is even happening sending you pictures of them cannot be explained unless you are actually going through it so I know the pain you are in on a daily basis.
I am so very grateful that you have the strength that you have shown. Honestly I have never been more proud of you than these last couple of years. You have come to terms with the fact that you can’t control how evil and nasty other people are but you can control how you let it destroy you. You have learned that grandparent alienation is actually a global epidemic. It doesn’t lessen the pain but you now know you are not alone in this horrible nightmare.
You still know that someday you will see them again because you have always been the type of person that never loses hope (although I know it gets harder and harder in this world) and also never gives up. So from me to me I love you and I love the strength that you have given to us. We are alive and we now can conquer anything that comes our way because we have survived one of our two biggest fears and our story isn’t over yet!

It took me all of a nanosecond to know the most important thing I learned in my life and it was definitely a lesson. There was no thinking about it..no contemplating about all the lessons that have been taught to me. I have lived over six decades and when I say there have been dozens of lessons I have learned that would probably be an understatement. Of course going through the daily life that each of us does we certainly never think what is happening will teach us something down the road. We just go about our living either enjoying it or not. It’s not until we move on that we realize what we were taught from our circumstances.
I started by saying this took me no time at all to know my greatest life lesson but then I panicked. I thought if I write about this it makes me look like the unhappiest person in the world. So I stopped in my tracks and figured out I had to come up with something different. There had to be a lesson I learned that was positive or happy or hopeful! For days I started to write only to delete and start all over again. Why was I having so much trouble trying to come up with something…I instantly had what my true life lesson was so why was I taking so long trying to come up with another one?
I thought back through my life and realized I was trying to make something up that just didn’t exist. If I was to be truthful I would have to go back. I spent so much of my childhood and adult life trying to not believe the things my mom had told me because lets face it, she was my mom and how could she know anything? Luckily we all grow out of that and realize our moms are always there for us.
Sadly and unfortunately she was right and the greatest life lesson came from her. She told me early on that there is only one person to trust in life and that is the person staring back at you in the mirror. Of course I thought she was crazy. I had friends, family, coworkers and numerous other people I could trust in my life and apparently my mom was just a bitter woman who wasn’t happy.
Then life hit…In the last 15 years I found out exactly what she meant. Just because someone is blood does not mean they are loyal or family for that matter. We just share a lot of the same DNA. Just because someone pretends to be your friend does not mean they can be trusted because sometimes they truly aren’t happy for your happiness. The people in my life that I NEVER thought would hurt me have gone above and beyond trying to destroy me. I have found the true meaning of abuse and again shocked that the abuse was from people I gave my life for.
This is not because I am old and bitter but because other people have shown me who they are by their own actions. My mom was right and I only wish she was here to see that. When something bad happens in my life now I look in the mirror and say “you got this, you can get through anything” and when something good happens I never forget to say to myself “Good job you did it”.
This is about the best lesson I learned and although I would have liked it to be a more positive lesson, THIS was and is my greatest lesson. The person you want in your life is someone who is loyal, trustworthy and willing to help you from their heart and to never intentionally hurt you. It should be someone who is willing to give their life for you if needed. I still have hope for people and maybe even a little tiny bit of faith but when it comes down to my life these days I realize there is absolutely nothing wrong with looking in that mirror and knowing you found that person looking back at you.