MOTHERHOOD AIN'T ALWAYS EASY

I can't ever remember liking, let alone loving, the skin I am in. 

Even before I became riddled with scars, both above and below the surface.

They teased me nonstop from as far back as I can remember, about everything, because I was always the new kid in town.  And it didn't help that I had one of those fathers who never once called be pretty, or beautiful, or his little princess, or anything else that would be considered kind or 'fatherly'.

My mother complimented me once, on my looks, I guess... when she told me I was prettier than my older sister. 

I left her room wondering what she told my sister about me.

Even the boys treated me like meat.  The abuse I was enduring at home was like a beacon to them, and each and every flaw was theirs for the plucking.

It wasn't until I had my son... that I became determined not to grow bitter because of it, because of the abuse, the neglect, the teasing, or the scars that riddle my body, or because of the people who put them there, or the folks who stood back and let it all happen.

No one tries to save the ugly girl, who is just pretty enough to get all the wrong kinds of attention.

That scars too.

So many scars, that riddle a body which can no longer handle the barrage of chemicals our industrialized water and food provides.  I imagine my innards are as scarred as they feel.

You see... the honest to God truth is... it's been a battle, every second of my life... to survive, to thrive... as best I can, for a son who didn't ask for any of it.

His father's failures are scars I carry too... as I know I am responsible for choosing such a deplorable human, such a critically damaged man to be the father of my child.  But in a world full of barbarians he had seemed a normal choice.

That's the thing about habituation to abuse - it resets all of your baselines, all of your 'instincts' for survival, even if your brain doesn't tell you exactly why it's doing what it's doing.

Yet through it all I have made a beautiful relationship with my son, a man of integrity and honor, a man that makes me incredibly proud to be called mom.

And the truth is I would do it all again, suffer the decades of torture and abuse, just to stand here today, as riddled with scars as any woman can be, just to call him family.

The years of sacrifice I put in have all been worth it.  Each sleepless night, each 17 hour day, each mad dash with everything we own in tow...

This life has been so incredibly hard, and through it all my son has been my guiding light, the reason I want to stay, no matter how dark the night becomes.

Life has been so incredibly cruel to me, any sane person knowing my tale would have to agree, and yet... it has been so unbelievably kind in the love and care and support I receive from my son.

I am only alive today, and strive to be healthier every single day, because of his love.

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how," Friedrich Nietzsche once said.

And if my life is any evidence I have to say it is absolutely true.

Namaste,
The Storyteller


Happy Mother's Day! 

(Posted at 7:15 pm 04/30/2026)

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