When Fighting Is All You know...A Journey From Grief To Victory

I’m long overdue for a moment of reflection. In my last post, So Maybe I’m Clinically Depressed But I Sure Am Happy To Meet You, I shared with you how lost I’ve been feeling, how uncertain I am in my own existence, and how unsure I’ve been in regards to my arrival here. Yet, I still haven’t committed to doing the work. So I thought now would be a good time to retrace my journey.

I celebrated my 31st birthday last month. I enjoyed the company of my loving husband, my three amazing children, a few of my most loyal clients, and one of my favorite couples. It was everything I could have hoped for. I hadn’t smiled so much in a very long time. In fact, I noticed that in the moment too. It felt great and on that day I realized just how blessed I truly am. I thought of how different my life is currently than just 5 years ago. I thought about how I had gotten to where I am. I reflected on the transition of being a single mother to my now 10-year-old, Sanaia, marrying the love of my life, acquiring four bonus sons, and lastly birthing two more children. Through my reflection I realized the greatness of my own strength and perseverance.

My thought process began with the reflection of prior birthday celebrations. That thought alone left me to quickly understand just how traumatic my life had been. I hope that you’ll journey with me. I ask that you make a conscious decision to set aside judgement and aim to view my journey from a lens of understanding. Here we go:

I toured the Bay area for my 30th birthday. My husband was born and raised in Deep East Oakland. All of his family still resides there. It was actually the first time I met all of the major influences of his upbringing, including his mother. I met a few of his closest cousins and one of his aunts at our wedding a year prior. My husband saw to it that we experienced so much of the area in just a few short days. It was all around a beautiful experience, but I loved the people most! It reminded me so much of home. Obviously not from a scenic stance as the great plains of Nebraska don’t compare at all to the mountain peeks, ocean views, or infrastructure of the Bay area. It was the closeness and love of his family that resonated with my heart. My 30th birthday was for sure one to remember!

I then reflected on my 25th birthday and the chaos of my life at that time. Sis, my 25th year of existence could’ve killed me, in more ways than one! Please proceed with a double dose of grace as homegirl (me, I am homegirl) was out of control. I was in a toxic relationship at the time. There were seldom moments of harmony and the frequent dysfunction often ended in physical abuse. I remember being on crutches once as my boyfriend deemed it necessary to forcefully slam my body onto the pavement. The swelling in my knee was so severe that I couldn’t bend it. Normal function, such as walking, was nearly impossible for almost two weeks. The arguments were often a result of his infidelity. I remember feeling depressed then, but more than anything it depleted me of my self-worth. I often felt like maybe I was to blame. Maybe there was just some area that I was falling short in that encouraged this behavior in him.

Ladies, abuse, in any form, is unacceptable! It isn’t a result of your shortcomings, and you deserve so much more than that! There was absolutely nothing I could have done to have kept that man faithful and kept his hands off of me. It’s who he was at the time. I pray that the last six years have birthed something new in him as well. I wish that I would’ve left the first time, but I didn’t. The abuse went on for so long I felt deep down in my being that one of us wouldn’t survive the fight. A part of me knew that I deserved better. As I reflect I often wonder why I didn’t love myself. A woman who loves herself doesn’t accept anything less than love from her partner. Abuse and love can not coexist!

As if this wasn’t enough stress in my life at the time I had also spent the last couple years trafficking a little paraphernalia. A couple months before my 25th birthday one of the loads that I was responsible for transporting didn’t make it to its destination. We don’t have enough time to unpack the complexities of that situation, but you’ll get a bit of an understanding here shortly. My abusive boyfriend owned a nightclub at the time. I insisted on a celebration. My closest friends and family joined me on a party bus excursion around the town. It was a blast! I was wasted! Afterward my sisters and I hit my boyfriend’s nightclub. I spent the rest of the night with my hand inside my handbag with a death grip on my 9mm Ruger. I prayed that somehow God would work a miracle. I hoped that we’d safely dodge the drug dealers and their goons that were openly making their threat to us known. (I’ve really oversimplified this situation here. The shit was theatrically intense!) This wasn’t the life that I wanted to live. I wanted more for myself. I wanted more for my family. I wanted more for my child. The recklessness ended there. I severed meaningful relationships. I knew then that in order to endure what was to come I had to let go of the pieces that made my prior lifestyle so easily accessible. That meant letting going of people I loved. It was selfish yet sacrificial. It was essential to my evolution. Three months later I relocated to Dallas. The day after our move, we celebrated Sanaia’s fourth birthday at American Girl by picking out a new baby doll, Serena, and a dinner at Pappadeaux. She ordered her usual mac and cheese and alligator bites. As time has gone by we’ve blossomed here, but the first few years were tough for both Sanaia and I.

My father was murdered four days after my 21st birthday. I remember going drinking with friends every weekend. Nights would end in unbearable pain. I’d cry uncontrollably. I just couldn’t seem to be able to drink the hurt away. I struggled with forgiveness. I hadn’t forgiven my father prior to his passing. I couldn’t forgive myself for holding such a grudge. There was just so much that my 21 year old mind couldn’t understand. Growing up my father wasn’t around much. He was always in and out of prison. I didn’t understand how he could love us so little as to not be around. It’s an awkward feeling to be so sure of something yet so uncertain at the same time. I knew my father loved me yet I felt it wasn’t enough. I drew some correlation between his love for me and his choices. Why wasn’t his love for us great enough inspiration for him to live righteously? In my father’s absence, my Uncle Muff raised my little brother. Somewhere along the lines my father was out of jail long enough for Terrell to live with him for a while. It was short lived. After my Grandmother lost her battle to cancer we lost my father to drugs. Not in an eternal sense, but he wasn’t the man we knew anymore.

I once tore up the underbody of my ‘98 Grand Am during one of Omaha’s many icy winters. I was 16 years old at the time. My dad was an auto mechanic. I was into it with my Mom and didn’t want to call her. I was hell-bent on proving how independent I was. I was driving down a pretty inclined street, approaching a red light at an intersection, and my car began sliding on the icy road. I couldn’t stop. I was terrified of driving straight into the traffic and figured if I could turn right then maybe I’d avoid any major accidents. I couldn’t gain enough control of the car to fully make that right turn. I ended up banked on the median, but avoided collision with other vehicles. I called my dad. I knew he’d fix it. We arranged for me to pick him up on my way to work the next morning. I gave him the money for the parts, roughly $300. He was to pick me back up from work with the repairs completed. He didn’t show up.

I called my cousin for a ride and went back to her house as I couldn’t bring myself to tell my mom what happened. I hoped that he’d turn up before I had to do so. I remember thinking maybe the repairs were taking longer than expected. I thought he must’ve been so busy working that he was unable to hear his phone. As the hours passed those thoughts changed into the brutal reality that my father had just stolen my car. I knew what had become of my money. It had gotten him high. He wouldn’t! He did! By 9pm my mom called wondering why I hadn’t made it home. I broke down trying to explain what my father had done to me. Once my cash ran dry and the drugs wore off he called my mother to let her know where he abandoned my car. She retrieved it, un-repaired. She then did what she always has. She picked up the pieces and kept our lives together. After she took care of the repairs we never really talked about it again. I didn't speak to my father for quite some time.

I wasn’t able to fully heal these wounds until last year. It wasn’t until then that I was able to understand that my expectations of what my father was supposed to be were what caused me to hold onto those grudges. My thought process was always about what he had/hadn’t done to/for me and my siblings. I could never remove myself long enough to empathize with what he was experiencing and battling within himself. I realized that my father couldn’t be who/what he needed to be for himself. What the hell was I going to bring out of him that he couldn’t bring out of himself? Through this experience I’ve learned to view people as people first. Regardless of titles and roles people are independent beings. We each face our own battles. It’s up to us to hone into our God given strength.

My daughter’s father was murdered three months before my 20th birthday. I was three months pregnant at the time. My grief was foreign and incomprehensible for many because the extent of our relationship was merely an occasional casual hookup though it didn’t begin that way. The first couple months we spent a lot of time together. We enjoyed many dates, had a lot of fun, and a lot of sex. As with all superficial things, the excitement faded. There was no fall out. There were no hard feelings. There was simply time and space. A few months passed without communication and my sister invited me out on a friend’s party bus. He was in attendance. We rekindled our flame long enough to conceive a baby and resumed living our lives without communication for the next five weeks or so. My cycle was late, but I knew what was happening. My body told me everyday. I was constantly tired. It wasn’t a superficial tiredness. I’d wake after a full nights rest still tired. I’d have just enough energy to go to work. Once I got off I’d immediately go to sleep. I was nauseated. My breast were tender. I had everything except confirmation.

He texted me the morning that my sister brought over a pregnancy test. We exchanged small talk. He said he was just checking in. After taking the test that afternoon I responded “We’re pregnant, Dad.” He lost his mind! He was anything but happy. I couldn’t have cared less as I certainly didn’t force sex upon him without contraception. He was also well aware of my stance against birth control and the fact that I wasn’t on any. I also recall a small disagreement over purchasing a Plan B in which he chose not to. I wasn’t going to play into that game. I chose to end communication with him. We spoke a month or so later. It was yet another unpleasant conversation. I’ll never forget his words to me. “I don’t have time for you or another baby,” he said. He already had five children. Though I knew him to be an amazing father, it didn’t matter to me. I had grown up watching women raise children, tend to their homes, and earn a living at the same damn time. If that was my destiny so be it. I wasn’t going to be driven into an abortion by fear of his absence. Either he was going to be the father I’d known him to be or he wasn’t. Regardless I was going to be the best mommy I could be. Shortly after, he was murdered and it was certain that my destiny was the latter. After Sanaia’s birth we kept in contact with her father’s aunt. His mother died when he was young and his aunt raised him. She was so kind and loving. She was battling cancer and passed three months after Sanaia’s birth. Though Sanaia still has an amazing relationship with her eldest paternal sister, her relationship with the rest of his family died with her.

I lost my little brother, Terrell, to gun violence May 16, 2006 in Flint. Michigan. He was 16 years old. I was to graduate high school two weeks later. It was just three months prior to my 17th birthday. Apparently life likes to go up in flames three months before birthdays. The details of what happened to my brother didn’t matter to me. As far as I was concerned, it was my father’s fault. If only he had cleaned himself up enough to actually be a father my brother would still be alive. Terrell’s mother was an addict as well. Somewhere between bouncing back and forth between my father and uncle he left for Flint to live with his grandmother. We lost him there. Though my uncle was an amazing father figure and provider, my brother chose a more exciting life. Children will always be attracted to the exciting abundance of thrill. A part of me died that day.

At 13, I lost my paternal grandmother to cancer. It was one of the most painful sights to witness such an influential person in your life endure such a battle. To see someone you’ve always known to be so strong and full of life so weak and lethargic is life altering. To witness such a decline in someone’s life at such a tender age was hard. I didn’t know how to process the vicious loss of my grandmother and I certainly didn’t understand the toll that drugs were soon going to take on my father.

The year prior we lost my maternal great grandmother, Verta Mae. At 12 years old I was beginning to understand death, but that didn’t make the pain any less. She was 88 years old. Though she lived a full life, up until the year preceding her death I thought she’d be with me always. She spent a lot of time in the hospital prior to her death. I don’t really recall how I’d get there, but I remember being by her side often. I remember it being just she and I like it often was. I recall my cousin and I twirling our yo-yos throughout the hospital hallways. I remember how cold her body was to the touch once her soul ascended. I remember the funeral and my big cousin shouting “that’s fucked up” as he witnessed her body lie lifeless in the casket. I remember feeling in agreement with him that it was indeed fucked up! I remember the depression that my mom went through during her grief. I remember the magnitude of the hurt.

Three months prior to my 10th birthday we lost my great aunt Lou Lou to lung cancer. She was merely 40 years old. This was the first time I recall the soul wrenching pain of losing a loved one. I knew then just how much I hated funerals. Eventually I’d stop attending them all together. I didn’t have to witness my aunts battle with cancer as she and my uncle lived in Minnesota with their six children. I loved spending the summers with them. As the only child of my mom’s for many of those summers it was a whole new world of excitement being with so many kids. My cousin Toy and I were the youngest so we got to explore a lot with her older siblings. I spent the summer of 1997 with them in Minnesota. My mom birthed my second sister while I was there and I remember crying like a baby because I knew the pain she had endured during delivery having watched her labor with my first sister. It was the summer before my aunt’s death.

It’s grown quite evident to me throughout my memories of loss that there were never any conversations. We never really talked about what was happening. I learned at an early age that shit happens, you deal with it, and life goes on for you to keep taking its punches. That way of operating is unhealthy. I grew throughout my teenage years with displaced grief and anger. I spent all of middle high and high school fighting. I didn’t know how else to resolve disagreement. Small quarrels would quickly turn into full out street brawls. In the midst of the chaos, I was always pretty certain of one thing. I wasn’t going to get my ass kicked on that day! With a petite build I had no clue where that confidence came from, but I learned quickly that strength alone isn’t what wins fights. Logic will tell you that the biggest, strongest fighter in the ring will surely win. The truth is that pain breeds champions and struggles win fights.

There’s a certain resiliency built into the flesh of those that take life’s beating in silence. You know they’ve been through the wringer, but you never see them crying. As far as you can tell they just keep on living. You know that they’re injured, but they won’t show a limp. They stand tall and face life until the right situation gives them a punching bag. This release of suppressed emotion is so euphoric that they’ll wait patiently until the next opportunity comes to pound out their next opponent. Somewhere throughout adulthood I’ve learned how to apply this mindset to life’s battles without the need of a human punching bag, thankfully. I’ve learned how to navigate disagreement with peace and understanding. My journey, though rough, has prepared me in ways I couldn’t have dreamed of. I know with complete certainty that no matter what may come my way I will prevail. When fighting is all you know circumstances, no matter how big, can’t shake you up.

In June I felt at my absolute worst mentally. I needed to reflect on all that God has brung me through in order to adjust my mindset. Depression knocked on my door to drown me in sorrow. I probably would have allowed it. Something in my being started preparing for war. By the time I published the blog post that I had written in June I felt as though I was already in a better place. I hadn’t made it to counseling. The outpour of support hadn’t found me. My family didn’t quite understand the severity of my mental health. I wasn’t comfortable enough to be truly transparent in regards to it. I spent all of August proclaiming that depression couldn’t reside within me. While I don’t know what the month of September has in store for me I know that God hasn’t carried me through all of this loss just to hand me over to depression.

I don’t know what you’re going through but you’re here with me so I can assume that you’re battling something. Throughout all of life’s struggles it’s important that we never lose sight of the blessings. I’m thankful for every step along my journey. I’m grateful that God has equipped me for such a journey. Know that whatever you’re facing God has placed a fight within you that can not be defeated! Depression can’t claim you! Anxiety can’t overwhelm you! Poverty can’t restrict you! Debt can not contain you! Employers can’t enslave you! Illness can’t hinder you! Addiction can’t overtake you! Whatever you are faced with, know that the victory is yours!

As always please share with me in the comments. I love to hear your opinions, stories, and advice! Let’s cultivate a community that prunes us for our destinies!