INTRODUCTION

  INTRODUCTION:   We are a very mobile society unlike the world of seventy years ago when almost every one I knew, stayed close to home.   Unlike yesterday, young people graduate from high school and college and to get a job, often time, they must leave home. Some times they get married far, far away from family members and they start a family.  And, in our complex society, to make ends meet both partners work in order to achieve the standard of living they desire. Some times, unexpectedly, a pregnancy occur and weather planned or unplanned, the child is now part of the family

     

   Then, because there is no family to keep the child,  the child is shuffled from nursery then to pre-K to highschool to college and then turned out into society.  I know for a fact that this type of arrangement with child rearing works very well indeed and my hat is off to the families with this arrangement. I honor the mother's who leave their children in the care of others.  This blog is not to beat up on working mothers for if the truth is told, and I confess, many, many days I wished I was part of the work force.  But we each must live with the choices we make.

     When I was growing up, I told all my friends that I was going to have twenty children. However, I was blesses with only four.  My husband had a job that enabled me to be home with the children.  I really wanted to work.  I actually worked at two or three jobs but combined they didn't last a year because my husband did not want me to work.  So I resigned myself to being a house wife and the mother of four children.  In the process. I found out that child rearing is a job and I gained a lot of respect for the Woman who can make the bacon and fry it up in the pan.

     I'm not stupid enough to indicate that I know every thing about rearing children.  Let me be the first to declare that I don't.  And yes, I made a lot of mistakes but that comes with territory.  In the final analysis, you do your best to get it right and sometimes to get it right, you have to seek help, but that's  alright because you 're on a mission, one that's been commissioned by Almighty God, for He has put the lives of His precious angles in your hand and that's a great commission.

     I'm older, much older, in fact, too old to have little children.  I would love to have five  or six precious grandchildren, but that's another story.  Any way, things happened in my childhood that set me on a journey to find a better way to rear children or better yet, a way in which I could have been raised.  Sadly, I must confess that I was horribly mistreated as a child.  The most overwhelming sadness that to this day I still carry around in the recesses of my mind is the feeling of helplessness that was a part of my daily life.

     I was cooking at the age of nine for my brother and sisters in a home where there were two refrigerators.  One of the refrigerators was in the dining room and that refrigerator held the food that my mother brought to the house for the five of us.  My mother wasn't allowed to live at the house.  I guess my grandmother couldn't stand having all of us under the same roof.  Any way, the other refrigerator was in the kitchen and it held the food for the other family members.  I could only cook after the other members had fixed their meals.

     That was bad enough but not as bad as the physical beatings with an extension cord.

Countless times I suffered abuse after abuse from that extension cord.  One incident, still fresh in my mind, is the day I heard my grandmother bragging about how she beat my brother and how he screamed.  I swore then that the next time she whipped me, I was not going to scream.  In fact, I decided that I would not make a sound, even if she killed me.  And sure enough, the next time came. She twisted my dress about my bottom and started wailing on me with that extension cord.  I stood flat footed and I didn't move.  Blood began to stream down my legs, yet, my hatred of her was so strong, so potent, I did not feel the bite of that extension cord.  I wanted to see her fall lifeless at my feet and in my child mind, I cussed her.  I used every vile word and phrase I had heard her use.  I know for a fact that

Physical abuse is horrible.

     Yes, physical abuse is devastating but it's twin, emotional abuse, is equally destructive.

I was called a lot of nasty names and was discriminated by my own grandmother for many years of my young life.  Even, years later after I reached adulthood, I still heard the evil that dripped from her mouth.  'You black mink, You liver lipped helfer collectively she called all of us Black Bastards.  Now, the word, confused me.  I knew it was an ugly word because it came out of her mouth.  I ran that word around and around in mind.  It took a few years but I did learn the meaning of that word.

     I have since heard many, many horror stories from adults who suffered as children.  So Much abuse breaks my heart. My personal pain forced me to seek professional counseling and I'm convinced that counseling changed my way of thinking and seriously, it saved my life.  I was a walking, talking, breathing dead woman until I was taken back counter clockwise to the root of my destruction and the child that existed in me was finally defended by the adult that I had became.  Then I began to move clock wise, a MUCH saner and happy person, ready to face the world.  I finally learned to talk about my grandmother without crying.

     I decided to write all the pain out in a journal.  Every beating, every painful word.  I emptied my mind of every thing that was festering over and over inside of me.  Once I competed the manuscript, I put it on a shelf with the understanding that I could only think of my past experiences if I read the book.  All my pain was in the book and the pain was no longer a part of me.  I was twenty-six years old when I finally forgave my grandmother.  She had been dead two years.

     When I look at TV shows and I hear parents talk about hating their children and the children talk about hating their parents do you wonder why our society is so screwed.  No,

as I stated earlier, I do not claim to have a quick fix for there is no one cause for there are as many causes of dysfunctions in rearing children as there are people.  All I want to do is just use myself and my situation as an example in the event some one is  in need of an example.  Life as a child passes to adulthood so quickly.  This is not a rehearsal.  It's the real deal.

     Like I said before, this is not a HOW TO collection of information.  I want to some how in a tiny little scheme of things help one parent, if it helps one child, I believe every    

thing that I have endured had a definite purpose.

     

THIS HAS BEEN MY INTRODUCTION.  MORE LATER!