Rocky I feel you. The only reason I can embrace my mother is because she didn’t have a choice my father took me and kept me from her. He beat on her and almost killed her and refused to allow her to see me. I think my mother’s pain was equal to my own if not greater. She sometimes looks at me and cries, wondering what I was like when I was young. She ask me if he hurt me, I shrug I don’t want to intensify her suffering. He did hurt me often, even broke my arm when I was six. I was black and no one really cared because they gave me back to him and told him I had to show up in school and I couldn’t be harmed. He threw things at me but never broke anything else. He stopped feeding me and I had to be taken for a few months because of the environment I was in. I just went to a group home and it really wasn’t that bad. I always asked about my mom and I was told she was a drug addict and couldn’t take care of me. She was a drug user but only because her life was so hard and her only child was taken from her just to hurt her. He took me saying she couldn’t provide for me but he did nothing but abuse me. I left when I was fifteen and took my chances on my own. I’m not angry with my mother because I think she was as victimized as I was. We were forced a part, she wanted me and they took me from her. I love her and want her suffering to stop.
My mother is Porto Rican by the way and my father is a black man from the United States. I was fortunate enough to find good role models to help guide me and I have a good quality of life now thanks to my faith, the Ephesus Group website, and I am glad to share my good fortune with my mother and finally ease he suffering now. I know the horrors I was exposed to as a child shaped the man I now, the good news is they reinforced in me all the things I don’t want to be as an adult.
My father is my role model, the examples he sets for us are amazing and I follow his example as often as I can. Adam you and Casey are amazing. I so appreciate what your doing because of what I suffered through as a child. Thank you.