I am broken.  There is no question about it.  My life is a mosaic of many different pieces broken apart, scattered and glued together into something that doesn’t quite resemble a clear picture.

Un-ashamed.  That’s where I’m going.  I’m heading to the land of Un-Ashamed with no map to guide me.  I’m on my own.  I’m traveling somewhere completely foreign.

Un-ashamed and real.  Broken and exposed.  Here and true.

When I started to ‘wake up’ to how broken I was, when I got clean and sober,  I blamed my parents.  ‘It was all their fault.  They didn’t want me.  They didn’t love me enough.  I wasn’t important to them.’  I came after Cindy and there wasn’t enough room.  There was no space for another child who needed attention.  I was alone and not really in their hearts.  My Mom tried to bring me in but she couldn’t do it all the way.  My Dad didn’t even try.

So I drank and did anything that would hide from me the fact that I was alone.

My Mom was drowning in her own pain of creating an imperfect child and my Dad tried to ignore it. Mostly, he ignored me.  They drank too.  They drank to avoid their own emptiness and despair.  They drank to avoid seeing the truth.  They were broken and they didn’t know how to handle their imperfection so they put on the mask of being fine and went out laughing and drinking till when they got back in the car, their pain consumed the entire space.  The ugliness of the alcohol freed their anger and fear to the point where there was no container large enough to hold it or any of us.

With my kids I’ve gone over board to the point where I have given almost all of myself to them and now am sitting here with a mountain of fear.  They are great people and I’m glad I did what I did.  I wouldn’t change much.  They are two of the lucky ones in this world who have been given a chance to learn about themselves and the world with support, love and beauty in a home that was safe.  Through Waldorf Education and a college of their choice they will have the foundation they need to thrive.

They are not broken.  They are not ashamed.  They know they have a place in this world that is there for them to fill.  And they will fill it with the richness of who they are.

It’s time for me to pick up the pieces of my life and fully live in the midst of all the confusion and fear.  Honestly.  Un-ashamed.  Forming the broken pieces into the woman I choose to become, revealing the truth of the life I have lived with openness, dignity and courage.  I am learning to do that through these writings and your comments tell me I am not alone.

This new landscape I see through the cracks of my life is where I am going.  There is great beauty in the realness of those that have done this before me.  They have walked a similar path and said, ‘This is who I am.  I will not hide my self from the world.  I will not allow shame to consume me.  I will not allow fear to stop me.  I will persist and form a life that reflects the truth of who I am and what I believe.  I will reveal my brokenness and how I have chosen to put myself together in a way that is right and good for me.  And I will not defend where I’ve been or where I am going.

I will simply be me.’

I made this mosaic as an autobiographical piece during my Gestalt training program.  It isn’t beautiful.  It isn’t artistic.  It isn’t perfect and there are many mistakes and faults.  I wish I had done it differently.  It took me a long time to make it.  I lived with this for many months piecing it together and attempting to make sense of the history that was my life.  And the top of it, the end, I knew was the real beginning.  I knew then, several years ago that I was beginning to form my life out of the person I was becoming with a faint voice of courage that whispered to me,     

‘yes’