![]() After her bruises heal, the physician (unsurprisingly) falls in love with her. She tries to find her mother, visits her father, and conveniently meets a nice young doctor. ![]() At this point, Gabbie decides to be a victim no longer. She's seduced by a con man, then robbed and beaten within an inch of her life. To top it off, the church forces her out of the convent with only $500 and two badly tailored dresses to her name. The priest then commits suicide after a painful miscarriage, Gabbie almost dies. She falls in love with a priest and becomes pregnant (after all, what do priests know about condoms?). But the world has other plans for this girl whose tribulations make those of Job look like chopped liver. To protect herself from a malevolent world, Gabbie decides to become a nun. In what is probably an act of mercy, Gabbie's mother runs off with another man and abandons the girl at a Manhattan convent. Meanwhile, Gabbie's father is a prodigious weakling who drinks to forget his terrible home life, eventually deserting both daughter and wife. But Gabbie's emotional wounds are even worse, for Eloise has persuaded her that everything wrong with the family is her fault. She bruises her kidneys and cuts up her face. She starves her, smashes her dolls, and breaks her ribs every Christmas. Her wealthy mother Eloise feels jealous of her: She abuses Gabbie almost daily for the first decade of her life. And we call this place HOME.Steel (The Ranch, 1997, etc.) actually manages to minimize child abuse in this saccharine take on tragedy. We never really leave, we just hold a place for one another with amazing grace. It is good to be home and I am glad that you are still here, waiting. The long journey to home: Knowing WHO we are and WHO we answer to. The love of SELF care leads to self acceptance. Today, I am passing this level of acceptance and perseverance on to the next generation. Amen for knowing that all glory goes to God who gives us strength and health and life to KEEP going! I’m thankful for this hard life that has grown me out of my SELF. The long way home is sometimes the journey from lost to found. In the time I have been quiet in this writing space, I have walked some deep grief, valleys of sorrow, mountains of victory and filled notebooks with words, pleas, pain, tears and rejoicing truth. I hate it and I love it.Īnd by the time I head back home- every time-I’m thankful. ![]() And now?įriends, I’m back to the slow, hard ascent to the top of the hill. I began with the painful treks to the top of the hill twenty years ago to jogging six miles a day with a stroller up and back. My legs burned, my feet stepped over the manure, and my conversation was with the trees and the cows.īut, my love for freedom, creation, exercise and results, perseverance and raising my kids in a space that afforded them everything hard work would give them: gave me LIFE. Year after year, pregnancy after pregnancy,I had to find ways to love my life, live my life and stay well, healthy- emotionally, spiritually and physically.Įvery one of my kids trekked this hill for miles with me in a stroller or by my side. Our steep country hill and I became worst enemies and best friends. I am from a loving, yet highly dysfunctional family-yet, became a mom of ten kids… raising them in the woods, surrounded on both sides with farm fields and no neighbors to see.Īny transplant situation takes adjustment, acceptance and adaptation. ![]() And for years, everything in my spirit craved the opposite and tried flourishing here. I’m a neighborhood, small town girl-transplanted into the middle of the woods in the country. It is time to make this space home again. I let this space sit in quiet shadows for many reasons, while so many words were being written and tucked away for a new day.
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