Having been torn from my mother and placed into an orphanage during the most important formation years of my life. To then be placed for adoption with parents who albeit had good intentions but were as mentally incompetent. To suffer abandonment, abuse, molestation and multiple rapes, while they were either nonexistent or incapable to understand. I learned early resilience.

That resilience carried me into my adult years as a single parent going through raising children alone and domestic violence. Constantly striving to choose different and to raise my children with that I didn’t have. I have to say the most important thing about all of this, isn’t that I’ve survived or overcome.

It all boils down to one thing, a choice. That choice is to not be a victim. But, to instead choose to understand those that have harmed you and taught you the very strength that brought you through it all. It is when you start to not play the victim and choose to understand through educating yourself on those very topics that you allow yourself to grow from that which you’ve been through. You are no longer surviving. You are no longer overcoming. You now have complete control to become you. And to love you, is the greatest love of all.

-Anonymous, A Daughter, A Mother, A friend, A Survivior.