Once upon a time....

Once upon a time, there was a teenage girl. Like many teenage girls, she got caught up in a heated romance during the summer before her senior year of high school. Once school began, her love left for college. So the romance cooled and then ended.

A couple of months later, she realized that her love had left her with a gift. A very precious gift. But not a gift that she was prepared to handle. Her family made the decision that the gift must be given away. So she was sent to a special school for other teenage girls that had similar gifts.

On April Fool's Day, her gift arrived. She spent a few minutes with her gift and then they took her gift away. The teenage girl received little emotional support after having to give her gift away. They said it would be better if she tried to act as if she had never had the gift to begin with.

Try as she might, the teenage girl could not forget. And no one around her would give her the emotional support she needed after such a loss.

Life goes on and one day, the teenage girl grew up. She tried to establish a new life. She got married but he was abusive. She got pregnant, twice but both times miscarried.

Finally, the abusive husband decided that he was tired of abusing her and wanted to go abuse someone else. So he left. While his leaving was a good thing, it left newly-grown-up girl in a bad position. She had no job, no training, and no means of support.

She moved back with her parents and found a new job. While working this new job, she met a man. He said all the right things, did all the right things, pushed all the right buttons. Soon enough, he had newly-grown-up girl wrapped around his finger.

Of course after all the experiences that she had been through, newly-grown-up girl was powerless to believe anything bad about this man. Even after finding out he was married. Even after he repeatedly told her he was divorcing his wife and did not. Even after he left her in northern California with no money and no way to get home. Even after things too numerous to mention.

Newly-grown-up girl changed into trapped-in-this-life girl. She was trapped - trapped with a man that had used her emotional problems to chain her to him. Trapped in a dead-end life. Trapped in dead-end jobs. Trapped in a vicious circle of bitterness - against her now-husband, against her abusive ex, against her family for not providing any emotional support for her, against herself for not being strong enough to stand against the tide.

Years later, trapped-in-this-life girl awoke to discover that she was not as weak as the controlling husband had made her believe. That she was not as irresponsible as her family had made her believe. She awoke to discover that she was strong and that she was valuable. She was not able to change everything about her life but she changed what she could.

One day, strong-and-valuable woman received a letter. One that she had not even dared to let herself think about. Her gift had returned.

She and the gift slowly got to know each other. There were a lot of emotions to sort through for both of them. But they wrote lots of letters and talked on the phone. It was funny how much their voices sounded alike.

Then after a year of letters and phone calls, strong-and-valuable woman saw her gift again. With much relief, she was able to talk to her - to make sure the gift understood the reason why she had given her away. To see her - to see how much they looked alike and to see how much the gift resembled her grandfather. To touch her - to make sure that she was real and not some crazy dream.

Strong-and-valuable woman was my birth mother. She passed away last September. I miss her more than I realized I would. Our time together was much, much too short.