A Gift of Wisdom: Journey of an Awakening Soul

I was born in December in the late 80's on the cusp of dawn in a suite at a small hospital off the coast of a mid-California beach city. The doctors all thought I would be a boy. So convinced were they that my parents had already decided on a boy's name and were caught without a baby girl's name when I surprised everyone.

"Winter," my mother called for. My father, thank heavens, refused it out of hand. As my mother looked out over the ocean's expanse, the color of the sky called to her.

"Amber then," she chose decidedly. Now, my father tells it differently. He claims that he chose the name 'Amber' and my mother was convinced she was going to call me Winter Whip. Laughable, true...now add my last name and imagine being called by a school teacher in the play yard so everyone could hear, "Winter Whip Lash! You're done with the tether-ball!" How much harder my life could have been I'll never know, but I thank my father silently every day for that small blessing just in case it's true.

The beginning of my life, like most of it, was not what you would describe as a walk in the park. It was as if my life, and my mother and father's life, were destined to be difficult. From apartments to grandparents' homes, to friends' rooms to living together as a family, then have that broken again; the first year and a half of life taught me to flow with changing scenery and people as best I could.

Despite all of that change, my mother was there through every moment. She strove as hard and as willfully as she could to create the best life for her little family that got smaller when I was 18 months old. As a single mother from that point on, she worked full-time, put herself through school for 10 years, and despite the exhaustion I'm sure she felt, she found time for me. My life may not have been full of monetary riches, but she made sure that I had every opportunity possible. She put me in a different school district closer to where she worked and it just so happened to be a better one than where we lived. She applied for scholarships for me to join Girl Scouts, go to camp, join city basketball, soccer, or even base-ball leagues. She always made sure I was taken care of, even if that meant she went hungry on some nights herself.

I didn't realize then, growing up between the ages of 18 months and 12 years, just how much she sacrificed for me and did for me silently. It wasn't until I was a little older that it all started to make sense and certain memories stood out as lessons or turning points in my understanding and maturity as I grew. I bring up my mother because she is my anchor and she was always the person I worked hard to appease or gain praise from. There is only one problem - that kind of drive, if not tempered, can lead a person to a certain level of self-destruction, as I'll explain as I roll out these memories.

It's only now as an adult I realize that it was that attachment and need to be liked or praised that drove my gifts into the background and I grew to live a life where I accepted abuse, pain, lies, suffering, and giving up everything I was in order to please others. Not to mention, this is a typical driving force of most empaths as the need to help everyone around us feel better is a primary coping mechanism of highly sensitive individuals, like myself. So, there I was at 30 as my life was falling apart around me, finally realizing I'd been hit twice over, through learned behavior, with the need to people-please for mental and emotional survival. This was at odds with my independent nature, and I didn't know who I was by the time the divorce finalized, but I'll get into that later.

Through the graces of amazing family, friends, and the divine, I pulled through and came to understand all of the lessons the world had thrown at me. Only then did my life begin to change. That is what it took. Deep, unerring reflection and a good long look in the mirror to realize what had happened.

How did I go from a bright, independent, and mostly happy little girl to this codependent, fearful, anxious, abused, and depressed adult woman; then, back out the other side to an even better place than I've ever been before?

It's a series of events that sometimes I can barely believe I lived through and came away intact. It wasn't just me alone, though. It was the support and/or experiences I had with every single person I've come into contact with that helped me get here today.

So let's really begin the story of these series of events...

Why am I different...?

One of the very first things that stood out to my family was that I refused to wear a dress. Now, I don't mean when I was 12 and refused a dress out of a sense of headstrong rebellion. I was 2. No one could get me into a dress long enough for me to get out the door with it on, much less wear it in public. I would scream, throw myself on the floor, and quite literally make it impossible for anyone to put a dress on me. That was the first time my little mind felt judgment.

Members of my family or friends would whisper to my mother their concerns about my not wanting to wear a dress as a little girl.

"But, don't little girls like to wear dresses?" they would ask.

"There's something not right about this," a tone of judgment colored a woman's voice.

"She's just a tom-boy," my mother would reply, "there's nothing wrong with her."

I even had a male cousin who loved to buy me dresses. My mother begged me once to wear one for him since it would 'mean so much to him'. That was my first taste of doing something I really didn't want to do - that went against the core of who I am - to please others. Who would have thought that it would be the subject of wearing a dress that would leave such a profound belief in my little brain? I sure didn't.

I was taught, like most, that doing the polite thing is often the right thing. I've since found this to be entirely false, but that's beside the point. Teaching children to be polite is a good thing and I believe in it wholeheartedly, but to a point. To everyone else, this was a non-issue subject. A dress. It means nothing. It's what girls wear.

But, to my little brain, I was a boy and shouldn't be wearing dresses.

I've never identified as transgender. However, when I was little I would play pretend with all of my friends and I was always the boy. I was the father in the wolf pack; the stallion in the herd; the brother or father of the house. When movies came out with tape recorded soundtracks, I would change the lead character, if it was female, into a male version and sing my little heart out. To me, I was a boy and I was free and rambunctious with it.

In the late 80's and early 90's, however, being gender fluid was not a thing. Being homosexual was not yet acceptable. Changing your gender? Unthinkable. Such were the way of things as my mother silently watched me grow while there were others voicing their "concerns" in her ear.

So I wore the dress, only once, and despised every minute of it.

As I mentioned before, this was the very first time I remember feeling judged by people who I thought were supposed to love me unconditionally. It didn't feel unconditional after that. Even certain family members wouldn't take me clothes shopping anymore because I refused to wear "girl" clothes. It was pointed out I walked like my father, elbows out at an angle. It was described to me as being like a gorilla. I believe the exact phrase was, "You walk with your elbows sticking out...you look like a gorilla! Why do you walk like that?"

The heartbreak I experienced in that moment, at the age of 8, tore me up inside for a very long time. I wasn't accepted, even by my own family, and I didn't even understand why. There had been enough sideways commentary with my mother present in the room, even though she never said anything to insinuate her preference one way or another, to let me know I couldn't ask anyone about these feelings. I couldn't talk to anyone about these experiences. I was always the wrong one.

I used to think my being different from everyone else ended there. But, the more I grew and experienced things in school, the more I realized it went far deeper than a gender fluidity I didn't understand.

A Word from the Author: This set of works is based on a true story. Names and certain specifics have been removed out of respect for those discussed. If you're enjoying the story so far, please help support me in continuing to add to this book by leaving a gift (or tip) below. Thank you so much for reading this excerpt and I hope you return March 2, 2020 for Chapter 2.