Cinnamon

Her kindness overflowed into the lives of everyone she met. While she was tough as nails she was also as gentle as a summer breeze in your hair, the kind that makes you throw your head back and just breath.

Her laugh was whimsical and contagious. To hear the sound of it reverberate in the room sent joy straight to the depths of your soul. Her laugh was joy on butterfly wings, infecting the hearts of everyone it landed on, a room filled with laughter and very few knew what they were actually laughing about.

I am reminded of a story she told me of when she was about 3 and her mom, who had a new born baby and 2 toddlers was trying to take a nap. My mom, feeling restless, decided that she would climb out of her crib and take a trip to the bank to get some money.

She had on just her birthday suit, a pair of her moms high heels, her mothers purse and her father trench coat and was feeling quite dignified as she walked up to the teller and said "may I have some money please?" I can't imagine how adorable that must have been!

My mom was mischievous to say the least and stubborn as an ox too. She could read a book and then do what it said. One night I went to bed with her reading a plumbing book and I awoke to the floor in the kitchen torn up so she could fix our plumbing, it took 3 months, but she actually did it!

You wouldn't know that my mom used to hate thunderstorms because when she was age 10 or 11 her step-father would come into her bed and say that he was afraid of thunderstorms and that laying with her would help him not be afraid.

Soon it wasn't just during thunderstorms he wanted to "feel safe" and he molested my mother from the time she was 10 until she was sent her to live with her father at age 15.

One would think that she would be relieved to be gone from that man but she wasn't. She had to leave her baby sister behind and was terrified her entire teenage life about what was going to happen to her. She spent from the time she was 15 until she became married at the age of 18 trying to make her father mad enough to send her back to her mother so she could protect her little sister. Sadly, she never was able to rescue Jennifer and it tortured her for life. Jenny would grow up and suffer greatly because of the abuse she suffered and her and my mom would forever have a bond that haunted them to the core of their beings, a similarity that made them love each other more and hate each other at the same time.

My mothers first husband had joined a group of protesters shortly after they were married. It was a group of Hispanic people fighting for equality and my mom was a huge supporter. Somewhere along the line her husband decided that he hated white people, even the one he married and had a child with. He became very abusive, not letting her write in her journals or study for her GED, but as I said before my mom was as stubborn as an ox. She studied for her GED and wrote in her journals secretly in the bathroom and right after she left him she got her GED.

She supported herself and my sister on her tips as a stripper and her mother was proud of her efforts towards survival since she couldn't live with her. She didn't mind being a stripper so much since the touching was up to her and she got paid to be violated. If someone got aggressive she would just have the kicked out. She would tell me later that it was robbing her of her soul and that she couldn't do it and stay sober. She had to be so messed up on something that she was vaguely aware of what was going on or she would be in PTSD flash backs.

Her second husband (my father), and her were both working in the bars, my mom had just quit stripping and was now bar tending and neither of them knew how to love. Both of them were broken and battered from their lives. Throw some alcohol and some drugs into the mix and you have a pretty nice bonfire.

One time my father beat my mother so badly that she had to be taken to the ER because she was unable to move. She never told me these stories with the intent of making either one of them sound bad. She wanted us to know about life through illustrations (or at least me) so that we could visualize the answers to some of life's hardest questions.

Like the Ocean, great in its expanse, brilliant as it gleams in the sun, smooth and soothing in its gentle sway but huge in its storms, bellowing waves of strength and courage, no one can destroy! Not a lifetime of abuse or neglect! She was able to fold back against herself and absorb pain and suffering and it became a part of her wisdom and courage. Yet, like the sea buries its victims in the very depths of its belly only releasing them in the midst of a terrible storm where it may damage another with its broken vessels, so pain comes out and without intention cause pain out of its reaction.

My mom became pregnant with me during a time that her and my father were separated and at first she didn't want to keep me because she was an alcoholic drug addicted (recently made) single mother with two other children, but with some events that were out of her control (she would call them miracles) she was unsuccessful at having an abortion. Our bond was strong because she decided that she wasn't going to share me with anyone, I was her baby and hers alone.

My father did come around and while I would never call him father of the year he had at least started to make an effort. He and my mom were best friends and even when they weren't together as husband and wife, he would still come over to just be near her. I can't say that my mom ever loved anyone as much as she loved my father, maybe it was because he was the one she couldn't keep. She was so beautiful that in most circumstances she was the one being chased and where my father was concerned, with him she was the chaser.

When I turned 3 my father was murdered by a still unknown assailant with a blunt force object and was left out in the mountains for 6 months until someone found him. My mom was completely lost to everyone for a few months and my oldest sister went to live with her father and my brother and I went to live with my grandma.

Devastation when there are so many unresolved feelings, can break a person and almost did break my mom. Yet, she picked herself up off the floor as she had done so many times before and she rose above her pain and chose joy.

Affection is my love language and as a baby it didn't seem to bother her, in fact she was very affectionate back. It wasn't until I was 9 and I started to develop (yes VERY early) that she started to be afraid of my affection. Suddenly she would recoil when I touched her or she would get extremely scared of certain gestures I made (I know now) that my mom was so broken she couldn't give me what I needed without remembering herself at age 10 and becoming overwhelmed by the feelings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Being the woman she was, she didn't think about herself in this situation. In fact, she was saddened that she couldn't be the mother I needed so she went to counseling to get better and give me the affection I so badly needed .

So often we don't realize that child abuse doesn't ever stop abusing until you get help. Abuse happens to more than just the child being abused. It affects every life that will come into contact with that 'child' as an adult for the rest of their lives unless they get the help they need!

Many abuse victims won't get the help they need because of the shame and guilt they still carry around with them but please I beg you as a child of a woman who was abused, you deserve healing and you don't have to spend your life in fear of yourself.

My mom was love on legs there was not a person she didn't go out of her way for. She would make everyone she came into contact with feel important and special. As kids we would always bring home wayward kids because we saw, in them, their need to be loved and accepted by someone who was an adult.

One time, I had a friend who was a member of the Bloods and my sisters were close with a guy who was a member of the Crips. These two men hated each other for no other reason besides they wore different colors. My mom adopted both of them into her heart and her home and most of the time these two men never encountered each other, but the day would come and did. These two men saw each other in the front yard and immediately started going at it. My mom came out, stood on the porch, spread her arms out as if to give them a hug and they both looked up at her and each wrapped an arm around the others shoulder and they were best friends from that day forward.

She loved the lowly because she once was the lowly. She was a stripper and a drug addict. She had been hurt beyond repair, but it didn't destroy her. Instead she let every painful event in her life grow her and make her stronger and make her kinder to the broken.

The day before my mother passed away and would rob this world of her light, I remember rolling her down the hallway trying to pull her oxygen tank behind me with one hand and wheel her with the other and I kept running her into the walls. That day we laughed so hard I peed my pants. That was my moms life and her legacy, when pain wants to rob you of your joy, please ALWAYS find a reason to laugh because laughter HEALS the soul.

My mom could have been destroyed by her life but wasn't she used it to lift up those who she saw, felt destroyed.

She could have felt stupid and useless because she was abused and no one would let her be smart but she didn't, she made sure that she grew her knowledge on her own and expressed herself without permission.

My mom could have decided that life without Vaughn wasn't worth living, but she didn't! She lived and she lived well. She lived for him because she knew how much he loved life.

The last day I had with my mom before she died, we could have spent that day in mourning and in sadness with her in discomfort but instead my mother spent her last coherent day on this earth laughing with the little girl she didn't have share with anyone, so that, that little girl could choose joy over sadness.

That is inspirational!