Finding Freedom in Hardship

My tools. My artwork, paints, brushes, pencils, canvas. The sweat, blood, and tears reflected in the woodcrafts, stone sculptures, and fabric. Everything that weaved my life’s tapestry.

Photo albums, journals, yearbooks. My library. A lifetime of memories, legal documents, birth records. Twenty years of accomplishments, hard lessons, perseverance, friendships, love. The fruits of my labor. The businesses I built. It’s hard to grasp the true value of personal independence and autonomy until your own “house of cards” is blown over by another. A fellow human being, who I’ve sworn an oath to defend, maliciously and irresponsibly burned my life to the ground, exploited my children, dismantled my sense of security. My sense of self.

I worked hard all my life only to have someone take it from me in an instant. I’ve never had to ask for help. No person asks to have their sense of security crippled, peace of mind broken in half, or their identity stolen. No one asks to be a target. Every thread of my being has been erased, literally and spiritually. I am a ghost. I don’t exist online or on paper before a few months ago. I don’t have any pictures. No car, no home. When you lose your car and your home your job shortly follows. Majority of anyone who has experienced this never find help or recover. Even worse, you have to beg on your knees for help in a society that casts stones at the mother in need, the minority, the victim of crime, the kind neighbor.

I have been looking for a car for months. I hadn’t noticed someone hacked my accounts until I applied for an auto loan last summer. My credit score tanked over 200 points in three months. A kind man from a charity spoke with me, the only person who took my pleas seriously. Unfortunately, their organization hasn’t received funds or donated vehicles since 2003. According to Denis Rigdon, founder of Project Hope, he receives roughly 2000 applications a year from women who’ve suffered the same crimes and 20,000 others asking for sanctity. That old idiom, “closed mouths don’t get fed“, Denis replied, “is now a taboo effort and often met with resistance and alienation,” after I asked him how to approach others in my search for remedy, peace, or even justice.

“I’m sure explanation is tough, especially when people today believe it is just fine to demonize those who need help to overcome obstacles that mount up. That's why I am busy with calls for help but not many about donating.”

Left to waste away in a town like a deserted island without a vehicle, stranded with kids. Without help, and nothing left to sacrifice, it feels impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Forget about the farm, the credit score, the 65” TV. It’s all worthless junk compared to the clippings from my baby girl’s first haircut, the diapers and clothing I sewed by hand for my children, Berdy’s baby teeth, and my late father’s song books, letters, and poems. All I had left of my dad is a memory now. Even memories fade away.

July 30rd, 2020. 1 year later...

My 34th birthday is a few days away. The world is a very different place from the one we knew coming into the new year. A viral pandemic swept our nation, and the globe, and the universe came to a screeching halt. In a few months all of us were forced into quarantine to fend for ourselves in a completely alien landscape with children to feed. Mortgage payments don‘t stop for the apocalypse, in case you were wondering.

My secret? I have been here in a cocoon of isolation, working to recover from detrimental loss since August of 2019. I was quarantined for eight months before the entire population joined me. Turns out it is possible to manifest positive change from thin air, gain momentum when frozen in place, and happily start new. Anyone who owns a bit of land knows that each year when the grass becomes dry and brown you must burn away the dead covering to make room for new growth. The same is true for a human lifetime. When the fruits of your existence are so violently separated from you, often it’s too painful to imagine any good opportunity is possible. It’s crazy to believe from the suffocating decay comes healthy new life blossoms. It does. I promise you.

In medias res.

A preface, to be continued...