The Bonfire

"There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons."

Dennis Waitley

In August of 1992, I was safely home with my parents after one of the biggest mistakes I had ever made. June of that year I got married to someone I went to high school with, someone I thought I knew. We moved to California, where he was in the Air Force. Everything went bad to worse immediately. I was being used as a punching bag and if that wasn't bad enough, the morning I was trying to leave him, he pointed a gun at me and told me "if I can't have you no one will." I barely escaped on our one month wedding anniversary and after quiet an ordeal I made it safely home back to Georgia. I was just a couple of months shy of turning 20. Licking my wounds and feeling like a complete idiot for going through with the whole ordeal. I was so embarrassed to be back home so soon with such a war story to tell. It wasn't the happily ever after it was supposed to be and I was very ashamed to be back home, when I was supposed to be living some terrific new life in California. I was very depressed and kept to myself, completely withdrawing myself from friends and family. I literally dropped off the face of the Earth as far as most people knew. My Mother, in particular had no idea what to do to help me. It didn't even matter to me that I had done the right thing escaping an abusive situation. I just felt stupid and often wondered if I had missed any red flags.

On a particularly down day, the "wedding photos" arrived from the photographer. There I was with two sets of wedding photos that cost my family around $1000, reminding me of what was supposed to represent one of the happiest days of my life. My Mom and I sat down and started going through the pictures. The more I looked, the more depressed I became. Then my Mom did one of the craziest things. She ripped one of the pictures into two. I was horrified. What was she thinking? As she sat there grinning, I asked her: "How did that feel?" "Great! she said. "you should try it." So I did, I ripped up one of the pictures into two and it felt SO empowering. I didn't have to live with pictures to remind me of my mistake for the rest of my life, I had a brain for that! Before I knew it we were surrounded by a pile of ripped up pictures. Then we came up with the perfect way to totally destroy them. We raced out to the back of the house and put all the ripped pictures in our grill, lit a match and burned $1000 worth of wedding pictures. My Dad didn't quite understand as well when he first found out, but he finally said "if that made her happy I guess it was worth it." My Mom still says she can remember the horrified look on my face when she tore up the first picture. She said it was "priceless."

These days Taylor Swift is a very popular singer/song writer. Liz Rose and she wrote a song titled "Picture to Burn." My favorite lyrics are:

so watch me strike a match

to all my wasted time

as far as I'm concerned you're

just another picture to burn

Every time I hear her song I think back to the best bonfire I ever had!

The Year My Mom Brought the Beach to Me

I've always loved the beach and ocean. Just listening to the rhythm of the waves as they crash upon one another, the warm feeling of the sun on my skin, the sand in my toes, the breeze through my hair and the smell of the sea easily transports me into my own utopia.

One summer I desperately needed to be at the beach where no sickness existed and I was invincible. Due to financial reasons, going to the beach was out of the question, so my Mom brought the beach to me.

We lived in a quite subdivision with lots of space between houses and people. Our backyard was quite and shaded by trees. There were two trees that were the perfect width apart for a hammock. My Mom used some wood and made a sand box underneath my hammock. She put sand and sea shells that were gathered from vacations past.

It became my personal beach that spring and summer. I would lie in the hammock for hours listening to ocean sounds or music from my Walkman, read and sometimes gently rock myself to sleep for a nap. I could feel the sun on my skin and feel my own beach sand between my toes.

My beach was my sanctuary. I hope my Mom still knows today how much "my beach" meant to me, and that I think of it often.