Finding Me - Softcover

Wheeler, Sarah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1504399366 ISBN 13: 9781504399364

Verlag: BalboaPress, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

The book will take the reader through hardships that had built a woman that has made it a mission to help others by shining a light, a beacon of sorts. Her trials started at a young age and progressed till her father passed away in her early thirties.

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Sarah Wheeler only wants to celebrate the great accomplishments in life that she never thought she would be able to see. Striving to stay alive and falling to symptoms of depression and ideation she has been able to find her way, enjoying her journey.

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Finding Me

By Sarah Wheeler

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2018 Sarah Wheeler
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-9936-4

Contents

Manual, 1, 
Trauma, 5, 
Death, 21, 
Fear, 25, 
Child, 29, 
Sex, 35, 
What Is Depression?, 49, 
Ideation, 59, 
Surviving, 61, 
Spirituality, 67, 
Happiness, 77, 
Family, 81, 
Age, 89, 
Finding Me, 93, 
Building My Own Manual, 97, 

CHAPTER 1

Manual

We are not born with the understandings we have as adults. We are born with unconditional love, and then we slowly realize over time that some people can be bad — so we lose love for them. Some are taught that love is only given to a select few people (or animals), if anyone. Before we are born, we have this conversation with God; we make a plan starting with the lessons we need to learn and which people are going to help us along our journeys of life. Then, poof, we are born with no awareness of the conversation as soon as we are released from our mothers' wombs.

This is meant to be. We are meant to be in the sense that we have a job, and that job is to write our own manuals. I wished so many times that I knew what my purpose was, why I was given such a hard life, and why I was so resentful. But then there were times when I knew I was meant for something. The need to stay alive overpowered the need to die.

My parents didn't have a manual to give me, and they certainly didn't have their own manuals when they were born. My parents definitely did better than their own parents at raising children and progressing themselves. I say this wholeheartedly now because I understand more of how they were raised, and the manual they had to create for themselves must have been hard. The one thing they did have were their siblings who helped carry them through hard times even into adulthood.

When do our manuals start? I think they start as soon as we realize that certain feelings resonated with certain awarenesses. For example, the first time I saw violence, I was aware that it wasn't right and that it hurt me. I didn't know how to describe the hurt back then, but it was a terrifying betrayal.

When people start to compile information for their manuals, they are influenced by their tribes. What I consider to be a tribe are the people who are connected to a person on a deep level — support (negative or positive), relation (neighbor or relative), and experience. Experience comes from actions that help to create understanding and awareness. This can be negative too. The experiences other people have aren't true for you.

When I started to write my manual, I wrote a lot of false ideas. I wrote that I had to be in survival mode all the time, that if I cried then I was showing weakness, that my feelings should not be validated, and that my voice didn't matter. There were many times when I thought I couldn't talk to anyone because I would get into trouble.

I also thought the things that happened to me were my fault and that I needed to fix myself. I felt guilty for not helping when bad things were happening to my family, but I was afraid to step in or speak out. When bad things happened to me and I would say something, I was not validated, so I must have done something to have it happen. Now that I'm a parent, I try to give my children a good set of moral instructions to put in their manuals. I let them know that crying is a sign of strength. I tell them that they are important and that they are loved very much. I tell my son to stick up for himself if I am out of line. I tell them that they can make good choices by listening to their hearts, to their gut feelings.

I have been trying to be a good example by not hitting my children out of anger and by listening to them when they are struggling with something and trying to find a solution. I want them to stand up for themselves even to their teacher at school. I want them to know that they should not judge a book by its cover and that every person matters.

Being a parent is hard, but I highly suggest it. I'm biased due to the great experiences I've had as a mother. Both of my children have saved me in a way. My son kept me alive for so many reasons, which will be explained later in the book. And my daughter has helped me find my inner child again.

Watching her has opened up so many doors that I closed tight. Now they are opening, and I have been able to rewrite some of my manual. One thing that my daughter has taught me is being able to see the wonder in life. Watching her be so motivated and curious lit a torch in me.

CHAPTER 2

Trauma

Trauma can come in different ways. There are violent, accidental, and emotional traumas. Some trauma can come in childhood, some trauma can happen in war, and some can occur during domestic violence at any time in a person's life.

As a child I felt scared many times for my family and myself. I'm not completely sure when I first saw violence, but one instance when I was nine years old has stood out the most vividly. My father body-slammed my brother on a piece of framing board outside, and I noticed how my heart raced. I was scared.

My little brother, who is five years younger than me, received a broken arm because of it, and the blame was put on my sister, who is six years older than me. My siblings and I have talked about this incident quite a bit growing up, and my father admittedly told himself the story enough times until he believed my sister did it.

My older sister, Veronica, and I went through some trauma together. The start of the series of unfortunate events in my life started when our house caught on fire in our bedroom when we went to Salmon, Idaho, to my great-grandfather's funeral. I had a collection of stuffed animals that my step-grandmother, my mom's father's wife, had given me.

When our family came back to California from the funeral, I had to grieve for all of my stuffed animals. I felt sentimental about them. I still have one that my grandmother gave me when I lived in Stanley, Idaho. It's a cat made out of brown, flannel-looking material with button eyes and string whiskers.

After the fire, we had to stay in a hotel while our house was renovated. During that time, I started to have headaches. My mother, Daphne, made me try to swallow a Tylenol for one of the headaches, but I had a hard time swallowing pills, which is a problem I had up until my late twenties. I ended up puking the Tylenol up and making Daphne mad.

I remember when I was younger than nine, my dad would have my sister put her nose in the corner for punishment. My dad would give me the leather belt to hit my sister with if she pulled her nose away from the corner. I thought it was the coolest thing to have authority. I now know that was the start of teaching me that violence was acceptable.

I don't remember a lot of the physical or mental abuse before the age of nine, but I do know that it happened because abuse doesn't just start out of nowhere. That day when I watched my father break my brother's arm was the most intense. Other times I saw violence included when my father put my sister's head through the wall of the trailer we lived in. My father swung me by my hair and threw me into walls and into a mobile closet that was next to the front door. I believe I must have had an out of body experience because I remember it as if I was watching it as a spectator.

The worst of the violence was around the Fourth of July, and it was right before my eleventh birthday. Two years after my parents moved my sister, brother, and me to Idaho, their...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: BalboaPress
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1504399366
• ISBN 13: 9781504399364
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 108
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland