For over thirty-five years, I have had a deep and personal relationship with God. I do not know how I would make it without my relationship with God.  It has been a learning and trial by fire experience. Growing up, there were two things you did unless you were dying; one was go to school and the other was go to church.

Having to go to school, church, and being a multiple was an unique experience. I didn't know the name growing up, but somewhere in my growing up days I named it "different." After being in therapy for several years, I learned what was wrong with me I was diagnoise as having Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). There was so much violence, mental abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse and verbal abuse that we split into alters. In one incident, when the physical abuse started one took the pain of the physical abuse and one took the verbal abuse. As the abuser used the belt to beat my naked body the ugly words would spew from her mouth. We learned early how not to cry or shout out in pain. Having the ability to switch out made the abuser mad.

Where does my help come from? It comes from my deep, faithful and rich relationship with God.

http://http://mhrecovery.com/

Who is an advocate? An advocate is someone or a group of people who speak out or deliver services to help someone in need of physical, mental, or emotional help. For example, I have a friend, whose story I am going to tell, that is now an advocate for widows because she went through the experience of becoming a widow and can now advocate out of that experience.

My friend is a small stature woman with a big heart. About seventeen years ago, the unexpected death of her husband turned her and her children's world upside down. Not only did she grieve over her husband's death but also other issues began to surface around her mom and her stepfather. She was having a hard time balancing her world. There was a clinic my friend had read about on the back of a magazine that advocated for people with issues around widowhood. The one drawback was my friend felt they dispensed too many drugs. Several years later, my friend started a widow's group to help other widows advocate together about things on their heart.

Knowing someone has "got your back" or advocating for you is a powerful thing. If you need help try your local NAMI organization.

When I said “something” was “familiar” I learned later in life that the “something” was my mental illness and the familiar aspect was it had always been there.  I didn’t have words to verbalize what was going on with us.  Even if we had the words, there wasn’t anyone to cry out to.  As a result, the defense to the abuse was Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).  If we were not a multiple, I don’t think we would be here today.  All the people inside have done a good job of keeping us alive

Keeping secrets and enduring the abuse was a common occurrence, but it was not like that all the time.  I want to share some of the good mixed up in with the bad.

I remember Christmas connected with food.  It seem food was in abundance along with fruits and nuts.  I remember oranges especially.  We use to roll the oranges around with our feet until they were real soft and juicy.  We would then make a hole in the top and suck the juice out.

Christmas meant a Christmas tree.  We would decorate it with the same ornaments plus the new ones we made.  The tree was always pretty.  We would wake up early and run down stairs and every year there would be presents.  After Christmas day, we had to pick one toy and the rest were put away never to be seen again.  To this day I have a hard time excepting presents.