There was this girl...
I began working with an incredible woman when she was an adult and she shared her story. It shows what a plan of action connected to a dream can achive. I work with her on other stuff now, but this was her story that I had to share with you because its true, its powerful and it's amazing the strength that dreams can provide when all else seems lost. Read on...
..there was this girl. She lived in a small town with her father and step mother. This was a family of nine childern. The girl had been in foster care for a while before her father had remarried and had only joined the family as one of the middle children when she was 6yrs. She always felt like an outsider. Something about her was different, she didn’t fit it. Just after she began living with the family, her father began to molest her. This went on until at 12 years old she ran away.
She ran away to live with her mother. Her real life had finally begun! She began to make friends, she wasn’t as shy as she had been when she lived with her father. She stopped being scared all of the time. She came into her own existence for the first time.
Life was about being popular, getting good grades at school and having a boyfriend.
Life was terrific...
Life can throw us all a curve ball from time to time.... her mother sent her back to live with her father. The relationship hadn’t been great with her mother and the girl was struggling to adapt to her mothers way of doing things, but being sent back to her father was not only unexpected but promised to send her back to the awful fear and degradation that she had spent the past 2 years leaving behind.
...however, she went back. She was alone and terrified. Being back in the same small town, people talked about where she had been for 2 years. Her siblings only just tolerated her – she had walked out on them and they weren’t going to let her back in that easily.
Her father took control again and for a moment she felt she was doomed to this kind of life. But there was a little voice inside of her that kept saying it doesn’t have to be like this. Your different. You can change this. Just trust yourself and your own ability to survive. Hang in there and focus. You are different you can beat this.
This voice was constant and reassuring.... but what how was a little voice in her mind going to help her?
In her last year of school a teacher from the town her mother lived in visited and gave her some school books to help her get ahead of the class. The moment was brief and almost insignificant. The teacher was in town running a marathon so he hadn’t gone out of his way. But his kindness and understanding of the girls need to achieve something better than before were catalysts to something incredible that he would never know about.
It was this small act of kindness that turned on a light for the girl . It made her realise that other people saw her, she wasn’t completely hidden and lost within her family. She was her own person. From that moment she started to plan her future! She had wanted to become a teacher but now her goal was simply to leave home. To start a life on her own without her father and family.
It was going to be damn tough but she had to do it for her survival!
She planned everything, from which bus would take her to her planned destination, to what she needed to take with her to survive. She had one final exam that she needed to sit so she organised to do it in the new town she was moving to. She wasn’t going to let a little thing like running away stop her from achieving her goals of being the first person in her family to sit and pass the top exams. So she took her school books, some clothes and some blankets, some food for the trip and $100 that she had saved from some babysitting jobs over the past year. That was it – no cell phone, no furniture just herself and some basic necessities.
Once she made the first move the rest fell into place.
She arrived in the new town and for the first two nights slept in a bus shelter. It was scary and she lay awake most of the time just waiting for something to happen. She knew that this wasn’t what it was meant to be like so she decided to do something about it. The girl had always had a talent for writing. Usually it was poetry or school assignments that she was writing but this time she was writing for her life!
She needed a job and a flat desperately. She placed 2 handwritten notes on a board in a shopping mall. Her contact number was a friends parents phone as she didn’t have a phone herself. She had to remember to walk around to her friends place and let her know that was what she had done! Its all seems very basic doesn’t it-but it had to be, her basic needs in life had to be met to go any further.
Here’s what happened within 24 hours of her putting those two hand written notes on the message board.
The local pharmacy was needed a new assistant, she was hired! Her “Flat wanted”ad that had a proviso that she would work for the bond if needed, got an instant response. A landlord had a flat come empty that week but it was a mess and needed cleaning. If she cleaned it he would let her off the bond. Luckily the previous tenants had left some basic furniture-a bed and a couch.
This was the first step in a journey that would take her all over the world visiting new places, working for companies that needed a person that could sell and promote their business to others. She was in demand because of her ability to communicate to others with enthusiasm and excitement.
Her past was well and truly behind her... but there is more...
The girls only regret up until a few years ago was that she hadn’t been able to go to University to complete her study. She passed the exams but because she had simply had to get a job and earn a living to support herself , going to University had become a dream but took second place to ‘Life’ . It wasn’t until after she was married and had her first child that she went back to school at night to study. She quickly discovered that a lot of what she was being taught she already knew. She had simply learnt it on the way. But it was nice for her to be able to prove that she knew what she knew!
That was a few years ago... she now runs a very successful business and enjoys a lifestyle that 25 years ago would have seemed impossible. She has made a life for herself that is positive, constructive and fulfilling. It is not filled with being scared, or degradation or even hatred. She learned to forgive her father although she can never forget. She built strong relationships with friends that became over time her new family.
People don’t know who she is, she isn’t famous. She is a person you might run into on the street. She is though, a survivor of some incredible odds. She could have easily gone down a different path and gone the way of drugs, prostitution and crime. But she didn’t-she held onto that inner voice and ignored those that said she would fail and end up in the gutter.
Now not all of us have awful upbringings. Some of us in fact have fantastic loving homes and parents that are still together. What makes us who we are is our belief in our self and our ability to adapt and stand true to our beliefs. If the girl that you have just read about hadn’t stood true to that inner voice of hers, she could have ended up on the scrapheap of life.
She didn’t and neither will you, if you are prepared to make a change-to listen and understand yourself and to take action
I got a phone call from a guy named Sam* who lived in Florida USA. He was 53 and he had read about the work I did with people. Sam had gone to the website and did the changeology 103 program.
Adultology 101
Teenology 102
Changeology 103