about. What was unhealthy about my situation, however, was that I was being raised by a verbally and physically abusive mother who almost always made a point of letting me know that I did not live up to her expectations. Because of the rejection and mistreatment, I always found myself doing things to try and win her approval. Somehow, I was never quite good enough.
Most of the decisions I made about how I dressed, what I thought, or the things I attempted to excel in weren’t based on what I wanted. Instead, they were based on what I thought would make my mother proud, or, depending on her frame of mind — help me avoid her wrath.
Maybe you decided to pursue a certain career, live in a certain neighborhood, drive a certain car, or pick a life partner based solely on how it would influence other people’s thoughts about you, rather than making those choices because they would bring you fulfillment. If so, you’re probably not very happy. While pleasing others can in some way have its rewards, it can debilitate us if the things we do aren’t actually in line with our own purpose and desires.
By the age of 10, I had learned how to betray and dishonor myself, my dreams, my goals, and my ambitions because I feared rejection and desperately needed the approval of others. I became codependent on people at the expense of my own emotional and physical dignity. It’s been said that a girl’s knowledge of a man is established by the interaction she has with her father. I never knew my father, so I was clueless about men. At a very early age I began allowing men to take advantage of me. As I got into relationships, I thought a man was doing me a favor if he dated me. Therefore, I positioned myself to be the object of emotional or sexual manipulation.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t just men who took advantage of me. It seemed that everyone did. For years, it was as if I had a neon sign across my forehead that read, “FOOL! Use me!” Anyone who could see my desperate need for acceptance and significance was able to benefit from my inability to have total authority over my life. Having the love and affection of a man just happened to be the devil’s greatest tool in keeping my potential on lockdown.
Maybe the pressures my mom experienced as a single parent of five children had taken its toll. But her abuse had gotten so bad that by the age of fifteen, I left my mother’s house to live on my own. At sixteen, I was pregnant and working at an upscale steak and seafood restaurant as a fry cook at night and cleaning an office building on the weekends to provide for my daughter and myself. When my daughter was born, I went back to school.
God blessed me to find a babysitter who lived across the street from the high school I was attending. She agreed to keep my daughter during the day while I was in class, and at night when I was at work. In many ways she became my daughter’s surrogate grandmother. Every day, I would get out of school, walk across the street to spend two hours with my daughter, then head to work.
I didn’t have a car, so I rode the city bus back and forth to work. I would get on the bus around 10 p.m. It was the last bus of the evening, and I was often the last passenger. I was also blessed to have a bus driver who would stop in front of my babysitter’s house, wait for me to get my daughter, and get back on the bus. The bus stop was a half block from my apartment, so when the driver let us off for the evening he would watch us to make sure we got in safely. I would turn the porch light on to signal that we were okay. This was my routine five days a week until I graduated from high school.
My pregnancy was the result of an older man (I’ll call him William) who saw an opportunity to exploit my desperate need for affection and approval. For me, the sexual touches and tender, yet manipulative, words fulfilled my longing for the love and approval my parents failed to give me. For William, it was just sex. And like a drug addict trying to recapture that first feeling of ecstasy, I became an addict, making every sexual encounter a fiendish pursuit of love and approval.
This warped sense of thinking devastated my life in a very unsuspecting way. Because my need for love was shaped by my brokenness, I never learned the true nature of love. I equated sex with love, and no one ever told me anything different. I never learned to give love, receive love, or trust love. I was too busy trying to satisfy my own brokenness.
The news of my pregnancy and my refusal to abort it revealed William’s true nature. Immediately after hearing the news, he became abusive. When my mother found out that I was pregnant, she attempted to force William to marry me. The outcome was disastrous. Mother had invited me to go shopping with her and my older sister. I was excited because we were going to get things for the baby, and I interpreted this act as mending our relationship.
Unfortunately, there was no planned shopping trip; the next thing I knew, I was at William’s parents’ house. Feeling like a sheep being led to slaughter, I soon realized my mother had planned this. The room was darkened by heavy drapes and the darkness was deepened by the coldness of the attitudes that surrounded me.
In her usual, embittered tone, my mother told William, “My daughter is pregnant. You’re the father, and you need to marry her.” The shock and humiliation of my mother’s statement was like a heavy cement band that kept me bound to the chair. If I could have snapped my finger and disappeared, I would have.
William’s response was the rope that tied me down for the slaughter. Still dazed by my mother’s statement, I vaguely heard him adamantly deny ever being involved with me. With total contempt in his voice, he declared that I was “beneath him.” He went on to tell why he suspected I had become pregnant: “She screwed around with a lot of different men!”
While William’s statement wasn’t true, it led to a silence that seemed to strangle life out of the room. With my head dropped in shame, I could feel the hate emanating from his eyes. The very look he gave pierced my soul like red hot coal burning through silk. The same man, who had previously taken sexual liberties with my body, now spoke of me in total disgust.
As I walked away from that humiliating situation I felt extremely filthy. It was as if the ultimate scarlet letter of shame had been stamped on my forehead. The shame was embedded more when my mother vowed, with the same measure of disgust, that she would never help me in the support of my baby. In the years that followed, she stayed true to her word. Oh, just so you know — we never went shopping for the baby — not that day or any other day.
I was determined not to be a statistic or a financial weight on society, so it was critical that I finish high school. I attended summer classes to make up for the time I lost during my pregnancy. Back then, a girl wasn’t allowed to attend school once the officials found out she was pregnant. When word began to spread, the boys I knew and the few friends I had avoided me like the plague! The girls acted as if my condition was contagious. The boys — well, none of them wanted to be accused of being the father of my baby.
My mother forbade my sisters to talk to me, and my oldest sister who attended the same high school, did just that — refused to talk to me. My younger sisters decided to defy mother. They would lie about having to stay after school and would come to my house instead. When my mother found out, my younger sisters were punished. But despite the punishments, my sister Sheila continued to sneak to see me. Sheila still has that defiant spirit, but sometimes it sabotages her in emotionally unhealthy ways.
I miraculously finished school on time and walked across the stage a proud mother, with my sisters and daughter cheering excitedly as my name was announced. It was one of the proudest moments of my life, but my mother and father were nowhere to be found. Even then, they were unable to give me love and approval.
With no help from my parents or my daughter’s father, I felt totally abandoned, betrayed, and afraid. I sought assistance through the state welfare program and received help in the form of childcare and food stamps. In my mind this was another symbol of shame.
I had hoped to raise the status of our lives by attending college to become an ophthalmologist, but those hopes were quickly dashed when a college advisor told me to try something that I was more qualified to do. I can’t remember his list of suggestions, but they were service-oriented jobs, like hospitality and entry level office support. In that moment I gave him greater authority over my life and my hopes because I never challenged his opinion, nor did I continue to pursue my ambition. By accepting his view of my life and potential, I also accepted a life of mediocrity. Thank goodness