Partner with InspireWorld Foundation
Last summer, a postcard arrived in my mailbox announcing that the 45th Class Reunion for my High School would be in just two weeks. I had not been to a reunion in 40 years, and was a bit curious but also reticent. I have just one friend I am still in touch with from High School, so I called her and we agreed to go. I had a tiny hunch, an instinct, that there was some reason that I should go. I was pretty nervous. When I graduated back in 1979, I was really hitting a low point. I weighed 350 pounds and was getting desperate and breaking down emotionally and mentally. I was always well-liked and had friends, but I was carrying a lot of it hidden, under the weight no one knew about.
Not long into the gathering, I was standing with a group of four classmates when one of them remarked on my physical change. He asked how I had lost all the weight. I was a bit taken aback and on the spot with people I hardly knew, but felt a nudge to be honest, so I said, “ You never know what other people are carrying, and in fact, in High School, I was suffering deeply from years of severe trauma and sexual abuse. I have done a lot of therapy, worked through that for many years, and gradually the weight has come off. It wasn’t really obesity I was carrying, it was trauma.” He literally teared up and apologized for asking, and I assured him I was not offended at all…I’ve published my story, given talks about it, and it is no longer a secret. I also said, “I am now one of the happiest people I know, so please don’t feel bad for me.”
Another classmate, Charlie Kruse, was standing on the other side of me, and he asked me if we could talk privately. We stepped aside after a few minutes, and he began to tell me about this mission of his—InspireWorld. He said I was speaking of and witnessing to precisely what the mission was—helping people to heal and even thrive after trauma. Charlie asked if I would consider further conversations about my possible participation, and I knew right then that this was the reason I had the nudge to attend this reunion. I agreed, and although it has taken a year for me to be ready, I had already begun my relationship with this Foundation.
My story is extreme, both in my wounding and in my healing from those wounds. I lived through enormous childhood trauma that included sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, and being trafficked by my father.
Yet, I was born with courage, tenacity, and faith that have kept me alive and in constant pursuit of safety, provision, hope, physical and mental health, love, and peace—things that were out of my reach for the first four decades of my life.
Faith in something good, something greater than myself, was kindled out of several extraordinary spiritual experiences I had as a very young child of an Angel who came to comfort me and lift me out of my body during nearly lethal abuses. Those experiences lit a tiny eternal flame that was planted in my soul and has never left me, withstanding the storms and hurricanes of unimaginable pain and terror for many years.
The psychological, emotional, and physical wounds from my childhood were profoundly damaging and limiting in their lasting effects into my adulthood. As in my youth, so in my young adult life, I developed survival strategies—but as the years wore on, they became ineffective, exhausting, and eventually created more and more chaos, inner turmoil, and near despair. In my forties, a violent assault shattered whatever I still had standing of a psychic structure, and I collapsed, inside and outside.
This pivotal crash forced to the surface a non-negotiable decision from my soul: Either find true healing, or commit suicide. The anguish had to end, one way or another. That eternal, unquenchable flame in me still flickered with love. I could not take my life. I loved other people too much to do that…I did not want my nieces and nephews to have an Auntie who took her own life. They became the reason I stayed alive and sought true and lasting healing until years later, when love and respect for my own life and being grew enough that I could become my own reason to live.
Sick with STDs from my childhood, mentally broken beyond “fixing”, I courageously began an epic journey that has been my path to becoming the alchemist of my own life. I decided to conduct a personal experiment to see just how far healing can go. I wouldn’t stop until I hit a limit — and so far—it seems the sky is the limit! Twenty-five years of intensive work is blossoming into a blessed, joyful, healthy, and very, very happy life.
I have chronicled and painted much of this journey. I have published some of it, spoken of it to groups of therapists, teachers, and students, and at times retreated from sharing it at all. But now I am emerging again, ready to share the fruit that is ripening.
It is a great joy for me to partner with InspireWorld Foundation, whose mission profoundly aligns with my own heart’s desire to offer what I can to help others who have suffered like me. When any of us can use the powerful energy of our own pain and suffering that we have embraced and healed to alleviate some of the wounds and isolation of another, we become a Christ. We become an Alchemist. We fortify our own victory and stir up the flame of eternal light in the depths of souls. Then they can, too, become their own safe haven, their own healer, with the dignity of having learned to forge their own resurrection.