I woke up this morning to what is my 55th birthday.

I am beyond grateful.

If blowing out birthday candles really made wishes come true, then I assume all of the birthday candles I’ve ever blown out did indeed grant my wish.

It’s always been the same.

I can’t tell you because today I will make the same wish, the wish I made last year and the year before that.

The same wish I will make next year, God willing.

One thing I can tell you is that never did I ever think I would be writing and sharing my pains here or anywhere beside with my therapist.

It was never about revenge.

It was a calling that I had to answer.

I came from generations of leavers.

I learned how to be a leaver for my survival.

I had mastered how to slowly take myself away.

It began when I was an infant.

Leaving my body where my soul, my spirit was held in safety and existed in the light of God, all while in the real, I was in hell.

Then when I was six or seven, I found that wine did the same same thing, although it didn’t take me to the same place.

There is no memory. Just numb.

Today, I gift all of my hard work and healing, all of the muck I’ve worked through and will continue to work through to my ancestors.

I gift this to them so that they may rest in peace in the knowing that their voices were heard.

That the cries and tears of their lifetimes were met with the ears and heart of a woman who would stand up for them when she stood up for herself.

I give the women who lived through generations of abuse, from the cradle to grave, a voice that I wish they had so that they didn’t have to numb the pain and sorrow they had inherited.

May they rest in eternal peace.

And so it is.