MISTAKES MADE + LESSONS LEARNED

First and foremost is a mistake I made as a teenager. Why? That had the monumental consequences that affected not only me but a daughter from my teen pregnancy. The pregnancy itself was the mistake not the preemie I gave birth to who ended up with the correct mother in the end as a result of the foster care system when I forgot to get her immunized. She later died in foster care of causes related to her disabilities due to her prematurity.

Next in severity is my misguided judgment in choosing a mate so young: eighteen-years-old and at the cusp of mental illness. He was an alcoholic that brought me mostly pain and suffering. I say mostly because that marriage resulted in my now grown kids, four of them, which were not a mistake in the slightest. That marriage was the impetus of so many blunders, primarily because my normal state was always being on edge waiting for the sword to fall. It was acute and chronic anxiety that my ex-husband would do something to the children that drove me to miss the funerals of some of the most important people in my life, i.e., my maternal grandmother and aunt, as well as my foster father/grandfather. He’s both because I called him Grandpa when I was young and Dad as I aged. I have a hole in my heart from their absence. That will never go away.

Then there’s adolescent wrongdoings due to pure and simple immaturity, particularly with friends. That’s friends from childhood that I lost touch with during adolescence because I was too self-centered. In addition, there’s friends that I met in the hospital stays I had during adolescence. For teenagers, we talked about some significantly deep life events, choices, and people involved. Those sessions were both in group and in our free time. Lastly, there’s high school classmates that I lost touch with because I didn’t know how to be a real friend and instead allowed my jealousy and fear to get the better of me.

So, only after many years were there lessons learned. Again, I was immature, self-centered, and afraid to change. And I couldn’t work on those things at the height of chronic and acute anxiety. Then the other shoe dropped and along came my diagnosis with schizophrenia. The psychosis began when I was twenty-six and it was all I could do to maintain a facade of sanity for the sake of custody during my divorce. It was only after meeting Robert that my brain went from a state of high alert to a day-to-day normal where I returned to the University of Minnesota and its Center for Spirituality and Healing masters’ level coursework to learn how to be me and all that that entails: mistakes, guilt, and all.

The most important thing I found was that mistakes aren’t catastrophic as long as you learn from them. Make them the springboard for change. Use that newfound knowledge to help someone else who is down in a similar situation. Discover the light at the end of the tunnel: the pathway to a new portal for positive change.