Read Angie's Thoughts

In recent weeks, I have been wrestling again with God over the issue of my mom, or rather, my not having a mom. This issue tends to rear its ugly head every now and then, usually when I least expect it. It usually starts with my becoming more aware of the interactions taking place around me between moms and their children. Working at a school, I see a lot of those interactions and lately, watching them has left a familiar pang in my chest. Then comes the heaviness of heart and the tears when I lay in bed at night trying to fall asleep. Along with those tears come the familiar questions I've asked myself since I was a little girl, the biggest one being, "Why didn't she want me?" As I lay in bed last night, having cried until there were no tears left, I began thinking back over the many issues I've dealt with in my life. Between the abuse issues, the mom issues, and all the issues in between, I really have dealt with some difficult ones. What I realized is that even...

Recently, I have followed the suggestions of some close friends and started to write a book about my experiences with sexual abuse and the abandonment by my mom. My first attempt at writing was this past summer, but I didn't have much success. I have a book full of poems that I wrote years ago when going to counseling and really in the middle of working through my abuse issues and my idea was to take each poem and write some background information on what I was dealing with when I wrote it. As hard as I tried, the words just weren't flowing and sitting down to write was such a struggle, so I gave up and stopped trying to force it. A few weeks ago, I was thinking again about how I wanted to use my life and my past experiences to help other people and a new idea of how to write my story came to mind. I decided just to start at the beginning and write how things happened. I started asking people close to me questions about things I didn't know or couldn't remember and just...