(this is from a post on another forum… and Im cutting and pasting it here)

Ooooh what a good question Chewie! What is my greatest test and lesson learned? Oh my! I have lots! How to prioritize them? Where do I start? Amazingly, I think many of them are trying to teach me the same lesson…. I sadly haven’t learned it yet I guess.

Easy for me to point to 9/11 and my weight loss surgery and the lesson of how sometimes courage and persistence is needed to fight through the biggest obstacles. I felt I could accomplish anything after I lost all the weight. It was my life’s biggest failure and I conquered it.

Easy for me to point to the childhood rape and subsequent torture afterwards and how I learned to be self sufficient. Not expecting anyone to save me and learning coping skills that probably no 9 year old should ever have to learn. I learned great inner strength and to trust that I could get myself through anything. I can survive anything if I can survive that.

Easy for me to point to infertility and the separation from my husband and the almost divorce. It showed me how chronic pain (emotional) can break apart a marriage and that sometimes time and space can heal it. Reminded me how pain can be so cruel. Must not ever be vulnerable to pain. Must be prepared and damn up all the places where pain can seep in and cause damage. Detachment and denial became my coping skills of choice.

Easy for me to point to the miracle of Emma’s conception after 7 years of IF. It showed me grace and forced me to humbly accept my lack of control sometimes brings about good. Miracles happen. Grace is amazing. There is something bigger then just me here and it is a miraculous.

Easy for me to talk about finding out about I believe love’s bond deepens in challenging times like toddler adoption. Like how hard Dinara was to love at first. How sick I got. And just how plain hard our whole trip to Kaz was. Or how my love and dependence on my mate grew 10 fold when I realized he could be there for emotionally. For the first time I actually had to trust someone emotionally.

I guess I learned more about being dependent with my plastic surgery. I was physically dependent on others and it was very uncomfortable. Or perhaps I could talk about my near death experience after Brazil… the emotional pain of our dog dying, my uncontrollable pain, the inability to “achieve at anything” when I was lying flat on my back unable to move. Grief overwhelmed me and again my husband was there for me in a way I never expected. And yet again my mom let me down. That’s a long story… but it bears mentioning here.

So when I add up all the big lessons, they seem to all point to my inability to trust people to be there for me. There is struggle I face … the reason I am the way I am. Always looking for the “holes” in life where I can slip through and drown in the emotional pain of trusting someone else and them letting me down. To not prepare, to not be prepared, means that I am like my mom… I’d be abandoning my children like she did me and that is unacceptable.

Motherhood is what I think is most changing me. It’s the mirror that causes me great reflection and growth. It’s in the simple beauty of those relationships where people are dependent on ME… that I realize what joy really is. Joy without boundaries.

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