It started the day my little sister was born, December 1st, 2008. I heard my mother in the other room screaming for my stepfather to race her to the hospital. I still don't remember all of the events that occurred that night. Until the next morning when I held that beautiful, tiny miracle in my arms. She shouldn't have survived. She was born two weeks early and only weighed three pounds. After we took her home, my mother had to stay at the hospital, the stress of labor outdid her. They diagnosed her with a disease called, Lupus. it was extremely painful and her doctor had to prescribe many types of medications just to keep the pain bearable. After a while my mother started to abuse her medications, she would take twice the amount she needed to, causing her to always be tired and angry. She would scream and yell at everything we would do. Eventually, she got my grandma hooked on them also. It was a hard period of time. Me being the older sister but not knowing a damn thing about life. I had to raise that little miracle and keep her from the experiences that completely changed me as a person. Because she was abusing her medications, my mother would have excruciating seizures. Leaving me to deal with outcomes. There was a time it was so bad I had to hold her tongue to keep her from choking. Two years later CPS came to the door to ask me some questions about my occurrences at home. I explained, being too young to understand what their intentions would be. I told them that my mother would show me how to crush pills and sniff them. I told them about her seizures and weird conversations I'd have with her while she was high. How she would leave her door locked and I'd only be able to come in if there was an emergency. How I at nine years old, was raising and feeding my baby sister who was two years old at this time. They wrote everything down on their computers and left to make some arrangments. To my surprise, they took me and my baby sister to my father and gave him temporary custody. Although it was better, I hated living with my dad. I was trapped. Not even able to walk outside unless I went to school. While I was with my dad, my grandma had passed away. Overdose. If she did it on purpose? I still don't know til' this day. But she will always be my best friend. Even though she was high most of the time too, she let me be around and talk to her about the problems happening at school. She let me cook with her, she braided my hair, and she let me cry on her shoulder as my mother should of. So losing her was losing myself. I didn't know who I was without her. I started acting out at school. Because my dad was an alcoholic at this time he was also always angry. He would take out his hard days at work on me, and when I was in trouble he'd called me horrible names. Bitch, Pussy, Mistake. It depended on the day. Even though it was better, I still missed my mom. No matter what she did I had always loved her and begged God to bring me back home. Finally, my mom was able to have visitations with us. I remember her long blonde hair and the intense smell of cigarettes and perfume. I hugged her with all my might. Hoping she'd feel my love since I couldn't express it into words. I didn't talk for years after my nana's death. After about a year of visits, my mother was able to see me outside of the building and I started being able to go back and forth between her and father on different days. But this is when the worst of the worst started. The beginning of my horror show of a childhood. We moved into a town-house with my little sister and my stepfather. This is around the time my mother started to use Heroin and Meth. I decided to ignore it and if anyone asked I had no idea what they were talking about. Those were the good years. That's when I started learning the basic feelings of life. Love, Hope, and Sadness. Until it got to be too much. My mother and stepfather started to fight every day. He began to hit her. I had watched my stepfather repeatedly sock my mother in the face. And it came to the day where I had to protect her or I would have lost her. She tried to jump out the window when I had seen the life leave from his eyes after I'd hit him in the head with an ashtray. She couldn't believe the fact I had taken her husband from her. She was going to end her life after I'd just saved it. I rushed to pull her from the ledge. Luckily I had saved her once again. After the death of my stepfather, there were a lot of questions and fear of having to go to prison for the majority of my life. But my mother finally wrapped her head around the situation and told them everything. From the drugs to the death of her spouse. And they let me continue my journey. Thank you for listening.

I woke up one morning feeling sick. This was unusual because though I don't profess to be a superhero, I very rarely get sick. Some of my friends used to tease me that I was only piling up my minor illnesses and that the day I get sick, it would be an avalanche. I am relieved to report however that their grim prophecy has never seen the light of day. This particular morning, however, I was having a fever and my body ached all over. I decided to step out and was immediately welcomed by the loving embrace of the gentle morning sun. Suddenly when the rays kissed my skin, a current of exhilaration run through my whole body and I shuddered out of pure ecstasy. What a feeling I had! The pain and discomfort still lingered somewhere in there, but this new found feeling seemed to shut them out completely. I got a chair and stayed in the sun for the rest of the day until much later when the now hot rays reminded me it was noon already. The next morning, I woke up as fit as fiddle; no headache and no fever. I decided to step out into the sun keeping my fingers crossed that I would have the same feeling as the previous morning. To my greatest disappointment, I had no such feeling. I figured that the exhilarating feeling was linked to the mild sickness I had the previous day and as ridiculous as it may sound, I wished I was still sick that morning so that I could have the same feeling over and over again. Years later, it occurred to me that what happened that day was life's practical way of teaching me the truism in the saying that ‘'there is a silver lining in every dark cloud''. Sickness is not a thing anyone would ever desire, in fact, it is and should be abhorred. People would want to talk about any other thing but pain and suffering. It is too macabre a subject to discuss and yet in the greatest dark clouds, we have silver linings. There I was, wishing I would be sick, so I could enjoy the ‘'silver lining'' that accompanied the sickness. Pain is a universal human experience that we all feel. Think about it, the first cry of a newly born infant due to pain is what douses the fear of mothers that their babies are alright. Though man has gone to lengths to provide remedies for pain, it has proved over the years too elusive to conquer. Think about the pain of a breakup, the pain of losing a dear one; there is no prophylaxis whatsoever against these. Perhaps, this is to remind us that pain has come to stay and may mean more than we have ever cared to think about. No matter the kind of pain we experience, we must never become so fixated on it not to see the wonderful silver lining that may accompany it. We have not given pain a fair hearing in the courts of our minds. It has been typecast as not only undesirable but even evil. But if not for pain, you would step on a sharp object and feel nothing and that will only injure you more. Pain sets off an alarm system to ensure that our bodies are preserved. Have you ever thought about people living with leprosy? Their sickness is simply that, they are not able to feel any pain. Perhaps someone who is in deep pain at the moment is reading this and saying to me that I am oversimplifying matters. I must admit, that might be true. It is often a different matter when we are actually the ones having to go through a certain experience. I still believe though that, having the right perspective of the purpose of pain and suffering will not only help us smile through the pain but also engender an air of perpetual happiness around us. No one should ever wish for misfortune in their lives, but when it does happen, know that you are not defined by the pain that you go through. Know that perhaps it was purposed for you to go through that experience to identify a particular silver lining in that dark cloud. The world is replete with examples of people who at their lowest moments made their most outstanding breakthroughs in life. Always be reminded to take advantage of the silver lining in your dark cloud, even as you go through a particular challenge in life. Photo Credit: Zig Ziglar

I lay on the hardwood floor, propping my chin up with my fists. I had crawled over to the hallway's sliver of light shining beneath the door. The shaft of light illuminated the worn cover. Edges were scuffed, pages were torn, this book had been bought used at a garage sale for a dollar. Helen Keller's "The Story of My Life" invited me to explore its truth. Little did I know this long deceased, blind, deaf girl would teach me, able-bodied and blessed, how to truly see. Helen Keller, the daughter of a Confederate general, stricken with blindness and deafness before the age of two, struggling, and then succeeding at shattering the blackness that engulfed her. Then me, born a century later. Living in the age of convenience and technology with impeccable sight and hearing, yet in a blackness of my own. Two women, both blinded, seemingly worlds apart. I found a friend in Helen Keller. I poured over her words, I had felt a glimpse of the light she found, and I wanted it for myself. I now followed along, book in hand, illuminating my way like a flashlight. A decade ago is when my light turned off. I grappled along walls, trying to find the switch, but to no avail. I have an older brother Colby. My parents adopted him before I was born. His birth mother also lived in the dark and tried to remedy that with drugs. Colby, to no fault of his own, was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, addicted to the liquor. The toxins had warped his developing brain, and he was left to become a toxin to those around him. When I was eight the unthinkable happened. Colby entered and left my room in the dead of night, leaving behind a broken girl and a list of threats. It severed my trust with men and it isolated me from the rest of humanity. I was left alone, searching for a match in a wet, inky world. I searched and pried Helen for an answer, turning page after page looking for the source of her light. I found it on page 97. “I remember that I was sorry for them. I felt vaguely that they could not be good even if they wished to, because no one seemed willing to help them or give them a fair chance. Even now I cannot find it in my heart to condemn them utterly. There are moments when I feel that the Shylocks, the Judases, and even the Devil, are broken spokes in the great wheel of good which shall in due time be made whole” (97). Forgiveness. That was the missing piece, the black shroud that dampened my life. I wrestled with it for a while. Logically I could understand Helen's argument but emotionally her empathy felt like a betrayal. How could she condone that type of behavior, that type of hurt? I had to detach myself from the situation. Had I been born in Colby's body, with Colby's chemistry and make up and experiences, who's to say I would not be floundering, struggling to stay afloat amid his crises. Condoning the wrongs committed was not the conclusion. Understanding and forgiving them was. “As time went on my thoughtless optimism was transmuted into that deeper faith that weighs the ugly facts of the world yet hopes for better things and keeps on working for them even in the face of defeat” (29). Forgiveness was not a switch. The light switch I had so desperately been grappling for did not exist. It took hours and days and weeks of feeling the emotions. Of allowing myself to immerse deep in the sorrow, to feel every last drop of trauma. To soak in it and let it pass. Of letting myself be angrier than I have ever been, fierce and on fire with emotion, and letting the blaze burn itself out. And finally, to let the soothing calm settle in. To exhale and feel the tenderness of my mother's hug, of my girlfriend's touch, my twin brother's smile. The light did not flicker on immediately. It came as a gradual glow over the horizon. Sometimes it grew so drowsily I worried it had stopped all together, that I was beginning to fall backwards. Even now a misty cloud may roll by, obscuring my sun, so I fall back on Helen's words: “Sometimes, it is true, a sense of isolation enfolds me like a cold mist and I sit alone and wait at life's shut gate. Beyond there is light, and music, and sweet companionship; but I may not enter…. So I try to make the light in others' eyes my sun, the music in others' ears my symphony, the smile on others' lips my happiness” (109). Works Cited Keller, Helen, et al. The Story of My Life: Helen Keller. Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1954.