Recently I wrote a piece to celebrate my achievements. I felt like a pat on the back was due and it was. Today I was to celebrate something bigger than myself. Today I want to celebrate life. Not my life specifically but ALL LIFE.

My earliest memories of pain always come with me as a teenager crying outside my mothers house. Crying out to GOD, almost every day I would go outside and sit there and talk to GOD. I would cry bitterly regularly. I was raised in a home where GOD was the foundation, my mother taught me that you can get through anything this way. Any type of heartbreak, any challenge, just anything, and at the time she was all I had and so I decided to believe her. So I spoke to him everyday outside, because I really trusted nobody else with my pain.

The picture you have in your head right now is probably of this broken innocent teenager desperately praying, the way we are supposed to, but that was not what this picture looked like. You see my mothers way was very structured, together, she would sit with her bible and say the rosary and pray the way we were taught to at the church we belong to. My way was not the conventional way. You see I wasn’t the same as my mother. I didn’t have as much honour as she did, even as a teenager. I had already completely messed everything up. So me praying behind the house looked more like this: I would light a cigarette and then look up and start talking, mostly swearing, lots of whys being asked and then sobbing from the core of who I am. But then another cigarette. It was the thing i wouldn’t stop because it was the one thing that I believed held me together. I was broken, a broken young lady that was just a teenager and had completely no clue about anything. All I knew for the longest time was that it hurt inside to be me, to live my life. I also knew that I was different to my family and I was afraid that I wasn’t good enough. But everyday I went outside, I smoked my cigarettes and I cried bitterly. Sometimes I didn’t cry, sometimes I had a good day and I would just sit there and talk. I guess the people outside who heard me probably thought I sounded like a lunatic talking to myself like that, but I wasn’t talking to myself , I was talking to GOD.

GOD is a sensitive topic nowadays. It’s a topic the divides more than it brings us together. It’s avoided when there is a mixture of religion in the room. I’ve learnt though that GOD doesn’t separate, GOD wants us to love all mankind and to live in harmony. But we are human and unfortunately we have many different factors that will always separate us. Like… who is right, whos religion is the right religion, even within those religions men fight about how it should be done. The old way or the new way. New age people are a problem for old school people and greed had overtaken the hearts of so many. However, no matter how dark the world gets, no matter how close danger is to my doorstep, and no matter how many lives are lost, when I sit outside and I look up I know that GOD is still there. I see him in the beauty of the sky, of the trees , of nature… I see him everywhere even in the bad, he is there.

Just to be clear, this is not a religious post, this is a TAMMY post. I’m telling you MY story and how I got here. Coming from a religious family, I know what it looks like for your choices to be frowned on, but that has only taught me to fight harder for what I believe in, and that is what this post is about today. It’s about how I SURVIVED everything and lived to see today. I lived to celebrate myself yesterday and I have lived to write this piece today. I give all thanks to MY MAKER for ALWAYS being my shoulder to cry on, the ear that listened to me and my protector. You don’t have to be Christian to know that GOD is love. You don’t have to believe what I believe to have the hand and the favour of life itself on your path. I surround myself with likeminded people now. People who believe in love, who believe that healing the hearts of the broken is needed. People who don’t think of themselves as better than the next person because of rank, belief or money. Religion divides. GOD does not divide. We are stronger together, as a people as we breathe the very same breath, its a testimony to how life holds us all in the palm of his hands. You want to limit an unlimited entity by giving him limitations like names and trying to bring him down to the level of your understanding. Look, why would you call the creator of life GOD if you felt you could even begin to understand the power he carries. To me, GOD is everything and he is in everyone. The very breath that we breathe – GOD. The very essence of your being – GOD. HE has no limitations, even giving GOD a gender for me is a human limitation. But I like to see him as a father so I call him father. The GOD I believe in is almighty, he surpasses every bit of my understanding and he just IS.

I know many will feel like I am not who they thought I was, because I was raised a certain way and I should be living by those rules, but this is who I am and that should be OK. Hiding myself in the shadows, my true self is just not acceptable anymore. The reason I have accomplished everything so far is because I have let the world see a glimpse of me. Not because I need recognition, because I really don’t. I recognize how far I have come already. I validate me and GOD validates me through each challenge that I overcome. The reason I share myself is because I think of how I felt as a child alone, outside smoking cigarettes because I could not tell the people around me what was going on with me because I was afraid it was my fault. I think of all the children/ teenagers and even adults that have had to endure the things that I have endured and I want to help them understand that it will get better. People who had to face molestation, divorce, rape, shame, loneliness, death of those closest to them and for whatever reason they feel hopeless and alone. I am not here because I need the world to see me, I’m here because I need the world to see hope. That even in those deep dark corners, nobody is ever truly alone, spiritually they have the support of the highest ranked being they could ask for and that is GOD, the GOD of life, the GOD of the beginning and the GOD of the end. Whether you believe he exists or not is irrelevant to him, it doesn’t remove his existence. He is like the sun that rises in the morning and sets in the night, the moon that shines over us and the stars in the sky. The creator of this world is not limited to your understanding, It’s you who feel important enough to place limitations on him. Because you need everything to be on your level of understanding. I get it, and you are right. No matter what you say , you are right. In your world and to your understanding, you have decided to place yourself in a box of your own understanding and that’s ok. I get it its safe in there. I just want you to see that just because its warm and cozy in your box, doesn’t meant your neighbours box isn’t just as warm and cozy like yours because its different. It’s our nature to put everything in a box and to want to categorize life the way we understand it. Because of this, some that read this post will be offended. That’s ok too, because I understand why you are offended and you have every right to your feelings. But think about how limited you are if you base everything on a feeling or an emotion. instead of what is certain no matter how you feel. I know know for sure that no matter how you feel about me today, the sun will still rise and it will set later on. When you take a breathe your lungs will fill with air unless its your time. Fire will still be fueled by air, the tides will still come in and go out. GOD will still exist. Whether you believe it or not, whether you want him to or not.

I say this not because I was told by people. I say this because even though people told me how to believe and how to pray and how to understand, I realised that my eyes see differently to those that try to limit me. That every step I took, I took because of the inner strength I received through conversations with HIM, with the moon, with the stars and with the sun because MY GOD is everywhere I go, he is in everyone that breathes and he has no limitations really. Most importantly, when it comes down to it the nitty gritty of it all, it is in the miracles that literally kept me alive as I walked through this life looking for trouble in my youth. So I choose to believe that LIFE himself has been the hand that guided me and protected me and continues to do so today.

Today, I give all the glory to GOD, to LIFE, to the beginning and the end, not because someone told me to, but because I wanted to. Because when I look back on my life, nobody else had my back but GOD and nobody ever will. He was the key to everything back then and He IS the key to everything now.

Love and light.

Tammy