12 Steps Forward

Everybody has a story to tell...everyone has something that has changed them. For Patti, there wasn't just one life altering event that changed her. It was every challenge, every traumatic life event that has been sculpting her into the warrior she is today.

Patti came from a broken family in a rural, small, uneventful town. Her parents divorced when she was four to which she had been an innocent bystander to her parents knock-out fighting. The home she grew up in held so much anger and resentment. Her parents were too busy verbally accosting and physically assaulting one another, loathing the other, that her parents didn't have the time to show love and nurturing that children should receive. As Patti grew into a young woman, she vowed to be 'different' for she had seen enough that she knew she wanted to do better and not make the same mistakes.

Patti just graduated high school and she was excited about heading to college to begin her life as an adult. She had been dating her boyfriend for 7 years. Daniel was her first kiss, her first love...and if you asked him he would tell you he raised Patti and took care of her. He knew there was something special about her and didn't want her going off to college and fall in love with someone with more ambition than him. That's when she got pregnant. She remembers the very night as Danny did it intentionally. She remembers crying herself to sleep that night so mad at him for what he did. She loved him so much that she quickly forgot about it and forgave him.

Unfortunate for Patti, she had become another pregnant teenage statistic. No one in Patti's or Danny's family thought it was a good idea for Patti to have this baby, not even Danny himself. When Patti went against everyone's wishes and decided she was going to have this baby, her mother handed her a trash bag and told her she was only allowed to take whatever could fit into that trash bag as everything else was 'loaned' to her and was in fact not Patti's to take.

Patti dropped out of college working six days a week and saved everything she could to make a home for her baby. Danny spent his days working followed by drinking. Patti thought Danny's partying ways would stop knowing the immense amount of responsibility they now were expecting, but it only got worse for Danny wasn't ready for parenthood. In fact, the abuse and drinking only got worse. He drunkenly raped her, hit her and told her she couldn't make it without him. When Andrew was a year and a half old, Patti finally gained the courage to leave Danny after many nights spent on her knees crying and begging for the strength to do so. She had to for her son.

Patti loved Andrew. He was such a happy, bright child. He was a big boy at birth, long and lean. Andrew had red, curly hair, bright blue eyes and a face that looked like a Cherub! Patti would garden with him, paint outside in the summer sun on the picnic table and she loved taking him to the park.

Patti met a young man when Andrew was just about 6 years old who appeared to have his shit together, for lack of a better term. He had his own business and was handsome as hell. He had the most beautiful eyes and gorgeous smile. Everyone thought what a "great catch" he was. It wasn't long for Patti to fall head over heels in love with Greg. From what she could tell, he didn't have a drinking problem and he was the total opposite of Danny and so she thought she was safe. Andrew was 7 when he was blessed with a little baby brother named Benjamin.

It was after baby Ben was born that Greg began to show his "dark side". He would disappear for weeks on end and just show up without a word or explanation as to where he was and what he had been doing. This is when the abuse began. Greg's anger was something very dark and deep rooted. Not like Danny's. Danny's was from pressure and stress of responsibility. Greg's came from a different place. Greg's abuse was the kind you read about in the news. H liked to instill fear, mentally, verbally, and physically abuse Patti and humiliating her gave him great satisfaction. He would be raging on the inside and Patti would become his 'punching bag'. The blows she endured would knock her out of the chair, sending her crashing to the floor, crawling on her hands and knees to get away. There were several times he knocked her unconscious. Her face disfigured and so black and blue, constantly making excuses as to what 'accident' had occurred this time as she was so embarrassed to tell the truth. He cut all her long brown hair off, stripped her naked, bound her hands and feet with electrical cords, stuffed a sock in her mouth and tied a shirt around her head, sodomized and raped her with objects and himself. He beat her with a baseball bat splitting her skin wide open with the harsh blows until she was unable to walk. She feared for her life. He stalked her, followed her and even tried running her off the road a couple of times, coming out of nowhere and all of a sudden high beam headlights were behind her, and he began ramming into the back of her car while she was driving. Patti was strong a woman, but she was so afraid of Greg. The abuse was unimaginable. Greg was truly frightening. He loved to terrorize Patti. He wouldn't allow Patti to leave the house to get help and often hold her 'hostage' until the initial fear wore off she knew he wasn't going to kill her. If she tried leaving, he would always reach for the baseball and rub it against her head, threatening to bash her skull in if she tried leaving. That look in Greg's eyes when they glossed over became so empty. His eyes would change from a bright blue to a dark grey as if a storm of evil was ready to erupt and unleash total destruction upon her. She always thought, "this is it...this is how my life ends" and she would envision her babies and this gave her great strength to survive.

When Ben had only been home from the hospital for a day and just after finishing breast feeding, Ben had projectile vomited. This was her second child and she had never seen anything like this. She was used to 'spit up', but this...this was different. Something was wrong, her motherly instincts knew something wasn't quite right. Ben became very sick as a child. It wasn't constant, it was cyclical. He would become very ill and sick for 7-14 days accompanied by spiking and concerning fevers of over 105 degrees Fahrenheit. Unable to eat, ghostly white, and vomiting all the time unable to digest food, and then he would get better. She took Ben to so many specialists and out of state children's hospitals that the best diagnosis they could provide her was a syndrome, PFAPA syndrome that was an acronym for five symptoms (Periodic Fever, Aphthous Stomatitis, Pharyngitis, and Adenitis), of only which he had two symptoms out of these particular five along with many other unexplained random symptoms. She knew in her gut this isn't what he had. There was so little known about this syndrome such as what causes it, what are the long term affects, how long does one typically suffer with symptoms, etc... She gave up on the healthcare field altogether. Patti slept with a light on in a sitting up position so her son wouldn't choke on his vomit for years as she woke one night because she woke to the sound of her son choking one night on his vomit. This made it difficult for Patti to work full time and provide for her children, but she managed. She always found a way. While these episodes were concerning, Ben was growing and physically advanced for his age. Not in the sense of height but when it came to fine and gross motor skills, he was advanced for his age and beyond older children. He could throw a baseball better than his older brother who was 7 years his senior. He was running at the age of 7 months old and was riding a bike without training wheels at the age of 3.

Greg always took off for days and weeks on end and would reappear out of the blue without a word, but she knew he never was truly very far. Greg would destroy any material objects that held sentimental value to Patti and would lie and do everything to sabotage her career by destroying important work equipment and calling her place of business harassing her trying to make it very difficult for her. He would even scale and climb her work building, waiting for Patti to come out of the building watching her leave making sure she was alone and would follow her. One night she awoke suddenly to an eerie presence looming over her, staring at her and it was Greg. Patti knew she locked the doors, but how did he get in? The breeze from the wind blew the curtains which caught her eye and she saw the bedroom window open through which he climbed. It was at this time she knew she had to do something. There outside the open window in a nearby tree, she saw a white heart with what looked like to have eyes as if it was watching over protecting her in some way.

Patti got a restraining order, but that didn't stop Greg and she knew it was in fact, just a piece of paper. That's when she abruptly planned her move without telling a soul. She didn't tell anyone her new address...not her best friends or her family. She needed to put some distance between her and the life she knew and at this point trusted no one. Only time and space could help Greg forget about her. Patti knew she had to break the family cycle and take some time to heal and focus on her children. No more relationships until she figured out why her relationships were so toxic and abusive as she was the common denominator in them both. For the most part, Andrew and Benjamin only saw the aftermath of the strikes, the bruising and swelling. They did however, witness on brutal, traumatic attack on Patti with a baseball bat and that one time was one too many. Andrew will forever remember the 'cracking' sound of the bat against Patti's legs.

Patti was very close to her boys. Andrew's father was an alcoholic who married a very young woman who was closer to Andrew's age than she was to his father. Andrew was ignored, mistreated, and denied access to certain food in the home. He soon realized the only person he could count on was his mother. Benjamin's father would always disappoint and never show up for his son. His father would blame Patti for the reason he couldn't be a part of his son's life, but Patti refused to speak ill of their father's and had to let them learn on their own the truth about the men they truly were. Neither boy's father paid child support of any kind. Andrew's father was significantly more involved than Benjamin's father and Benjamin noticed. Patti saw something 'break' inside her son when he was 8 years old when he sat on the couch, bag packed, coat on eagerly waiting for his father to come pick him up, only to wake up on the couch the next morning broken and defeated.

Benjamin was a handsome boy. While his brother Andrew was tall and lean, Benny was shorter, lean and cut with muscles, a darker complexion with brown curly hair and hazel eyes. Patti believed he would be a well known athlete one day! When Benjamin was 13, just graduating from 8th grade, he lost his uncle. There were only three people from his father's side of the family that invested in Benjamin and that was his grandmother, his aunt, and his Uncle Billy. Uncle Billy died suddenly from a hear attack. It was at his Uncle Billy's funeral that he learned his father had taken off to Florida with another woman and he was going to have a baby brother in 8 weeks. Everyone in his father's family knew...except for Benjamin. This was devastating to him. His Uncle's funeral was the second 'blow' to Benjamin that would begin to carve a dangerous path of self-destruction.

What Patti didn't know, was that Andrew's father had been feeding Andrew alcohol since he was eleven years old. Danny wanted to be Andrew's 'friend', not a parent. Danny didn't want the responsibility of being a father, remember? Danny was creating a mini alcoholic who so wanted to be 'just like' his dad. Andrew idolized his father who was a man's man. His father was an outdoorsman who hunted and fished. His father was a lumberjack and at one point in Danny's life, he hitchhiked all the way to Alaska to work on the fishing boats. Andrew also began buying alcohol at the age of seventeen. Andrew figured out real quick, after a long hard days work, he craved a beer and if he walked into the store dirty and ragged looking while confidently placing a twelve pack of beer up on the counter, he wasn't asked for an ID. Patti never suspected this as Andrew went to school and work every day and successfully graduated high school.

Life was catching up with Andrew and Benjamin. The negative influences all around them were luring them in. Benjamin began smoking marijuana to numb the pain of an absent father who abandoned him, and Andrew was already sliding down the slippery slope of alcoholism because he thought it was 'cool' and it helped him be a little less socially awkward, but really it had already become a habit taught by his father. Even though did the best she could, climbing up the corporate ladder, buying a home for stability for her boys, supporting Benjamin playing hockey which meant up at 3:30 am for hockey practice six days a week and late night games, devoting her life to her boys offering them love and stability, it wasn't enough. They needed a positive male role model to help guide them and show them the way.

The year 2020 would prove to be the most challenging. Andrew had his first DWI at age 18 and had been in two roll over car accidents. By the year 2020, Andrew had three DWI's. Patti had been laid off by her company just before Christmas, and Benjamin was half way through his freshman year in high school, was making honor roll, and playing hockey for the high school team 6 days a week. A global pandemic erupted and the life as they knew it was spiraling out of control. Benjamin was forced to participate in online learning for the rest of the 2020 school year which no one was prepared for, the school or students. Benjamin began falling behind and failing classes. Andrew had fallen in love for the first time and was navigating a toxic relationship with his girlfriend. Anger and trust issues quickly developed between them both. This was not Andrew's girlfriend's first time falling in love as she was seven years older than Andrew. They both lacked emotional intelligence, creating a most toxic brew. Benjamin was falling into depression as all school activities abruptly stopped and Andrew was experiencing is first heartbreak and was medicating himself with alcohol.

Andrew had bought a Ford Explorer as a 'Woods rig' to drive around the woods on some trails. He had been taking that Ford Explorer out into the woods all summer long trying to heal from his first heartbreak by drinking and four wheeling, any stimulation to numb the pain. Patti was on edge knowing nothing good was going to come out of this, pleading with her son time and time again, trying to express the potential consequences of his actions and choices, knowing full well there was no reasoning with someone under the influence as there. All her efforts were falling on deaf and distracted ears.

August 22, 2020 Patti receives a frantic call from her son. Andrew and his cousin Michelle, Patti's niece had gone four wheeling this particular Sunday evening, enjoying a few beers together, exploring in Dora the Explorer. It's 9:11 pm when Patti's phone rings and sees it is her son, Andrew calling. When she answers she hears a frantic, yet authoritative voice from Andrew saying, "call the fire department right now and tell them the woods are on fire and they need to get here now!". Patti is shaken and begins asking questions, but Andrew replies, "Just do it right now, call them right now!" and hangs up. Patti makes the 911 call to alert the authorities of the fire and the call she received. After speaking to the 911 dispatch operator, she begins calling her son back, but he isn't picking up and she can't reach him. She is afraid to go out into the woods for what she might find. All she could think about was the forest burning, all the animals homes being destroyed and then...her son going to jail. She wasn't prepared for what happens next.

Patti watched the fire trucks and ambulance arrive and enter the woods. She didn't even have any idea that Michelle was with Andrew until she saw Michelle walking out of the woods alone. Patti let out a howling cry of sheer agony not knowing what her son's fate held.

Michelle is distraught and upset. She explains that Andrew saw flames coming up from the hood and told Michelle to get out of the vehicle right now. They were not on a trail, but blazing their own trail so there was brush, leaves, and trees surrounding them. Michelle got out, and started running but then soon realized she forgot her phone in the car so she ran back searching the Ford Explorer for her phone and finally found it. Andrew called his mother because he didn't have time to waste being on the phone with 911 dispatch as he is trying to contain the fire. He jumped out of the vehicle trying to put out the fire on the ground around the vehicle, but got back into the burning vehicle to drive it out of the deep woods and back onto the trail where he could park the vehicle on dirt to keep the fire from spreading as quickly. Andrew was trying to save the woods and his cousin and managed to get the Explorer onto the trail, but not before the vehicle became completely engulfed in flames with Andrew inside.

Patti unable to stand and is in a squatting position as she is overcome by nausea, on the wood's edge, weeping with gut wrenching moans, looking up to the sky praying, she sees a white heart in the trees where the trail enters the woods. She remembers seeing that white heart before in the night and suddenly she feels protection. She wasn't comforted, but felt a sense of protection, like it is a sign. Patti was so close to her son, less than a mile, yet felt so far away and so helpless. Then they hear an explosion.

A few months earlier that same year in 2020, Benjamin's anger and disappointment from his father, his father's family for all knowing Greg had moved six months earlier to Florida with his girlfriend and soon to be baby brother and withholding that information from him cut him deep. Then with the pandemic cutting him off from connecting with peers, friends and his hockey team buddies, he began to spiral into a depression. He took his anger out on Patti. "Fuck off!", and "Fuck you!" was all Patti heard. Then it turned to "I am going to murder you!". Benjamin wouldn't do his school work and when they did allow students back to school, he stopped going. He fell so far behind he was so overwhelmed. He began sleeping all day and when Ben specifically said, "I can't physically get out of bed.", Patti desperately began seeking help from the school, therapists, and filed a CHINS petition (Child in Need of Services). Ben began throwing up, just like he used to.

The little boy that Patti once knew was gone. The one that loved his mother so much and would cuddle with her and did everything together had quickly dissolved. Ben was someone that hated his mother and was filled with so much rage. He began breaking things, punching holes in wall, ripped doors off hinges and Patti lived in a world of fear. After work, she would go to her room and cry herself to sleep. How could she help him? She already was doing everything she could, but hospitals were turning her away saying he was 'fine' when she lived in constant state of anguish and fear. Memories of Greg were flooding back. How did things end up like this??? How can she fix all of this??? Andrew with his drinking and Benjamin with his mental health and physical health issues. Benjamin began having episodes just as he did when he was a child. Benjamin's last fever/vomiting cycle was when he was 12 years old. Patti thought he outgrew it, but something isn't right with Ben, she knows this. Patti had to dig deeper, much deeper this time for the strength and courage to begin the crusade for her son's health. Ben is 16 and Patti only two more years to advocate and seek answers. Healthcare isn't as advanced as we would like it to be. She needed to find a Dr. that wanted to help discover and find the answers she seeks. A Dr. that was truly passionate about helping others and the reason they pursued this career in the first place. Patti was getting tired. The stress, worry and responsibility weighed extremely heavy on her.

Ben would be eventually tackled and apprehended by 4 police officers and tased by a State Trooper before getting a small portion of the help he desperately needed. Unfortunately, it takes a major crisis involving crime for the healthcare field to take action. It was when Ben put a knife to Patti's chest that the she knew the only way to get him the help he needed would be by calling the police an involving the law. It would only be at this point that Dr.'s and clinicians would take her son's health seriously. The police came to the home and Ben escaped from the officers, running on foot into the cold wet night as his response was fight or flight mode, and he chose flight. Remember...he was a very athletic boy and very fast on his feet. They couldn't catch him. Patti had no idea he had slipped away from their custody and when she saw the ambulance and additional police cruisers blocking the road just beyond her home after the police had taken Ben outside to bring him to the hospital, she began to fall apart. Benjamin on two other previous occasions had run down the middle of the road jumping in front of cars in an act of suicide. It was dark and it was night time. Had he slipped away from police and actually did it this time? Was he successful in getting run over? Panic set in. Flashing lights everywhere, traffic stopped and no one was telling Patti anything.

Ben had slipped into the woods. Now the State police were involved and they had K-9 units and dogs searching the woods for Ben. After an hour and a half, Patti found Ben inside their home, in the basement in a room hiding. He didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay right at home. Patti explained to Ben she had to inform the police that he was back here at home because she couldn't let them keep looking for him. When she went outside to inform the police, Ben locked all the doors to the basement. Needless to say, the police splintered doors, and attacked Ben who had locked himself in a room in the basement. When Patti reached the basement all she could see is her son with four officers on top of him. Ben had gone into fight mode when the police began kicking down the door to get him into custody. Ben was just 16. Was this a mental health issue? A health issue undiagnosed and treated since his birth? What was happening? Patti's home was falling apart and getting destroyed. Officers were kneeling on her son's chest while his head had gone through the sheetrock from the force of the officers tackling him.

Ben ended up in the hospital for three weeks. Two of those weeks, he was held in the emergency department of a regular healthcare hospital. Unable to leave his room or go outside, without privileges of any kind. A security guard at the hospital who used to work at the men's state prison said prisoners were allowed more freedom than my son. Finally the third week he was brought to a mental health facility for children where they diagnosed him with bi-polar disorder. It was this point his old vomiting cycles began to return in full force, turning ghostly white, unable to eat and digest food with constant, violent vomiting, and feeling downright terrible.

Patti volunteered when she could for animal rescues and during this tumultuous time, the rescue reached out to her asking if she would be interested in caring for a Barn owl that could not be released back into the wild? Patti never considered herself a 'bird' person, nonetheless, she accepted. Upon her arrival at the rescue that evening, what she saw was a beautiful bird with a white heart face looking back at her. It was a full moon that night so she decided to name the owl Luna. When Patti brought Luna home, she soon realized she needed Luna just as much as Luna needed her. Luna seemed to bring peace to the household.

Luckily, that night on August 22nd, 2020, Andrew walked out of the woods, unharmed but a few small second degree burns. Today, Andrew is not drinking. He has been sober for 22 days. If there is ever an emergency, Andrew is the one I would want by my side. He always keeps a cool head and jumps right into action instinctively knowing just what to do.

Benjamin fights depression daily. There are days he comes out of his room once or twice, but his mood is stable. The anger isn't what it used to be. Benjamin violently throws up and Patti still has no explanation as to why his body seems to shut down. I appears his body reaches a toxic level and he becomes miserably sick. Benjamin gets violently sick like you and I would after a night of very heavy drinking.

Patti has come to learn is that we all could benefit from the 12 step program no matter who you are whether you are addicted to substances, have behavioral addictions and compulsions (such as learned behaviors as a child as a result of familial repeated cycles of abuse, negativity and torment as the victim or abuser), this program can help anyone who is looking to change their life for the better. You can find much meaning in the serenity prayer. "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." These words are not just for alcoholics, but for anyone who is struggling with life's challenges. If we change the perspective of our lens by zooming out, with an aerial view from above, you will see life is happening for us, not to us. Courage isn't having the strength to go on, but rather going on when you don't have the strength because you admitted you are broken and need help. When you acknowledge you need help, it is then you can find help from believing through fierce faith. That is how the light gets in...to give us the energy to keep going. Everything is energy and has it's own frequency. Light is energy and we need that light to give us strength and share with others just as we need food. We can choose the frequency in which we radiate and the 12 step program can help one achieve that. For Patti, teaching her boys faith was unequivocally the hardest thing for her to do. Teach your children faith from the beginning and their lives will be much more abundant and will raise the vibration of the Earth.

Patti realized the owl had a much more significant meaning and place in her life. The owl spirit reminds us what quality time with loved ones truly means, and that is having faith. The owl provides a strong sense of intuition and can access wisdom that is usually hidden from most, offering inspiration and guidance to deeply explore the unknown magic of life. The presence of the owl brings change and transformation representing learning and mental change for a new beginning. The world is ready for transformation and a fresh new beginning of fierce faith and higher vibration. So mote it be.