Dear Heather

Dear Heather (my closest and most cherished friend),

You have been on my mind lately. With this being Women's History month, I thought I would take a moment to write to you and remind you of the incredible strength that lies within you. As your oldest friend, I feel I am well qualified to point out the many wonderful experiences life has used to shape you into the tough woman you are today. It has been my pleasure to watch your growth and to mark your accomplishments throughout the 45 years of your life. Stand assured that all of your hard work as well as hard knocks have not gone unnoticed by me.

When we first met, you went by another name. It was a lovely name and one that seemed to suit your meek, kind-hearted, sometimes naïve personality. It also sufficiently reflected a stubborn, head-strong, rebellious image of your youthful self. But as you sprouted up from the rich soil of childhood into the magnificent garden of womanhood, it was apparent that you would need a more flowery name - something sweeter scented like the beautiful blossoms of joy, wisdom, and self-awareness that bloomed from within you.

Your new name afforded you inclusion into a sacred community of women world-wide who fought for the right to stand tall in a space all their own, a space that is free from the chains of humiliation, submisiveness, repression and abuse. What's that? You don't remember earning a better name for yourself... Let me remind you of all the ways you paid the price of admission into this circle of sisterhood. To do that, we will need to revisit some hurtful memories. But I know you can handle the discomfort of these memories in a way that acknowledges the triumphant strength gained and not the painful scars left behind from each one of your heroic battles.

You, in fact, were born on a battlefield. Your newborn soul was planted right in the middle of a war you had not started but one that only you could continue to fight and eventually overcome. You see, being born to a young single mother in a world that had not yet accepted a woman's independence and ability to raise a child on her own was a oneway ticket to a stereotypical forebareance that you would learn to carry with grace. Though the weight of misunderstanding was heavy and at times you stumbled under the pressure of an assumed embarrassment, you always regained your composure and faced the burden of not knowing your father with a brave hope that one day you would be better for it.

With little guidance from family, you relied on instinct to navigate the wilderness in which you were planted. This did not always prove to serve you well and often led you down unhealthy pathways in search of male approval and validation. Your relationships with men were briar patches of thorns that entangled your spirit and ripped at your heart. And you kept returning to their snare in hopes of collecting enough wildflowers to make your effort worthwhile. Two wild roses were all you gathered - two beautiful wild rosey cheeked children created in your own image who would become your new heart and soul.

For these children, you put on the armor of love and fought the most gruesome of all battles. You warriored against the monsters of Drug Addiction, Narcissism and Psychopathy with their weapons of pathelogical lies, love-bombing, gas-lighting and isolation tactics. They targeted your empathetic personality. They tried their best to manipulate and dominate you with fear. They caused you to question your own sanity. But in the end, you won because you were stronger than they knew, perhaps even stronger than you knew. With this new knowledge and self-awareness you appeared invincible to your enemies; they grew tired of the battle and moved on in search of easier prey while you and your children flourished in a world of peace.

This alone is how you earned your new name. But it is not how you have kept it. You were once again called to the battlefield to fight for your own life. This time you would face a fiercely pernicious foe from within, a vitamin deficiency that had been lurking around every corner of your body since birth, depleting your red blood cells, destroying every bit of myelin it could find, and cripling your peripheral nervous system. You were hit hard with anger and resentment towards you body. It was failing and cheating you out of the new joy you had finally aquired in life. A dark depression fell upon your spirit and choked the breath from your lungs as you struggled to rise above the daily pain you felt. You were exhausted, disabled, and alone. But you would not give up; you could not give in to helplessness. If there was one drop of hope left in the universe, it belonged to you.

Somehow, you managed to take that one drop of hope and multiply it, spreading it evenly throughout the lives of those around you. My friend, you were the light in the darkness for me even when you could not see one step ahead. You continued to march onward into battle with your shield or on it. You are my shero.

Most sincerely,

Yourself