I remember distinctly the day I told my first lie. I was in first grade and Miss Hooper had let my friend and me go down the hall to get a drink at the water fountain. We held hands and our ponytails swung back and forth as we made our way down the hall. We were quietly chatting and my friend suddenly turned to me and said, “You always talk about your Daddy; don’t you have a mother?”
I will never forget that moment. I absolutely froze inside and panicked. I blurted out, “Of course, I do!” and quickly changed the subject. You see, I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to be that girl without a mother. I was living a double life already….painfully motherless in most of my life and in denial with made-up stories in the other.
I knew deep in my soul that someday I would have to tell the world, my little world, the truth. My mother was gone and she wasn’t coming back.
No, I didn’t tell my friend the truth that day and it would be years before I could actually say the words out loud. But something changed within me that day and I was never the same.
soulspeak2016 