can past hurts bring a positive outcome?

This post is dedicated to a gal whose past life was difficult for even the most hardened people to comprehend. Born to a mother whose descent into the drug filled world created turmoil within this young girl's life, she grew up to understand that the world held nothing for her except pain, disappointment, sorrow and finally- anger.

It was quite by chance that she met up with someone in her older years who, for a brief few years in her younger life, provided her with solace. After he left, due to a breakup with her mother, once again her world  turned to a bleakness that seemed to have no future.

I was apprehensive at first about this online meeting about five years ago only because her e-mails were full of hurt, anger and pain. It was only after she realized that the one who had given her that brief bit of light in her youth had been, in fact, searching for her again all along that her whole demeanor changed.She was hungry for love and acceptance. To know that out there was someone who held her in high esteem gave her a boost upwards to better things. She looked at the world around her--and decided that she would change it!

Gone was the anger and bitterness, put instead towards helping other youths who had been in her situation; youths who go from foster home to foster home due to no real fault of their own other than the fact that their mothers were arrested for drug use and the child(ren) had nowhere else to go. Once in "the system," they were bounced around for months or years until they were released...only to repeat this pattern quite often. She wrote a book about her life ("lil girl lost...one woman's journey into meth as seen through the eyes of a little girl" see book at amazon.com ) and although at the time she didn't have the courage to have her name set into print, still, she spoke out about and for changing a system that she was all too familiar with.

That in turn, lead to other things. She adopted two young girls, one of whom sadly died from a heart condition. This prompted her to support St Jude's Research Hospital, in the hopes that other children suffering the same fate could be cured of it. (www.stjude.org). Then she went even further and began working with the ReMoved Project, an organization that reaches out to children who become "lost" in the foster care system. (see https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/heschle/removed-part-two/description). Again she reached out and because she had walked that horrible path, was able to step up and help others.

I tell you all of this only because I see so many people who use their sad circumstances in life to blame others. To say, "well, if not for THIS circumstance from my past, I wouldn't be THAT way!" I see how others are bitter, angry or worse to justify the pain they have gone through. "If I wasn't abused, I wouldn't be a drug user now!" If I wasn't hurt, bullied, poor, black, ..... _______" (fill in the blank).

My friend, you need to do away with those negative words! "If  only..." is just an excuse to say, "I don't care!" It's another way to somehow get around being a positive force of change.

I can tell you from experience myself that my life was very hard, you know this if you have been keeping up with my posts. Yet I turned that train around and hope that by inspiring others to be a positive force of change that someday we can all look around and see a much better world, or at least our own corner of it.
All it takes is a willing heart and a joy-filled spirit to be the change! Just because crap happened to you doesn't mean that you need to carry it around forever! You are an adult with free will...so why make life harder than to needs to be? For example, your mother was abusive, I get that, truly I do! However, do YOU also need to be an angry, vengeful person?

This gal that I described passed away last month. My heart grieves that her time on earth was way too short. However, the legacy that she has left behind can continue and will....if only because she was able to look beyond her own pain and see others needs instead. May God be with you, Amber....you will never be forgotten.