I love that. 
For me, it would have to be having met my wife, and leaving Canada to come here, get married and start from scratch, with no option to fail. I had it pretty rough for a long time, and now I was presented with the opportunity to prove that I could do what I said I could. Everything about my life has changed for the better since we met.
It was worth coming here, even with the immigration procedures and waiting all those months waiting for my Social Security card and work permit, and the nervousness of being newlyweds, and the sheer improbability of our situation. I never felt overwhelmed. I was ready to take it on.
We’re coming up on our tenth anniversary in May. Everything is going as well as could possibly be expected, maybe better. I took the ultimate gamble, and it paid off, big time. One doesn’t often get the chance to do that handed to them, so I really appreciate where I am, as opposed to where I used to be.
Wow. Such inspiring stories!
One pivotal moment I had changed me pretty profoundly, even though it took a while to completely turn my lifestyle around.
I was pretty well into shooting up coke (not crack) on a regular basis. I had been for about three years. I still had a job, thankfully, or things might have been even worse. I was heading down the drain, though.
I was a single mom of a three year old boy. One day, I bought a big rock, and proceeded to do it all, slowly. It was the middle of the night, and the kid was asleep, and I was alone. I had done so much that I started to hallucinate, and had what I call a “vision” now. Jesus showed me a view from above, with me lying on the floor, dead, and my baby son trying to wake me up.
It freaked me out so bad, that I quit doing coke in any form. I quit all my friends that did it, too.
I am not “religious” - I don’t attend church or talk about religion much, but I believe in Jesus. He saved my life.
That was 20 years ago.
There have been two defining moments in my life.
In 2001 when I lost my baby.
And my current job.
The morning of Monday, March 4, 1991, I was sitting in a hospital bed. I came to an abrupt & total understanding of exactly who and what I was, and it wasn’t pretty. I made a decision that morning to change direction completely. Been sober ever since.
That sobriety (and the years of deep-down, hard work that prop it up) enabled me to deal with the devastating autism diagnosis of my youngest child, the OTC that nearly killed my 2 day old nephew and the liver transplant that followed at only three months old, plus any number of deaths and other tragedies & dramas with the dignity, self-respect, love and caring that I had always lacked before.
I am a beautiful, strong, happy woman today, and I got here as a direct result of that horrible, painful, dirty morning almost 17 years ago. That was the best day of my life.
How about four?
#1 When I married Ivylad…although, to tell you the truth, that’s been an ongoing defining incident. We were both very young, and it’s only been in the last 5-10 years or so that we’ve reached a calm harbor…with its own pitfalls.
#2 When my son was born. I was a Mommy! Oh shit…I had no idea what I was doing.
#3 When my daughter was born. I was a Mommy times two! Her babyhood was much easier with the experience I’d gained from my son.
#4 When I made the decision to cut my mother out of my life. I’ve talked about it before, so I won’t go into details…let’s just say a weight was gone forever.
No need to worry. One of the best parts of my defining moment was knowing how to respond to insults, as explained in Matthew 5, verses 11-12.
Negative one here. Pretty much anything was possible, until that ghastly car accident. DEFINITELY not my fault. Anyone who thinks you get rich off this sort of thing…heheh. Now I have limitations on my mind and body that suck a telephone pole.
[QUOTE=Czarcasm]
[Moderator Admonition]I suggest you shut the snark off now. This is neither the time, place or forum for it.[Moderator Admonition][/QUOTE
Sorry mate,my sense of humour can be a bit brutal sometimes,it was not my intention to denigrate the poster.
My second rape, and the birth of my little girl, were at exactly the opposite ends of the emotional spectrum, but probably at the same degree of impact.
Funny, the first rape wasn’t so bad, it seems. The second…seemed to have fucked me up for life. Coloured everything - my relationship with my parents & family, my depression, dropping out of college the first time. Then comes my wife, and later my child, and everything changes. Therapy & SSRIs help, but it’s the other things that came first.
For me it was the day, after literally almost a full lifetime (as in, I started doing this when I was about 5 years old) of nursing one cripplingly painful infatuation after another (and, for four years in middle and high school, nursing three at once), suddenly having an ephiphany as to why I was so afraid to let go of things that only caused me pain. I think it was the fact that the final infatuation I had was with someone who was, and still is, my best friend, instead of a semi-stranger who only knew me as “that weird girl who keeps staring at me.” The stress of my undying obsession and bitterness that he was with someone else was damaging our relationship, threatening the best friendship I ever had, and suddenly, one day, it was like a light went on in my head. “I can just let it go,” I thought, and it felt like I was dropping 50 pound chains. All of a sudden, I was free!
And since then, I’ve never felt that painful, horrible need in my soul to attach myself to someone regardless of their wishes, to cling and make a fool of myself. My life is so, so much better, and when I faced the severe injury and near-death of my father in 2006, I found the lesson carried through – that I could let go of worry, that I could let go of fear, and let things happen as they must. Therefore, I managed to keep myself together through those hard months, because the one ephiphany moment had taught me that it was okay to let things go if they hurt.
Yes, all inspiring and life-affirming stories, thanks to all for sharing.
The incident that changed my life was when I was 11 years old and my mother died unexpectedly at the age of 35. When I look back on my childhood, it was a pretty happy one, but it ended in October 1976. Back in the 70’s no one talked about death, so we were all on our own islands trying to make sense of it.
Now that I am an adult and have lived 7 more years than she was able to, I often wonder what our relationship would be like now if she were still here. Would I call her every day to talk about nothing? Would we have the mother/daughter squabbles that many experience? Would she drive me crazy? Would she be my best friend? All that kind of stuff.
I used to get upset when my friends would talk about fighting with their mothers…“I wish I had one to fight with!” I used to think to myself…but that is not fair, really. A few years ago I read a book called Motherless Daughters that finally helped me to deal with the loss in a way that made sense. I was finally off the island.
Still doesn’t mean I can think about her with out my eyes welling up with tears though.
My mother died when I was thirty, just after I cleaned myself up. I miss her quite often, and I wonder what kind of relationship we would have had, too, HelloKitty. Hugs.