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  I am not a perfect parent with Evan; I was so afraid to discipline Evan and make him upset or feel pain that for the first year, Evan was the “dog wagging the tail,” as Sam so eloquently put it. As Evan reached his “terrible twos” I learned that I needed to change the way Evan was being raised before he was an out-of-control teenager, and I sought out help from my support network of friends and family. I learned effective discipline techniques, not punishment techniques, to guide my son into making the right choices when it came to his behavior.

  I am so grateful for my dad Sam. My experiences over the years with Sam have made me realize that it doesn’t matter that I don’t know who my real dad is; Sam is and remains the ultimate father figure in my life. I have learned so much about myself just from being around Sam; I’ve learned that I am capable of anything I set my mind to and that if I work hard enough, I can accomplish anything I want to in life.

  I kept my promise and I still stay in close contact with my cousin Megan and my mom’s side of the family. I do feel a tinge of guilt when I am around them sometimes because I feel like I am a constant reminder of a painful past. I am trying very hard to work through the guilty feelings I have, and I am making progress. I know deep down that no one on Mom’s side of the family hates me or resents me for any reason, but I am still a little nervous around them for reasons I can’t truly understand yet.

  I miss Emily so much, and I think about her every day. I want to pick up the phone and call her, but I was the one who wrote that e-mail and wrote her off for the rest of my life. I think cutting Emily out of my life was the toughest decision I have had to make because I really do love my sister. Regardless of how much more Mom loves her and how much it hurt me to see the mother-daughter relationship they had, I still love her because she is a part of me and because I think deep down she knows how crazy Mom is, too. But for some reason, Emily chose Mom over me, and for right now, I can accept that. Maybe one day Emily and I will talk again; maybe it won’t be until the day Mom dies, but I can hold out hope that one day we will be sisters once again.

  It is hard to even know what to say about Mom. I have spent two books and countless years trying to diagnose her, understand her, and trying desperately to make her love me. I never thought I would be able to get to the point where I could be completely done with Mom and cut her out of my life forever. Evan changed all of that, and when I started hearing about the abuse Mom inflicted on me as a newborn, I knew that I could never let that woman around my precious baby boy and risk him being hurt by her too.

  I don’t love my mother anymore because I can’t waste any more of my life being around people who won’t love me back. I’m not going to spend my life begging Mom to love me when I have the love and support of so many other people. I don’t know if Mom ever loved me for even one moment in my life. I thought I loved her, but I realize now that that wasn’t love, it was fear, and that isn’t something I need in my life or around my family.

  Finally, I want to thank God for being there for me over the years, even when I thought He wasn’t listening. I used to get mad at Him a lot as a child because I thought He was ignoring me as I was pleading and begging for Him to save me. I felt like a bad child for a very long time because in my naïveté, I felt as if I had done something terrible that made Him angry at me and He was punishing me through Mom’s fists and kicks. I realize now that God must have been by my side the entire time or Mom would have killed me. Something or someone stopped her every time from going “all the way” and leaving me to die at the electric fence or make me take that entire bottle of Excedrin.

  As I got older, more independent, and more sure of myself, I stopped asking for God’s help all of the time. I felt positive that I could do everything by myself and God could spend His time helping those who truly needed it. After Evan was born, I began my conversations with God again, but instead of being angry and asking Him for help, I used the time to thank Him for saving my life and making it possible for me to have that moment in time with my beautiful son. Life is what it is, and you just have to learn to make the best with what you have and be thankful for each moment you are alive.

  I pray for all of you still suffering and I love you all.