We Wear Purple of Fridays

During the month of October, we raise awareness of two major issues that affect women. Growing up I never understood how someone as beautiful as my mother would allow herself to be treated, verbal and physically abused by her partners. I remember her coming for visits with me with longs sleeves and heavy foundation to cover the bruises. However I know more than those physically marks it was the belittling and verbal assaults that left her feeling worthless and sadly desiring of the physical abuse.

I didn't completed understand how someone who brought so much love and joy into my life wouldn’t feel the same and I also couldn’t understand how anyone could ever want to hurt my mother. It took me years to understand what lead my mother to a place where she felt that if someone didn’t hit her, they didn’t love her. And while I will never completely be able to understand, I at least could see how my mother ended up there.

To me, my mother was vibrate, loving and in many ways childlike. She had a deep need to feel loved and accepted, and unfortunately those needs were preyed upon and created a horrible situation for my mother and for me at time also. I lived off and on with my mother till the age of seven. To go into detail about life back then seems unnecessary for this blog. To get a slight picture let’s just say life was filled with poverty, despair, abuse and addiction.  At the age of seven, a mother’s greatest fear happen to our household. My sixteen year old bother, Sammy, was killed during an argument with his friend. Sammy was shot and killed by a fifteen year old classmate and he died before help could get to him.

Our home went from broken to shatter beyond repair, and so was my mother’s soul. Shortly after I went to live with my father full time and my mother story took a darker, sadder and heart breaking spiral downhill. Ultimately, two weeks following my tenth birthday, we received a call that no family ever want to receive. We were notified that my mother’s body was found on the side of a country road in Genesee County. How, why and who might have been with her leading up to her death is still unknown, 17 years later.

My heart felt ripped from inside of me. Thinking back on that day even now, I can remember the feeling so vividly, yet it still so indescribable. We know some facts leading up to her death and one that I do know that my mother boyfriend had on multiple occasions described to my mother how he would kill her. I know that my mother suffer greatly at the hands of the person she was dating prior to her death. And I believe whole heartily that while he might have not killed her, the abuse she suffered was a huge part of the path that lead to her death.

So why do I wear purple in October? I do so in memory of my mother who never left, I do so in celebration of my legal guardian who did leave her abuse husband, and I do so for the next generation in my family who I hope never suffer this type of abuse.

I believe everyone is created in God’s imagine and we are meant to be cherish and loved. Also that we are meant to live happy and holy lives. No child desires to wonder like I did, why mommy was so sad or why she was hurt. No family should ever get phone calls like mine had to receive.

My mother isn’t here to tell her story, and I wish her story had a happy ended, but because she didn’t. I promised her that my story would, that I would honor her with my relationships and how I lived my life. But more importantly that I would tell her story, our family’s story in hopes that it would effect and change other’s lives.

And that is why I wear purple.