I Healed from My Past and so Can You: Living with a Secret

By Mick

Mick shares how to let go of your past and to learn to forgive so that you dont live with regrets or resentments. His story has inspired thousands of people to find the answers they are looking for and to lead positive and healthier lives, free from the past. Learning to live in the present moment allows freedom from depression, anxiety, and fears.

Inner peace was Micks number one focus; once he achieved that inner peace, he made it his lifes purpose to help others find peace as well. Loving and accepting yourself is the key to happiness. No matter where you are in the world or who you are, you can be touched by this inspiring story of how he has taken all of the challenges in his life and turned them into something that is positive and inspirational.

Mick believes in you, and now it is time for you to believe in yourself!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jan 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452578767

Mick

Radha grew up in Fiji and trained to be a High School teacher. She worked in the Ministry of Education for many years, writing and producing radio programmes for schools. She is now working as a teacher aide in a High School in New Zealand. She has always loved reading and writing stories and poems. “While reading my active immaginative mind would visualise everything I read. Weeks after I’d finish a story book, the characters would still be with me. Scenes would still be flashing past in my mind. I also loved telling stories. I loved acting them out. I’d make my young audiences cry or laugh!” She hopes when children read this story they too will enjoy it as she did when she was a child.

Book preview

I HEALED

FROM MY PAST

AND SO

CAN YOU

Living with a Secret

MICK

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Copyright © 2014 Mick.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7875-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7877-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7876-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013913653

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/13/2014

Contents

Preface

Introduction

My Years in Foster Care

Dreaming of Living a Normal Life

My Suicide Attempts

My Romantic Relationships

Self-Help Authors Whose Work Helped Me

The Secret about Myself I’ve Been Trying to Keep

My Father

My Mother

Trusting in the Healing Process

Choices

Anger

Sexual Abuse

Positive Thinking

Worrying

Music

Self-Talk

How I Help People

Triggers

Blame

My Peaceful Place: Suicide Creek

My Eating Habits

Letting People Go

Walking Away from Objects

Beliefs (My Secret)

My Addiction

My Fears

My Biggest Obstacle

How I Dealt with Being Issued a Peace Bond

Living in the Moment

Taking Risks Outside of My Comfort Zone

Affirmations

Self-Love

Things I Have Done Out of Compassion and Empathy

My Personal Growth

My Work Accident

The Kids in My Life

Helping Others

Turning My Life Around

My First Apartment

Rudy

An Embarrassing Moment for Me

Working for Myself

Epilogue

About the Author

Preface

I remember very little of what happened when I was a child, but when I was in my thirties, I was able to obtain the documents (through the Privacy Act) that chronicled my years in foster care. In reading through these files, I learned many details about my childhood, which included neglect, abuse, and rejection. At the age of two weeks, I was taken from my parents for the first time because they were neglectful in caring for me. I was returned to my parents only to be taken away again on many occasions. Both my mother and my father were addicts, and their drug of choice was alcohol; at least, that is what I was told. I was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and have suffered from learning disabilities, mostly having to do with impaired memory function and an inability to retain information, my whole life.

I have many things to tell you. Some of these may be shocking and not suited to your tastes. But I will walk you through my journey and show you how I have healed myself and become the happy, healthy person I am now.

Introduction

M y name is Mick. I am forty-three years old, and I am a life skills coach. My goal in life is to help as many people as I can with what I have learned throughout my own healing process. I have learned that the best practice is to live in the present moment. Let the past go, and don’t worry about the future. The past is gone and you can’t change it; and the future hasn’t happened yet, as those moments have yet to be created. When you learn to live in the present moment, you learn to live your life well. Being able to live in the present moment myself, I am able to remain grounded and refrain from being reactionary. I am better able to appreciate things; the things around me appear more real. Mind you, I had once been a person who had never realized that I could live this way. Instead, I would constantly run through the past what could I have done differently? How could I have changed my path? What if I had approached things from a different angle? My asking those questions did nothing to change what had happened in my past; still, those questions haunted me for much of my life.

This is a story about my life, but it is also a story about the lessons I’ve learned. You may take these lessons with you. I am very proud of how far I have come in my life. It took perseverance for me to become a life skills coach who can help others realize their own potential by teaching them the same things that I have learned. When I look around at people whether they are alone, as part of a couple, or in a group I find myself listening to how they talk and communicate with others. I sometimes leave these situations a bit frustrated because I want to explain to these people that if they would just change their wording or attitude, then they would be happier with themselves instead of complaining, gossiping, or blaming others. I do feel a deep sense of compassion toward others; all I want for them is to live happily and at peace with themselves. If they only knew that the way in which they thought was creating many of the circumstances in their lives, then maybe they would stop and change the way they thought.

In this book, so as not to be confusing, I use the words mother and father when speaking of my birth mother and father. When I lived in foster care, I called my foster parents Mom or Dad, so I refer to those people by those terms in this book. The person I refer to as my mum is the woman from my last foster home. She was English, so the term is appropriate for her. I did love her, and it was wonderful after her husband left and the home was more peaceful as a result.

I have changed the names of people in this book to protect their identities.

My Years in Foster Care

F ollowing, I describe events that I remember from my childhood. I don’t recall much of my life from my birth to the age of about twelve. However, I will share what I do remember, in addition to what I read from my case history file.

I spent my whole childhood moving in and out of foster homes, beginning just shortly after I was born. I was a ward of the court by the time I was six years old, and I never felt like I was actually part of a normal family unit. One of the main reasons I was never adopted is because my mother would make court dates to try to regain custody of me, but then she would fail to appear at the scheduled date and time. My going from home to home involved a lot of turmoil; there were even times when my mother would sell or give away all of my things after I was taken from her. I once received a letter from her saying that she had given away my things; for a child to learn that his mother had gotten rid of all of his possessions is difficult. I didn’t feel like I ever really had my own belongings. My mother had a habit of moving somewhere new almost every time I was returned to her care. Looking back, I see now that I am able to adapt to living almost anywhere because of how I grew up. I continually had to get used to a new space, a new room, a new family, and new rules.

One of my earliest memories is from when I was seven or eight, but it is a bit unclear. I was living in a foster home in Abbotsford, British Columbia, and there was another boy living there. He was about twelve years old. I am pretty sure that he was the biological son of the foster parents in whose home I was living. He would pay me to let him touch me; it was just pocket change, and I didn’t know any better. I had no idea that what he was doing was wrong, but I knew it just didn’t feel right. After some time, he was caught having sex with a boy in the home. I don’t remember his being there after that.

Memories of times when I was older are more abundant, but some of them involve pretty terrible things. Sometimes I wish those were the ones I couldn’t remember. When I was eighteen, the foster parents I was living with at the time wanted to go on a vacation. They wouldn’t take me with them, so I was sent to a group home. There, I made friends with a kid. I was more of a troublemaker than he was, often sneaking out at night, with him in tow, to go hang out with friends and drink. He was fun to be with. After a while, though, I ran away from that group home and back to my foster home, as my foster parents had come back from vacation.

I later learned that the boy I had befriended and with whom I had spent time went back to his foster home, too. He with the help of his foster brother, who was the natural son of one of the foster parents murdered his foster family shortly upon his return. The pair killed the mother and father and their two younger children. When I heard about this, I was stunned. It hit me hard, and I was affected by it for a very long time. I knew this boy I had been friends with him and yet I had had no idea that he was capable of doing such a horrible thing. I had felt safe around him; nothing indicated to me that he would ever do anything so horrific.

Just after I turned thirteen, my social worker picked me up from the foster home I was just then leaving. Once I was in the car with her, my social worker told me that this time we were going to do something different for my home placement; I was going to choose from three different foster homes. This intrigued me; I was going to have a say in the next place I was going to live. My social worker said she was going to take me to visit three different homes and that I would be able to meet the people I might potentially live with. The first two families I met had small children, but I didn’t sense any connection between me and these families. The third family lived in Mission, and when I went to their home, I learned that they had a foster daughter who was sixteen. They also had a three-year-old adopted son who was handicapped; he had cerebral palsy. The day I met this family, the foster daughter invited me to spend some time with her and her friends. We drove around, and I had a lot of fun. I felt accepted, and she was very nice to me. I was not used to this. I then met with the parents, and I connected with the foster mother. She sat me down and actually talked to me and asked me questions. She asked what I liked to eat and what I did for fun. That threw me a little off guard. I was not prepared to be treated as an equal. I wasn’t used to that. But it was for that reason that I chose this family’s home to live in. It seemed like the people there (with the exception of the foster dad) actually cared enough to get to know me, and that meant a lot to me.

When I moved in with the family, I had my own bedroom. The first Christmas I spent with them, I actually received gifts things that I had asked for! This had never happened before, not as far as I could remember. The foster dad had dressed up as Santa, and he handed out presents. I had never really celebrated my birthdays or Christmas holidays; I had usually felt awkward during those times because I was normally in a new home. But this family did their best.

Unfortunately, the foster dad at this home was abusive. My foster mum was kind to me; however, her husband abused her. Later, I charged the foster dad with sexually abusing me, and I won my case. My foster mum actually testified in court on my behalf. Even though we both suffered abuse in that home, I still felt that I was able to confide in this foster mum. She would listen to me. I talked to her about what was happening in my life with school and friends. I felt that I had a friend in her, and I also felt that she didn’t judge me. I don’t believe that regrets are useful, and as such I don’t regret choosing that foster home. I was abused in every foster home in which I was placed, but this woman gave me something that I had found in none of these other homes: friendship. I ended up calling her Mum. I got used to our relationship. It was nice. I really wanted her to be my mother, although that never came to pass. To clarify, I didn’t necessarily feel that anybody could replace my biological mother, even though she had neglected and abused me.