Second Chances How I Turned Hate into Love and Found My Purpose

By Laurie Herbers

We are not meant to live a life of turmoil. All I ever wanted was to hear my dad tell me he loved me. To know that I was deserving of love. I spent my life hating everything that I was. I kept searching for anyone to love me, for anyone to help me feel necessary in this world. I was worthless. I was a failure. Everything in my life had fallen apart. I had no reason to live. No one would care if I died. I was in so much pain. I carried so much anger inside of me. I thought I knew so much, but it turned out I was wrong about so many things. This book is my journey through pain and rejection into love. It is acknowledging my imperfections and incorrect thinking. I am just one person who dared to look deep within myself for answers. I am sharing my story so others can find love. There is a love calling out to you, trying to get you to look inside yourself. I am here to tell you how important you are and that your life matters. We all have purpose. We all have a reason for being. If I can help just one person step into the fullness of love by sharing my battle through the depths of despair then it was worth reliving. It was worth diving back into all the pain to get the words onto paper. You are worth everything I went through to show you the way. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laurie Herbers
• Release date: Jul 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393104445

Laurie Herbers

Laurie Herbers is an Empowerment Coach, Certified Educator with a Master’s in Educational Administration, Author, Entrepreneur and Founder & CEO of Soul Love Legacy. Everything she does is done in love and believes in honoring all life. She is passionate about leading others to truth, their purpose and falling into love with life, every aspect of it. Her number one goal in life is to change the world through a movement of love from the soul.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Lost and Alone

May 31, 2011

MY children are lost. They must be found. You have MY heart within you. Share it with them. There is no greater love than this.

Iwas lost. There is no other way to explain it. I had lived my life just the way I wanted to. Made all my own decisions based on what I wanted or what felt right. There was no rhyme or reason to the choices that I made. I had lived life on my own terms without any regard to how my decisions affected myself or anyone else.  Each choice that brought a poor result caused me to push more sadness down inside. Each poor choice caused me more pain and anger. I walked through life with the expectation that God would fix every poor choice, that He would rush in and make it all better.  When He didn’t, I blamed Him for all the pain that I felt. If God really loved me, he would fix everything! So, there was no way he could love me because look at what I had become.

God, universe, source, higher power, higher self, the creator, whoever this is for you, is what is important. To me he is God, so that is what he will be called, but do not let that sway you on what I am saying. There is still so much for me to tell you. I am just getting started. Our perceptions change every single day whether we are aware of that or not. So much of me has changed since this book began and I stopped writing, to now when I came back to finish what I started. So, stay. Listen. Allow yourself the chance to seek with your heart and soul, on your terms. Not mine. Not anyone else’s. Yours. 

Year after year I lived this way. I made one poor choice after another, each one taking me further and further from where I truly longed to be. So far in fact I could no longer see who I was or had any idea what I wanted. All the dreams I had when I was younger were now gone, completely forgotten. I felt there was no way to be anything but the empty shell I saw when I looked in the mirror. God had left me. He did not care for me because he allowed my life to turn into such a mess. Everything that went wrong was God punishing me, he did not love me.

I grew up with two parents who stayed married, which is rare these days, and lived together under one roof. I didn’t have the kind of father I wanted or needed, and it was easy for me to blame him. I knew he didn’t love me because of how he treated me, it was definitely not love. It was all I ever wanted. Love. His love. To have him just look at me one time and say he loved me, that I was important, but that day never came. I grew up spending a lot of my time closed in my room wondering why I was unlovable. It continued like this for years. I spent night after night in that room. I wrote poems and listened to music. Many nights were spent dreaming of the day when I would have love, that someone special would love me for me. He would adore me and take me away from all of this.

I even remember having a dream about him. I was the damsel in distress. I wore the long gown and my long flowing locks hung down my back and moved as I ran from the evil that chased me. As I ran in terror, I would cry out for help and there he would be. He galloped after me on his white horse wearing his armor. He would reach out for me and grab hold of me, lifting me up onto the horse with him and race off to keep me safe. I had no idea what he looked like. All I knew was that he had blue eyes.

I know most girls dream of their knight in shining armor, maybe not an actual dream, but we all long to be loved. This dream reoccurred a few times as I grew up, always the same, always the blue eyes. He was the one I longed for. The truth is all I ever wanted was someone to love me. It is so simple and yet seems to be the hardest thing to ever find. After a while, the loneliness takes over and the knight in shining armor is anyone who seems to care.

I grew up and moved out of my parent’s house and worked to support myself. I didn’t go to college because I had grown up being told I was nothing and couldn’t do anything right. Even my guidance counselor in high school told me I wasn’t smart enough to go to college, so I didn’t. I could blame her for everything that is wrong in my life, but we all make our own decisions. Not saying she was right in any way for telling me that, but it was a part of making me who I am.

I went to cosmetology school and learned to work on hair. I graduated and began working in a small hair salon and a diner as a waitress. The waitress job led to a job making bicycles. It paid better than the salon did, so I just did that. I dated guys and messed around. At the age of 20, I decided to see what sex was all about and gave myself to a guy who later dumped me for another girl just because she had a fake id and could go out drinking with him. I was heartbroken. Devastated.

I had convinced myself that I loved him, and it was the most horrible thing I had ever experienced up to that point. I remember crying the entire day at work and a guy told me there were plenty of fish in the sea. I, with tears streaming down my face said, but when you catch a good one you don’t throw it back. No one tried to cheer me up after that.  I moved on from that experience and dated other guys. I didn’t see anything wrong with having sex because everyone was doing it. Not to say that I had sex a lot, but if I was with a guy long enough it was the inevitable conclusion. It was what people did.

No one ever told me to save myself for my husband or how sacred I should have held that part of myself. I was even teased about being a virgin. They made fun of me for wanting to wait. What the heck! I gave it away without a moment’s pause. I wish someone would have told me to wait, that my heart was tied to my body. I learned the hard way, the painful way. The destructive way.

I continued to live my life going out with friends and having boyfriends. Deep inside I longed for a family, a husband, a home, love. In my foolish youth I believed sex would be the way to a guy’s heart and he would fall in love with me. Turns out that was nothing but a lie. Once guys get sex they move on to the next conquest. I know not all guys are like this, but to a young confused girl it seemed like it. Chance finally caught up with me and I found myself pregnant and alone. I told the lucky guy he was going to be a dad and his response was, I’m not going to marry you. I told him I didn’t want to marry him and truthfully, I didn’t.

Throughout my pregnancy he continued to sleep with other women, and I became more heartbroken every day. He loved to flaunt them in my face, even hitting on them in front of me at work. I wondered how I would be able to raise a baby on my own. I could barely take care of myself. I cried many days and I sang to the little one inside me. I wanted this child to have more than I ever did. I wanted her to know love and for a short time I pondered if maybe someone else could give her more. I didn’t deserve to have a child to love me when I wasn’t loveable. This baby deserved the world, but how could I possibly give her the world when my world was so broken. I had nothing to offer a baby. I didn’t want to be like my father. That was the biggest fear I carried as I carried her. I never wanted another child to feel so unwanted and unloved. I didn’t feel like I had anything to offer her.

My love for her was the greatest thing I had ever felt or known. Although I questioned keeping her, I knew deep down I could never let her go. And I didn’t. She was beautiful. I took her home and have loved her every day since. Her dad and I lived close by so he could see her until the day he told me how annoying I was. How I never left him alone and he didn’t like me. He didn’t want me around. I