All Things Worked Together for My Good

By Sheila Nicole Alamo MSW

All Things Worked Together for My Good is the autobiography of Sheila Alamo, who is only five years old when she is badly burned in a house fire. She spends months in the hospital receiving skin grafts, plastic surgery, and physical, occupational, and speech therapy. She leaves the hospital bound by bandages and braces, with a new face that causes people to reject her. Her mother places her in a residential facility where she receives medical care and assistance with mobility and the tasks of daily living.

Poorly treated by both staff and residents, after six months Sheila is rescued by her biological father. She ultimately transitions to receiving treatments at Shriners Burn Institute in Boston, where she endures multiple surgeries until the age of nineteen. She learns to cope with her bodys limitations and the painful feelings from rejection by others.

Sheila Alamos book is a powerful story about tragedy, pain, loss, love, and acceptance. She invites readers to experience her world as she did, making the words you cant into her motivation for moving forward.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532022708

Sheila Nicole Alamo MSW

Sheila Alamo, currently a supervisor at a day program for the intellectually disabled, has a bachelor’s degree in human services from Audrey Cohen College, and a master’s degree in social work from Hunter College. Together, she and her husband have four children and are currently residing on Staten Island, New York.

Book preview

Introduction

D o you often wonder why? Why you have endured the unspeakable? Why it seems there is always heartache and pain before you? Why a God who proclaims to love you will allow you to go through what you believe was designed to break you? I’m led to believe that at some point in our lives, we all ask why.

I don’t proclaim to know the answer to your why, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t even proclaim to fully understand my own. What I do know is that there is growth, strength, and testimony resting within every possible why.

I know how difficult it is to see beyond your current pain. I know how lonely it is to believe that you are not important or as worthy of the happy ending you believe everyone around you is receiving. On that same note, I also know that if you dare to believe in something greater than that pain, then the greater will come. Take special note that you have the power to cause what came to hurt or destroy you, to be the very thing that motivates and pushes you toward greater heights.

My hope is that in reading this book, you will be inspired to continue living. If you find yourself unable to make sense of your situation, or if you are seeking hope in what appears hopeless, I pray that in reading of my trials, my joys, and my pain, you find the strength and courage to keep going.

It gets better. There is something greater on the other side of that pain, but you must believe that for yourself. You have to want to believe that. When you have faced one abuse after the other, one rejection after the other, I know it’s much easier to hold on to what feels familiar. It’s hard to be positive when everything around you tells you to be negative.

It’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when everything around you seems dark. Notice I say hard, not impossible. If hurt and pain have kept you company, please understand that you have the power to tell them it’s time to go. We all have a story to tell; we all have scars. Mine happen to be visible, but many of you are burdened with scars no one can see.

This is a story about my life. It’s a story that I pray will encourage and inspire you. Within it, I don’t provide many self-help tips, but I am inclined to believe that if you walk with me through my journey, you will think about your own situation and take courage in knowing that you too can find the strength to live. I don’t mean simply waking up in the morning and following after your regular daily routine, but really living. Smell the roses and recognize God’s awesome plan through your pain. Discover that there is purpose in your pain. Discover the power in accepting the good with the bad. Understand that you are much greater than what you’ve been through.

During the entire process of writing my book, I’ve been asked why. Why am I writing? What message do I plan to get across? I thought about these questions for a long time before being able to answer them. In reading of my life, you will learn that I did not have the perfect life, but I remained happy. I didn’t have the perfect childhood, but I was content. I endured loss after loss, heartache after heartache, and yet remained hopeful. I can’t be given credit for any of it. God caused me to see the bigger picture, the light at the end of the tunnel, the joy on the other side of my pain. He placed something on the inside of me that forced me to keep trying.

That same something also lives in you. Reach out and ask God to give you the strength to believe in the power already present on the inside. I’m free today because I believed. I believed him when he said that all things would work together for my good. My prayer is that you also believe all things, the good and the bad, will work out for your good.

God is a gentleman. He can’t take over until you surrender. When you open your heart, he will send the help you need. Did I receive therapy? No, I can’t say that I did. But because I believed in something greater, God placed therapists on my path who counseled and encouraged me. Those therapists were my family, friends, nurses, and doctors.

Sometimes you must ask for help. Most people won’t seek help for a variety of reasons. Many are ashamed, and others are afraid. God can and will do only what you open your heart to allow him to do. He placed those who ushered me to a place of freedom into my life.

So that’s it. That’s what I want you to understand while reading. No matter your history, no matter what you have been trained to believe about you, if you open your heart and mind to see how beautiful you were created to be, then your world and the way you see it will change. The tragedy is just as important, if not more so, than the triumph. It all works together.

Once Upon a Time

H er beginnings were those of neglect and abuse. She was treated as though she were a mistake. She was made to feel ugly and ashamed. She questioned who she was and believed she was undeserving. She was made to feel that she was unworthy as a child, and that caused her to believe that she had no right to demand better for herself as an adult. My mom was born into a life that communicated only hate and mistrust. It was a life that handed her ridicule and physical harm.

Beginnings mean everything. Who we are and who we become are constructed within the first five years of our lives. Children are resilient and can live healthy, productive lives after abuse, but they don’t always have the support needed to do so. In the case of my mom, she continued to be abused years after she left her abusive home. She struggled to understand why her existence was hated.

My great-grandmother and great-grandfather, her grandparents (whom she believed were her mom and dad), took responsibility of my mother when she was thirteen months old, after she’d been beaten in the face with a blunt object. The assault left scar tissue behind her eye, and it is believed to be the reason my mom has poor vision. It wasn’t until my mother was fourteen years old that she realized that the people she knew as her parents were in fact her grandparents.

My great-grandparents owned a restaurant, where my mother helped out. One day my grandmother walked into the restaurant as my mother was eating a burger, dragged my mother off her seat, and began beating her. What’s going on? What did I do? Why is this woman beating me? These are thoughts that I’m sure crossed her mind. The reason for the attack was never made clear, but it was on that day my mother learned this woman was her biological mom. What an introduction!

Imagine what that must have felt like, the pain that must have caused. She was hated by the one who was given the responsibility to care and protect her. My mom spent a great deal of her youth trying to figure out why this woman who’d birthed her hated her so much. That question was difficult to answer because she could not find reasons why she was loveable. Self-love is easily preached but almost unattainable if you were never given an example of why you should have it.

My mother was an unwanted child and was dark in complexion, which many times is unwanted among African Americans. Dark skin meant one was worthless. At least, that was what my beginnings taught me. I have had the unpleasant experience of sitting among African Americans who blamed many of their troubles on the white man. These African Americans stated it’s a color thing.

What some may not know is that many of us African Americans are guilty of that very same crime, hating who we are and what we stand for. It’s not always the white man who judges us harshly, but also our fellow African Americans. Yes, racism continues to be prevalent among us, and unfortunately we discriminate among ourselves almost as much as our Caucasian counterparts.

Our history tells us we’re not good enough. If you’re paying attention, these messages are all around us. They are often digested and believed. Many of us are color-blind. We tend to gravitate toward the fair-skinned in the family, believing that because their complexion is lighter, they are more attractive, smarter, and more likely to succeed.

I am ashamed to say that on several occasions, I have been in a room of beautiful African American men and women who embraced this ignorance. That ignorance unfortunately caused my mom to suffer. She was a beautiful woman made to feel ugly, a dynamic soul who allowed the world to define who she was, never owning her greatness. She was a young woman who believed that she was a nobody. She believed that no one cared for her, and she didn’t trust that happiness would find her. With this belief, she escaped the world she knew—only to move toward what she believed would provide her with the answers to her heart’s call.

My mother met a man when she was sixteen years old, and he told her she was beautiful. Those words were never spoken to her before. Shortly after they met, my mom married this man. She believed that all the hurt and pain was now behind her. She believed that this man she married was her happily ever after. This same man also abused her.

I have memories of watching him chase my mother around the house, hitting her with all he had in him. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I was afraid. My mother would turn up the music and go into the room, and the beatings would continue. When he was done, my mom would dry her eyes and come out of the room to make sure that Gina and I were okay. I was about a year and a half old at the time.

My heart broke, but what could I do? She didn’t have the strength to leave, and so my mother continued to stay as the beatings continued. It wasn’t until he chose to take Gina and me by the ankles and dangle us out of the fourth-floor window of our apartment that my mother decided enough was enough. My mother pleaded as she carefully begged him not to drop her babies to a fall that would have proven fatal. Then she packed as she cried.

My story begins from the moment before my conception. I don’t believe that my readers can get a sense of how amazing this gift of life has been to me without speaking first of my beginnings—my mother’s beginnings. Literature states that one side effect of childhood abuse can lead to an adult who is poorly equipped to be a parent.

Of course, my mom is no angel, and she made some mistakes along the way. However, her love for her children assured that if nothing else was communicated, the love she had for us would be the one thing of which we could be sure. She endured a lot of pain and agony while having two small children, but she was able