Who Is There For Me?

By Dorothy Reynolds

A woman struggled to find the answer as to why her parents excluded her from the family because she was told that they did not want her to disgrace them if she became pregnant while unmarried. The parents chose their second daughter and not her other four siblings to be excluded from the family. She was emancipated to a man who was a total stranger to them. After she was married and had no children for twelve years, they still excluded her and instructed her siblings' children not to have anything to do with her children because of where they were born.

The parents could not control this married daughter, so they talked down to and disowned her and her family. Many adversities came her way, but the blessing outweighed them all because God put other people in place to fill her needs and keep her uplifted. Her husband had multiple college degrees, and her sons were college-educated.

This is a journey of a woman who showed you how she lived her best life when odds said otherwise. She maintained respect for her wedding vows and showed how to keep her husband head of household through adversity. She taught her children respect, hard work, and how to successfully, when one thing fails, try another until you find peace and happiness. She kept the mindset of being a leader and not a follower to maintain her best life through adversity. She was determined to prove to herself that she could survive this life and make her own world of peace and happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662486012

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Who Is There For Me?

Dorothy Reynolds

Copyright © 2022 Dorothy Reynolds

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-8600-5 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-8601-2 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Diane and Jessie

About the Author

To my husband, I was a young child when I was shown a vision of a young military man who came to be in person when I needed a loving protector. You married me as a teenager. You walked with me through a life of hiding behind the pain as one set of crutches while we both used them together at the same time, walking through a challenging life as one. I love you today as I loved you from day one. Thank you for this journey together.

To my two sons, you have been the most loving and respectful children a mother and father could ask for.

To my three grandchildren, you bring the most joy to my heart and love to my soul. To my daughter-in-law, thank you for the grandchildren.

I am proud of you all because you make smart choices.

To the rest of my family who chose to follow my parents' exclusion of me, I lay down my heavy burden to end the pain hidden behind my laughter while I await my next blessing.

Chapter 1

Over the course of many years, there had been many sleepless nights. Confused and wondering why me. Is this a dream, or am I cursed?

As a small child, I could always find something to occupy my time. I was a busy child and one that always wanted to be happy with approval.

I always often found myself being compared with my sister, not wanting to be or realizing that I was. I had always wanted to play and be friends with my only sister. For some unknown reason, my sister did not feel that way. Her skin tone was very bright, and I was very dark. This was something I could never understand as a small child being that we were sisters. I was often reminded of this skin difference by Mom.

Being an inquisitive child, I could handle most anything. But I couldn't understand why my sister never got a whipping or punishments. I got one almost daily for nothing more than what I had said or accused of saying. I could always play with my three brothers.

Dancing was my favorite pastime. I found it very relaxing and something to have fun with. My parents did not think it was very lady like to be dancing until they had their usual weekend company at home or at Grandmother's house. Then I was called to entertain the adults as they feast and drink.

Having to pick cotton, cucumbers, and pepper most days in the summer, there wasn't much else to do. My brothers learned to go hunting with my father. My sister didn't have much interest in anything. My sister was always in charge of us while Mom and Dad went to work in the dairy barn that they did not own and not farming. Being two years older, you would think sisters would be closer. In the eyes of my parents, she could do no wrong. The five of us were never allowed to fight each other. We were spanked for just what we said to each other, all but Sis. One day, a miracle happened. I was taking clothes in off the line outside when Sis decided to knock them out of my arms. Bingo, Mom was watching. It did my heart good to see Sue get a spanking because she could do no wrong.

When my sister started school, I had to go sit in the classroom with her so she wouldn't be alone and afraid. I learned as she learned but not enrolled. In school, I was an average student. I learned how to do the best I could without help since Mom and Dad had third-grade education themselves. I was eventually, but in school, one grade behind my sister.

My father couldn't read or write. He would always ask me to read him the Bible. We were not taken to Sunday school, so reading the Bible at such young age was almost impossible for me to understand. As I grew older, I longed for friends, for girl talk. I enjoyed going to school because I would always have my classmates to talk with. Being a dancer. I wanted to join the cheerleading team. My parents said no. On Fridays of every week, the school would have a dance. The cost was twenty-five cents. For lunch every day, we were given a sandwich from home and a nickel for milk. I would save my nickel for the dance on Fridays. This was the day, I wanted to look my best because I knew everyone would be watching.

Being very thin and dark, I worked very hard on my appearance. I had black coarse hair, not like Sue's long soft black hair. Our parents were poor and couldn't afford to buy us new clothes, so we wore hand-me-down clothes from a family's daughter which Grandmother worked for as a maid.

One day, when I retrieved the mail from the mailbox, there was a card with the mail that read,

If you can fill out this puzzle, you could be a winner of a new sewing machine.

At the age of ten, this was very exciting for me. This was too good to be true. The catch was forty dollars. What was I going to do to get this kind of money? Knowing that I was not their favorite daughter, would I dare ask for just a large sum of money? Why not? After all, I was all familiar with the word no. With my heart filled with excitement, I ran a half mile across a very grassy field to the dairy barn where my parents worked. Pleading and begging as if it was my life, I had to have this machine. To my surprise, Mom gave in when I told her I could learn myself how to sew.

Weeks went by, and these summer days seemed longer than ever. But one day, my sewing machine did arrive, and you bet I took claim of it.

I read the instructions and parts manual over and over until I could take the machine apart and then put it back together. Now all I would need was a material to sew. Every two weeks, the candy man, as we called him, would come by Grandmother's house. He offers the family boxes of candy to sell from the trunk of his car. Among these items was material by the yard. Sweet, Mom's mother, as we called her, always got material as an exchange for she could sew without a pattern. She often made Sue and me church dresses. I soon learned how to earn what I wanted from the candy man by selling candy. I taught myself how to sew. One yard of material could make me a beautiful dress. Everyone was impressed, and in order to get a material from the fabric store, I would first have to make mother an outfit. And she in turn would buy her a yard or two for me. Weighing ninety pounds, it didn't take much. For some reason, sewing became natural to me. I could make anything I wanted without being taught. Everyone complimented me on how well my clothes looked. Then I had to sew for my grandmother and my cousin who was a school teacher.

By that time, I was beginning to take home economics in the seventh grade. I was sewing like a champ. On Fridays, I had made a new outfit for the dance. Sue took sewing in home economics, but she couldn't master her baby sister's sewing talents. I offered to make her clothes, but she would have nothing to do with my sewing. I began to have lots of friends at school. I was all dressed in my own made clothes. I was friendly and outgoing. Sue began to come home every day and give our parents a daily report as to whom I talked to and danced with. Mom and Dad decided that I was just too fast for myself. I frequently received the lecture on how I was going to be hung in an oak tree if I came home with a baby. This I didn't understand because all I was doing was going to school, coming home, and working the fields when I wasn't sewing. Every day became harder to deal with. The hardest part was that I didn't understand any of it.

I had been driving since I was ten years old. My job was to drive behind the cows to make them go to the dairy barn and not let them turn around. When I wanted to go somewhere, the answer was, No, unless your sister goes and drive you. She always said no because she knows I would be sad.

Georgia's brother, Jim, lived next door to us with his wife and three children and one on the way. One day, the nine-month-old child became ill. He had long worms coming from every direction and orifice: his nose, his mouth, and his rectum. The child was admitted to a local hospital. No one in the family could stomach this. The child would stay in the hospital all alone until I reminded myself of how I felt alone, not really knowing why. Even though I was underage, the hospital allowed me to stay with the baby. At such a young age, I felt it was young mother spending days and nights with a very sick little baby. The baby finally got well, and I learned that it was a hard responsibility to