What Real Love Taught Me About "The Big C"

By Arlene R Galinos

What Real Love Taught Me about "The Big C" is a true account of one woman's roller-coaster ride through the challenge of breast cancer. Transparently honest, Arlene's testimony will not only validate your feelings, but educate, inspire, and encourage you along the way with scriptures you can stand on. Whether you are in the midst of the battle o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Oct 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9798890411891

Arlene R Galinos

Arlene R. Galinos is simply a woman devoted to God and her husband. Her most beloved titles are "Daughter of the Most High King" and "Mrs." Although she has acquired the title of "Cancer Survivor", her passion remains the same: to speak the truth heart-to-heart, so that others may truly come to know the heart of Father God, the love of Jesus Christ, His Son, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

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979-8-89041-021-4_Cover.jpg

The Story Behind

I Survived

Kristine Kittredge

From the Dark to the Light

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2023 by Kristine Kittredge

All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain.

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Cover design by: Kelly Stewart

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Trilogy Disclaimer: The views and content expressed in this book are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views and doctrine of Trilogy Christian Publishing or the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 979-8-89041-021-4

E-ISBN: 979-8-89041-022-1

Dedication

To God in heaven, who has loved me even before I was born; Jesus Christ, who died for my sins; and the Holy Spirit, who is with me every day.

To my son, AJ, who has had faith in me and who’s given me the will to overcome the challenges we have faced. Thank you for your forgiveness for all the mistakes I made.

To my sister, Kathy, and to Mike and the family, who were there for us when we needed you most, I am forever grateful.

Lastly, to my parents, who brought me into this world, who loved me, and showed me all the lessons they could, I miss you both dearly.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Introduction

Chapter 1: My Life’s Foundation

Chapter 2: My First Life-and-Death Experience

Chapter 3: Friends and Neighbors

Chapter 4: Divorce and Self Esteem

Chapter 5: Childhood Experiences and Lessons

in the ’70s

Chapter 6: Teenage Years

Chapter 7: Becoming an Adult

Chapter 8: Life with Anthony and the End of

Our Marriage

Chapter 9: Girls Night Out

Chapter 10: Restraining Order and Brainwashing

Chapter 11: My Crumbling Life

Chapter 12: The First Violent Episode

Chapter 13: Life Changed Forever

Chapter 14: It’s Time I Stood up for What

I Believed

Chapter 15: God Taking It Out of My Hands

Chapter 16: The Calm Beforet he Storm

Chapter 17: The Event and Going Home

Chapter 18: My Situation

Chapter 19: Struggles While Picking up the Pieces

Chapter 20: Opening up Again

Chapter 21: My Next Life-and-Death Experience

Afterword

Appendix

Prologue

This book was written in the hopes that my story would help others. So many people go through difficult life experiences. I had to look back at my life’s history and upbringing. I found that investigating my past helped me to have a clearer picture moving forward.

Though we all have a beginning, we don’t often go back in time to heal past wounds. The wounds that keep us from understanding the reasons we may make poor decisions. These unhealed wounds may cause us to make the same mistakes repeatedly.

I found that I needed to forgive the past and be forgiven. I had to forgive others but also forgive myself. That was the most difficult. I needed to be healed. God has been there the whole time. It was I who wasn’t living in the Lord, walking with Him. Our Heavenly Father has always been the answer. By God’s grace through Jesus Christ, I have been forgiven. I have to fully and completely surrender my will. I have to put all my faith in God every day. I live because of Him. I learn because of Him. I love because of Him, and most of all… I am forgiven because of Him.

Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, wherein shall we return? (Malachi 3:7).

Introduction

This story will take you to most levels of life and death. If I had nine lives, I must be on my seventh. I faced death on more than one occasion and was able to live. Although I was on my own at seventeen, I was able to work my way up from a file clerk in the insurance industry into a very successful businesswoman. I had recently divorced after a fourteen-year marriage. Subsequently, I lost everything, my financial security, my hope, and almost my life. I found myself in a world of a young man’s influence and domestic violence. It was my new way of life. There were hospital visits, abuse, and fraud, which made it impossible to think clearly. All of that ended with the stabbing that almost took my life.

To share with you my life and open my embarrassment, love, fear, insecurity, and hope…as well as many other feelings…my wish is that we can all learn, heal and be stronger than the tests and challenges we face. In writing this book, if I can help one man, woman, or child avoid this tragedy, it will solidify the reason I remain here on earth and be well worth the pain.

The Charges:

"Attempted Murder; Willful,

Deliberate and Premeditated."

He pleaded guilty to Willful and

Deliberate in October 2008.

When this nightmare started, I was a forty-year-old branch manager who was one and a half years separated from my now ex-husband. I did not date that entire time and was lonely.

I spent that year and a half working hard and raising our son. Anthony was quite upset over the separation, so he wasn’t involved in seeing or speaking to AJ for eight months during that time. But that would change. God works in mysterious ways.

He became quite involved once I told him I was in trouble. It was ruining my job of over fourteen years. And the relationship he knew I was having with a boy toy, as described by my friends, had turned into a psychotic, twisted, and abusive relationship. I was being beaten and stolen from by him. That wasn’t even the worst; I had to tell him that child services went to our son’s school. They took temporary custody of him. My ex-husband subsequently gained full custody of our son in December 2006 due to my poor decisions during that time.

In this book, I will share with you photographs and letters written by me during the darkest, scariest time of my crumbling life. You will see how I was able to work through this trauma. Being numb with such shame, most days, I wished I wouldn’t wake up. It changed from being numb…to…feeling again. The pain in feeling emotions and the guilt was so powerful it was the most difficult to overcome. As hard as that was, it was no doubt one of the many miracles that occurred after this tragedy. I had the ability to write poems I never knew I possessed. My brain injury…didn’t prevent me from writing this book. God and His angels were watching over me that day. The predator just about killed me, and you will hear of the horrid details, but God had a different plan for the evening of March 23, 2007.

Chapter 1:

My Life’s Foundation

To begin this nightmare, the stabbing of March 23, 2007, I would have to go back in time. Then you may see and have a better understanding of how this can occur, even in the most successful of lives. That’s the scariest part. No one is fully safe from their own ability to fail.

I started out and lived a very humble life. I also was able to live the fifteen minutes of fame people talk about. But in the end, it is all about being humble. That’s where your lessons come from, and that’s where you learn.

It was a normal, drama-filled life. Maybe not like most, but it was for me anyway. I was the third of four children. You know what they say about the third child, forgotten about, spoiled, needs all the attention, or is the outgoing one. Those statements are so conflicting but can be true all at the same time or in intervals. One of the poems I wrote recently may shed light on some of the struggles I had early on…

Remember

I remember the early days when I was young.

Life was pure and simple under the sun.

As I grew older, life’s clouds came and went.

During some of those times, I was sad and bent.

I remembered these words as if they were true…

Sticks and Stones.

In the hopes my spirit would be renewed.

Though these words I repeated, I still went on

Feeling defeated.

But as I grew older, through growing pains, I saw

It’s more than physical. It’s mental I must gain.

Though during my life, I’ve explored the tragic and grown.

I know I’m not complete until anew.

So, please remember this, friend; it is God who will see us through to the end.

I now realize those unresolved issues from my childhood played a huge part in my future. They were left untreated. I never worked through them. I stayed in relationships that were unhealthy. Without healing the old wounds, it prevented me from moving forward.

My mom’s father was from Italy, a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force; he played the sax. Her mother was from Canada, a Canadian Indian. My grandma never got her US Citizenship though she lived here much of her life. My dad’s father was from Iowa City, while his mother was from New York and was adopted by a wealthy family. My grandma conceived my mother out of wedlock, which wasn’t common back in those days. They did get married before her birth. She was an only child, wanting several.

Mother grew up as an Air Force brat with my grandma and her second husband. She told us how difficult it was as a child moving from base to base. She always had to make new friends. Dad was in the Air Force, one of three children, being the only boy. My grandmother lost her first husband in a car accident when she was six months pregnant with her oldest daughter, his oldest sister. Subsequently, she met Willard, my grandfather. Both of my parents came from divorce, raised by their mothers. I call it absent father syndrome. Unfortunately, that trait continued—with all but for Kathy, who has been married for over twenty-five years, and Kyle, who has remained unmarried.

My dad and mom on their Wedding day.

Mom's cousin Judy and dad's best friend Ned.

The beginning of my life started with the first breath of air I took on September 24, 1964. My parents were married for twelve years. They produced four children, two boys and two girls. The youngest, Kyle, had his first open heart surgery at one year old. He endured another at five. We didn’t realize he would require a pacemaker at seven. He subsequently had a full heart transplant and stroke at nineteen years old. He was born with a complete transposition of the great vessels and a hole in his heart. He is a miracle.

Mom Pregnant with me, Kathy, Kevin, both our Grandma's, Aunt Karen and our Step Grandpa White

Kathy, Kevin and I

Our Home in the 1960s

Dublin (formerly Amador and Dougherty Station) is a suburban city of the East (San Francisco) Bay region of Alameda County, California, United States. It is located along the north side of Interstate 580 at the intersection with Interstate 680, roughly ten miles east of Hayward, six miles west of Livermore, and twenty-five miles north of San Jose. The nearest major metropolitan area is Oakland, approximately twenty-five miles.

The house we grew up in was a two-story tract home. We lived on one of the main streets in the quaint town named Dublin, California. Our family moved into our home in 1965; I was one year old. It had a two-car garage and five bedrooms with two and a half baths. The dining room was just large enough for the six of us. I loved the fireplace in the living room and the hardwood floors. The rooms were small; mine was directly across the narrow hall from my parents. I felt safe being so close to them. Kevin and Kyle shared the first room on the second floor after Kyle was born. Kathy’s room was at the end of the hall.

Our home was built in the sixties. It was cheaper to live on the outskirts of San Francisco, though we were closer to Oakland, California. Growing up in Dublin was like being close to wealth on either side but being just outside of it. It was a small town with two main streets. There were over a thousand students or so at Dublin High School. It was a typical neighborhood with rolling hills keeping us nestled in. It was beautiful when in winter because it was so green. It did get quite foggy. The San Francisco Bay would share that with us. It was so foggy sometimes you couldn’t see the hood of your car. The weather was colder than in Los Angeles, for sure. The summers would be short, and getting a tan was difficult.

I loved pink as a young child. So, of course, my room had a lot of pink in it. It was a feminine color. My dolls were always dressed in pink; I loved to mother them. I had this favorite doll that I would feed with a pen when I lost her bottle. I was a thumb sucker and needed my cold pillow when I was tired until around five years old. The thumb-sucking resulted in buck teeth with a large overbite.

The first memories I have in my room were of when I used to get on my knees and pray before bed around three years old with my parents. Many times, I would pray alone, knowing God was always there for me to talk to. I was very close to God when I was very young. He was like my best friend, always there to help carry my burdens. I was very happy to know the Lord; He made me feel good.

I would say Dublin was a safe town and middle class at the time. I went back to visit years ago, and everything had changed. I was flooded with memories. It looked so different. Of course, I went by the house I grew up in on Amador Valley Boulevard; it looked so much smaller than I remembered as a child. It also looked more Asian-styled than I remembered. I couldn’t believe we used to climb up onto the side of the chimney and sit there; we would hoist each other up, but I don’t remember how we got down. We used to jump from the second-story roof to the front yard; I can’t believe we didn’t break something. The lots were not very big, I noticed.

When I drove by the house, I thought of the plum tree in the backyard. We would climb out of our windows onto the tree, hiking down to the backyard. We also had a beautiful magnolia tree in front; if we forgot our keys to the house, we would climb up the tree and let ourselves in the upper window. One year, it snowed. I don’t know if it has ever snowed again.

As we got older, we used to have our girlfriends over and climb through the hall closet up on the backside of the roof to lie out in the sun. I knew we would never fit through that window now. I also noticed they had put in stop signs three doors down. I thought, Great! Save another family from the pain of losing a dog. We had lost enough of them because of it. They have now built condominiums on Devils Mountain. Much of the time and places were now only in my memory; the landscape had changed.

It was a mix of all different ethnic backgrounds. Looking back, I saw no color in people as a child. I just saw the human spirit and whether it was good or bad. I accepted everyone into my heart, no matter their culture or religious beliefs. There were high riders, low riders, jocks, and burnouts, as they were called. I was friends with all of them. I didn’t really fit into any of the specific circles because I was open to having relationships and being cool with all of them. You respect me; I respect you.

It was as simple as that. With my humble background, I know how hard it was, no matter how a person looked on the surface. That’s why I had so much empathy. To a fault as I grew older.

Chapter 2:

My First

Life-and-Death Experience

It was February 1969. I was five years old, and I almost died. I enjoyed spending time with my father. I would go with him on his newspaper routes occasionally. To me, it was a lot of fun having alone time with him. I used to stand up on the passenger seat and have drive-bys putting the newspapers in the tubes.

This one day I went with him didn’t turn out very well. I had just put the last paper in the tube and sat down. We were on an old ranch road in Livermore, CA. My dad told me to put my seat belt on. I thought, I don’t want to, I’ll wait, and when he starts driving, I can sneak up next to him, stand up, and make funny faces in the rearview mirror. So, I didn’t put the seat belt on. It started to rain, and as my dad was backing up to turn around, he told me to roll up my window. I was looking with him for traffic and wasn’t paying attention, that’s when I accidentally opened the door.

I made the mistake of hanging on to this very heavy door, which pulled me fiercely out onto the blacktop. I was dazed, but then I realized my dad was still backing up, and he didn’t know I wasn’t in the car. He proceeded to back over my shoulder. He stopped the car right on top of me. He put the car in neutral, put the emergency brake on, and ran to my side of the car. He found me kicking and thrashing under the tire. I remember looking at how a tire was attached to a car from that view and how I saw my dad’s navy-blue socks, noticing he was wearing floods. He was panicked, filled with adrenaline that enabled him to lift the heavy 1960s station wagon off me.

I remember he put me in the front seat, placing the rearview mirror toward me. I caught a glimpse of my purple, tear-filled face with blood all over me. I couldn’t breathe; I was gasping. My dad was trying to calm me down and