Life is a list of perseverances in order to liberate my true being.

So is that why I regularly think: I need to climb the Statue of Liberty? Also, I drive a 2006 Jeep Liberty – claimed by its marketing name: Liberty.

Presently, my twists and turns result in being tired of writing about how I came into this lifetime as a child of rape, conceived in Bremmerhofen, Germany. Yet, I’m fully inspired to write about my seventeen year old dad, unable to speak English, when arriving in the USA from Germany.

Dad, being a youth resister to the rise of Hitler, dreamed of attending medical school in America, as he sailed past the Lady holding high the Liberty Torch into New York City’s harbor. He only knew an aunt and uncle with whom he did not get along; eventually venturing out on his own, finding menial jobs like: “Going up, going down, watch your step please.” He became a US citizen, and joined the US Army, fighting against his homeland: his Catholic family, his three brothers who died in WWII.

He fell in love with my mother, the nurse taking care of him on the ship Huddleston as it returned from WWII; once again sailing past Lady Liberty.

He saved me from being aborted, liberating me by signing my birth certificate as my father, giving up his individualistic dreams especially for me, and then his two children born after me. He loved me as his own, unlike my mother whose shame could not.

My spirit drove me to be liberated from my family’s (mostly my mother’s) addiction to the one-way-to-god religion – finally not just hearing my ten-year-old-inside-voice saying that it is not the truth – and then listening, despite the fear of being rejected by my ‘church’ community.

I would not listen to the baptist church admonishment to keep my two daughters away from their coming-out gay father!

I would run 36 marathons in 36 months, garnering a national women’s record, literally running away from my feelings of not being truly recognized for who I am; finally recognizing (dark painful) Feelings as being the best “F” word going:)

I would marry four times and give up my shame of others judgmentalness.

I would stomp and cry when my fourth husband would not trust that I was telling the truth: I was not having affairs.

I would advocate to provide a HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP SKILLS COURSE at my local high school for 25 years and counting after becoming a Marriage and Family Therapist.

I would write a trilogy of books although I received a 65 in English at Cornell University. All three titles came to me while running (one day in 1995): TEARS ARE TRUTH…waiting to be spoken (published 1999), TEARS ARE TRUST…waiting to be felt (2007), TEARS ARE TRUE LOVE…waiting to be known (2013).

I would hear, “I choose not to forgive you” at my eldest daughter’s 2016 birthday dinner; sliding off her tongue like melting ice cream. A month later I wrote a loving email-letter to her about how resentment hurts her most of all. She knows this already. (all- ready to forgive someday?)  I so desire her true love.

At Mother’s Day brunch (2016) I ask her if she’d like to see the ballroom I’m helping to renovate – to be able to see the before and after. I hear her say: “Not really; but if you would like me to go, I will,” in an innocent girl-like tone.

It’s still May, my most favorite month of the year. My daddy’s 99th birthday is the 4th (if he were alive); my second daughter’s birthday is the 6th; my third granddaughter’s birthday is the 14th. The trees dress up in various shades of greens; tulips speak  their

many colors, and I dig up wild Forget-Me-Nots from a stranger’s yard to transplant to my and other’s gardens. (They say, “Take all you want!”)

I would plead guilty to rolling through a stop sign at 1am, where no head-lights could be seen from the intersection. There is a space under Plea of Guilty to give an “explanation” which I write to the judge as I saw clients at the time of the court appearance.

I would be shocked to read the judge’s letter saying I’m fined $193 for using my own good judgment.

I would appeal the ticket and speak on the phone with Judge Norman; who asks me, “Why did you plead guilty?” I reply with sincerity:  “Because I’m an honest person.” Later, he asks the same question again; I reply, “Because I have integrity. There’s a space for an explanation which you say you read.” I feel liberated.

The judge says, “Why didn’t you come to court so I could see your face?”

     Is this the face of Lady Liberty?

Addendum: The hurt I felt – the betrayal of trust – of not knowing the truth that my dad was not my bio-father until it was angrily yelled at me by my mother when I was sixteen  has propelled my spirit to tell the truth and to expect to be trusted. I feel in my heart of hearts (as the cliché goes), passionately, that I am truly the reflection of my dad’s heart-face.