March 20, 2018

I lost my voice today due to a hefty bout of laryngitis. I mostly reveled in being silenced on this very important day and I’m pretty sure my kids enjoyed my silence more than I did!

March 20th is the date I actually consider to be my real birthday. While I’m 51 and my belly button birthday is on December 21st, on March 20th, 1998, my life really began.

I look pretty haggard, scarred and wrinkly for a 20 year old, but I wouldn’t change a thing.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

There needn’t be any diatribe about all that has happened in the last 20 years. A lot happens to anyone in the span of two decades.

Of course, there were plenty of celebrations, hardships, illnesses, births, deaths and a smorgasbord of grief, fear and shame.

PUH-LENTY!

So, even though I feel like I started living 20 years ago, it’s just been in the past few years, that no matter how much I hunted, I couldn’t locate that bad, stupid girl, (me), I’d heard so much about.

I kept looking and looking, but really, there wasn’t anything ghastly or malicious about me.

I’m just so imperfect. That’s it.

Perfectly imperfect.

So, for most of my life and even long after I was born on March 20, 1998, the ghastly girl I sought out and thought I might be, never existed.

I was just so beautifully unashamed about releasing my shame.

And furthermore, on this day, March 20, 2018, as I sit in silence without a voice, the voice I thought I’d never had as a young girl, was never lost, but put away in an inaccessible box.

And right now, my life, in silence, without my voice, leaves me full of promise, hope and quiet stillness.

My gratitude, no matter what the status or volume of my voice, is louder than my voice.

Thanks to every single human being who brought me here.

I love and cherish you.

Pam