"There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons."
Dennis Waitley
In August of 1992, I was safely home with my parents after one of the biggest mistakes I had ever made. June of that year I got married, moved to California, was used as a punching bag, and escaped on the one month anniversary of the so called marriage. Licking my wounds, and feeling like a complete idiot for going through the whole ordeal, I was just a month shy of turning 20. I was so embarrassed to be back home so soon with such a war story to tell. It wasn’t the happily ever after it was supposed to be. I was very depressed. There wasn’t much of anything anyone could do to cheer me up. My mother, in particular, had no idea what to do to help me. It didn’t even matter to me that I had done the right thing escaping an abusive situation. I felt stupid and often wondered if I had missed any red flags.
On a particularly down day, the “wedding photos” arrived from the photographer. There I was with two sets of wedding photos that cost my family around $1000, reminding me of what was supposed to represent one of the happiest days of my life. As I was going through the pictures, my Mom sat down with me and looked at them. The more I looked, the more depressed I became. Then my Mom did one of the craziest things. She ripped one of the pictures into two. I was horrified. What was she thinking? (To this day she says she can still remember the look on my face) As she sat there grinning, I asked her: “How did that feel?” “Great!” she said. “You should try it.” So I did and it felt so empowering. I didn’t have to live with pictures to remind me of my mistake for the rest of my life, I had a brain for that! Before I knew it we were surrounded by ripped up pictures. Then we came up with the perfect way to totally destroy them. We raced out to the back of the house and put all the ripped and whole pictures in our grill. We made a fire and burned $1000 worth of wedding pictures. It was the best bonfire I ever had!
