My mom raised my sister, and I as a single parent. She was 16 when she had my sister and 17 when she had me. When we were young she went to Cosmetology School during the day and worked at a nightclub as a cocktail waitress and “Go-Go” dancer at night and therefore, was hardly ever home. She made arrangements with a few people to keep us, sort of like a foster home, and she would visit us when she had time. But it seemed like when we would get settled, the foster parents would decide they wanted to keep us, then mom would come in and “rescue” us and place us in someone else’s care. We even lived with our Aunt and Uncle in Arizona for a little while. We moved so many times, I lost track of the places I lived and the schools I attended.
When I was in 4th grade we finally got settled in a house in Hollywood. My mom was dating a guy pretty seriously for a couple of years, and then they got married in July 1972.
I started smoking cigarettes when I was in 7th grade because my parents did and it was a "cool" thing to do.
My mom and step dad decided when I was about 12 that they preferred my sister and I learned about marijuana from them. So, they sat us down and gave us our first joint. That was the beginning of my life with drugs. This was in the 70’s so the sexual revolution was in full swing so, along with the introduction to marijuana, they took nude pictures of us and we played strip poker as a family.
My sister was a year older than me and when she was 14 she was fully developed and discovered boys (and they discovered her!). She got caught several times sneaking out of the house to go meet them and eventually decided to permanently run away from home at age 14. She went to Juvenile Hall for a while, and then was placed in a foster home because she told the courts she did not want to return home. I found out later that one of the many reasons she made that choice was because our step dad had attempted to sexually molest her.
My mom and step dad became devout worshipers of the Eastern Religion, Hinduism, and got me involved in it. We chanted in front of a Gohonzon, burned incense, meditated, and attended a church called “Self Realization Fellowship”. We prayed to a Guru named Paramahansa Yogananda, who is supposedly very highly evolved, that we called “Master” when we prayed to him.
We moved to Pasadena when I was in 8th grade and things really started to go down hill. My mom was a severe alcoholic and life was always an emotional roller coaster. I never knew what to expect from her because her moods were so varied and drastic (I found out after she died, from her care giver, that she had Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or multiple personalities, which helped me to make a little more sense of my crazy childhood). It seemed like my parents were always so unhappy. They kept trying to fill the void in their hearts and lives with things that were supposed to be “Hip and cool” like drugs, alcohol, sexual adventures with their friends, and pornography. But these things only served to make their lives even more empty, which led them to drink and party even more.
I was pretty up set when we moved away from all my friends in Hollywood, so at every opportunity I would take a bus there to see them. Some times I would ditch school to go party with them. I lost my virginity at 14 years of age at one of those parties.
My best friend moved to Glendale and I would take the bus to her house and spend the weekends with her as much as I could. At the end of one of my visits with her, November 9th 1975, we were running across the street to catch the bus I was to take home and a car hit us both. She was thrown in the air and landed on one of the cars that did stop for us, shattering her left kneecap and cutting open her forehead. I was thrown in front of the car that hit us and broke my left collarbone and both bones in my lower left leg. I was in intensive care for nine days and almost died from fat embolism in my blood stream. I was in a wheel chair for two weeks and in a cast for six months.
I went to Pasadena High but I never got involved with the kids there because I was still emotionally attached to Hollywood and Glendale. I was on the swim team and the water polo team the entire time I was there and won many metals and ribbons but my mom didn't participate in any of these events.
I witnessed several suicide attempts by my mother. One time, when I came home from school, she had written out instructions for me to follow in regards to her funeral and belongings and sat there explaining them to me before she left. I couldn’t tell you what she said because obviously my head was swimming with thoughts of how I should be reacting. I knew I should be trying to stop her, but in my heart, I was hoping she would succeed. She had a bottle of pills and a bottle of wine that she was taking with her. She ended up driving all over private property and got arrested and put in a padded cell until they felt she was sane enough to be let go. Another time I walked in on her after she had just cut her wrists. There was blood everywhere and she was a basket case. It got to the point that I would pray she would succeed because I was tired of mourning for her over and over again. I was tired of dealing with her and tired of seeing her so miserable and in so much emotional pain.
In my parents twisted way of thinking, they thought it would be cool if they could introduce sex to me and my step brother themselves. (My step dad's oldest son from a previous marriage, he was around my sisters age). They didn’t know I had already been introduced to it. They talked and joked about it for years and then one day in Pasadena they planed, and executed it. A little bit after that, my step dad attempted to seduce me again when we were alone but I emotionally overloaded and passed out before he could succeed.
In January 1977, just before the end of Christmas Vacation, in the middle of my 11th year in high school, my mom got a call from the school in regards to all my absences and forged notes. I was punished and grounded and I was to be transferred to a school for difficult and bad kids. It was at that point that I decided I had had enough, and at 16 years of age I ran away from home. I had a boyfriend at the time who lived in Glendale that my mom didn’t know too much about and he took me in to live with him and his folks for awhile.
At the same time, the house in Pasadena was up for sale and after I left, my mom and step dad got divorced and they went their separate ways as well.
I lived with my boyfriend until that relationship got too dry for me and I fell for one of his friends. His friend went to Alaska to work on the pipeline and promised to come back for me (which never happened). By then, my step dad had moved to Manhattan Beach and was living with his girlfriend. I called him to see if I could hang with him. He let me stay until I wore out my welcome. Then, I went to live with my best friend (my friend that was hit by the car with me) until I could find some place else. She and I found some new friends and I started to like this guy so he and his family let me live with him (twelve of us lived in a two bedroom house!). His mom worked at a restaurant and got me a job there. I worked the graveyard shift for two months.
One night my girlfriend, some other friends and I, went to our favorite hang out at a park. We met some other people there, and a guy that was there asked for my phone number. I didn’t feel right about giving out the people's number that I was staying at so I took his number instead. I really didn’t intend on calling but one day just before my birthday, I was feeling lonely and decided to give him a call. He ended up taking me to the mountains for my birthday and another relationship started. He and I rented a hotel room, at a weekly rate, next door to the restaurant where I worked because we didn’t have a car. Not too long after that I got sick and thought I had mono. It turned out that I was pregnant. I had some regular customers at the restaurant that I became friends with and one girl worked at a hospital. She offered to get me in for a pregnancy test and then for the abortion. I had the abortion on Tuesday, December 20th 1977.
Around this time I was starting to get tired of this guy because he was either high or drunk and I didn’t want to deal with him anymore. I was interested in another guy who was one of the people I met at the restaurant. So I left the current boyfriend for the restaurant guy and we lived with the lady who worked at the hospital.
Some how or another during this time I managed to work and go to Continuation School, a school for troubled kids, and was able to get a couple more credits toward my graduation. I didn’t want my terrible family life to interfere with my schooling, and ultimately my adult life. That’s not why I left home and I knew how important my diploma was. Unfortunately, I couldn’t enter a regular school without a legal guardian’s signature so Continuation School was all that was available to me at that time.
The new boyfriends parents lived in the San Francisco area and they talked him into going back home so he could take care of some personal business. So I went with him. I managed to work out the school situation and I went back to school in the middle of my senior year, after missing one whole year of school, I graduated on the honor roll, in my year, 1978.
Well, once again, the relationship with this guy went dry and by then I had gotten back up with my mom, so I left him and moved in with her. She still hadn’t changed, and was still an alcoholic and very troubled, and I wasn’t too far behind. For ten months I partied and made a terrible reputation for myself and couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy. All I wanted was to be loved and accepted for who I was. It never occurred to me that I didn’t even know who I was. I tried to be something or someone for everyone I met and lost who I really was in the process. I tried to get acceptance and approval, because I hadn’t gotten it from my mom or through the guys I was with. But all that did was make the need and the void even bigger. I did a lot of damage to myself in those ten months.
In the Eastern Religion, they believe in Karma and Reincarnation. They believe, when you learn your lessons and quit creating negative Karma for yourself, after living life after life, you become higher evolved and graduate to higher planes of existence. I had such a hard time with this. I couldn’t imagine living life after life, over and over again in this rotten world. And if that wasn’t true, I couldn’t believe that my life, who I was, Linda, could live, and if I didn’t become famous, or make my mark on the world, would die, and my life would mean nothing, that I would just be dust in the ground. So, in order to avoid too many lives on this earth I decided to be as good as possible, create as little negative karma as possible so that I could go on to a better plane of existence. My motto was “do unto others as I would have them do unto me”… I didn’t know at the time that that was a Biblical scripture.
After a very hard winter in the mountains, and, again the need to leave my mom, I moved back to the beach area and stayed with my step dad until I could get a job and an apartment. He helped me get a job in his company, and I found an apartment.
I met Tom Daniels, now my husband, at work and we got an apartment with another guy who worked there. His girlfriend and I became best friends and we hung out together all the time. She was from New York and we thought it would be cool to write a book about our lives together. We started taping our conversations and we would talk about controversial topics like abortion, homosexuality and stuff like that. At one point in my life, I wrote a movie with one of my parent’s friends, who later became my uncle. I thought we could ask him his opinion on how to go about writing this book. So my friend and I went over to his house one day and we hung out with him and my Aunt for awhile and talked about the book and some of the difficult questions we had. Then he asked us if we wanted to hear the “bottom line”. Well, of course we did, so he proceeded to tell us about Jesus, and Satan and the fall of man and all that Jesus did for us and why. It was the first time I had ever heard that story. And for the first time in my life, all the missing pieces were filled in. I finally understood my purpose in life. Jesus loved me so much that he died a horrible death on the cross, to pay for my sins, so that I could live with Him in eternity. He loved me as I was, at that moment, broken, hurt, confused, and full of sin and pain. He gave me a meaning and purpose in life. I gave my life to Jesus that day, March 22, 1980. I now know that I’ve already made my mark in life, and that mark is my name written in the Book of Life. And the reason I am here is to tell people who are like me, broken and full of pain, that there is a better life, fuller and with more peace with Jesus.
The reason I went into such detail in my testimony is so that you can understand when I say, I am not sorry for anything that happened to me. If I had it to do again, there is very little I would change because those things have made me who I am today. And I know that there is a reason for each and every thing that I went through. If God can use my experiences, and me, to help another person avoid some of the stuff I went through, or help them through it, then it was worth it.
I have been a Christian since 1980 and God has done some pretty incredible things in my life. One of the biggest things is the restoration of my marriage and the emotional healing I have received, some through professional counselors, but mostly through prayer and allowing Jesus and the Holy Spirit to heal my heart wounds.
The thing I am continually learning is who I am in Jesus and who He is in me. Replacing the lies I have believed with the truth of who I am in Christ and gradually getting a revelation of His amazing love for me. I am “Stripping off my old self which follows my former ways of living and ruins me as it follows the desires that deceive me. I am becoming new in the spirit of my mind and putting on the new self, which was created to be like God, righteous and holy in the truth”. Ephesians 4:22-24
Christ’s Servant for His Kingdom,
Linda :)
Insert: I have to say that I am still in contact with my step dad. To his credit, he came to me about a year or so after I ran away from home and apologized profusely for his inappropriate behavior towards me. He took full responsibility and even offered to pay for any counseling I needed as a result of his behaviors. That was huge for me and I very much appreciated that he did that.
My mom was a VERY broken woman and had a way of driving men crazy, literally, and they ended up doing things they wouldn't ordinarily do. Are they still responsible? Yes, absolutely. But I am thankful that my step dad was able to face what he did and take responsibility and apologize to me. He really is an amazing man and I am grateful for him in my life.
My mom passed away on May 13, 2004. Six days before my first granddaughter was born. She had just turned 61 on May 10th.
My sister passed away on June 1, 2006. She was killing herself gradually with alcohol over the years but once our mom died, she stepped it up and succeeded within two years.
My father passed away in 2001. I didn’t know about this until my birthday September 27th 2006. I had lost contact with my father for many years and had no idea where he was but had tried to find him to let him know about my sister dying. For my birthday Tom's gift to me was to find him and ended up finding my half sister who then told me about my dad passing away.
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