One of my heros

We all go through life knowing people and having heros...that person who exemplifies the higher ideals or actions that we look up to for inspiration. We read or hear about heros everyday. Yes, there are true heros who are true heros who selflessly are willing to lay down their lives for others but there are other types of heros. I have one such one in my life, my daughter Rodina.

Rodina was different yet the same from birth. I always knew her and her disposition. Yet, in all this, she has always had a different take on life...different ways of seeing things that would blow me away that such a young child could think the things she did. Sure, she was a girl and later became a woman and had all the foiables of a female....yet she still maintained a level of awareness that was so unique and all encompassing. We are not only mother and daughter, but we are also best friends. I've gone to her many times with thoughts to see what her take is on a situation and she has the most amazing ability to see the whole picture and give me an honest assessment which is usually totally correct.

Jump ahead to a few years ago. She met and married a man who adored her. She had two babies with him and life was good. Then he got on drugs. He got stupid and crazy and put her through a living hell. The things he did to her and put her through were unspeakable and she didn't tell me for the longest time. I blame myself for this as she grew up seeing me taking abuse and she had the reality that this is the way life is. When she finally told me, I immediately got her out of that mess and she took her children to a woman's shelter and lived there for quite sometime. All this time on top of it all, she had postpartum depression that was almost dibilitating. This is a condition I have learned is in my family. Although I never had it, I understood it after learning that other women in my family including my mother having had it. What Rodina went through that I later found out was the worst abuse anyone could imagine and heartbreaking for a mother to hear. Better women would have folded.

Things kept getting worse for her....she was having hell on earth and it didn't stop. She kept spiriling downward and I was helpless to help her. In all this, she was a good mother to her two girls...a really good mother. She finally spiraled down back last October/November. She was so low that she couldn't take care of her daughters. It was not easy on me either. I was supporting her financially by this time and it was really hard. Two of my best friends told me to just cut her off and let her sink. That hurt. I could not do this. However, I had to get 'tough' and take her girls from her. It was the hardest thing I think I've ever done in getting tough with her and tell her to get her act together or lose the girls forever. She was at the lowest point in her life and I made it lower. The night I took the girls and ranted and raved to her then left, I didn't know if she was going to live or die that night. That was the hardest night of my life.

I went back to her apartment the next day and she and I cried and cried. She was at least out of bed and working on trying to clean up her apartment and act. She had chosen to live and get her girls back in the night. Only six months later did she tell me the reason for her spiriling down: She had taken herself off her antidepressant medications cold turkey the month before. I didn't know where to turn but to prayer. I asked my family and close friends to pray with me. I continued to pray and I know they did also.

Slowly but surely, Rodina pulled herself up and got on with living. I gave her daughters back to her and she plunged into motherhood with a vengance. She found a job...a most difficult job with the worst hours available...yet she kept plugging along. Eight months of a job from hell...working sixty hours plus, her stepfather and I babysitting what seemed to be all the time but in reality we had the girls two nights a week each. The bonus to all this was the wonderful times we had with the girls and the closeness we now have with them.

Now, Rodina has landed a wonderful job that she will be able to support herself with benefits, holidays, vacations, retirement and best of all, good hours and weekends off. She's come so far in the last 8 months! SHE did it for herself and her girls! I am so proud of her and also wish her the best. The backbone that she has shown is an inspiration.

Like in a recent song: 'To the world, you may just be another girl...but to me...you are the world'. My daughter is the world to me and to her daughters. Some day I hope to help them understand what a fantastic woman they have as a mother.