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be the light when it seems as though all hope for women has gone dark, just by being you, my darling." I had heard her whisper to me while I was huddled there that night on her lap, lost in the limbo of reality and unconsciousness. Luckily my head has been attached solidly to my shoulders starting at a very early age, so her ultimate message of "be yourself" was not lost on me.

My mother and I had been through so many trials and tribulations that it was a wonder you couldn't see the scar tissue of countless battles etched upon our skin. I believe the traveling freak show would be reinstated if they somehow became visible.
Struggle was more than a simple, random noun for us; it was a way of life. It is natural for me to hold my mother in higher regard than my father, for despite the fact that I know he loves me, sometimes there are people in this life who just cannot be a part of your own, for whatever reason. In this case, the reasoning was my father's wanderlust. What had been so intoxicating to my mother when she first met him was a huge liability not long after they had found out I was coming along.

I was conceived during the opening bars of a Brian Adams song, that is to say, in the summer of 1969. They were not married, and they were not at all prepared for me. My mother said she became a mother the minute the doctor told her she was expecting. My father took the news as an affront to his own personal freedom, and sneeked out the door in the middle of the night without telling my mother.
After that, there was no sweetness to their relationship; all that remained was the bitter taste of abandonment on the back of my mother's tongue. She never saw or heard from him again.

Learn more about this author, Katy Andrews.
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