Love Child

I am a "Love Child" in the truest sense of the word. When I first heard Diana Ross wailing out that tune I quickly downloaded it for my cell-phone ring tone. It was perfectly poignant for the phase of reflection I was going through in my life and gave me a constant reminder of my unique and eccentric origins.

Picture it: Venice Beach, California, 1975. A guitar player and singer in a garage-meets-lounge band fall in love. The singer was a college drop-out Mid-West transplant seeking fame and fortune in the bright lights of big city L.A. The guitar player was your average San Fernando Valley hippie experiencing the unravel of the counter-culture movement while traveling around the country in a van with his band. They were busy living their youth and dreaming their dreams. Neither of them were stable, settled or mature enough to begin a family, but other plans were in store for them... The singer finds herself pregnant, 23, unmarried and half-a-country away from home. Buying into the Women's Lib movement of the day she is determined to "have it all" and refuses the guitar players marriage proposal. Underneath the long hair, bushy mustache and faded bell bottoms was a man raised by a good family with traditional values willing to take responsibility for his responsibility. They move in, set up house and spend 3 days hosting a "home birth party" before finally giving in and going to the hospital to deliver their perfectly healthy (at that time) baby girl. A few months later the singer asks her baby daddy to marry her and the day after Christmas in 1976, in his Mom and Dad's backyard, with a 4 month old on their hips, they do. The marriage is fueled by passion and drama and lasts 2 years before both move on to other phases in life, each with 1 hand of that toddler tightly entwined in their own.

They marry others, co-parent successfully and give me the best possible life they were capable of. I never doubted that I was loved and extremely important to both of them. They both made many sacrifices along the way and I am so grateful for who they are. But my upbringing was emotionally tumultuous and fraught with much confusion. I was a bright, temperamental and intuitive child that viscerally felt each experience in life with acute comprehension. I grew up to be an uber-intense, type-A, perfectionistic, controlling and intelligent under-achiever with a bad temper prone to throwing tantrums! I flew through my teen years in a blur of self-medication and boundary bashing, causing endless amounts of heartache to my poor parents. Somehow I made my way to college and managed to straighten out a bit, actually graduating in 5 years, no small miracle. I set out on adulthood in a blaze of glory, battling Major Depression as I attempted to find out who Leah is and define myself as an adult. Not who she had been taught to be, told to be or shown to be. I spent 3 intense years in therapy deconstructing myself and my self-annihilative habits. I learned that so many of my choices were a reaction to my past and that knowing how to parent my inner-child was not something I had been taught how to do. I learned the beautiful necessity of setting limits and making better choices for a better outcome. I thank God for the opportunity to have worked through the garbage of my past, for in 2005 when I got sick, the skills I learned during my Age Of Enlightenment got me through the devastation of my life.

How much of my emotional past contributed to my medical problems? How can I even begin to say one has nothing to do with the other? Major Depressive Disorder and a long-standing sleep disturbance suppressed my immune system and my genetic Hypertriglyceridemia caused Pancreatitis. I was just a sitting duck from there. CFS (Viral Induced Central Nervous System Dysfunction), Fibromyalgia, TMJ, Cervical Kyphosis, Degenerative Disc Disease, Sacroiliac Joint Dysfunction, a fractured skull base, and finally RCVS (the strokes) have wound their way into my body and tried to snake their slithery selves around my life. But my parents raised a fighter. In playing the role of parent when I was the child and knowing an instability and vulnerability children should not have to see, I gleaned the aptitude necessary to make it through every health trauma life has thrown at me. I am a fighter, a survivor, and I fought back harder and stronger every time and as long as the good Lord allows breath in my body, will continue to win.

Thanks for joining,
Leah