One Wee Spark

When I meet someone for the first time, I realize now that I may or may not be a "stranger" to them. It's an unusual predicament to meet someone for the first time and be unsure if they know about your past (at least a small window into it), or whether you are a completely blank slate. Recently, I shared with someone I had met for the first time two months ago that my mother and I had been on the show last year. From the look on her face, I could tell that she was a bit in shock. I can only imagine the thoughts running through her brain: "She's look so normal." "She's one of those kinds--attention-seeking drama queens." And I could also tell that she also struggled with the first glimpse of who I am in relation to the disclosure that I had been on a reality TV show, and not just any show, but "Hoarders". Her next comment was priceless, "We'd just been discussing this topic this morning--who would be on a reality TV show?...

“ I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as thre...

Practically my whole life, I have attempted in different ways to get my biological father's attention and to make him proud. When I was still in school, I tried my best to always get the highest grades and achieve at the top of my class since he was a schoolteacher. As an adult, I tried to become the young woman a parent would be proud of--a strong woman of faith, a mother of character and love. When I returned to school, I sought to make the dean's list. Time and time again, I failed to get the attention that I desired. I never heard the words, "I'm proud of you." I believed all these years that what I really wanted from my father was to hear those words. And then it happened. Last Sunday, I saw my father for the first time in over eighteen years. Obviously, much of the conversation was casual in nature. But several times things turned to matters of a more serious nature. Not once, but several times during our lunch, my father looked me in the eyes and told me th...