While out shopping one day, I saw a poster. The picture was a typewriter with a piece of paper in it. The paper held three simple words. Hope is power. I loved the poster instantly.
I grew up in a home where my mother was emotionally and verbally abusive. My younger sister followed mother’s lead, and most of the time my dad sat idly by and said nothing. Mother tried to sabotage my efforts at success. When I wanted to get a job at McDonald’s at the age of 15, she refused to drive me to work if I got the job. The McDonald’s in question was a new location. It was on the highway headed out of town, just down the road from our church. In a rare moment, my father suggested I could take the Greyhound bus if I had after school shifts. I could walk to the bus station from my high school. Dad said he would pick me up after work and drive me to and from work if I worked on the weekends.
I am forever grateful to my father for that. Working at McDonald’s changed my life. I had some hope! I could earn my own money, buy my own things and meet new friends. I gained confidence, independence and skills as an employee. These were things my mother couldn’t take from me. In that moment, hope was power.
More Than Expected
In addition to confidence, friends, skills, independence and the ability to buy my own things by working at McDonalds, I met Rob, and Eric. Rob and I dated for 4 years. As Rob entered the working world and I went to college, our beautiful teenage romance ended. But that relationship taught me that even though my mother didn’t really love me or want me to be successful, I was, in fact, lovable.
Although my heart was broken into a million pieces after my relationship with Rob ended, I had my friends from college, a car, and a job. I still had hope. Hope that everything would be alright. They say that in the end, everything will be alright. So if it is not alright, it’s not the end.
In time, I met Eric. Well, met him again. He worked at the same McDonald’s that Rob and I worked at. He was dating someone during our time at McDonald’s as well. While out with my college friends one night, I ran into Eric and we began a conversation. When he realized I was no longer dating Rob, he asked me on a date. Eric and I ended up getting married and having 3 children. Who knew that a simple part-time job at McDonalds could lead to such wonderful things!
The Cycle Continues
I began life in an environment of toxic dysfunction. So did Eric. His mother was abusive to him in the same way my mother was abusive to me. I guess we didn’t realize at the time that it was abuse. We just thought of ourselves as the black sheep of our respective families.
Eric died in a car accident when I was 7 months pregnant with our third child. No amount of abuse or heartbreak I had experienced up until then could match losing him. How would I ever survive it? I had hope that I would survive that, and I did. With God’s help.
Having the love of a lifetime with Rob, and then have it end, was devastating. I hoped on, and found happiness with Eric. We had a wonderful life, and he was good for me in so many ways. But then he died, and it was back to despair. Being a widowed housewife with 3 little kids (newborn, 2 and 5), I needed a lot of help. Both my toxic mother and Eric’s toxic mother were there to help me. Which was wonderful, as I desperately needed the help. And oddly they were fine as long as I was suffering. But as soon as I started to hope, to believe I could be ok and move on with my life, the cycle of abuse began again.
Hope Lives
I spent 15 years as a widowed single parent. I raised the 3 kids by myself and limited the interaction with abusive family members as much as I could. All the kids, and me, had immersed ourselves in martial arts training. We had all become blackbelts. I started a part time job, gained experience and did some additional training. I eventually completed my time with that job and started my own business.
The kids were 20, 17 and 15. The oldest was a plumbing apprentice, the middle had been accepted to a science program at university in the upcoming fall, and the youngest was in an advanced program at high school. We were making it, and things were good. I had just acknowledged the 15th anniversary of Eric’s death. What would become of me?
Then something strange happened. The planets aligned, and Rob and I reconnected. We soon picked up where we had left off at the best part of our teenage romance. Later that year, we were married in a small, private ceremony.
I no longer have contact with any abusive family members. I live with more peace and joy than I ever thought possible. Everything is not perfect, but I have hope that even the difficult things in life will turn out alright in the end. Hope really is power. Power to move through things we don’t love and would never choose but get to deal with anyway.
I didn’t buy the “hope is power” poster. I printed “Hope is Power” on a sheet of paper and put it in the antique typewriter Rob’s mum gave me. That typewriter sits in my office, and every day I am reminded that hope is power.
Hope on.
