Martha Kirby Story |
Imagine getting married to the love of your life at the age of 17. Imagine have two children: a son and a daughter by the age of 20. Life is set, so you think. Imagine four years later after celebrating your daughter’s fourth birthday, you wake up the next morning and your husband is laying next to you dead. As you fly home, make funeral arrangements, and the hustle and bustle is over, it sets in, you must raise two children alone. This was not the plan. Let’s face it…you never really wanted to children.
Imagine asking your mother to move in to help with raising your
two children. That turns out to be a mistake. It turns out your mother isn’t much help. She moves in and so does her live-in boyfriend offering no assistance, adding two more people for you to take care of.
Can you see the making of a dysfunctional household? In my early years I felt something was wrong at home, but with my limited life experience and words I couldn’t quite articulate it. I guess it was around the age of 6 I started staying out of the house. I wouldn’t really call it running away, I’d just stay the night at different friends’ homes. The ones who had older siblings taking care of them because their parents worked at night. I’d do anything not to go home and feeling unwanted, unloved.
Now as an adult recognize it wasn’t just dysfunctional, it was abusive. Homelife for me was where the word love was never used. I was emotionally, mentally, verbally, and physically abused (never sexually). It seemed like my mother was always angry about something. Her communication style was yelling and cursing. I know every black home during that time was dysfunctional to some point. In hindsight I see we were all trying to survive the best way we could. To survive I had to become someone else. I had to push all my emotions and feeling deep inside of myself and do as I was told. I had to become the smart child without rocking the boat.
As I grew older my mother became an alcoholic who suffered from hypertension and epilepsy. I became her caregiver at the age of 13. My grandmother wasn’t any help, though she was living in the house with us. When my mother would get drunk, she wasn’t a very nice drunk. She would become angry, combatant, yelling, cursing and fighting. I stopped having friends over to my house, especially male friends. My mother would flirt with them.
Unlike so many of my friends we didn’t attend church services, my mother said she felt we needed to find our faith on our own. This I did while I was in the military. When I started reading my bible for myself and had a lot of questions. I saw my belief system was different from others. I always said I was spiritual and not religious. I didn’t fall into any religious doctrine so I would say I was non-denominational. I had a friend who told me that was a doctrine. I kept thinking not in the way I saw it. There had to be more to being spiritual than what I was seeing on the surface.
I saw so many people who attended church having all kind of issues they hadn’t worked through. I didn’t really see the church helping them. I wanted to be that help. While I lived in Louisville, KY I went behind the veil (this is what I call going behind the pulpit), I saw all the working behind the scenes in several churches. I saw minsters abusing their positions of trust lying and stealing. I saw married pastors cheating and preserving the teachings. I saw pastors removing minsters from the church for fear they would steal “his” congregation. I couldn’t take any more. There had to be something more. Something that was bigger than what I was seeing. There had to be some truth out here. Something that could help people who were suffering.
I started my quest of finding my own spirituality. I’ve always been an avid reader. I started searching other teaching; I’d read on to meditation, African spiritual, Shamanism, and alternative healing books. Along with my journaling I had an awakening. Before you ask, yes I believe in God, a supreme deity. I’m just led by “The Spirit of God” and not man or their doctrines.
We all know our first teacher is our family. Because of this I lacked the ability to communicate effectively. I can go from zero to 100 when triggered on the anger scale. There was no talking but yelling and cursing.
I am an empath. Empaths can pick up the energy of the people around them. I don’t think some of that anger was mine.
I’m also a seer and as a seer I see everything good and bad. What bothered me the most is how negative I had become. I grew up in New Jersey right outside of New York. Have you ever met people from there? They tend to be negative and can’t see the good in anything. They are skeptical and suspicious of everyone and everything. That was me; I had become sick of how critical and negative I was. I hated when I saw things I didn’t agree with. I would constantly speak on it till I was tired of hearing about it. I would even stress myself to the point of becoming sick. Not only was it making me physically sick everything was affecting my personality, my mindset, my belief and understanding of the world around me.
The things I was seeing, the anger I felt were valid, but something had to be done to bring balance and harmony in my life. I started on my quest of working on myself. I started adding balance to my life with learning meditation, mindfulness, communication skills (joining Toastmasters), energy work and most important working on my shadow. Shadow work is looking at myself and the actions I take in certain settings. Releasing what isn’t serving me and building new ones to be who I was created to be.
The lessons I learned forged me into becoming a certified Spiritual Life Coach to teach others how they make changes to their lives, mindset by bringing balance to their bodies, minds, emotions and spirit.
Imagine asking your mother to move in to help with raising your
two children. That turns out to be a mistake. It turns out your mother isn’t much help. She moves in and so does her live-in boyfriend offering no assistance, adding two more people for you to take care of.
Can you see the making of a dysfunctional household? In my early years I felt something was wrong at home, but with my limited life experience and words I couldn’t quite articulate it. I guess it was around the age of 6 I started staying out of the house. I wouldn’t really call it running away, I’d just stay the night at different friends’ homes. The ones who had older siblings taking care of them because their parents worked at night. I’d do anything not to go home and feeling unwanted, unloved.
Now as an adult recognize it wasn’t just dysfunctional, it was abusive. Homelife for me was where the word love was never used. I was emotionally, mentally, verbally, and physically abused (never sexually). It seemed like my mother was always angry about something. Her communication style was yelling and cursing. I know every black home during that time was dysfunctional to some point. In hindsight I see we were all trying to survive the best way we could. To survive I had to become someone else. I had to push all my emotions and feeling deep inside of myself and do as I was told. I had to become the smart child without rocking the boat.
As I grew older my mother became an alcoholic who suffered from hypertension and epilepsy. I became her caregiver at the age of 13. My grandmother wasn’t any help, though she was living in the house with us. When my mother would get drunk, she wasn’t a very nice drunk. She would become angry, combatant, yelling, cursing and fighting. I stopped having friends over to my house, especially male friends. My mother would flirt with them.
Unlike so many of my friends we didn’t attend church services, my mother said she felt we needed to find our faith on our own. This I did while I was in the military. When I started reading my bible for myself and had a lot of questions. I saw my belief system was different from others. I always said I was spiritual and not religious. I didn’t fall into any religious doctrine so I would say I was non-denominational. I had a friend who told me that was a doctrine. I kept thinking not in the way I saw it. There had to be more to being spiritual than what I was seeing on the surface.
I saw so many people who attended church having all kind of issues they hadn’t worked through. I didn’t really see the church helping them. I wanted to be that help. While I lived in Louisville, KY I went behind the veil (this is what I call going behind the pulpit), I saw all the working behind the scenes in several churches. I saw minsters abusing their positions of trust lying and stealing. I saw married pastors cheating and preserving the teachings. I saw pastors removing minsters from the church for fear they would steal “his” congregation. I couldn’t take any more. There had to be something more. Something that was bigger than what I was seeing. There had to be some truth out here. Something that could help people who were suffering.
I started my quest of finding my own spirituality. I’ve always been an avid reader. I started searching other teaching; I’d read on to meditation, African spiritual, Shamanism, and alternative healing books. Along with my journaling I had an awakening. Before you ask, yes I believe in God, a supreme deity. I’m just led by “The Spirit of God” and not man or their doctrines.
We all know our first teacher is our family. Because of this I lacked the ability to communicate effectively. I can go from zero to 100 when triggered on the anger scale. There was no talking but yelling and cursing.
I am an empath. Empaths can pick up the energy of the people around them. I don’t think some of that anger was mine.
I’m also a seer and as a seer I see everything good and bad. What bothered me the most is how negative I had become. I grew up in New Jersey right outside of New York. Have you ever met people from there? They tend to be negative and can’t see the good in anything. They are skeptical and suspicious of everyone and everything. That was me; I had become sick of how critical and negative I was. I hated when I saw things I didn’t agree with. I would constantly speak on it till I was tired of hearing about it. I would even stress myself to the point of becoming sick. Not only was it making me physically sick everything was affecting my personality, my mindset, my belief and understanding of the world around me.
The things I was seeing, the anger I felt were valid, but something had to be done to bring balance and harmony in my life. I started on my quest of working on myself. I started adding balance to my life with learning meditation, mindfulness, communication skills (joining Toastmasters), energy work and most important working on my shadow. Shadow work is looking at myself and the actions I take in certain settings. Releasing what isn’t serving me and building new ones to be who I was created to be.
The lessons I learned forged me into becoming a certified Spiritual Life Coach to teach others how they make changes to their lives, mindset by bringing balance to their bodies, minds, emotions and spirit.