I am now 47. I am taking life easy for the moment. Because I can. Because I have had chaos most of my life. So I am Unlearning chaos and learning calmness and mindfulness and integrity and honesty and loving myself. Why chaos? Read on.

I was born to my Ukrainian father who is 6’3″ and my Irish mother who was 4’11”. On my mother’s wedding day she said, “to my awfully wedded husband.” She said that was a curse for the rest of her marriage…and it started that night…you see, she barely made her wedding due to a ruptured appendix and was told by the doctor after her surgery the day before no sex on your wedding night. Apparently my father didn’t listen. And that was just the start of 13 years of wife battery and abuse.

So, guess who was conceived that night out of that loving union…MOI! My mom was 20 when she had me. I was a very ill child. I suppose having 2 parents who smoked didn’t help. I had major lung issues and spent most of my time in the hospital for the first 3 years of my life. They thought for a while I had cystic fibrosis but then degraded that to severe allergies. I had needles in both arms for most of my youth and many bouts of ear infections and lung infections where I would stay in the shower breathing in hot steam and eucalyptus oil. Then I would have to cough in a bowl for long periods of time to clear my lungs.

And apparently I didn’t get a lot of love either. My mom came once to the hospital to find me screaming on the floor. Apparently I had climbed out of my crib and fallen onto the floor below. Seemed to be a trend in my life. I was screamed at and abused by my father. As I got older, my mom came to pick me up early once from a babysitters to find me in a closet bleeding out of my ear. She said that she found out I had been locked in that closet day in and day out for a very long time and beaten. Hmmm…so I was beaten at home and at the babysitters.

Growing up I didn’t make many friends. When I was roughly 4 or 5 I stood up on my tricycle to throw something in the garbage that a kid had given me only to have them push the bike away from me and I sliced my head open and they all laughed. My mom came out to find me bleeding and rushed me to the doctor. I still have that scar on my forehead.

Then when I was 5 years old, I wanted to go out for a swing. There were 2 teen boys there and they whispered to one another. Then one approached me and asked if I would like to have a swing. I said yes. So he took me by the hand firmly and said, “ok, you just have to come with me first” I was getting scared and couldn’t pull away. He picked up double bubble comic wrappers to try and appease me but I was crying and scared. He took me behind some garbage cans where he made me ‘suck his popsicle’ and touched me and had sex with me.

By the time I was around 8 years old, I was on survival mode. I was much more aware of the daily abuse going on and was scared to come home from school every single day not knowing what my dad would want us to be doing…as it didn’t matter as it was always the wrong thing to be doing. At 9 I was doing scheduling for his driver training business he bought from MacKinnon. Often calling his clients as he was too drunk to go to work.

There was constant screaming in my house. My mom always through her small body in front of me to save me whenever my dad was on a rampage screaming, “NO LEN, TAKE ME NOT THE CHILDREN, PLEASE TAKE ME.”

Those are my childhood memories. Well, there were a few sexual experiences I remember as well. I was sexually curious at a very young age and without naming names as I am still protecting identities, I was giving blow jobs and hand jobs at about 8 years old. And it was never in a bad way, except by my dad a few times, but by the others, I actually wanted to be touched lovingly…in any way. I didn’t know it was wrong.

So I looked forward to these occasions. And when it ended, I was sad as it was the only loving I got…

When I turned 12, my mom was almost beaten dead. That morning she was in her rocking chair, and I can still see her as clear as day right now. She looked me in the eye as a half dead woman whose life soul had been beaten out of her and her body black and blue and said to me, “tell your teacher you will not be coming back tomorrow”. So I went to school and very timidly told my teacher that. I didn’t know what to think of it, but when I got home, my aunt and uncle were there and we made an escape. He often said he would kill my mom if we told anyone and she feared for her life. It was his brother she had to call. I am sure it was THE most difficult thing she had ever done.



More difficult then being thrown out of a speeding car, thrown down the stairs and then hit with the butt end of a rifle, yet still getting up to run and save your children while they were getting beaten to a pulp. More difficult than having every dish taken out of the kitchen cabinet and slammed on your head while being screamed at and told how useless you are…and on and on…I have stories to fill pages…but I think you get the idea…if not, please ask and I can share more.

This started a new journey. My grandparents got my mom a new place. And then I turned into the crazed teenager. I didn’t listen to my mom and became my dad of the household. Andrew was only 9 months old when we left and my sister 8. I was not a nice teenager. I yelled at my mom, I hit her, I swore at her, I didn’t let her know where I was going or when I would be home. I was point blank a spitting image of the monster she had left. I am sure she wished she had left earlier before I was affected so deeply…but it was too late. The pain was immense for me and my hatred for my father seethed through my veins…and then for myself as I did all that he had done. His wickedness became my wickedness. There is nothing he did that I didn’t do…other than rape her.

I would go off and drink mickey’s with friends on weekends. The goal was to drink it down straight as quickly as possible. And so I did. But there was a few things I didn’t do and this is because of my grandmother and the weekly visits each summer I got to spend with her…my ray of hope. She told me to never have sex till I got married and to never do drugs…oh, and to never stick my arm out of the car window as the air police would come and cut it off.

These words stuck so even though I was drinking young, I didn’t do drugs and I didn’t have intercourse ever. Thank goodness she said that!

I had NO self esteem though. I started going to bars with my cousin at age 14-18. We would dance together and of course pick up men. Somehow I got through all that without having sex! Just gave a lot of blow jobs and got through all that. I really just wanted to dance. My time for enjoying touch had passed and I was not looking for that. I just wanted my cousin’s friendship. I was not looking for a man at all. By 18 I had a marriage proposal and a ring from Jaime Smith. Met him at Goose Loonies and he truly was an amazing fellow. Built my bedroom downstairs and treated me and my mom well. But I knew at age 18 I was not ready for marriage. It was the same birthday that my mom had given me my Dime Bottle.

Yes…the dime bottle. What would change the course of my life as I know it today. Will come back to this.

At age 18 I went to U of A as my grandma made me. I had gotten a job at age 15 at McDonalds as my dad had made me and then Superstore. Made good money and learnt from my grandpa how to do taxes and he told me I should buy some bonds. So I saved money and bought bonds. He taught me a lot about finances.

My mom had gotten worse mentally and I had calmed down a lot after an intervention by my aunt. They moved me out to Lister Hall and my brother to my grandparents and my sister to my aunts. I was suicidal at this point. BUT..something deep down…that voice inside said that God had great things planned for you so it is not your time.

I joined karate as my aunt told me to join something to meet people. Karate changed my life. It made me believe in myself. So did meeting Patti. So did meeting Michael. Then my mom died when I was 22. This also changed my life profoundly. And started my spiritual journey.