Hello all you wonderful women, today I am very proud to bring you this story from Tracy McMahon.
Fall down Seven Times, Get up Eight
It’s cemented in stone. I have committed the crime of
fraud. I’m a mother, a partner, a sister, a daughter and I am a friend. I fell
from the rails and committed one of the worst acts in the eyes of the British
Public, however minor the amount was in the great scheme of the world we live
in today.
I lost everything. My children, my home, the love of my
life and ultimately, I lost all moral fibre. After a legal battle to see my
children that lasted five years to pay my legal fees, I started a life of
crime. That battle has not ended and as my children are now adults, the battle
continues within me and there are no other words to describe the feeling other
than it feels like I have been stabbed every single day of my life being
without them. I’ve hurt my father, my mother, my children and some very good
friends. However, I own my crimes and those who want to make it their own have
chosen this route and I am in no position to change the direction of their
sails. Overnight my friends disappeared from my life vowing never to speak to
me again. To date, they have stood by their words. I can only make amends where
I am allowed to.
I was sentenced four months ago, on June 14th.
I honestly thought I was going to prison. I had been warned that I was going to
prison. I was transferred in a van via the M6 motorway to a Northern court
where my sentence was to be passed. Breaking the news to my mother was one of
the hardest tasks I have ever had to do. My mother has the mental disorder,
schizophrenia, yet my pain somehow brought her back to the reality which was
staring her in the face. Her daughter was going to prison. People waved the
newspaper article in her face, the same people who have taunted her for years
and who she has closed out in her mind as she enters her own world that doesn’t
exist for you and me.
I lived on a canal bank. I was not given a custodial
sentence. As desperate as I felt, something flickered in me. At the back of my
mind, there was a pilot light burning away quietly. That light brought me a
smile and despite the fear, I picked myself up, dusted myself down and I write
today from a very different platform. I have picked up my business and given it
a dusting down. I write for a respected publication and in the New Year, I am
to offer work to women who have also fallen from the path we are supposed to
tread in the boundaries of the society we live in.
I’ve learned my lesson. I fell down seven times and the
eighth time I got up; I stood up and stood tall. I’ve worked 15 hours a day to
bring my business to a workable level. Those who were once my nemesis have now
become my friends. Those who refuse to speak with me, I can do nothing about.
Remember that little pilot light? I touched it and it
is now a towering inferno. That little pilot light was the little voice that
was telling me to keep trying and in the great words of Mary Ann Radmacher;
Courage
is not always the lion that roars, sometimes it’s the little voice in the
corner that says; “I will try again tomorrow”
My pilot light was my courage.
Please carry on sharing your stories with us here on realwomanswords, leave a comment or contact me to become a guest author. Dr. Dee Gray
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