Leaving unwanted behind...learning to love ourselves

Children around the world, since the beginning of time were made to feel unwanted, told they were not wanted, and shown they were not wanted by their parent's, caregivers, families, and sometimes society itself. Looking back at my own "unwantedness" is something I face everyday as a survivor of child abuse. Having been told by my mother that I was not wanted, I was born of rape, and that I should have died with the other three stillborn babies my mother lost prior to my birth, was reinforced throughout my life from the time I was born until just before she passed away. This was also reinforced by horrific physical abuse and beatings that she would dish out to me on a regular basis as I grew up under her anger and hatred, and the devastating verbal assaults were even more regular. This had a profound effect on me as a child and I began to feel as though she should have just killed me during one of those horrific beatings, or that I should just die as a youth as I was not wanted or loved and I could see no purpose to be here, no purpose to live, and I felt as if I were already dead, and that I was just a "walking shell" of a person. This was all before the age of ten years old, and at ten years old I began to tell my mother to "go ahead and kill me" as she was often saying that she should have killed me in the past tense, or that she should kill me in the present tense. Sometimes while beating me, she would tell me, "I'm going to kill you" and a string of unmentionable curse words would accompany the threat. She literally destroyed my sense of being, my spirit, my soul, my body, as she was attempting to destroy the thing she hated, her marital rape child. I was made to pay for being born, and paid dearly for it. I began to hate life, and hate myself, and as the years rolled on, I lost a sense of who I was as my "inner child" had been killed. It has taken me a long time to bring my inner child back to life, and to learn to nurture her, to tell her she IS wanted, she IS loved, she IS needed, and that she did not deserve to be treated that way as it was not "her" fault. It's been a long hard road, but I am making progress, and it is my wish that anyone who reads this blog entry will know that ultimately, we all deserve to be here, we are here for a reason, for a purpose, and that we all do matter and count. We must learn to love ourselves, and allow ourselves to live, to grow, to give love, to receive love and to learn to "want" ourselves in order to be able to walk free from being "unwanted". Never give up! Never ever give up!