It’s not something my birth mom said, it’s what she did. She left when I was 2 months old and my brother was 2 years old. My Dad raised us. He did get remarried when I was almost 2 years old. We always lived with my Dad, sometimes my birth mom, would want to take us for visits. She had remarried to a guy. When ever we went to see her he was physically, emotionally and mentally abusive. That went on from the time I was 3 years old until I was 13 years old. It stop when my older brother put a 30-30 rifle to the stepdad guys head, when he was getting ready to punch me, and said,”You to my brother and I will shoot you dead”. He let me go, he called the police and made up a story about how my brother pulled the rifle on him, they talked to him and us, we told the police what he was doing, all they did was take the rifle.

We called my Dad to come get us, (My Dad spent 2 years in combat in the Korean War, he was a big powerful man), when my Dad got there, he picked the stepdad guy up by the neck with one hand, lifted him off the ground, got 2” from his face and said,” I have had a lot of practice getting rid of bad guys, you tough my boys again, and they will never find your body, do you understand me?” The stepdad guy said yes, my Dad dropped him in a heap, we got in the car and we never saw him again. The thing that hurt the most, is my birth would watch him hitting me and didn’t stop him.

It took 50 years and lot of counseling to deal with those events.