"Well, if you are not going to help around the house, you might as well get the hell out!" my mother yelled at the top of her lungs. She was throwing me out of the house when I was six years old! She had a frightening, aggressive posture. She was leaning forward and was stiff as a board. The world came to an end for me. I felt and emptiness in my chest; I felt powerless and absolutely forsaken.

I am 60 years old now and I still look with longing to older ladies, looking for the mother I never had; I am still struggling to cope with old emotions; I still wake up with a diffuse anxiety, feeling that I am under some kind of threat, feeling that I am not what I should be.

I have spent a lifetime trying to overcome the feelings of inadequacy, of helplessness. I have spent years trying to deal with the anger, the desperation, the anguish caused by the many traumatic experiences of my early childhood.

This is the story of my healing journey. It has taken me a lifetime of anguish and pain, but I have managed to heal myself substantially. I have finally learned to compensate for my upbringing, to appreciate myself and to be grateful that I have survived.

I wrote this book for several reasons. One is that I wanted to understand my own story. Writing this book was a cathartic experience. I had to relive some very painful experiences, but I also learned to view them from a different viewpoint.

I hope that other victims of childhood trauma will find some guidance and hope in these pages. We cannot travel anybody else's path, but we can find inspiration in other peoples' stories.

Finally, I wrote this book to close a chapter - a very long chapter - in my life. It has become clear to me that I have been using my story as a sort of crutch to justify my perceived shortcomings.

Now I know that, no matter what your background was, you are not bound by it. You can imagine and live a different life, one of your own creation.