Requiescat in Pacem, Zachary Dutro-Boggess

In my past, I came to learn a thing or two about child abuse. I deduced that my Aunt Helen and Uncle Frank were mentally retarded (sorry I don't know the most recent correct term for this). I know for sure that Aunt Helen was a victim of shaken baby syndrome. It became most apparent to me that there is a history of severe child abuse, perhaps even infanticide in my father's family of origin.

I shudder to think that if I had been born and raised in China, and once having been defined as "bad", I would have been subjected to severe abuse, even more so that I actually experienced as being raised in America. I suspect that with the appellation of "bad", I could have been killed. In China children were considered property, and therefore dispensable.

I have worked hard to heal from the trauma I was subjected to. My therapist thinks that I am pretty heroic to have gotten so far into recovery as I have. She admires that I chose never to continue the pattern of abuse, and that I committed myself to be a force for good in my students' lives.

 I think it's time for me to move beyond the pain of the past. I am almost done with it, I hope.

 The only reason I am thinking about my past abuse today is that Jon has written a poem in tribute to four year old Zachary Dutro-Boggess, who was murdered by his mother and her boyfriend in 2012. I think the link to me is that in his pictures, he looks so much like me when I was young.