Author | Speaker
This power-packed word inspires, motivates, and transforms. It brings hope of being the best we can be. Freedom is available to all, but it is a choice. It’s a no-holds-barred, going-for-it, embracing-it-along-the-way, laughing-until-your-side-hurts, living-in-the-moment kind of freedom. It’s a freedom I longed for all my life.
Too many of us are simply bogged down by the weight of life. Carrying the burden of our pasts, we all have battles to face and trials to tackle. Some of us have come from horrible upbringings. Some of us think we have nothing but bad luck hanging over our heads. Some of us wish to dismiss our issues by sweeping them under the rug and quietly moving on with our lives. Others feel too trapped to ever consider achieving something so far-reaching as true happiness or real freedom.
Being happy was something I had to find for myself. Taking hold of it wasn’t going to come from someone or my surroundings. After many years of educating myself and being around some healthy people, I concluded I had been on the dysfunctional side of the fence far too long. I wanted over there, on the healthy side, over the rainbow.
“Was it even possible?” I would ask myself. Could a person grow up in a dysfunctional home, live in a dysfunctional marriage, and get to the other side of the rainbow and become healthy? I believe the answer is a resounding “yes!”
“…an honest and personal look at the author’s years of struggle to find healing. Those seeking to become healthier will find Over the Rainbow a helpful resource.”
– Cyndy Sherwood Director of His Healing Light Ministries and author of the Healing Journey Class and Road Map to Healing.
Consistently aired every year, dreaded fear brought conclusions, early on, of my dislike for this movie. It scared me! Becoming an adult didn’t deter me from similar feelings. It wasn’t the flying monkeys that freaked me out. It was the wicked witch herself and the movie’s resemblance to my own life.
For those not familiar with the story of The Wizard of Oz, it was a movie based on the book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum. It was about a crazy witch after a poor Kansas farm girl named Dorothy. Dorothy got swept up by a tornado that set her down into an imaginary land called Oz. Struggling down the yellow brick road in search of the Wizard and running into a whole bunch of misfits along the way, all she wanted to do was go home. It was a long movie and, oh yeah, there was all that singing! Yes, I know, there are many of you out there who love The Wizard of Oz. In fact, I know several people who would say it’s one of their favorite movies! For me, it was all too close to home. Dorothy and I both longed to get over the rainbow, to something better.
I grew up in dysfunction. You might say, “Didn’t we all?” Growing up in a family of five, being the middle child and unhappy from as far back as I can remember, I felt like the black sheep. Happiness was always a struggle and always seemed fleeting, even into adulthood.
Married young, I found myself in more dysfunction. (Bringing your unhappy past into your marriage will do that for you!) After 25 years, I was divorced and in a place I never wished to be. (With all my “Christianity,”) I had “fallen off my throne,” as my mother put it. Pamela Perfect was no longer perfect, and as a result, my whole world came crashing down. It is out of my brokenness, my healing, and a desire to help others that I have found purpose in sharing my story.
