Usually I write at least one column every year bashing “Santa.” This because how can we trick our children into believing in the “jolly red elf,” then expect them to believe us about God after they find out we’ve lied to them about Santa?
However, this Christmas I want to write about my hero. Her dream since childhood was to become a writer. She survived a horrific childhood that included repeated, brutal rapes. One of them put her in intensive care for a week because she nearly bled to death. The only way to stop the bleeding was a transfusion and she was a rare blood type. Unforgivably, no one asked questions and the rapes continued. At one point, she was held captive on a boat with an armed felon who had drowned his own son so that she would not flee or tell anyone about the abuse. She escaped and married a Mexican National. They lived across the border in a one-room shack and shared a communal outhouse with ten other families. She worked on the U.S. side of the border and walked the four miles across the bridge to and from work every day.
They rented a house on the U.S. side of the border for themselves and their three children, a one-bedroom, three-room house with a bathroom and shower attached outside the house. Her husband was critically injured at his road job across the border. It took years for his head and leg injuries to heal enough that he could return to work. Meanwhile, she discovered questionable procedures at her job and was fired and blacklisted for vocalizing her concerns. By this time they had a fourth child. They were so broke that they sent their baby across the border to live with grandparents temporarily. She worked her way through university graduating with honors. Through all this…she never stopped writing. She never let go of her dream to be a successful author. Now, just in time for Christmas, she has released a poetry book of intense, moving brilliant poetry, “Always the Moon.”
Oh, and did I mention her other books, A Love Beyond, His Temporary Wife, Wildflower Redemption, Take Me Out, Unattainable http://www.crimsonromance.com/
La Llorona (The Wailing Woman), and inclusion in two internationally best selling cowboy anthologies?
My hero sister, Leslie P. Garcia.
Stephanie Parker McKean 
An amazing woman indeed, Stephanie. She would be an inspiration to many many abused girls and women. As are you!
Thanks, Val. She is indeed an inspiration. I forgot to include that she taught public school for 22 years and compiled her poems in bed with the computer propped up on a pillow because she can no longer walk, stand, or sit without being in incredible pain.
Oh no! Has all that terrible abuse resulted in serious medical problems?
This many years past I don’t know, Val. She does have a lot of medical problems. When her husband was in the hospital with failing kidneys and she stayed with him for four days, she came out unable to walk and had to retire early from teaching. She needs an operation to expand the space between her vertebrae, but she needs to be stronger and in better health first. Plus she’s the only driver to take her husband to dialysis three times a week and take her younger daughter to work. As I said in the blog, my hero sister. She never complains, never quits writing, never gives up.