Skinny Girl Chronicles

Sherry Hopper-Wall

Description

Despite adversity, living a wonderful life is the ultimate goal and can be obtained by anyone who is determined to do so. After all, you can stay stuck where you are or move ahead to greatness.
Despite adversity, living a wonderful life is the ultimate goal and can be achieved by anyone determined to do so. You can be stagnant or move forward to greatness. In Skinny Girl Chronicles, author Sherry Hopper-Wall shares some of her major life events. Th ese include the highs and lows and the fear she developed at an early age, a fear that almost deterred her from creating a better life than her early years in Virginia.
Her story reveals personal feelings and details about her coming of age as a young, black girl in a small, southern town; a strained mother-daughter relationship; a failed first marriage; and a renewed faith in love. She also highlights the fact she’s a highly sensitive person and how being so has played a major role in how she perceives the world around her, as well as how she responds to it.
An intrinsically happy person, Hopper-Wall demonstrates resiliency and determination in moving forward from any encounter that doesn’t bring about positivity. When she became ill with Grave’s Disease, unlearning unhealthy habits became her primary focus to return to the full happiness she once knew. Skinny Girl Chronicles shares not only the good, but also the trials and uncertainties, which Hopper-Wall conquered with determination.

Sujets

• Dreams
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Determination
• Achievement
• Biography
• Adversity
• Resilience
• Goal (disambiguation)
• Fear
• Succès (homonymie)
• Health
• Résilience (physique)
• Adventure
• Autobiography
• Happiness
• Love
• Dream

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665726788
• Langue: English

Extrait

Skinny Girl Chronicles
 
The Good, the Bad, and the Healing
 
 
 
Sherry Hopper-Wall
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 Sherry Hopper-Wall.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2676-4 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2677-1 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2678-8 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912666
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 08/18/2022
Contents
Preface
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Dedicated to my daddy and husband, who are my greatest loves and inspirations. Thank you for giving me the courage and confidence to live this life and loving me through it all.
Preface
Some people hinder themselves from accomplishing their goals because of fear and rejection of the unknown. I am not some people. I have been able to accomplish great things without allowing the fears that I have to stop me because I know deep down that fear’s intended purpose is to keep me from my greatness and living my life authentically. This is the story of my internal battle, which I have fought the better part of my life, due to the perceptions I created in my own mind after experiencing trauma and negativity at an early age.
Even though I have enjoyed a life that some people see as financially stable and with uncomplicated privileges, it did not come about without constant determination, sacrifice, pain (at times), and hard work. The exact opposite of what is perceived about me is the truth, and it is something that many don’t know and those who do, don’t seem to understand. I learned to overcome the struggles that plagued my parents to live in a way that many people desire, but are sometimes hindered from seeking out and pursuing.
I am a school teacher and educator, who is married to a now-retired military officer. My life didn’t just happen. I had to pay the price of starting over again numerous times and bouncing back from unfortunate experiences, if I wanted to maintain my happiness, which was the reason for it all. I could see beyond where I came from and I wanted to go there.
The stories I am sharing reveal the sometimes misguided journey of my life and how it changed my view of people and their intentions. I have real connections with people whose friendships span time and distance. I appreciate them more than they may realize. They see the human that I am and have no qualms with me.
At times, my experiences may not have been what I had hoped for, but it was the exact reason why I never gave up. The love that I share with my firstborn, Nathan, saved my life during my divorce and heartbreak as a twenty-something trying to find my way in the world. I am praying that the same love will now save him before it is too late. I haven’t been perfect, but I have been the best that I can be under all circumstances.
Being able to travel the world and live out my dreams has been one of the greatest gifts that God has blessed me with. I used to fantasize about faraway places after reading a novel in English class or about a particular country that I had studied in history. I would always think to myself, I am going to go there one day . I knew that if I shared my thoughts, I would get negatives from naysayers who couldn’t see dreams as I did.
I held onto that dream and a few others and made them all my reality once I became an adult. All I had were my dreams. My determination and resiliency during adversity helped to make me a strong woman who always held my goals in sight and maintained my tenacity to accomplish them. Achievements sometimes come with a price, and I am not the exception to that rule.
You see, I have had many things happen to me, but my being unwilling to give up created the courage, determination, and renewed confidence within me to keep trying until I reached the outcome that I had initially sought. I know my grandmother’s prayers and God’s unchanging hand over my life are the reasons that I am no worse for wear and the person that I am today.
Many people told me what I could not do, but to the contrary, I always figured things out. I knew I could accomplish my goals and held onto the thought, Just watch and see . My motto has always been, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” I am one of those people who very seldom ask for help, and I believe it to be my biggest flaw as a human. If I had, maybe the tough times would not have been so tough. I have always reveled in the fact that I did things my way.
Realizing that people don’t see me as I am, but as they are and that their limitations are sometimes superimposed on me, allows me to be my authentic self. Once I detached myself from unhealthy opinions, I realized my value and had the strength to be the best version of myself. This is what I had to do to love myself unconditionally and realize that I am worth just as much as the next person was. I take credit for my fortitude and for wanting more out of life than the hand that I was dealt at birth. No one can make me feel undeserving of it.
There have been many versions of me. I would be remiss if I allowed perceptions from past encounters to linger because I have evolved into so much more. I was consistent in the things I chose to do to cope with life, but often morphed into the person I thought I needed to be to fit in with others. This was my way of surviving the moment. I realized that I spent the better part of my younger life in survival mode because that is all I knew and where I came from. The place where people were just trying to survive.
This is my narrative, told the way only I experienced it, of the journey I was destined to travel as a young, skinny African American girl from the South. The place I have often felt that I didn’t belong and would come to despise as a young adult trying to find my way out and break cycles of being undereducated, abused and alcoholism.
It isn’t the beauty of the South that I could not accept but rather, the atmosphere, attitudes, and treatment from both, those who were like myself and those who differed from me. Genuine love was not something I often felt from others. I knew I had to love myself and not harp on the lack of it. I thought I had love for myself, but I was heavy-laden with emotional scars that were left each time I had an experience that I interpreted as hurt and was traumatizing for me. It all came with me. My unresolved baggage and I set out in life thinking that things had to be different elsewhere.
The moment I had to exist in the world outside my home, I was faced with a multitude of forces that I wasn’t prepared for nor had a desire to deal with, but nonetheless, had to. The common factor was me. I was an emotionally inept young girl. Negative encounters I had with others were met with inadequacy that I felt for as long as I can remember. I could feel them deeply. They may have seemed like small incidents to some. For a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) like myself, they were encounters, which opened scars established long before and made them fresh again.
They transformed me into the person I am today. They imposed triggers on me, which I knew nothing about until I went through therapy. Whether I liked it or not I had to learn to deal with me and how I reacted. To this very day at times, I still find myself reliving these same atrocities. The only difference now, is I know how to cope. I am on a continuous journey of healing. Being triggered by a painful experience takes a lot of restraint in the moment. I have learned to ignore and revisit to process my emotions and not just suppress them, as I had as a kid.
I have many abilities, but I am sometimes apprehensive to share them for fear of being judged. Judgement—we all hate it, but nonetheless, we are all subjected to it. I believe it’s the reason that I, from a very young age, avoided certain people and situations. I stay to myself and will deny anyone access to me at any given time. I’m a loner. It is not an odd way to exist, as some may think. Finding solace in myself brings me the peace that I constantly crave more than anything else.
Engaging in meaningless conversations or socializing in large crowds creates an anxiety in me, that I can live without, but find myself functioning through often. These interactions are exhausting for me, and at times, they leave me feeling overwhelmed and underfed emotionally. I can remember just about every detail of an encounter and the feelings that were stirred within me, whether the encounter was positive or negative.
Having