“Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror”

I've been thinking about my past. Because my past has made the present. I was thinking I need to make sure that I understand and am past what happened to me in the past before I can help kids in the future. I thought about all the pain, loss, heartache, and fear I went through and realize how I got through it. My mother is an alcoholic and my father is a drug addict. Now to most people the genes should follow and I would become my parents. And honestly most kids think this is true so they don't even try to be different. Those people are wrong. My faith in knowing I won't become like them is what made me who I am today. I had to trust that my destiny was to become someone different and in the future be a better mother. I don't hate my parents...I honestly don't. I just remind myself that I can't change them and it isn't my fault who they have become. See, I let my mom move in for a short while and I thought maybe we can have a better relationship now than before. I thought she was clean. She wasn't and I realized there was nothing I could do or say to change who or what she was. See, I don't know my mother any other way than what she was when I grew up and that is all I remember. But believing that I won't turn out like my parents is the way I got past what they have done. Maybe this is how I can help other kids dealing with what I did. So, they know they don't have to be like their family. They can be different.