By Teresa Cavaliere
West Palm Beach, FL, USA

Teresa Cavaliere (credit: Joseph J. Bucheck III)

After lingering in the twin dungeons of Foreclosure and Unemployment for four years and hating it, I finally took a realistic look at my life. My marriage was over. Everything I had worked for and aspired to was suddenly foreign to me. I had consumed myself trying to hold someone else up and lost myself in the process. All my life I had struggled with the negativity my father had projected onto me. Since childhood, I was stupid and wouldn't amount to anything in his eyes. Looking back, owning a business at twenty-one didn't mean a hill of beans because of what I wasn't. In retrospect, what the hell was I thinking?

I was always a rebel. I fought my whole life to prove I was better than what my father said I was. And that was the inner strength I reached for just recently to prove to myself that I could be a success in my own right. So here I am, wanting to kick myself for allowing someone else to control my thoughts and beliefs. I'm here today to tell you something we all intuitively know - LOVE gets in the way! It doesn't have to. I know plenty of people who are supportive of one another. That wasn't the case for me. Let's face it - I married my father.

Because we are all bruised and scarred from things that happen in our childhoods, we have to reach down into ourselves and ask, "What did I do to get to that higher place the first time around?”  Then, with all your might, you have to pull yourself out of that dark hole you allowed others to put you in and shout, "I'm Back!" and really go for it. Keep the momentum, don't let it die and most of all, don't let some smooth-talking, good-looking so and so reel you in and destroy you to make himself look good. If your partner doesn't nurture you for all the great things you have to offer, let that be your alarm to RUN LIKE HELL!

Life has a way of chipping away at what you know about yourself. It takes a great deal of strength to say "NO MORE" and move forward. I had to keep reminding myself that I can do anything. I’M LOOKING UP! I’m doing it for me. And I’m doing it for my two fantastic children. What are you doing?

Teresa Cavaliere is on the frontlines of today’s America and reports on the curves life throws at her.