Britney's Story: She's A Survivor!

Meet Tribe Member Britney! Through the lens of her Beautiful Disaster momma:

She was abused in the womb, as well as into her first year to year and a half of life.  The first chance out of it, we left.  By age 2 or 3, we found out she was autistic and had other issues (physical and mental health).  She began different therapies and all.  As she grew, more and more things occurred. 

She began having seizure like activity, yet we couldn’t catch a seizure on a machine.  She has a neurogenic bladder which took years to work on and find a way to get her on a schedule to not have bladder issues.  She’s been hospitalized on many accounts due to kidney infections, bladder infections, and upper respiratory infections.  She lives with autism, add, anxiety, ptsd, sensory disorder, and more.  All of this has caused her to come off different from others, and has caused her to become a target for people over time. 

She began getting bullied at an early age.  She was in elementary school when it all started.  She was a cheerleader and a Girl Scout during this time.  The bullying started out verbal.  She was called names, told she needed to go to retard school, she needed to just kill herself, etc.  Then, it turned into mental and emotional abuse.  And in the long run, it started getting physical as she’d get shoved around and had someone try to throw her down 2 flights of stairs in the school building. 

They started getting inside her head.  She started to believe things they were saying and believed that everyone would be better off if she were gone.  She started hurting herself.  She cried everyday she came home from school and would cry when she knew she had to go to school each day.  She’d end up emailing me breaking down because she didn’t want to be at school.  She began having her grades drop.  She wanted to die.  She was done with it all. 

It even rolled over into her extracurricular activities.  By fifth grade, we got the state rep involved and had to find a way to get her out of the school and into virtual.  From there, we increased her therapy time, pulled people together from Facebook to surround her in love and support, and prove to her that she deserves to be alive. 

We took her out of Girl Scouts and cheerleading.  We focused on her health issues and her mental health.  Between a shower of cards with encouraging words of support and small gifts for her to wear and hang on her walls to remind herself daily of how beautiful, smart, unique, etc she is and us at home and with her specialists all pulling together to show her the love and support she needed and sharing our stories with her helped tremendously.  My beautiful girl pulled through in the long run. 

She went from public school to virtual, left cheer and Girl Scouts and found the pageant world which is her safe place away from home, and she found a new path in life and her perspective on life is unique and different from most people her age.  She had to endure a lot throughout her life and still continues to do so with her disabilities and all, but if you look at it all, she is a survivor! 

She is still here with us today, is a beautiful disaster, and is helping to spread awareness so others can see that no matter what you’ve endured, how you’re different, etc that you do deserve to be here and be happy and to feel worthy.  We are all worthy of being alive and being our unique selves.  We were all put here for a reason, and no one should prevent you from living your life and fulfilling your purpose. 

Only you can truly let others opinions of you impact your life, but the only person’s opinion that matters is your own.  No one else’s opinion matters because there will always be judgment, but those people have no room to judge you especially if they haven’t walked a mile in your shoes.