A Moonlight Spur & Mercy Journal
Pieces of
a Story
35 Days of Stories, Reflection & Faith
A Moonlight Spur & Mercy Journal
35 Days of Stories, Reflection & Faith
The Journey
35 days. One story. One piece at a time.
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Explore Faithful Gifting →Day 1
Starting this journal feels a little strange because there are so many places I could begin. My childhood holds memories I can see clearly, memories that feel like pieces of a puzzle, and memories I don’t remember at all.
Day 2
Today I want to think about the little girl I was before I start putting all the hard parts into words. It is easy, when looking back, to see a childhood through the things that went wrong.
Day 3
I don’t remember one single moment when I understood that my life was going to change. I was too young to understand what CPS meant or why adults were making decisions about where my brother, my little sister, and I would live.
Day 4
One of the hardest parts of being removed from our home wasn’t just leaving. It was being separated from my brother and my little sister.
Day 5
I don’t remember every goodbye from my childhood, but I remember what those goodbyes began to teach me. When you’re moved from one place to another, you don’t always have time to understand what you’re losing.
Day 6
After enough goodbyes, something in me started to change. I don’t remember making a decision to stop feeling.
Day 7
Somewhere along the way, I became very good at being quiet. Not just quiet with my words, but quiet with my feelings.
Day 8
As I look back on my childhood, one of the hardest things to understand is how much I couldn’t explain. I knew when I was scared.
Day 9
As I got older, I began to realize that even though I couldn’t always explain what I was feeling, the things happening around me were still leaving their mark. The people I met, the homes I lived in, the goodbyes, the changes, and especially my siblings all became pieces of a story I was still trying to understand.
Day 10
There are memories from my childhood that I can still picture clearly, and there are others that feel like pieces are missing. For a long time, I didn’t question the gaps very much.
Day 11
Seeing that picture didn’t just bring back a memory. It brought back feelings I didn’t know were still inside me.
Day 12
I thought seeing his picture was the worst part. I didn’t realize it was only the beginning of something I had buried for years.
Day 13
The nightmare always started with my bed directly in front of the door. It was a waterbed, and somehow that detail has always stayed with me.
Day 14
After waking from that nightmare, I was terrified. The kind of terrified that doesn’t disappear just because you open your eyes.
Day 15
I have thought about that dream so many times. I have replayed the room in my mind, the waterbed pushed up against the door, the banging and scratching, the sound of something trying to get inside.
Day 16
After everything that came rushing back, I found myself asking a question that I don’t think I had ever allowed myself to ask this deeply:
Day 17
After spending so much time thinking about the little girl in that nightmare, I think I need to step away from it for a moment. There is so much more to my childhood than the things that hurt me, and I don’t want this journal to become a story where the painful memories are the only things that define me.
Day 18
I knew that knock.
Day 19
I don’t remember every detail of arriving, but I remember what it meant.
Day 20
Two years had passed since I was taken to the white house where my brother and baby sister were living.
Day 21
I knew my parents loved me.
Day 22
Throughout grade school and my teenage years, I carried this strange conflict inside me. I wanted closeness, but closeness scared me.
Day 23
For a long time, I thought my story was mostly about everything that had happened to me.
Day 24
Looking back now, I can see that being adopted didn’t automatically erase everything I had learned before it.
Day 25
As I got older, I became really good at keeping certain parts of myself hidden.
Day 26
I think I became so used to handling things on my own that I forgot I was allowed to need someone else.
Day 27
For a long time, I thought keeping people at a distance was just part of who I was.
Day 28
There are times when I still feel like that little girl.
Day 29
For a long time, I thought the painful parts of my story were just things I had to learn to live with.
Day 30
For so long, I thought healing meant reaching a point where none of it hurt anymore.
Day 31
Thirty-one days ago, I started writing down pieces of a story I had spent a lifetime carrying.