Cumming Car Accident Lawyer - Attorney Steven Leibel, Auto Accident Atto...

Attorney Steven Leibel:  404-892-0700

Leibel Law – Steven Leibel, PC
6150 GA-400
Cumming, Georgia 30028
Phone: (404) 892-0700
http://www.leibel.com/

Google Plus:  https://plus.google.com/b/107361675832951907972/+LeibelPersonalInjuryLawyer/posts?gmbpt=true&hl=en

Google Maps / Directions to Cumming, Georgia office:  https://www.google.com/maps?cid=7197686359225099903&hl=en

Custom map for Cumming Car Accident Lawyer:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uNfeToYatcrqv9Mv6iXMda0vqHY&usp=sharing

Personal Injury Lawyer Office Locations:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lM9O4HGgQml-WVM1MLw02QkaEUE&usp=sharing

readalot: Sticks and Stones by K.J. Larsen

readalot: Sticks and Stones by K.J. Larsen

Growing up in the South Bronx. Low self esteem and poverty

A boy is born in hard time mississippi
Surrounded by four walls that aint so pretty…

His father works some days for fourteen hours
And you can bet he barely makes a dollar
His mother goes to scrub the floors for many
And you’d best believe she hardly gets a penny
Living just enough, just enough for the city... yeah!...

“Living for the City” Lyrics and Music by Stevie Wonder

Maybe if, like the lyrics in Stevie Wonder’s song, my parents had given me “love and affection,” I would have felt differently about myself and our circumstances. But whatever caused my parents to basically be unable to parent, is another story I will tell. For now, it’s about my personal experience living in poverty in The Bronx.

We moved there when I was in the fifth grade, about 10 years old. We had lived in a safe neighborhood but that changed drastically when my grandfather died and my family decided to go into a “family” business. My father, mother, aunt and my uncle all bought a luncheonette together on Tremont Avenue. My parents and I moved into a building just across the street from the luncheonette. This business had to support two families: My parents and I and my aunt, uncle and cousin. We were very poor.

My parents worked very hard at the luncheonette and it became my job (at 10 years old) to take care of the house. I did all the cooking, cleaning, ironing, took the laundry to the Laundromat, and did whatever else needed to be done. While other kids were out playing, I was home taking care of the house.

Now to describe the “hell hole” as my mother called where we lived. Roaches. Everywhere all the time. Especially in the summer. No matter how much we sprayed, cleaned, killed them, there were always more. Then there was the garbage, like the roaches… everywhere, all the time. I grew up believing that I WAS the roaches. I WAS the garbage. I WAS the ugliness surrounding me.

As a child it is hard to separate our experiences from ourselves. It’s only been in the last 10 years I’ve even been able to tell people that I had roaches. I felt so much shame about it. Which, in turn, led to shame about myself. I have never seen myself for who and what I really am. The mirror has been clouded and foggy with a lifetime of self blame, shame and victim mentality. It has only been in the last several years that I’ve even begun to unravel and understand the heavy, useless baggage I’ve been walking around with.

I have always been a kind of “the unexamined life isn’t worth living” type of person. It took an injury that got progressively worse for awhile and then a move to another state that seems to have finally triggered a major turning point in my life.

I learned to try to “notice” my reactions and realize that these reactions were part of my childhood and now I have the power to be the “adult.” I no longer am a terrified 10 year old, I am now an adult who can reason and see my reactions were not really appropriate anymore. My focus is to be “present,” notice my reactions, even laugh at them sometimes, and remember “that was then and this is now.”

I really began “getting” that I had been living my parents’ life, seeing myself through their eyes, not the eyes of reality and accepting as true all the irrational beliefs about myself. Some days, weeks, are harder than others, but I’m feeling an underlying joy that I don’t know I’ve ever truly felt before. It seems that buried under the barrage of garbage I’ve believed all my life is a truly Shining, Beautiful, Innocent, Pristine, Compassionate, Loving, Being. And that’s who I truly am. I feel more freedom than I’ve ever felt. I am slowly and gradually more and more liberated from the constantly arguing voices in my head, the internal bickering that hardly ever stops. I feel like something in my core is changing and shifting. I’ve been lucky to have some inner resilience that has allowed to me be able to not only survive my childhood, but to thrive in that I am FINALLY learning the lessons that I’ve always needed to learn. It’s been a long and winding road… leading ultimately and actually to MYSELF!!!! The Beautiful, Joyful, Innocent Being I actually am. No matter the outer circumstances, I am learning to unconditionally love myself as the true beautiful being I actually am. Definitely to be continued…

I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow
And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow
This place is cruel no where could be much colder
If we don’t change the world will soon be over
Living just enough, stop giving just enough for the city!!!!

“Living for the City” Lyrics and Music by Stevie Wonder