Today is my birthday. Before you send your wishes my way, I want to tell you a story about the history of my birthday.

For most of my formative life, I was sexually abused. As a means to control something through the trauma, I developed an eating disorder that reared its hideous head during my teen years. Then, to top of a truly horrific sixteen years of my life, on my seventeenth birthday, I was raped.

The words ‘broken’ and ‘damaged’ are thrown around frequently to describe people like me. Shattered, and unable to form the ashes into something, anything at all, would be how I would describe the state of mind I lived with for a very long time.

Nineteen years later, I have given talks about my experience hundreds of times, but this is the first time I have put these words on paper, where I will have the ability to read my own words, about my trauma for the first time in black and white. And this, this is where you left me:

You left me robbed of simple things that bring other people joy: baths, playing in a pool, eating watermelon, mundane things that I don’t enjoy because they are triggers for me.

You left me with very few to trust and I thought for a very long time that I would never be good enough for someone to love me.

You left me with a nagging, vexatious sadness that plays like a broken movie reel in the back of my mind at all times.

You left me with a destructive cynicism towards humanity.

People ask me all of time — usually in an accusingly loud whisper — ‘what will you tell your boys? How will you explain this to them?’

I will explain it by teaching them not to rape. I will also explain to them that I am no longer ashamed and embarrassed, because this is my story to tell, and if no one wanted me to talk about it, then they never should have laid their hands on me.

I will explain it to them by teaching them about finding joy and peace within your life amongst a consuming pain. The picture you see captures the first time I realized that I felt joy celebrating my birthday, and celebrating the milestone of finding joy on an otherwise internally stormy day for me. The joy was so overwhelming in that moment, it felt as though I could suffocate under its sheer ecstatic weight of emotion. The hard truth is that life can and will change in an instant, and you must let go of expectations in order to move forward, because while the change might be hard, it also might be amazing, and you must be prepared for both.

I usually shun a celebration, because the pressure inside of me builds slow and steady in the months leading up to my birthday, but not for the reasons that you might think. I use this milestone to gage whether or not I have done enough in the last year to give back to others to make the weight of this baggage worth bearing, because sometimes not knowing or understanding the reason this happened to me becomes infuriatingly too much to bear. But, I have finally learned, that I, alone, am enough. And while I might never have the answer to the questions of ‘why’, I get to choose this newfound joy.

When I have flashbacks due to triggers, I choose joy, because you are no longer here to hurt me.

When I worry about who my children are exposed to, I choose joy, because I have two children who love me unconditionally.

When I feel inadequate and unlovable, I choose joy, because my spouse shows me otherwise.

I choose joy, because it is the only choice I was given to make in the collective experience. Where you left me is no longer a pile of ashes, but something I molded into a beautiful life. But you also left me with something that I now know: I have a strength you cannot match nor dare stand up against because my strength is greater than the pain you caused me.

I normally don’t write much about our boys being on the autism spectrum, mainly because I don’t have much to say about it in the way people expect.

Today, however, is different, and I think what I have to say about it is of some value, just from a human perspective. I ran into this woman today, who on several occasions has tried to discuss autism at length with me. Mind you, I do not know her name, nor am I really sure she knows mine, but through mutual acquaintances, she knows about the boys landing on the spectrum. That said, I am more than willing to have discussions about it, and we are very open about the subject.

Before this woman had a child, she read me the riot act because when she asked if we vaccinated our children, I was honest and said ‘yes’. Once she had a child, she told me I had ‘drank the water’, and vaccines were the reason my children were autistic. Today, I saw her and I could feel my cheeks burn, the hair on my arms prickle, and my insides start to blister. And then I overheard her whispering to someone about my ‘choices’ to vaccinate.

I ignored her, and once I got in my car, I started crying. This is what I wanted to say to her today: please stop judging me, I am doing the best I know how. Yes, we are open about our boys having autism. We are open about it, because to ignore it would mean we are embarrassed, and, I assure you, we are not.

I don’t have the answers to why both of our children have this. Listen, I get it; people want reasons. While I pray daily about them, God hasn’t given me an answer as to ‘why’, and I have stopped expecting one, because I’m pretty sure he sees the big picture when I don’t.

If you don’t know the parent you are judging, just stop. And if you do know them, proceed with kindness. I can tell you that I am doing the very best that I know how. Do I make mistakes as a mother? Oh, hell yes. But, so does every mother I know. When you ask someone that you don’t know at all, ‘have you thought of this or that’, you are essentially saying to them, ‘have you thought of this reason to blame yourself?’ There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, you can say to me that I haven’t already questioned in my mind during sleepless nights. I see the way you look at me and talk when you think I can’t hear you. I see the sympathetic, disdainful, and critical eye rolls you toss my way when my kids are acting insane, or only wearing costumes because he lives in an alternate reality. I know you thank God every day that he didn’t give you a child like mine. I am aware of all of these things, and while I cried the whole way home today because I wanted to be nasty to you in return, I chose not to judge you.

I chose not to judge you because I think you are doing the best that you know how. I can tell you, when we stopped asking ‘why’, something in our house changed. All of the time and energy spent on trying to find a reason has been replaced with what I like to call ‘finding the magic.’ The boys have talents I could only dream of, and they give us a whole new perspective on the world. Our youngest one literally sees the world as a magical place.

So, my advice from my soapbox today is to stop judging and instead come from a place of kindness. We are all fighting battles. Everyone has challenges. Some you can see, some you cannot, and I choose to believe we are all doing our best. And, if you are wise enough to live authentically, you will find your own magic.