I have only a few days left to say whatever I might have been holding back this past year. I’m going through the list to see what I might have missed as issues of note.

I have come to realize I write to stay sane. Was I ever insane? Well, no. Not in a clinically diagnosed sort of way. But I definitely drifted far enough away from the piers of nice North American female normalcy that caused many, and me, to wonder.

I didn’t have you would call a “normal” childhood. At least, I now know what a normal childhood means. A set of parents (or caregivers) who were consistent, available and sober.

Children knowing what bed they were going to sleep in every night. Kids who had a right and got to enjoy their privacy. They could slap a “no boys allowed” sign on their bedroom door and expect it to be respected.

Nope. Didn’t have any of that. So forgive me if you have read all this before. Essential backdrop if you haven’t. My father was an abusive, alcoholic, womanizer. My mom got through the marriage with countless bottles of “Mama’s little helpers.”

No one was there to answer my questions and help me sort out difficult situations. Just as often when I would bring an issue to my mother, I was mocked and invariably silenced. A very dry well.

It wasn’t so much that my parents were not interested in listening. For the most part, it was more that they simply weren’t there. Booze and pills are famous – and relied on – for taking you far, far away from your troubles.

Looking back on my life from this vantage point, I can see what was missing and forgive myself for the things I did to stay alive. The caregiving gaps in my early childhood affected me. What I did to make up for those gaps was rarely what I wanted or needed.

Booze couldn’t take the place of genuine love. Sex was a particularly transient and unsuitable substitute for comfort and belonging. I was a very poor conformist, no doubt partly due to my upbringing.

I never could happily adapt to the 9-5 life. I did one mindless contract after another over the years with the single intention of keeping body and soul together. No joy. no sense of purpose.

I didn’t have the courage to follow my dreams of international photojournalism. I had limited faith in the Universe at that point. My great dream of international media stardom never came to pass.

Truth be told, fame was never a real goal. Most of the time, I was just happy to have the press credentials to get me behind the scenes at a lot of big travel events. The official opening of Disney World’s Chautauqua Institute as one example.

I look back with some bemusement on the doggedness that led me to do a deep dive to see why I landed where I’d landed. I learned a lot. For starters, no man is an island. We are all part of a bigger story. Our people were working-class stock through and through – a fact I believe chagrined my mother.

To compensate for the lack of family pedigree, she imbued her three daughters with an undeserved sense of specialness and entitlement that could never have been sustainable in the real world. Even the best and brightest will falter and fail to thrive without safety and careful sensible nurture.

What I realize today is that above all else, I needed stability and safety to grow. I am only just finding it in my life. The stability gap between my life today and where I came from is vast.

In retrospect, mine was a story of survival that grew into eventual stability. It is not the sexiest script out there, I realize. But it is mine.

From the age of fifteen, I tried to find the source of my constant emotional discomfort and deep insecurities. I swung from one vine on the healing path to the next and the next.

I learned a lot along the way, including the importance of my famous catchphrase, “sayin’ ain’t doin’.” There is lots and lots of talking in the world. Backing up what people often say with action, however, is just not as common.

So this year of daily writing has been about seeking answers and finding my own authenticity. What matters to me and what most emphatically doesn’t.

It has caused me to look back on many of the roles and work I tried on just to get by. Some of it was ridiculous. A lot of life is actually if we give it a hard look.

Now I am planning the next phase. The final one. And mentally exploring what I think I want to do and where I might go one day.

I now have the time now to pursue any dormant passions. I have cleared most of the interfering childhood crud out of my psyche.

The future beckons and is also right in front of me.

Armed with my emerging sense of a solid self, I say, “Bring it on.”