A New Beginning

It had been five years since I'd run away from Hank Hakes after an abusive marriage and I'd worked hard to rebuild my life with my son Jackson.

Maybe that’s why I felt so uncomfortable when my best friend Emmy Lambert said she couldn’t wait for me to meet her cousin from North Carolina. The truth was, I had met J.T. Wainwright years before when we were both children, and the memory wasn’t one that overwhelmed me with an interest to meet him again. He’d been a scrawny kid with big ears, messy red-brown hair, and freckles all over his dirt-smudged nose. He had also been loud, obnoxious and downright rude. Imagining that in a 27-year-old man wasn’t making the meeting any more appealing for me.


Besides, I didn't need a man to make me happy. I was already happy. I was running my own sewing shop, writing a lifestyle column for the local paper, and raising my son. Why did everyone in my life seem to think I needed a man to fix me? I didn't and I wasn't going to let my family, or anyone else, tell me anything different.

It might have been five years since I'd broken Hank's nose after he'd broken mine, but I still had a lot of healing to do, including learning how to not only forgive Hank, but myself for leaving with him at the age of 17, getting pregnant, and then letting him abuse me before I finally walked away.

Sometimes life forces us to change to survive. I'd changed. I'd survived. I was comfortable behind the walls I built. Tearing those walls down could leave not only me, but my son, vulnerable. I wasn't about to let that happen.