The First Thing I Had to Reclaim Wasn’t a Dream—It Was Me.

They made all the decisions for me. I didn’t even know I could say no.

I never thought I’d write about this publicly. But at 69, soon turning 70—I’ve learned the cost of silence, and I’m not willing to pay it anymore.

I was twenty years old, six weeks postpartum, and sitting in a room full of church ladies who were thirty to forty years older than me. It was a "circle meeting"—what the Christian Women’s Fellowship called th…