Sarah Montana tells her heart-stopping true story about the unthinkable traumas she endured in her young life.
She's put herself back together more times than you would think possible...
Sarah Montana - Writer for Aha - Moments That Move
She's put herself back together more times than you would think possible...
Sarah Montana - Writer for Aha - Moments That Move
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00:00But when a high school boyfriend took my virginity without asking me first, I went a little crazy.
00:08I wish I could tell you now that it was a cool kind of crazy, like set fire to his car
00:13and waiting to exhale crazy, or even a cute crazy, like Carrie Underwood keying her boyfriend's
00:17car crazy.
00:19But it wasn't.
00:20Did I break up with him?
00:22No.
00:23No, of course not.
00:24Instead, I did Olympic gold medal-worthy backflips of logic to convince myself that I loved him.
00:32Because I had to stay near my pieces.
00:35I stayed with that dude for three years.
00:38I withered away in silent shame all the way down to 90 pounds until I finally came clean
00:44on our living room couch to my 17-year-old brother Jim and our best friend Joe.
00:49They leapt up off the couch and were like, please break up with him.
00:53Please break up with him.
00:54Please break up with this guy.
00:57And it had not occurred to me that I could do that.
01:01So we made a plan.
01:02Tomorrow, I would break up with him.
01:03And tonight, we would practice.
01:06Except three hours later, Jim found me curled up in a ball on my bedroom floor, heaving,
01:13sobbing.
01:14And he scooped me up like a baby and rocked me.
01:17And I just kept saying, how did I let this happen?
01:22I think I must be a bad person.
01:24I feel broken.
01:27I am so, so broken.
01:31And this 17-year-old boy sat me up, held me by the shoulders, and said, now you stop that.
01:37I don't ever want to hear you say anything like that again because you are the best person
01:40that I know.
01:41You saved my life like every day in a hundred ways you don't even think count.
01:46And anything you say bad about yourself cuts into me as if you said it about me.
01:50So stop crying, and I'm going to make you the best sandwich you've ever had in your
01:56life.
01:59That was the day that Jim taught me that words can save lives.
02:03Jim didn't see pieces when he looked at me.
02:05He saw all of me.
02:08Even when I was covered in bruises, he didn't think I should be thrown away like a bad piece
02:11of fruit.
02:13Somehow, my brother knew at 17 what most adults still don't.
02:19There are no pieces of me.
02:22I cannot be broken.
02:24I can be bruised, shaped, dented, sure, but I am always whole.
02:30My mom's life calling was very simple.
02:33She wanted to be Mama Smith.
02:35She was mom to every teenager and kid in our community.
02:38The front door was always open, the snack cabinet was always full, and you couldn't
02:42pass her in her van without her rolling down the window waving to you and saying, hey,
02:47I see you.
02:48I know you, and I love you sky big.
02:51Her wholeness was the sun, and kids just gravitated toward it.
02:55Even when I can't feel it or see it, the sun of my wholeness may be covered in clouds,
03:01but it is never gone.
03:02And it was with me when the police told me that my mom and Jim had been killed in a botched
03:09burglary in our home.
03:12In her killer's confession, he said that he killed her because he knew that she recognized
03:17him and she wouldn't stop screaming.
03:21She recognized him because she made it a point to wave to him every day, because he was a
03:26troubled kid.
03:27She wanted him to feel seen.
03:30It was with me when the media swarmed, when the national news picked up the story, and
03:36strangers everywhere started to whisper that my life was over.
03:39It would have been really easy to buy into the look in people's eyes when they looked
03:44at me and saw nothing but debris.
03:47It would have been really easy to believe the college professor who, two weeks after
03:51they died, looked at me and said, oh my god, you are never going to be okay again.
03:56Thankfully I'd had better teachers than him.
03:58I'd had Miss Graham.
03:59The first day of class, she didn't even introduce herself.
04:02She just launched into our first writing assignment.
04:04She said, who are you?
04:06What has shaped you?
04:08Who do you want to be?
04:10She took off her glasses.
04:12She rubbed her face.
04:14And then she very calmly walked us through the loss of her two sisters, her father, and
04:19her husband.
04:21The room started to spin, each of us drawn off balance by the magnetism of her trauma,
04:25but the wave of her hand had stopped, and she said, but I'm the happiest person I know.
04:31These things have shaped me, they have changed me, but they are not who I am because they
04:34are not who I have decided to be here.
04:37So who are you?
04:40And at that moment, I tethered my heart to this perfect woman.
04:45And because of that, she was there incanting to me all through my twenties that this would
04:49shape me, but it could not break me.
04:52That I couldn't control what happened to me, but I alone got to decide what it meant.
04:57Most importantly, Miss Graham taught me that I am always bigger than the parts that I play.
05:04Give yourself permission to heal your wounds.
05:07I promise you, after these past 10 years, it will take everything you've got.
05:13It will take every ounce of compassion, courage, talent, and skill you possess, and because
05:18it takes everything you've got, it will show you everything that you are.
05:22And once you've seen that, it's impossible not to show up fully to everything, to be
05:27whole.
05:28It's the bravest thing that we do.
05:30Because people who know how to do that know how to help other people without constantly
05:35abandoning themselves.
05:37They actually know how to form a pack of whole people who know how to stand in their
05:41goodness, who see people who are hurting and don't just walk by, but get down on the ground
05:46with them and say, hey, I know how much this hurts.
05:50I know that you're bleeding, but you are not broken and you cannot stay here because anything
05:55bad that happens to you happens to me too.
06:00So we're going to do this together.
06:07We're going to do this together.
06:08We're going to do this together.
06:09We're going to do this together.
06:10We're going to do this together.
06:11We're going to do this together.
06:12We're going to do this together.
06:13We're going to do this together.
06:14We're going to do this together.
06:15We're going to do this together.
06:16We're going to do this together.
06:17We're going to do this together.
06:18We're going to do this together.
06:19We're going to do this together.
06:20We're going to do this together.
06:21We're going to do this together.
06:22We're going to do this together.
06:23We're going to do this together.
06:24We're going to do this together.
06:25We're going to do this together.
06:26We're going to do this together.
06:27We're going to do this together.
06:28We're going to do this together.