She still has photos from that night, the night she landed in the hospital because her boyfriend beat her so badly. One of his kicks made a 3-inch gash in her skull; the rest of her face was the color of a ripened eggplant. Kicks had landed everywhere — on her legs, her sides, her arms.
She says: “I just kept jumping from one fire pit to the next — I never made it to the pan. I went straight into the fire each time.
“And here’s another fire pit: I went back to him.”
“You have to purge that stuff once in awhile — the memories will always be there. But I’m not a victim anymore. I’m the victor now …
“There will probably always be pain and sorrow. But I don’t have to wallow in it. I don’t have to walk in it. Or live in it — and I refuse to.”
But, oh, what a journey. Flora grew up in a household of beatings and disrespect. She grew up being sexually abused by her father, two of her brothers, her uncles, her cousins. She didn’t like it, but she grew up assuming that was the way things were.
“My dad would wake me up in the middle of the night, and he’d say things like … ‘You can’t tell anybody what we do because Daddy will go to jail. You don’t want Daddy to go to jail, do you?’ Or, ‘You can’t tell anybody. If you do, I’ll whip your ass,’ he’d say.
“I was 4, 5, 6 years old. I believed my dad. I’d seen my dad hit my mom …”
Alcohol flowed freely at her house; everyone smoked. Flora drank to deaden the pain — physical and emotional. Her mom didn’t disapprove when Flora’s 26-year-old boyfriend moved in when she was 14 years old. Flora was pregnant at 15, married at 16.
“When I was married, if you want to call drinking and fighting normal … I mimicked what I was seeing. That’s all I knew. Pregnant at 15, that was normal, I thought; that was just what happens.”
“That’s what I learned at my mother’s knee. That’s all I ever knew.”
With a strength of will, she gave up her son for adoption — the first glimmer that she knew there had to be a better life.
But not for her, not yet. The abuse that she knew at home continued, in a succession of boyfriends and husbands. All she knew from relationships was violence. The drinking continued, always the drinking.
“I went to bed with my beer, I woke up in the middle of the night and had a drink of beer. I woke up and had a beer. It was 24/7 for me. I was never much for hard liquor — but the beer. I’ve been a beer drinker since I was 4 years old.”
And then came meth.
“What an idiot I was. I should have known …
“When you’re doing the drugs, meth takes away everything. It takes away self-respect. It takes away dignity. It takes away you. That’s the way it is. (Flora’s voice drops to an agonized whisper.) There is no you, once you start doing meth.”
Things went from bad to worse. Flora made money by Dumpster diving. On the meth-induced, relentless search for a better high, she injected straight into her jugular vein. “I should be dead,” she says. When her boyfriend was arrested, she became homeless.
“Every once in awhile, I would find me. After a good beating, I would face myself in the mirror and say, ‘Why? Why do I stay? Why do I continue to be like this?’
“And I’d try to stay sober — that would last a day or two, max. Because once you’ve had it for so long, your body has to have it; it’s like blood in your veins. Every once in awhile, I’d catch a glimpse of the real me.
“It was … (her voice breaks) … so few and far between.”
Before those glimpses disappeared, Flora was arrested for the first and only time. It was — speaking in retrospect — the best thing that ever happened to her, although that wasn’t her opinion at the time. The judge gave her a choice: seven years in prison or City Light, a Christian residential program. She chose what she thought then was the lesser of two evils. Five years later, looking back, she laughs.
“See what happens when you make first-time offenders an example? And look what I’ve done with it. I’ve taken it and run — run straight. … They’ve given me my life. I thank my judge for sending me here.”
Not that it was easy. In what is normally a 12-to-18 month program, Flora took three years, plagued by health issues. She laughs anyway.
“It’s hard to believe that on April 21, I celebrated five years clean and sober. I never thought I’d be sober from anything for any amount of time in my life. I didn’t think I could. But I am.
“City Light is hard. I came into the program so full of junk. I was just rotten inside. They turned me inside out, scraped all the junk out, turned me back out right and filled me with God. It’s amazing.
“I’d never had people who loved me unconditionally, no matter what. And City Light did. … My counselors loved me even though I had to cleanse my soul of all that (bad) stuff. They still loved me. That in itself was amazing — because I never had it.”
She had to rearrange her thinking, her trust, herself. Even her faith. She hated God when she arrived at City Light; hated him as she had all her life.
“If he loved me so much, why’d he let all this stuff happen to me?
“It took me a long time to realize my life wasn’t the way God intended it. My life was the result of other people’s choices in my life. ... And when I was old enough to make my own decisions, it was my choice to live like that, because that was all I knew.”
She learned hard lessons, too, painful and necessary, as she let go of anger and regret and resentment.
“Forgiveness is a hard thing to do because you have to do it over and over and over. … I have forgiven in my heart, even though it hurts every time. But I still do it because that’s what God asks of me. I want to be forgiven for all the bad things in my life, so I have to forgive (others). Even if it’s hard.
“They can still hurt you from the grave if you’re still carrying that kind of anger.”
Two years ago, Flora got her GED, 31 years after she should have graduated. She bought her first car. She has a full-time job at the Boise Rescue Mission, at City Light, working with other women who are just now starting on what might seem like the hardest part of their journeys.
She wonders whether her whole life was leading her to this work and those photos that she kept — that it might give one more woman strength.
“If you’ve never even walked a block in their shoes, let alone a mile, you just can’t look at somebody and say, ‘I know how you feel’ if you’ve never been there. Maybe I’m here for such a time as this. I have walked 45 years in their shoes, over very rough roads.
“I feel it in my heart that I’ve had a true DNA change for God. ... I’m not a bitter, angry person. People want to change my name to Joy. I love life now. I laugh. I love to laugh. If I’m going to use energy for anything, it’s not going to be for being all icky and down and out.
“I’m going to use it for joy and laughter. It’s the only way to go. It’s the only way to live.”
Know someone living “from the heart”? Idaho Statesman photojournalist Katherine Jones spotlights someone in the Treasure Valley who influences our lives not only by what they do, but how and why they do it. Do you know someone we should know? Call 377-6414 or email kjones@idahostatesman.com.
