“All Shook Up” Out of Carolina (Pt 1 of 4)…by Debra Courtney

Photo by Amelia Grace Photography

When I would visit Carolina during the past 18 years having left this state in 1995, I never thought in a million years’ I would actually move back to Carolina and especially the town I grew up in. I had been gone from that part of the state for 30 years total. That just wasn’t on my radar. I had tried my very best to forget everything about this state that I had ever known or learned. Certainly some of my family still lived there in the town I grew up in, and it was good to go back to visit at holidays, birthdays, anniversaries and see how they were doing and growing in their families and having nieces and nephews and yes my son and grandchildren lived there but to move back… well I just had no interest in that notion at all! I liked seeing me pass by that Carolina state line in my rear view mirror as I drove down I-85 south bound headed out and into the next state. I would get almost pukeing sick just thinking about if I had to go back to living back there again.

Carolina held for me a lot of bad memories that I had tried my best to forget and not living in the town that I grew up in well it was a thrill for me to be out-of-there. As I think back and reminisce about my childhood although it was not all that bad (compared to what some children go through and deal with), however, it was not all that good, at least in my young eyes at the time. To say the least I hated the town, the county, and the state. Jackson Browne song “Doctor My Eyes” can just about sum it up! I needed a great physician! I was “ALL SHOOK UP.”

I carried a long, long chip on my shoulder and I was mad at the world for about 40 plus years. I think my leaving had a lot of payback in it for me.  People whom I did not want to deal with day in and day out was now living at a distance and their concerns were not my concerns any more. That phrase, “out of sight out of mind” was good for me and my well being at the time and I was glad to be gone from that “neck of the woods” to borrow an old southern expression. Unfortunately, I took that same spirit they had with me into my adult life. I had seen it used so often, but didn’t know what it was called. I just thought it was just the way people were and I was comfortable with it like an old pair of comfortable bedroom shoes and it worked for me; because I thought I was in control of my destiny now and I didn’t have to listen to anyone telling me what to do, when to do it, how to do it, etc... you get the point I am trying to make. I took people, places and things to the max. It worked really well until…

Debra’s life goal is to inspire and motivate women globally to become all they have been created and designed to be by using the guiding principles of their Creator’s word in gaining wisdom, understanding their designed-given personality identities & create their purpose!