Shattered … but Not Broken: The Story Behind the Words

By Judy Treadwell Gray

Judy Treadwell Gray offers her readers the story of Mattie, a thirty-year-old woman who is attempting to create a better life for herself and her fi ve children after living in a home where violence and alcohol abuse are rampant. Mattie knows what a good life looks like, having grown up loved and cared for. She makes the brave decision to leave her children with her mother while she undergoes a week of intense group therapy.

One by one, Mattie confronts her demons, the hurts and losses that have haunted her, especially the loss of her beloved sister, Cheryl, to leukemia. She relives her relationship with her abusive husband and their divorce, her second marriage, and her guilt over an affair. Throughout her life, her love and concern for her children and grandchildren remain a constant.

Ultimately, Mattie realizes it is her faith in God that sustains her and carries her safely through life. The poetry that concludes her book is written from the depths of the author’s heart as an offering to her readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532016240

Judy Treadwell Gray

Judy Treadwel Gray has spent most of her life working in various fields, from selling real estate, wine, and potato chips to being a notary public. Her most rewarding experience was raising fi ve children and welcoming seven grandchildren into her busy life. She moved to the mountains of Virginia after her children were grown.

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Copyright © 2017 Judy T Gray.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-1625-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-1624-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017902022

iUniverse rev. date: 01/25/2021

CONTENTS

Prologue: All The Way Back

A Visit With The Past

In The Beginning

Cheryl

Dreams And Visions

From Dreams To Nightmares

Life Again

Choosing Life

The Beginning Of The End

Another Beginning

The First Years

All The Way Back Again

Time To Remember

This book is dedicated to my parents Bud and Betty Treadwell as well as my Sisters Linda and Cheryl my children Shanna, Jessica, Lindsay, Brett and Jordan and my grandchildren Jasper, Sara, Marrissa, Caroline, Cheyenne, Aubri and Lyla and the future generations interested in learning the lessons learned through a life of turmoil and faith with a special thankfulness to my God who through my life has been at my side to gently lead me back to his side.

PROLOGUE: ALL THE WAY BACK

She had planned for years to begin a story like no other. With a character full of strength, she somehow seemed weak. Her life was no longer a part of a personal storm. Now there were storms all around her. Somehow, if the world could view her alone, they would see how very happy she truly could be. Her tormented past had come to rest on a shoulder rich with love and peace, yet she still allowed joy to be taken away from her on too many occasions. She questioned herself daily, What happened to the inner peace that got me here?

This could be a testimony of God’s love for a woman who wasn’t always looking in His direction. She was allowed to dream prophetic visions, entertain angels, and awaken in the middle of the night with God’s voice whispering through her pen in poetry, all a part of her life. Yet like so many, she did not always appreciate or acknowledge that His love was always there for her and His arms tightly enveloped her as she made her way down life’s path in many of the wrong directions. She would pay the price over and over, but eventually He guided her gently back to His waiting arms to comfort her.

It has become apparent to her that the wonderment of God’s love is constant once you ask Him into your heart. He will go with you on many detours and never leave your side. Many people walk with God, but in Mattie’s case, so many times God walked with her.

At forty-four, she was a small woman who was beginning to look her age. The mirror was suddenly surprising.

Is that me? was a regular question in her mind. Where did the youth go?

It seemed like yesterday that Mattie was seventeen. It had been the last year of total bliss. Except of course for a few sad times back then, life had been perfect.

She had adored her paternal grandmother and would measure up to her small frame and exclaim, I’m going to be bigger than you someday, Granny. As a little girl, she didn’t know that was just not the case.

Her namesake though was her maternal grandmother, Violet Madeline, a strong, positive-thinking kind of person who lost her own mom when she was just six years old. It must have been Nanny’s inner strength that made Mattie feel she was a bigger woman than she was. After Nanny lost her mom, her nine brothers and sisters raised her. It was a hard life, but the group relied on one another and the survival tactics in cold Vermont weather to remain a family.

Aunt Lillian was the oldest of the ten children, and for all of Mattie’s life, she remembered the safety of having Aunt Lillian’s home at the beginning of the dead-end street. All the kids in the neighborhood would wait for the school bus under the weeping willows at the edge of Aunt Lillian’s property and feel safe. In the afternoons on spring days, Mattie would rush by Aunt Lillian’s home because Uncle Louie would be out there, cutting the heads off chickens. Mattie would run home quickly to get away from the chickens flying over her. Uncle Louie was much loved on the street too; it was only the headless chickens Mattie couldn’t handle.

Nanny and all her brothers and sisters had ended up in the small New York town and called it home for most of their lives. At sixteen, Nanny met and married Joe, a young Irish-

man who was also orphaned at the age of two. He, unlike Nanny, was raised by Catholic nuns and was a hardworking man who became her soul mate. When Nanny was eighteen, Joe Jr. was born, and then two years later, Betty, Mattie’s mom, came along; Charlie was two years later, and Pat didn’t arrive for another eight years.

It was a very sad day for all when, at the age of forty-nine, Joe died of a sudden heart attack. They had five grandchildren by then, and he would never know the other twelve. Mattie was four and didn’t get a chance to build many memories with him. She had Nanny though, and looking back, Nanny must have silently sobbed for her husband because she went through life brave and strong, perhaps for her son Pat, who was only fourteen at the time. She had become very independent and tough.

The life Nanny lived made her a more wonderful woman, and Mattie loved every minute they shared together as they grew older. Nanny used to tell the story of the cuckoo clock in the sitting room, which was somehow found to have come apart at the time of Pop’s death. She told how each individual link of the chain hanging from the clock was lying mysteriously on the floor the day of the funeral. Stranger than that was when Uncle Louie died and the mysterious chain-link cuckoo clock was once again separated and individually lying all over the floor.

Nanny loved to tell stories, but all the family wondered about that one because it was so strange and there was more than one witness to the event. Perhaps it was a sign of death separating from life. Nanny was never a very religious woman. It was probably because she had always relied on herself and didn’t know there was an easier way. She never complained about hard work and looked at life like a great adventure.

Nanny remained a best friend with all her brothers and sisters, and they all lived to be in their eighties. It was a very close family, and Mattie enjoyed the many stories they could tell that were a part of the struggles they had been through.

As Mattie grew older, she became much more like her namesake in the life she chose for herself, but for the most part, she wore the shoes of the other grandmother. She would enjoy wearing both of their shoes and mostly wished she could be a combination. Each had a special way of making something good out of nothing at all.

Granny whom she favored both in her size and spirit was a gentle, nurturing, forgiving woman. She followed her heart most of the time and often would muck along in other people’s woes. Mattie lost this loving Granny when she was nine. Granny, only sixty-three at her death, had also had a life of difficult times back then, but for the most part, many of the new European Americans were learning how to survive as first generation.

There were also those memories of fear when, at fifteen, Mattie was so much in love. This was not the way she thought it should be. It was her first abusive relationship and probably a partial making of who she would become in other relationships. John had pretended to love her for nearly two years, and she had grown to depend on him for her happiness. If John were not around, she was alone, at least that was what she thought. It happened behind a pretty white church in a meadow with a small pond. She had many happy memories in that place from taking quiet walks to ice skating as a young child.

One day would be a memory she would never forget. It was the first time in thirty years she admitted her fear. He had loved her. In this love, she was full of sadness. This boy was only experimenting with her. (She knows that now.) Back then though, he was forceful and cruel. It was not normal, and she wasn’t sure. After all, he was her first love. She had always thought that she should meet