Dear Lisa:

“I  know I’m young, but I’m not gonna give up until I figure this out”- you are an amazingly persistent and stubborn very young woman, a teenager, really. I like your spirit, your passion- it expresses itself everywhere, including in the title of your thread.

And I think that you are too young to have a relationship with a guy, including a sexual relationship. You are too young and vulnerable, it’s not the time for it.

You mentioned a step father- were you living with a step father at the time your mother passed away, and are you still living with him (is he the one yelling at you a lot?), and what about your biological father.. is he part of your life? (I don’t think you shared this with me earlier; if you did, I don’t remember).

I want to quote the parts of what you shared about your mother and her death that were most meaningful to me (minor grammatical/ punctuation editing): “In the morning when she would get ready for work, I would just sit and admire her. I followed her everywhere she went.. She had been so sick for about a month. She’d tried everything, different medications, different oils. When she talked to a doctor, he just said she has vertigo because she had constant dizziness, headaches and earaches, so she believed him…

I was so confused. I felt that something was wrong, so I put on all my mom’s clothes, including her heels, and I walked all around the block in the rain, while my feet fit halfway through her heels. I was so sad, but I never thought I would never see her again…

One day, my dad came and got me and my brother and we went to my grandparents’ house.. I felt so happy, mom was home from the hospital!!!!!!!! No… The first thing I said was, ok so where’s mommy? .. It was still dead silent, but my grandma broke it with the words: ‘god has a purpose and he took your mommy for a reason’. I sat back and told her I hated god. Ever since then I stopped believing in a god.. A god with a conscious would never take an 11 year old girls’ mom”.

Thank you for sharing this most meaningful life experience with me.

anita