When I was only eighteen, a man at least forty years my senior made serious advances toward me.  I was bewildered, shocked, disgusted, angry.  And I was hurt.  Nothing ever came of it except the change that came over me.  My core, the innocence I still carried with me, my belief in joy?  These things were all altered and would never be the same again.  

It became one of my defining moments, and, I believe, a crack or break in the adult I had been becoming. Again, nothing ever happened expect some careless words and an attempt, but I had been a naive and free young woman.  But that changed in that moment - in the moment I was confused and stripped of a so-called spiritual innocence.  I saw "fault" in a person, a fault I perceived as evil,  

It is not the moment that defines, it is what we take away from it, what we learn from that moment that makes it defining.  This moment stays with me because of what I experienced after - the disillusionment of what I thought had been a good person.  And I blamed myself, though I was in no way - shape or form to blame.  It is just is what happened. 

Thirty years later, I yearn for defining moments every week.  Not like that one, of course, but moments that deliver a challenge, that present a lesson.  Because I know I will never be done.  I will always be becoming a new incarnation of Rayanne.  And as time goes on, I am more comfortable with who I am becoming and miss who I once was far less.  It is what life lessons and defining  moments are all about.  And of course, where there is a lesson, there is bound to be learning...

-Rayanne