UNFILTERED LENS
actress
Lost and found in Tinseltown by Tina A. Gallo, co-written with Carrie Christopher
The Lord plants dreams in our hearts at a very early age, fearfully and wonderfully creating every detail of our lives, with plans for redemption in all things, in all our ways, at all times, even if we don’t profess faith in Him just yet. These dreams are like fitted garments of clothing tailored uniquely to us, carefully spun and
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wrapped upon us, dressing us in colorful visions for the future. The desires that the Lord birthed into my life as a young girl were promises He was planning for my future. I just didn’t know it yet. At the early age of three years old, my whole heart’s vast dream was a one-way ticket to Hollywood. My tiny bluish green eyes were set upon acting in Hollywood movies, firmly fixed on an ambition that seemed unobtainable, yet written in my deemed destiny. Although the shifting sands of family instability made it seem like an impossibility, deeply embedded in my heart was the will of determination. My heart was screaming an epic dialogue: “I can do this.” My mother was much younger than my dad and came from a very unstable childhood with a family of 12 brothers and sisters. Alcoholism was a vehicle of destruction that ran rampant in her family. Basked in constant affliction, my mom and her siblings were responsible to care for one another. I have no idea if my mom knew that what ravaged her childhood would be what would ravage my own. During my mother’s child-rearing years, she carried that same generational alcoholism right into our very home. It seemed at least once a month, routinely, my mom would binge on beer until she couldn’t see straight, numbing her inner turmoil. She was running from her past into a sea of alcoholism. All the while my aching heart needed her; the cores of my childhood yearned for a mother’s love. Stolen was my mother. Her absence in my life left me with wounds that cut deep. My tiny little heart could never comprehend why my brothers and I, her children, weren’t
