The Naked Truth: The Real Story Behind the Real Housewife of New Jersey--In Her Own Words Read Online Free PDF

unique bond and trusted each other fully. And
nobody
could get on that horse but me.
    My father owned a stallion, named Diablo, that he kept in upstate New York along with Love. This was another horse nobody could ride but me. My father would attempt to ride Diablo, but the horse would behave wildly as soon as he climbed on his back. Diablo would try to turn and bite my father’s ankle in an attempt to get him off. I would always chuckle to myself watching Diablo try to shake off my father. Then I would mount Diablo and he would be completely relaxed and at ease. Diablo ran fast, too.
    I began to show my horse, Love, a lot more as I took upcompetitive western horseback riding. I’d compete every weekend and became very good friends with Susan, whom I met at the horse shows. I eventually spent a lot of time at her family’s gorgeous ranch in upstate New York. They had huge stables that were cleaner than most people’s homes! One day Susan told me that her brother Luke had a crush on me. In fact, Luke was the first boy who took interest in me. He was a great horseback rider and I had an instant connection with him. It was an innocent flirtation. We didn’t do anything beyond hold hands and have nice conversations. I couldn’t wait for the weekends so I could ride horses and see Luke.
    The few things that I enjoyed in my childhood eventually somehow fell apart, and one night my father didn’t close the corral gate correctly and Love escaped. She reached the highway and was hit by a truck and killed. I was inconsolable. Love was not only my pride and joy, but also my friend. Heartbroken after the loss of my horse, I lost contact with Luke and Susan. What a shock to lose her in this way—the one thing left in my young life that I truly loved.

    When I was eight years old, my father decided that he wanted to foster another child. My parents didn’t want a baby, as it would have been a lot of responsibility. They wanted a boy or girl who was a bit older. We had fostered many childrenduring the years after my arrival, and in the end, my parents never opted to adopt any of them, with one exception—Pam.
    Pam was a year older than me when she came to our home. I remember that she was a sad child who had seemingly survived quite a bit before becoming a part of our family. When one sad person looks into the sad eyes of another, you can almost imagine what they have been through in their life. I find that this particular level of sadness often can be a common thread between two lost people.
    Soon after Pam arrived, the sexual abuse slowed down quite a bit and eventually came to a halt before my ninth birthday. I believe that my abusers felt Pam would tell on them. We shared my bedroom and now what had been my personal space was occupied by more than just myself. This prevented me from remaining easy prey.
    Now, just because the abuse physically stopped, it didn’t mean that what had taken place hadn’t scarred me. Wonderful innocence had been completely stolen from me, as had the beautiful discovery of what intimacy could be. I’ve had to redefine intimacy over the past forty-seven years without truly being able to discover it for the first time through love.
    By the age of eight, I had already been severely sexually abused. I had gone through far too much for any eight-year-old to endure. I was too young to know wrong or right in the moral sense, but I did know that it didn’t feel good. In those days, nobody spoke about sexual abuse openly the way theydo now. I was made to believe that if I told anybody, I was disposable—that I would no longer be of use. I thought that I would be considered damaged and my parents would give me up for adoption again. So I just kept my mouth shut about the abuse and held it inside, which became my own personal battle.
    It turns out that my mother didn’t know until I told her when I was in my late twenties. Mind you, I wasn’t telling my mother about the abuse in an accusing fashion. I