Today Clara finished reading “A stolen Life” (With the exception of a few pages, she had to rush to pick her little sister up from school). She suddenly felt grateful; she felt happy to be alive and she was happy with all the choices and decisions that she had made in life; she wouldn’t trade them for anything in the world. She realized ANYTHING that happens in her life is better than the life Jaycee Dugard lived. Although she is now living a free life, she (Jaycee) has missed out on a lot, Clara thinks of all the years she’s been captive and held against her will, “18 years?! That’s how long I’ve been alive!” Clara felt like she was there the whole time, everything Jaycee went through, she went through too. She thinks back to what Jaycee did in certain situations, some people may even call her ‘stupid’ by not taking advantage of her outings and reach of the internet, but Clara thinks “I would have done the same thing” Clara wants to meet Jaycee and her daughters some day, she wants to hug her and praise her for surviving, because she (Clara) knows she wouldn’t have. Clara had her own share of sexual abuse, but nothing compared to what Jaycee went through. At the age of 6, a cousin of her father’s they were forced to live with showed her his penis and said “Put it in your mouth”; she doesn’t much recall that day but she remembers not putting it in her mouth and somehow finding a way out. Later in the years she would be molested, bothered, and eventually raped. First her cousins that were females forced her to ‘eat them out’ she never understood their pleasure in her doing it, later she would find out. Her cousins would touch her vagina and make her ‘play’ strange games. Then her family moved, for financial reasons, and she was always being taken care of by her mother’s best friend. Her mother’s best friend had an adopted son and he’d always want to play “mom and dad” with Clara, he’d make Clara’s little twin brother and sister pretend to sleep while he made a move on her, he must have been a year or two older. Then finally, one day she was over by herself, he took off her underwear, took out his penis and said “Put it in you” she made the excuse that she had to pee, and when he let her go she ran out and told on him. Later in her early teen years she revisited them and spent the night for the 4^th of July, he greeted her that morning with a hand on her breast and the other hand on her butt. Now, to when she got raped; she doesn’t remember any of it, she doesn’t even know if it really happened, she sometimes believes it was just a nightmare. Even though she believes it to just be a nightmare, she knows it happened, she just knows it did. Her ability to forget has been her strength, but in reading “A Stolen Life” she recalls everything; like one weekend she spent with her older brother when she was in the 6^th or 7^th grade, her older brother lived with an older lady that had an older son, around the age of 22, he snuck into her room at night and touched her vagina, he had big fingers and it hurt, she remembers one finger going deeper than the others, that hurt the most; then he grabbed her hand and put it down his pants, after a while (before it went any further) she pretended she was really sleepy and he eventually left her alone. Everyone in her family knows she was molested in some way, but they knew none of the details, and maybe they didn’t want to know. But all that had happened in her life didn’t affect her greatly, just that she was more aware of these things for when she had children of her own,   she didn’t fear to love, she didn’t fear to trust people, she knew just as much as there is bad in the world, there is also good; and good will always prevail. It prevailed for Jaycee Lee Dugard and it will prevail for her.