Every battered child grew up in poverty.
—Mack M.

Battering takes many forms. It often is physical, certainly, but it can also be emotional or spiritual. All battering leaves scars in the spirit of a child.
Many of us don't remember being battered. Having never looked at the poverty of our early emotional environment, we sometimes assume our current distress is of our own making. If the blows we endured weren't physical, we tend to think of them as something else. Or we don't think of them at all.
But nearly every child who thinks he doesn't count is a child needing love. And a child who is convinced she can't do anything right is a child living in poverty. Knowing we are adequate and worthy is fundamental to sane living. It is our birthright to know ourselves as glorious, innocent creations. Deprivation of that birthright is poverty in its most serious form.
Being born into a poor emotional environment need not sentence us to a lifetime of spiritual poverty. The past was not our choice—the present is.
I am responsible for the world I live in today. I will not define my life by yesterday's wounds.

From the book, Days of Healing Days of Joy