Finding December

At thirteen years old, Phyllis Bivins said yes. Yes to her first love. Yes to feeling chosen. Yes to a decision made in secrecy and fear that would quietly shape the rest of her life. Raised in poverty in the segregated South and carrying the wounds of childhood abuse, Phyllis learned how to survive long before she understood what healthy love required. When attention felt like safety and belonging felt like proof of worth, she mistook intensity for devotion and endurance for loyalty. One life-altering choice at fourteen became the blueprint for years of relationships marked by imbalance, silence, and emotional compromise. In Finding December, Phyllis traces the patterns that followed her from adolescence into adulthood, confronting the beliefs that kept her accepting crumbs instead of demanding fullness. Through heartbreak and hard-won clarity, she begins to separate survival from love and longing from self-worth. December—the month of her birth—becomes more than a month on the calendar. It becomes a reckoning. A season of clarity where love no longer requires self-abandonment. For every woman who has ever confused being wanted with being loved, this story offers something deeper: the courage to choose differently.