Youth Sports, Scarcity and Faith

Youth Sports, Scarcity and Faith

I was listening to a podcast the other day regarding parenting. The format of the podcast involved two psychologists talking about their experiences with families in the clinical and school setting and the various reasons people seek out help with their children. The broadcast was interesting to me especially given that both professionals were fathers and they spoke quite a bit on the pressures parents place on their children not just academically but in sports.

All of our children play sports. Depending on the time of year they could be involved in recreational community baseball or soccer, be engaged in their club level soccer teams or be on the field at their schools. I am used to sitting at ball games and I very much enjoy watching my children as well as their teammates compete. I am also painfully aware of the existence of the parental pressures the psychologists were dialoguing about. I have always wondered about the stress I see from parents when their children are playing. I am not talking about healthy excitement and positive cheering, which I gleefully participate in. I am referring to the harsh criticism of children’s abilities/inabilities, early specialization, stress that seems to reflect off both moms and dads, and the obvious, untamed projections of the parents’ own needs landing dead center on their kids and at times ricocheting off to graze my children. Yes, I have been witness to this behavior and had always wondered what the underlying driver was for otherwise delightful adults to act this way.

I think the podcast helped answer my question. Fear is what drives this sideline mayhem. The psychologists state financial fear as being a significant contributor to parents placing their children under so much pressure with the hope for scholarships looming large. I guess that might seem obvious but I was somewhat dismayed. I really gave it some thought and I began to look around my house, I started to think of others’ homes, I started to think of my life and the lives of others I know and began to take inventory. What I found was my socioeconomic peers and I have a lot of stuff, we have lots of experiences and access to even more experiences, we have a lot of relationships, connections and opportunities most people in the world do not have. Then I began reflecting on my own fear. I wondered if I was responding in fear on the sidelines just as the misbehaved parents do but my response just looks different and my fear gets manifested elsewhere. I began to wonder what my fear is based out of and I realized it is rooted out of fear of not having enough. A vision of scarcity juxtaposed against a sickening abundance of everything populated in my minds eye.

I have been doing a lot of reading on Christian spirituality and I have given much thought on how my own faith lives itself out in my life and my interactions with others. This serious spiritual parsing out is no small task and I am trying to learn to be ok with slow incremental progress on my part. Yet, when I took a step back and thought of my own fear/scarcity based responses, I knew it was not in alignment with my faith. This is something I need to continue to work on.

I am currently becoming acutely aware of how much our culture functions from fear only to be perpetuated through advertisements, media, politics, religion and ultimately trickling down to our children’s ball fields.

I would love to have a discussion with any of you regarding fear and its impact in your life. Perhaps some thoughtful discussion could help ease all of us through this scary world.

The Un-Crumpling Part 5

The Un-Crumpling Part 5

These posts are intended to inform, educate and hopefully help others. I have found my own sources of help that have led me to wholeness. My prayer is that other victims may find healing and wholeness as well.

The decision to write about my experience, as a sexual abuse/incest survivor was not taken lightly; I consulted numerous people, looked at the ramifications from many angles, and prayed about it. Ultimately, it was the reaction of my older children that was the deciding factor. Their compassion, grace, anger for the situation and overall loving reaction served as a catalyst. Our children’s reactions cut the final thread of fear. Their acceptance was not only a testament to our parenting; it was also a message to be fearless. I finally was set free.

An interesting thing happens when people decide to share their stories, be vulnerable and choose fearlessness. Other people follow. I was well aware I might be opening a Pandora’s box of sorts. I knew from sharing with various people in a more private venue that sexual abuse and incest is rampant and nauseatingly common. I knew I would have other survivors come forward and approach me. In fact, this is one of the reasons I wanted to share my story. I wish for an open dialogue among those of us who have experienced this type of abuse.

I have yet to discover a support group in Phoenix for sexual abuse/incest survivors. My therapists have suggested there might be something of this sort on a list serve or with a meet up group. My guess is that lingering shame prevents victims from engaging. If anyone reading this knows of something I don’t, I would love to find out.

My hope is that open conversations can occur. My wish is for victims to tell their truth and to shine some light on their perpetrators. My prayer is for those who have been victimized may know they are not at fault, are not broken and are loved.

If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse or incest there is help and no matter how old you are or where you are in your life, I promise you it is worth the pain, terror and work to move toward healing. I know it might sound trite or like a weak public service announcement but I encourage you to seek help.

I have been there. I know those deep, dark crevices of shame. I know the anger. I know the panic.

It will be okay. You are okay. You can be un-crumpled

The Un-Crumpling Part 4

The Un-Crumpling Part 4

These posts are intended to inform, educate and hopefully help others. I have found my own sources of help that have led me to wholeness. My prayer is that other victims may find healing and wholeness as well.

I would like to say that once the un-crumpling started, my healing was swift and effortless. This was not the case. The process of recovery has taken me almost five years since that day in the parking lot across from my church. I have thoroughly analyzed by a Jungian therapist, utilized homeopathy, went to my depths during EMDR, participated in healing ceremonies, soaked in a Himalayan sound bath at a restorative spa, engaged in CBT, did some yoga therapy, attended regular spiritual direction sessions, pilgrimaged, journaled, read and talked with friends. I have been very lucky to be given the resources to take on my healing journey with such vigor. I often wonder if I have been a difficult study and have thought maybe the process of recovery for me has been abnormally long but in reality I think this is just a testament to the damage that can occur from sexual abuse.  

Sexual abuse often leaves its victims in a state of deep, relentless shame. For me it also left me feeling a sense that something was deeply wrong with me. I blamed myself for the abuse and largely took responsibility for what had happened. Sexual abuse, and I am sure abuse of any kind, does not just wound mentally, emotionally and physically, it enters the victim’s soul and leaves a dark, seemingly endless hole in one’s spiritual life. For me, I struggled to reconcile the feeling of divine love was not as a result of some damage done by my abuse. This spiritual untangling does not come easily and many days it is still a chore.

It has also taken me to years to believe that in reality no one is going to, “think badly” of me because I was abused. As I write this it seems obvious to the point of preposterous.  Sadly, this is a common way for perpetrators to deflect blame and continue to control their victims. As I have told people my story, I have had very few instances of negative reactions. I have learned that in those who respond poorly are usually reacting to situations in their own lives. Perhaps my story hits too close to home for them and they have not sorted through their own wounds. These reactions have never had anything to do with me.

It has been and continues to be a long process of healing. I can say I am un-crumpled. I can also say that it was a lie and what my abuser told me was wrong. People do not think badly of me because I was sexually abused. They might think badly of me for things I have done or not done but that is a different story. 

The Un-Crumpling Part 3

The Un-Crumpling Part 3

These posts are intended to inform, educate and hopefully help others. I have found my own sources of help that have led me to wholeness. My prayer is that other victims may find healing and wholeness as well.

I sat in my car with my motor idling in the park adjacent to the church. I had left work early to meet with my priest and on that day I had given myself extra time to settle. My life had gotten to a point where I could no longer keep the secret and my gut told me the best person to tell was my priest, but first I had to get the courage.

The events leading up to that day are a synchronistic maze of dysfunction and blessings. My family was sorting through a financial loss brought on by a business failure, my older son and I had surgeries within weeks of each other and my father in-law had been diagnosed with cancer. My family of origin was up to their same histrionic antics including alcoholism, a divorce, an affair and my mother’s predictable under reaction to my family’s plight while inflating her own ceaseless victimhood that apparently defines her life. All signs were pointing to an internal stop sign screaming at me to stop running from the truth.

As I got out of my car I was shaking and thought I might vomit as I walked into the church office. Terror doesn’t give it justice. In retrospect, I probably on some level knew once I opened the dark vault where I stored my experience of sexual abuse, I would never be the same and I wouldn’t be able to turn back. I would be placed on a trajectory of having to look deep inside myself and at the time it looked like a dark pool of nothingness. It is always awful to die to yourself.

It took me awhile sitting crumpled in that chair, my priest calmly across from me, to break the silence. I remember it being horrible. The shame and fear was like nothing I’ve experienced. The one thing that stands out is that I knew I had chosen well. He had said the right things and responded beautifully.

Then the work began.

A couple of weeks later I sat in a psychologist’s office. Again, taking my time to get to the point, I increasingly sank into his leather couch and thought I might run for the door. He finally asked why I was crumpled in the sofa with my face firmly buried in my palms. I couldn’t look up or sit up straight. I was a mess, a crumpled mess.

I am not entirely sure when it happened but at some point I started to drop my hands from my face and sit up straighter. It took me some time to share my story with Rob and my friends but with each person I told a small weight was lifted from me.

I started to un-crumple.

The Un-Crumpling Part 2

The Un-Crumpling Part 2

These posts are intended to inform, educate and hopefully help others. I have found my own sources of help that have led me to wholeness. My prayer is that other victims may find healing and wholeness as well.

I don’t remember when the abuse started; my guess is I was nine or ten. It was around then that my parents thought it appropriate to subscribe to all sorts of periodicals including Playboy and occasionally Penthouse. These magazines were readily left out along with the latest copies of National Geographic and Popular Science. At the time I had no point of reference for the lack of suitability these publications were for my adolescent brother and me. My mother and father’s paranoia ensured I didn’t venture into neighbors’ homes and by no means was I allowed to have anyone over. Being homeschooled guaranteed a cloistering from the typical and mundane of the lives that surrounded us in our blue-collar suburb. 

I probably will never know why the abuse started but I do know why it stopped. In the flurry of magazine subscriptions there happened to be Seventeen ordered especially for me. Again, questionably appropriate for an eleven or twelve year old but ultimately it was a saving grace. The cover is etched in my mind, a leotard-clad model stretching forward in a Jane Fondaesque manner typifying the mid-80’s era it was published during. One of the cover stories that month was, “Incest: What You Need to Know.” The information in the article felt like a sledgehammer. How could I have been so stupid? I panicked and wanted to run away or throw up but all I could do was sit paralyzed on my bed surrounded by my Cure and INXS posters that had been pinned over my yellow kitten wallpaper.

The strength came. I am not sure if it was rooted from pure terror but I found within me the strength to confront my abuser. He was unperturbed and in an almost arrogant fashion casually switched the blame onto me. Then to finish it off he uttered, “I wouldn’t tell anyone if I were you, I wouldn’t want anyone to think badly of you.”

It was like a vault closing. I crawled into myself vowing to pretend it never happened. I would run from the truth into a better life. I convinced myself I would be fine and would triumph over all the possible bad outcomes the article outlined.

I did.

I succeeded.

But the thing about abuse is that it takes a place in one’s being and sets up shop and peddles insecurities, rage and shame. It rots the soul and eventually I couldn’t out run it.