Ode to Dennis

Ode to Dennis

What is his story?

It must be long.

Balding, grey, the gold ring on.

"Dennis," his wings say.

A nice watch, invisible glass,

Serving drinks. Scotch or apple juice?

The cardigan zipped.

Waiting for home before the plane goes down. 

The Aftermath

The Aftermath

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.

Almost a year ago I wrote publically about being a sexual abuse survivor. The act of writing was cathartic yet the sharing of such private, vulnerable information was scary. I was confident it was the right thing to do yet, on a deeper level old held beliefs would sneak up and that monster called shame had me double guessing my choice to share in a public forum. I knew there would be fallout and I worked hard to maintain hope that the aftermath of my decision would ultimately be positive.

It didn’t take long for the messages to start flowing in. Women from all backgrounds extended invitations for coffee or happy hour. The stories were sickeningly the same, an uncle, father, babysitter, someone unidentified, all perpetrators of child molestation. Some stories were more graphic and others vague. The identity of the offenders didn’t matter nor did the severity of the abuse. What mattered was these women were reaching out to tell their stories, make connection and search for healing.

The healing ended up being mine. The fear that I would be scorned, rejected and seen as irredeemably broken did not come to fruition. In fact I believe I was seen as a conduit for the healing of other survivors. The experience of acknowledging my past, fleshing out the parts that had wounded me, struggling to make sense of what was left and then regaining a certain kind of wholeness is a profoundly comforting story for other survivors. My willingness to share my story was not met with shaming but rather with acceptance, empathy and sharing of a wrong inflicted on far too many children.

In the aftermath, the stories were difficult to hear and the sheer number of them nauseating but I am grateful I did not shy away telling my own story. If you are a survivor and continue to hold this heavy secret, please consider breaking your silence. I promise there are compassionate listeners and skilled therapists who can help you through the darkness. And if you need encouragement, we can always meet for happy hour or coffee.

Grief of a Mother

Grief of a Mother

I spend a lot of time mothering. I realize most mothers do. We dedicate ourselves and give not only our time and money to our children but also a large part of our souls are enveloped into their beings. When they hurt, we hurt. When they succeed, the pride can almost feel like it hurts. As mothers the emotional energy expended on our children can feel overwhelming yet so inexplicably satisfying. The paradox is strange and everyone knows it. A mother’s love is rightfully glorified and celebrated.

This year will mark the 6^th year I will celebrate Mother’s Day without my own mother. A necessary boundary has caused the estrangement and my mother’s unresolved issues have perpetuated the falling-out. As it currently stands, I have lost my mother. She is not dead. Our relationship is not dead. Yet by the looks of it there needed to be a funeral.

I know grief relatively well yet this grief feels different. It is perpetual as there has been no closure. The unknown lurks with the fateful phone call poised to happen at any given time. Will she call before the coroner?  

Then there is the confusion and shame. Why does my own mother not want to work on the relationship and move toward healing? How could she not want to see her grandchildren? All of it strikes me as strange and painful. I have no answers for these questions only suppositions.

The hardest task is realizing my mother was never the mother in my idealization. The loss didn’t start 6 year ago. Her issues have been in place since I was conceived and all of my hoping and pretending could not make her into something she is not. This realization has forced me into some serious self-reflection. Do I even want to rekindle this relationship with my mother with the knowledge that she will still be herself? Is a mother worth having if she is not the mother I need? Again, I am not sure of the answers to these questions.

I have spent the last year attempting to mother myself through self-care and kindness. Drawing on my own ability to mother and utilizing my left over energy into something I can feel as a palpable motherly presence. This has helped some but it is not the same. There continues to be a sense of uncompleted loss and in a way it has turned into the new normal.

For Mother’s Day this year, I will celebrate my mother in-law, my friends and myself as mothers. I will celebrate my children for making me a mother and I will give a node to Mother Mary for being the mother of everything. And within the celebration there will be a sense of sadness for all the other mothers who grieve this Mother’s Day.

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.