During an illness nothing seems right, not my relationships nor my ability to interact with people with grace and tolerance. An old shrew, or so it seems.
Under that is a broken person unable to trust. How that has interfered with a warm, loving life is inconceivable. Yet there it is.
While so ill, wondering if the severe pain might lead to death because it was that serious, the negatives plagued me unable to retain any good thought.
On my death bed (sorry to sound morbid), I don’t want to lie there thinking of all the bad that I could have done better at. So, things that get in the way of the life preferred, and more importantly of the person I’d be proud to be, need work now.
Though I’ve worked daily, is it enough? Can I do more? Can I take the leap of trusting a bit more, and garnering a little more faith in people? To let the petty stuff slide off, and accept people where are- looking underneath their seeming hurtfulness to understand what may be hurting them?
Alone with myself, but not lonely. That is the magic of locating my core once again after last week’s separation from it.
A life of searing loneliness healed over time when feeling safe here on the land and in the meadow.
In childhood with repeated, terrifying traumas that went unprocessed, my body stayed on alert, finding everyday events life-threatening.
When real threats occur, it becomes unbearable and sleep issues return. My email was hacked last week, and the thief racked up hundreds of dollars on my account on Amazon.
Along with that the origin family added my name to an email about a dead attacker’s grandsons. They are planning a get-together. Do you really think my inclusion would be any benefit, that my sharing would offer anything positive about their grandfather?
The three remaining brothers want a clan even if needing to pull in those they never met or connected with. None met the grandsons nor had any connection with Chet who died a few years ago. Adding me to the email was insensitive, wounding me, especially when sensing their annoyance for requiring my name be removed from any further correspondence.
After upping my dose of anti-depressant with a smaller increase than before which caused shakiness and nausea, sleep improves. With adequate sleep my body calms allowing me back in my soul where comfort and answers can be found, and the meadow provides healing once again.
Healing doesn’t mean triggering is over. Ghosts from the past come out of the grave and crack me in two.
My younger brother Stevie, so needy of ‘family’ gave my email along with everyone else in the so called ‘family’ to a daughter-in-law of Chet, a brother who attacked me repeatedly, the first time violently.
Learning that suffocation could occur with his large body on me while fighting him, becoming still and feigning sleep at least let me survive, but gave him full use of my body whenever he liked.
And with Mom working after Dad’s death, Chet had plenty of time to do with me whatever he wanted.
So Stevie, who has his own sufferings; a 40 year old son living with him with schizophrenia who will never work, be married, or have friends, and losing his daughter at 30 from an overdose, has enough tragedy and pain which makes me hesitate to speak up at all when he oversteps boundaries treating me as non-existent.
When this woman emailed about coming up from a far-away state so that her teen sons, Chet’s grandsons could get to know the ‘family’, I deleted the email but felt invaded, as if a monster dead had come back.
Where has all this healing gone? Didn’t I just say I had healed?
Stevie responds to the email inviting her to come, blah, blah, blah.
That’s it, my need to protect myself from emails overrode my need to protect Stevie from hearing any negativity from me. My email to Stevie:
________________________
Please do not include me in further correspondence. Not sure how she got my email but I don’t need to be triggered by horrific memories of Chuck or his descendants. His attacks were constant, repetitive and traumatic.
He is/was NO brother. Do you know he gave me crabs? He told me it was nothing yet he went and was treated by a doctor. Mom gave me a toxic, unsafe, poison to put on (DDT) because she was so terrified of the SECRET getting out. No one helped or stopped it.
All the traumas came flooding back with these emails despite the decades of my trying to heal.
I didn’t want to give you money when you went there for the funeral and I thought you had an understanding of why, but I guess not.
You do not know the horrors I suffered by 4 of the people who were supposed to be brothers, one memory so horrific (rape) that to this day have blocked out, the memory too violent for even a 71 year old to allow to surface.
Healing does not mean all can be fixed. There remains broken parts such as trust issues and much more that are gone forever.
But the drowning shame for crimes that were not mine yet inflicted on many children subject to sexual attacks by those loved and trusted within a family, have been washed away by excising the wound.
Exposing my wounds to air, telling my story in many ways as many times as needed, cleaned the black, tarry, gunk swimming inside me like sharks biting from the inside out.
For a child to keep such evilness within her throughout her life causes damage much of which cannot be healed, but instead managed. Yet, to finally use the word ‘healed’ and feel its meaning for the first time shows that all these decades of hard work succeeded.
Before, ‘healing’, was just a word. Now the feeling internally is not black, red, swirls of rage and hurt. There is placid safety where it once was dark and stormy.
Years of openly discussing the traumas of my youth have healed me, though it wasn’t till mid-life after my mother died that it felt OK to do it. A safe place planted here where anonymity gave me freedom. Others also traumatized, but also muted by their families and society, encouraged me to keep going.
Though writing for myself, focusing on going deeply inside, others responded, and for the first time the truth of what happened was expressed; opening me, freeing me, and connecting me to others who were also silenced about childhood sexual attacks.
A caged wounded human, bleeding internally for decades, opened the wounds to air and with time healed. Lots of time, and lots of expressing, over and over again, as long as it took.
That is healing, exposing the hurts to air, receiving love and care in return, not silencing, coercion, and betrayal, but openness, love, and warmth.
I am at peace. I am whole, I am alive and glad to be, not hoping that it would all be over. The blood washed away, raw spiritual flesh healed. I may be a conglomeration of shattered parts grouted together, but the whole is stronger than it was or ever could have been.
The stellar beauty of pinks, and whites against the robin’s egg blue sky is as if from a magical land found in fairy tales, but it is right here, right now!
Photos by Patricia
Finally well rested, with the spring sun too, the ability to sit still with
This old, rusted garden sculpture, given to me years ago for my birthday by my son and daughter-in-law, sorely needed attention. The bold paint once prominent almost gone.
New life breathed back in, much like spring breathes it back into to me.
“It’s OK. You can go back down,” he responded compassionately.
At a month video check-up with my doctor, the newly added Zoloft was such a success my thought was more is better, so pushed for a higher dose which made me nauseous and shaky.
Sending her an inner office note she responded quite quickly that it was safe to go back down to 25mg, which is good because that was my intention for that evenings dose.
The little tweak of an anti-depressant added to my medications has allowed for a dramatic increase in my ability to sleep.
Unfortunately, being HUMAN, a mistake was made by asking for more. More is not always better. And if kindness were to be extended to myself, is it so wrong to want good sleep? No.
The harshness bestowed on me, by me, is here to stay, along with daily anxiety. And these things will continue to challenge me and need focus daily.
Life isn’t easy for anyone, but with acceptance of its challenges, the beauty can also be enjoyed. And the beauty as spring unfolds is quite stupendous.
My walks to the creek along the large singing pines brings new delights daily. You never know what splendors will come.
One day three pileated woodpeckers swooped onto the dead tree near-by. They are about a foot long.
The shy heron gracefully landed, also near-by unaware of my presence, and looked for her meal in the water as I stared in wonder.
Our muskrat living in the mud-hole along the creek bank swam by. The bluebirds have taken up residence in the birdhouse at the edge of the water, their brilliant blue backs lighting up in the sunlight.
The beauty of growing inward and learning to love all that is discovered, cherishing even the flaws and quirks, is that my life becomes my own. That living it my way while different from others is OK for me, more than OK, it is my own soul calling offering a freedom unfounded.
So much thought has been put into what others must think, and with my critical loudspeaker it is usually negative. Learning that my life is mine alone, and finite, allows for the freedom to live it in a way that brings all that one could ask for to flourish. But too easily my thoughts get caught up in the tornado of misguided presumptions, and even if true, so what? This is my life.
It is what I feel and think that matters. That would seem easy to figure out, but with a lifetime of being how my mother groomed me to be; nice, pleasing, non-existent really, just a cut-out daughter to meet her own needs, well, that makes finding my authentic self a tangled path, mysterious, often darkly jungled, having to hack away others opinions to swath a path toward the light of my real soul.
But it is there, that center that offers comfort, kindness, and loving acceptance.
Patricia J Grace 