Incest Recovery---Give Your Child Permission To Say No

Before I get into the topic of this article, I want to invite you to join me on BlogTalkRadio as I am interviewed by Cyrus Webb of Conversations Live at noon Central Standard Time on Thursday, April 29, 2010.  Cyrus has been doing interviews on BlogTalkRadio for seven years.  He is a great interviewer.  I thank you Cyrus for giving me this opportunity to share my message of recovery from incest with a larger audience.  I don't have any prepared list of questions from Cyrus so forgive me if I stumble out of nervousness.  I am excited to do this.  It is a totally new experience for me so there is some fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of not knowing what to say and fear of not doing it right.  The perfectionist in me tends to come out at times like this even though I have wrestled with not being a perfectionist for years.  I know myself well enough to know that I will be stressed out before the interview because that is when all of those old negative tapes will be running through my head.  I know they aren't true but that doesn't stop them from running.  I also know that as soon as Cyrus asks me the very first question, the stress will be gone and I will be comfortable with myself and my story.  I have shared small pieces of my story before and the calmness comes over me as soon as I start to speak.  I also always ask God to give me the right words to say.  If you can't listen to the interview at noon on April 29, Cyrus will have the recording up on his site afterwards.  Here is the link to Cyrus's website:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/conversationslive/2010/04/29/cyrus-webb-presents-the-patricia-singleton-story-o
I will post a reminder in another few days.  I hope you will join us and give me feedback afterwards.

I will warn you that if you are an incest and/or abuse survivor, the rest of this article may be triggering for you.  Precede with caution.  I am sharing things that I have never shared with anyone before.

Since I posted my recent article, "A New Chapter In Incest Recovery @ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/04/new-chapter-in-incest-recovery.html , I have been waiting to see what feelings are going to come up for me.  I know that this new work will entail grieving again.  Usually the first emotion to come up, for me, is anger or fear.  There was fear and anger both in the dream that I that I had that started this new chapter of work.  A few nights ago, after thinking about it for awhile, I told my grieving class that the first emotion to come up is anger at my parents and at my uncle for not asking me if I wanted to go with him on the fishing trip and if I wanted to go home with him for the weekend.  I was not asked if I wanted to do either of these things.  I wasn't given a choice of going with this man.  I was told to go because it would be fun.  Being 11 years old and being raped by a man in his 50's was not fun.  It was torture.  And the day of the fishing trip wasn't enough for him.  I was taken home with him and the rape happened several more times over the weekend.  He lied to my parents about other people being at his house.  The two of us were the only ones there for the weekend.  What makes me mad, so far, is that I was not given a choice in the matter.  I was not asked what I wanted.  The fact that I wasn't asked means to those adults that I didn't matter.  I had no value.  I was an object to be used and discarded.  I did not trust adults not to hurt me after that weekend.  I remember that I was afraid of hurting my uncle's feelings if I said anything.  I did not scream out the hurt.  I did not cry through the pain, through the tearing of my immature, 11-year-old body.  I went inside my head and stayed there.  I went as deep inside as I could away from the pain and the fear.  I decided that something was badly wrong with me for me to deserve to be treated this way by the adults in my life.  I can tell you the year that this abuse happened---the year that I was 11 years old which was in 1962.  I can tell you it was the Summer of 1962 because I was wearing shorts and the first night that my uncle visited we sat in chairs in the front yard under the stars.  He was talking to my sister and me.  No other adults were around.  They must have been in the house.  It was unusual for an adult to sit and talk to me so I enjoyed the attention.  I was on one side of him and my sister was in a chair on the other side of him.

I knew something was wrong the second he put his hand down into my shorts and panties but I didn't understand what was wrong.  This was a year before the sex talk that my six grade health teacher had with all of the girls in the class.  I felt uncomfortable with what he was doing but didn't want to hurt his feelings by moving away.  What he was doing didn't hurt but it also wasn't pleasurable to me.  Some part of me knew what he was doing was wrong. 

My sister, sitting on his other side, asked what he was doing.  He put his other hand into her shorts and panties too.  I can't tell you how long this continued.  On some level I must have shut down or my mind went off into the night.  I don't remember.  I do remember being relieved when Mom called us into the house.

The next morning after my dad went to work, my uncle asked Mom if I could spend the day fishing with him.  Without asking me if I wanted to go, she said yes.  I think that I will leave this fishing trip for another article.  I am feeling overwhelmed with what I have written so far.  I am sorry to leave you hanging like this but I need to take care of me.
Patricia