Saturday, June 25, 2011

A Story Of Incest And Healing - Guest Post At Bongo Is Me Blog

My second guest blog article of the week appeared today at the blog of Bongo Is Me.  Bonnie has put a Trigger Warning on the post.  Apparently it needs one from the comments that I got this morning.  Here is what Bonnie says about my post and me.

"This is the Eleventh in a series of guest posts .....it's about real struggle..real life...real pain...and getting through to the other side....thank you to all my guests for helping me find my voice....
This woman Patricia Singleton writes an amazing blog about her journey through incest and how she survives today..she shares her courageous story here..
I am honored to have her here..Please show Patricia the love and encouragement you have to me..."

Bonnie, thank you so much for asking me to do a guest blog article for you.  I appreciate the opportunity.

The name of my blog article is A Story Of Incest And Healing.  The link to this article is


This is one of the most difficult posts that I have ever written.  According to the first comments on the Bongo Is Me Blog, reading my guest post caused three people to cry.  I cried reading their comments.  The last two blog posts have both been guest blog articles and have been the hardest for me to write.  Both pulled the feelings out of me that I felt on Father's Day.  I felt vulnerable and raw.  Both of those articles are the first time that I have ever recorded in writing the details of my first two remembered experiences  of incest.  Approach both of them with caution if you are an incest survivor. They are not easy reading.
Patricia

Related Posts:

Guest Post At S.A.S.S.U Sexual Assault Survivors Standing
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/06/guest-post-at-sassu-sexual-assault.html

Today Is Father's Day
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/06/today-is-fathers-day.html

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Guest Post At S.A.S.S.U Sexual Assault Survivors Standing

Several weeks ago, Jacquese whose blog is S.A.S.S.U Assault Survivors Standing asked me to do a guest blog article for her.  We only met recently on Twitter.  I liked quite a few of the comments that Jacquese left on Twitter and so I commented back.  I read her blog and left a comment or two.  Here is what Jacquese says about her blog.

"S.A.S.S.U is devoted to providing healing, empowerment, education and resources to males and females who are survivors of Sexual Assault/Abuse and  molestation or family members and friends who support survivors.  You DO NOT have to be a survivor to support this movement."

I like what this says about Jacquese and her blog.  Like me, she is dedicated to helping survivors.  From what I have seen of Jacquese, she is a wise and caring woman, so when she asked me to write a guest blog article I said yes.

The title of the article is a collaberation between Jacquese and me.  I hope you will join me in going to Jacquese's blog S.A.S.S.U Sexual Assault Survivors Standing to read my blog article which we decided to call

Incest:  Protect Your Children which you will find at the following link:

http://sassuempowerment.blogspot.com/2011/06/incestprotect-your-children.html

Jacquese, thank you for this opportunity for me to reach a new audience of survivors.  I appreciate the work that you are doing to help other survivors and their families and friends. 

Readers, please leave a comment on S.A.S.S.U for Jacquese and me but also come back here and let me know what you think about the article as well. Have a glorious weekend.
Patricia

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Today Is Father's Day

A part of me really doesn't want to write this post.  I thought I would write it last night but that didn't happen. To postpone writing this, I spent time on emails and reading blog posts that others have written on Father's Day.  Last night I was on Facebook and became involved in a conversation that turned out to be over 60+ comments long about fathers and incest.

What I am feeling right now - fear, confusion, anger, sadness, grief - all started just before Mother's Day.  I have been on a rollercoaster ride of emotions since then - up and down and scattered all over the place and when things got too intense eating uncontrollably at night.  I have no problems with overeating in the daytime.  It always starts after 6:00 p.m.  I just got the thought "That was when Daddy got home from work.  That was when the fear and tension walked into the house.  Would it be tonight? Would he find some trip back to town was needed to pick up something that he forgot?"  I always had to go with him and that meant sex in the truck on some isolated road or field before we would go back home. I would feel sick to my stomach before and afterwards.

My son just called to wish his dad Happy Father's Day.

My mother never questioned why my dad couldn't go by himself or why I was always the one who had to go with him.  I was the oldest but men usually do father son things.  My brother was only a year and a half younger than me.  By the age of 9 or 10, he should have been doing things with his dad. We were grown and I was away from home before that happened.  I can only imagine how my brother felt, aways being ignored.

My stomach is tied in knots and I am feeling nauseous right now.

I recently decided to do some inner child work again to see if I had any open wounds left that needed to be healed.  I bought a book which has mysteriously disappeared this morning.  I have searched the house twice for it.  The book is a workbook by Cathryn L. Taylor.  I think the title is The Inner Child Workbook, if not it is something similar to that.  I have been reading just a few pages each night.  I haven't gotten to any of the exercises yet.  I guess the fact that I have "lost" the book tells me that one or more of my inner children are afraid to do the exercises.

My feelings and thoughts are really scattered this morning.  Part of me wants to hide from the world until today is over.  Another part of me is mad as Hell that I am feeling all of this again.  Another part wants to go eat and never stop.  A part of me wants to throw up.  Another part is getting a headache.  These are not separate identities like with DID or multiple personalities.  These are all my wounded, scared inner children.  All of us who were wounded by incest or any form of child abuse has these inner children.  They are the parts of us that stop developing at certain times in our lives when the abuse was happening. 

Doing inner child work means going back through each developmental stage of life to find out what needs to be learned to finish each developmental stage of childhood.  What inner child needs to be nurtured and taught to trust the adult me?  Which ones need to be loved and hugged and played with?  Which ones need to know that they can't control the adult me with temper tantrums or other childlike behaviours when we are in crisis mode.  The adult me needs to be the one in control during a crisis in order to keep all of us safe.  I need to learn to love them and trust them as much as they do the adult me.

I am going to try an experiment right now, totally unplanned previously.  The adult me is going to step out of the way and let one or more of my inner children tell you their thoughts about our father and Father's Day.  Here goes.


Tears.  Anger.  Rage.  Sadness.  Crying inside with tears coming to the surface. 

Tears because daddy didn't love us or he wouldn't have hurt us.  Anger because we are supposed to honor daddies on Father's Day.  (Having difficulty letting go of the control and letting the words flow.  Husband just came in and interrupted thoughts.)

Rage because anger is too tame a word to use for what I am feeling.  Overall sadness which has been with me, it seems like forever.  (Husband goes back to work in an hour.  Will come back and finish this when I am alone and it is quiet again.)

In that hour I found THE INNER CHILD WORKBOOK:  What to do with your past when it just won't go away written by Cathryn L. Taylor.  I asked my Higher Self where the book was after searching the house twice trying to find it.  I immediately picked up some papers next to my computer and the book was under them.

I don't know if I even want to go back to the exercise that I started above or not.  I bet you are thinking "Just get on with it."

Dear Daddy, you were never the daddy that I needed you to be.  One of my earliest memories of you is of you making my little brother who was less than 2 years old smoke a cigar until he was so sick that he was thowing up.  You said it was so that he wouldn't smoke when he got older. You laughed and thought it was funny.  Even at 3 or so, I didn't laugh or think it was funny.  You were mean to him and scarey to me.  I thought you would make me smoke a cigar too but you didn't.  I didn't like you for making my little brother sick. Daddies aren't supposed to do things like that.

During that same time period I remember my brother sleeping on an army cot in the same room where I slept at the foot of the bed with you and momma at the top of the bed.  What was that all about? Was I in the bed when you and momma had sex?  Did you fondle me during the night after momma was asleep?  Is that part of the mystery that I don't remember?  That I have forgotten on purpose in an effort to protect 3 year old me from dealing with something that was just too big for a 2-3 year old to survive in her mind.  Why did my 2-3 year old mind shut out any memories of sexual abuse?  What was too painful for that child me to be able to remember and deal with?  This is where the sadness, grief, fear and anger is coming from.

I hurt but I don't know why.  Inside the child of less than three hurts and cries and wonders why no one loves her or protects her from you or whoever else hurt her.  The memories are locked away.  They do exist in some area of my body or mind.  They are why the three-year-old called herself an adultress. This is hard to write and I know that I am still keeping some distance between me and all of this.  Some part of me is not willing right now to get any closer to the feelings or the memories that those inner children still carry to this day.  The body is still holding on, also afraid to feel the pain of those childhood days.  Instead the body gets an upset stomach, indigestion, ulcers, coughing attacks, headaches because it doesn't know how to let go.  It is more afraid of being empty without the stuffed feelings.  It is so easy to just disconnect from it all rather than feel the emotions.  I am surprised that it still hurts so much.  That is all that I can write today.  The adult me is too afraid of what the inner children might reveal.  The adult me doesn't feel very strong just now. 
Sorry,
Patricia



Monday, June 13, 2011

After Effects Of Sexual Assault

One of several books that I am currently reading is called Rid of My Disgrace: Hope and Healing for Victims of Sexual Assault written by Justin S. Holcomb & Lindsey A. Holcomb, Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2011, page 40.  I want to share a quote from this book with you.

"Because sexual assault is always traumatizing, victims are three times more likely than nonvictims to suffer from depression, six times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, thirteen times more likely to abuse alcohol, twenty-six times more likely to abuse drugs, and four times more likely to contemplate suicide."

The Holcombs got these figures from the following source:

National Center for Victims of Crime and Crime Victims Research and Treatment Center, Rape in America: A Report to the Nation (Arlington, VA: National Center for Victims of Crime, 1992).

I am glad that someone is finally doing studies and coming out with statistics on sexual assault.  Maybe someone will read these statistics and decide today that sexual assault, which includes rape and incest, has to stop.  More people need to take action to stop these statistics from being true. Start out by not blaming the rape victim for their own rapes.  Many children don't tell about their own sexual abuse situations because they are afraid for their safety and because they are afraid they won't be believed.  So many children who do tell are blamed for their own abuse.  Help me spread the awareness that sexual abuse has to stop.
Patricia

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

4th Anniversary For Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker

Today I am celebrating the 4th year anniversary of my blog.  I am inviting you, my readers, to celebrate by leaving comments to let me know if I and my blog have made any difference in your life.  Sometimes it is good to know the impact that we may have on others.

I am still on an emotional high from the radio program that I was on last night with Cyrus Webb as the moderation and owner of Conversations LIVE! Radio on BlogTalkRadio, Darlene Ouimet who is my friend and has her own blog Emerging From Broken, and Brad Rickerby friend and blogger of I am a Survivor.  If you missed out on our very  powerful talk last night, you can still listen at the following link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/conversationslive/2011/06/01/cyrus-webb-presents-you-are-not-alone

I talked with Cyrus this morning on my Facebook page and he said that this show has gotten the highest rating of any of his shows this year.  That is great news.  It means that more people are being educated about child sexual abuse and its effects upon survivors. 

The title of last night's radio program was "You Are Not Alone."  That could be the title of my purpose in using my blog to reach out to other survivors.  When I first admitted that I was an incest survivor in the late 1970's, I was pretty much alone.  The county library had only three books on the topic of incest or sexual abuse.  I devoured those three books and then there was nothing, no support of any kind that I could find so I continued on trying to ignore my incest issues and hoping they would go away on their own.  They didn't. 

It was in January of 1989, that I found help through 12-Step programs that I ernestly began my walk toward healing from incest.  It is a blessing that my dad was an alcoholic.  Without being an adult child of an alcholic, I might not would have ever started walking down my healing path.  It was another blessing that those 12-Step people became my friends and let me talk about incest in those groups.  Since then, I have seen groups that only want you to talk about how the alcoholism is affecting your life.  They don't want to hear about the incest and other abuses that happened in my dysfunctional family. 

In those early days, I could not separate what were the effects of the alcoholism and what were the effects of incest.  They were too intertwined to be separated.  I read somewhere that alcoholism is often present where incest happens. I never blamed the alcoholism for the incest because my dad was sober as much or more often than he was drunk when he sexually abused me.

I am very pleased to see the community of survivors and others who read my blog has continued to grow though the past 4 years.  Since I started using Twitter and Facebook sometime in the past year and a half, the number of readers of my blog have more than doubled.  I thank each of my readers for being a part of this growth and this community.  I am very glad that you are all a part of my blog community.  Thanks for being here.
Patricia