John Bradshaw Books And Healing Your Inner Child

Part of learning to love myself included connecting with my inner child. I needed to forgive her for not being able to protect herself when she was just a child. Giving the shame back to my abusers and listening to other survivors tell me that the incest was not my - her fault - helped me to accept that truth. John Bradshaw was one of the authors that helped me to let go of the lies and to connect with my inner child as well. Two of John Bradshaw's books that help me with this were:
1. Healing the Shame That Binds You
2. Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child

Another of John Bradshaw's books that helped me to see how dysfunctional my family was is called Bradshaw On: The Family: A New Way Of Creating Solid Self-Esteem.

I wrote this article because I wanted to share the John Bradshaw books that helped me but also because I wanted to share the following article with you on steps to healing your inner child. A friend on Facebook shared it with me this week.

6 Steps to Help Heal Your Inner Child @
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/09/23/6-steps-to-help-heal-your-inner-child

I hope this will turn on your curiosity and you will want to read more of Mr. Bradshaw's writing.
Patricia

California Judge Releases Pillowcase Rapist

*********TRIGGER WARNING***********

A California Judge will release Christopher Evans Hubbart, age 63, from a state run mental facility by July 7. The judge is Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Gilbert Brown. In spite of protects, the Pillowcase Rapist, as Hubbart is called, will be released. According to the article, that I will give you the link for, Hubbart was put in prison for 16 years for raping at least 40 women in the 1970's and 1980's. This rapist was released on parole in 1990 for a few months when he was put back in prison for raping another woman. In 1996, when his prison term was finished, he was put into a mental institution because it was thought that he was still a dangerous rapist. The judge and the mental facility now deem Hubbart as not dangerous to women.

If you live in the community of Palmdale, California, be aware, you will soon have a known rapist in your community.  I pray that this man truly is changed and that the GPS monitor will keep the women of the community safe. I would hate to live there or have my daughter or female friends living anywhere near this man.

I do not understand the judges and the court system that allows rapists - male or female - back on the streets.

Here is the link to this article:

"California judge says serial rapist to be released" @
http://news.yahoo.com/california-judge-says-serial-rapist-released-190825331.html

I share this kind of post here, on Facebook and Twitter to educate others. Someone has to let the court system know this is not okay. How can we protect our children, women or men from rapists if they are given light sentences and allowed back out on the street to rape again, as this Pillowcase Rapist has already done once.
Patricia

Blog Talk Radio And ISUVOA Guest Speaker Today

Sorry about the short notice but I am a guest speaker on Blog Talk Radio today for the ISUVOA Organization at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, 4:00 p.m. Central Time, 3:00 p.m. Mountain Time and 2:00 p.m. Pacific Time this afternoon, Sunday, May 25, 2014. I am their first guest and the show is 30 minutes long. There won't be a chat room open today but I hope you will come listen to the program. The show host will be Rachel Barret. We will both be meeting for the first time on the program as I share the story of incest and healing, my blog, my work and my mission. For those who are not familiar with ISUVOA the letters stand for  Incest Survivors United Voices of America.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/isuvoa-how/2014/05/26/patricia-caldwell-singleton-spiritual-journey-of-a-lightworker 
Patricia

Stages Of Loss And Grief For Incest Survivors.

Back in 1969, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross wrote her book called On Death and Dying. In that book she gives us the five stages of grief.
Denial and isolation
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

Grief takes time to get through. Each person takes however long it takes to get through the grief. Some stay in denial longer, others get angry and stay stuck there for awhile before moving through to the other steps. However long it takes is individual to the person. You can go back and forth between the stages until you finally reach acceptance and the grief ends.

Grief isn't just about death. Each loss in your life brings grief also. With incest survivors, many losses happen because of the abuse. The earlier in childhood that the abuse starts, the more losses you have to deal with. If you don't grieve the losses, they pile up and add to the pain and to the length of time that it takes for you to heal.

As a child being abused, stuffing everything inside is the form of denial that is often used. The brain blocking memories is an extreme form of denial used in order to survive the pain of abuse. I know from certain clues that I have that I don't have access to some early memories. I have written about labeling myself an adulteress several times on this blog. 

As an adult, I used denial in order to try to have a "normal" "happy" life when I first left home and then the first years of being married. I told myself if I didn't think about the incest that I could pretend it didn't happen and it wasn't still affecting me if I didn't think about it. I did my best to convince myself of that and I hoped it was working for about 10 years as I grew more and more angry and unhappy. The denial came to a head one day when I heard myself screaming at my husband and telling him that I hated him and my life. A part of me was standing off watching and listening as I screamed those hurtful words at him. Thankfully that part of me stepped in and took control and knew that the person I hated was myself because I couldn't pretend and I couldn't make the pain and anger go away. That was in the 1970's and there were only 3 books on incest at the county library where we lived. They gave me a little bit of relief but not enough. Self-help books were becoming popular so I read everyone of them that the library had and worked hard on improving me as much as I could. I was blessed that my husband forgave me for those hurtful words that I threw at him that long ago day. 

Isolation played its part in keeping me stuck in the pain too. I felt totally alone in my pain. I always felt alone and different, even in a good marriage. I felt like no one would understand if they knew and I was afraid they would judge and blame me if they knew about the incest. I was married for 8 years before I told my husband because I was afraid he wouldn't love me if he knew. If I stayed isolated, then maybe no one would ever know. Of course isolation just added more to my pain also.

The next stage of anger really scared me. I knew that the anger inside of me had grown to rage. That is what happens when you stuff anger deep inside and don't deal with it. It grows. The only anger I saw in my childhood was my dad's rage and my mom's passive-aggressive behavior. When she was mad, she would get quiet and you knew something was wrong but you never knew what. She always denied that she was angry. The passive-aggressive anger was hurtful and crazy feeling because it was never acknowledged. The rage was scary because it might become dangerous and violent. I was afraid that my own rage would become violent too if I let it all out. 

I was angry that the denial didn't work. I was angry that I was abused by those who should have loved me and protected me. I was angry at myself for being a child and not being able to protect myself. I had to do some blaming in order to get though the anger. I don't recommend staying in the blaming stage because then you just stay stuck in the anger and you do need to move past the anger stage in order to heal.

Bargaining is that stage where you just wish it would all go away and you would do anything to make that happen. You have conversations with God and ask Him to take it away and you may even get angry at Him because He won't. Free will isn't free will if God takes away all of our hurts. It is our responsibility to work our way through the feelings, not God's responsibility to take it away. He loved me through it even when I was angry at Him.

Depression is the stage of feeling all of the deep sadness, shutting down the tears and feelings, and pushing them back inside. Louise Hay says depression is anger turned inward. I have grown to believe this for myself. I know from a very young age, I was full of sadness to the exclusion of all other feelings. I know I carried the deep sadness with me at least as young as 5 years old. It may have been there before that and I just don't remember. It seems like for most of my life, I felt that deep sadness. I didn't know where it came from or how to get rid of it. I hated to cry. I was taught as a child that tears just brought on more hurt from my parents. Have you ever had a parent tell you, "I'll give you something to cry about, if you don't stop that right now." Once I reached this stage of grieving, the tears started. I cried for a year at 12-Step meetings because I didn't want my family to see the tears. I didn't know how to explain them to myself, much less to them. At that point, I still felt that tears were a sign of weakness too. Today I know they are a sign of strength. I still don't like crying but I do it when I need to.

You can go back and forth between all of these stages of grieving until you finally reach the last stage of acceptance.  With acceptance comes relief. When you accept the losses then comes change when you let go of all of the pain caused by the losses. With acceptance the losses lose their power to hurt you any more and the abuser loses his power over you too. With acceptance, you take back your personal power and you move forward with your life. With letting go of the losses, you now have room in your life for laughter and peace to enter. 

Each time that an issue comes up, I find more losses to deal with and more grief to feel and go through these stages again. Today, I get though the grief in only a day or two or three, not weeks, months or years. Today I am aware of what it feels like to grieve. Today, I know that if I want to feel the joy, I also have to feel the grief when it comes. 

I am sharing the link that gave me the idea to write this post and to share my ideas on grief. Remember these are just my opinions and experiences with grief. Grief may be different for you. I do know that if you want to heal from incest, you have to allow yourself to grieve.

"The 5 Stages of Loss and Grief" @
http://psychcentral.com/lib/the-5-stages-of-loss-and-grief/000617

Patricia

Origin Of Name: Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker

I have never explained to myself or anyone else where the name of my blog came from before today. That is because I didn't really get it before today. At the time that I started my blog in June 2007, I didn't understand the significance of the name. I felt guided by Spirit/God to name my blog Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker.  I listened to that guidance even though I didn't understand it, at the time. I have learned to follow spiritual guidance of that kind. It never fails me. God always knows better than I do. Today I got the significance of the name and will do my best to explain it to my readers.

All of my journey though healing from incest, and life in general, has been a spiritual journey, even when I wasn't aware of the spiritual side of it. My healing has taken me on a spiritual journey of reconnecting with myself and with God. I have learned to listen to His guidance through the wonderful mentors that He has guided me to through the years. When those mentors chose other paths that I didn't need to go down then I learned to turn inward and listen to my own inner teacher that God gives each of us because we are his precious children.

I learned that we are all Light Workers who shine our light for those survivors who come after us. Every time we share our healing stories, we are shining our light for others to see that healing is possible. 

I think the reason for making Light Worker into one word instead of two, which my computer considers correct, is because Lightworker is more complete, more whole. It is who I am. It is who you are. It is a new becoming for many of us. It certainly was for me. I am not sure that I fully understand that myself yet so I don't know if I am explaining it well. That part of me is still evolving and so is my understanding. 

I know that many more of us are sharing our stories and shining our lights for others than at any other time in history. I know that together we are stronger than alone. The journey started out with women leading the way to speaking out and breaking the silence of child sexual abuse. Now men are joining us in the fight to light the way for other survivors and to prevent more children from having to join the ranks of survivors who are hurting from what was done to them in their childhoods. When we are big enough and strong enough no one will be able to stop us. No more children have to be abused. We won't shut up until this happens. We are the generation that says no to child abuse.  Much more has to be done before it is stops but each day, I see more survivors - more Lightworkers - joining our march forward and shining their light. Soon the darkness will have no place to hide. We won't let it. 
Patricia