Rage Is Anger On Overload

As another tribute to Dr. Wayne Dyer, Hay House is offering a free link to "My Greatest Teacher" movie until September 15, 2015 at the following link:

http://www.drwaynedyer.com/my-greatest-teacher-movie-watch-now?

I cried through watching this movie. I have called my own dad my greatest teacher because of the lessons I learned from the incest.

What first hit me from the movie was the rage of the main character. I have felt that rage myself before and during my healing journey. Like the main character, I often directed my rage at my spouse and my children before I learned to control my rage.

What is the difference between anger and rage? A matter of depth - rage is anger on overload. Anger doesn't have to hurt anyone. Rage often does. Anger can be controlled and used constructively to make much needed changes. Rage often feels out of control. Anger can be expressed and let go of before anyone is hurt by it. Rage is often stuffed inside until pressure builds and an explosion occurs. Rage looks for a victim to pour out all over. 

I cried because my rage often hurt those I loved. I had to change the way that I dealt with my anger so that it didn't grow into rage.

When you are angry with rage inside, the Universe seems to give you reasons to be more angry, like the character in the movie. Everything is an irritant. What can go wrong will, so the rage can come out. 

My dad taught me how to do rage. So did my mom, just in a different way. My dad was a rageaholic. My mom did hers with passive-aggressive behavior. 

In order to heal my own rage, I had to stop blaming my abusers and had to switch to looking at what I was feeling and how could I diffuse my rage in a healthy way. Instead of everything being out there and someone else's fault, I had to bring my focus to inside my mind, my body, my feelings, my heart. 

What issues were causing my rage? How could I heal my own hurt? How could I let out the rage so it didn't hurt me or those I loved? 

My most prized healing tool has always been my writing. I could pull the rage and the hurt out and on to the written page so I could see it. I still had to feel it. Feelings are part of the healing. The written word always helps me see the patterns and figure out what I need to change about myself. I can forgive myself and I can ask forgiveness of those that I have hurt. 

These are my thoughts after watching the movie "My Greatest Teacher." I hope that you take the time to watch it for yourself. 
Patricia

Pain Caused By Regrets And Self-Doubts - Judging Ourselves

Please go and read the article "Memories and Regrets" from Beyond Survivor - The Wounded Warrior Blog written by my friend Jan L. Frayne at the following link:

http://whatislove-2010.blogspot.com/2015/08/memories-and-regrets.html

Come back here afterwards to read my thoughts about this post.

The Wounded Warrior expresses the pain and self-doubts that many survivors carry inside, hidden from the world most of the time. Voicing the pain of surviving through writing whether it is a blog like Beyond Survivor - The Wounded Warrior Blog or like here at Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker is important because giving voice to our pain frees other survivors to do the same.

Some survivors, like me, were alone with the abuser. Other survivors saw other children nearby also being abused. 

For years, I hoped and prayed that I was the only one that my dad was sexually abusing. Years later when I found out that he was abusing my sister by fondling and making sexual comments to, I was angry and felt guilty that I didn't protect her from him. I was the older sister. I loved my sister and I wanted her to be safe. She wasn't.

I can understand why Jan Frayne took on the blame for the abuse of the little boy that he saw being strangled. I, too, have said to myself, what if I had told?  Maybe my sister would have been saved from her experiences.

Looking back makes taking on the blame so easy for a survivor. We are looking back from a position of power as an adult. We didn't have that hindsight as a child.

As children, we didn't have any power. We couldn't protect ourselves or another child. No child should go through the abuse that we did. Yes, we were victims.

 I didn't have the courage to speak up as a child or even as a young adult. I wasn't able to overcome all of my fears in order to speak up. I could blame myself for my sister being abused or I can put the blame where it belongs, with my abusers. 

If we cannot prevent our own abuse from happening, how can we possibly save another child? We are not responsible for what our abusers did. That is just another form of victim blaming, even if it is ourselves we are blaming. Others do it to us often enough without us buying into it too. Stop victim blaming. 

Shift from feeling like a victim to offering love and comfort to your inner child. Feel what you feel and then let it go. You don't have to stay stuck in victim mode. Give your inner child more reasons to trust you. "Beyond" survivor doesn't mean you will never have to revisit being a survivor or a victim. Healing means going back and forth between the three as needed to heal. 

Memories come up because you are strong enough to face them. Dreams are all of the stuff that you are afraid to face in the waking world. Healing can take place in your dreams too. Keeping a dream journal can help you to figure out what your dreams are telling you. Memories and dreams are both part of healing.

Forgive yourself for what you couldn't control. Stop blaming yourself. Blaming yourself keeps you stuck in the hurt. You deserve better. 

Jan, be gentle with yourself as I have seen you be with other survivors. Beyond surviving - thriving - comes slowly but it does come. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and moving forward. Allow your friends to support you when you need us. You don't have to be strong alone. 

I copied a statement from one of my favorite teachers today that I want to share with you here.

"With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself, or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow, or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose."
                                         -Dr. Wayne Dyer
Patricia

No Tears for my Father: a true story of incest Book Review

Viga Boland is an online friend that I met because we are both advocates for ourselves and for other survivors of incest. When I heard that Viga was writing her memoir, No Tears for my Father: a true story of incest, I told her I wanted to read it and would do a book review afterwards.

As Viga says on the back of her book " 'Victims' own voices are the best weapons against child sexual abuse.' " In some ways, Viga tells my story. In others, Viga's story is distinctly her own and no one else's, as is true for all survivor stories. No Tears for my Father comes with a Trigger Warning Advisory for the safety of those incest survivors who may experience flashbacks or emotional pain from reading the sometimes graphic scenes of Viga's memories.

Viga Boland was born in Australia in 1946. Like many children of the 1940's and 1950's, Viga was taught by her parents to do what the adults in her life told her to do. It didn't matter who the adult was, they were in control if you were a child. This one rule, above all others, made it easy for Viga to become a victim of childhood sexual abuse and incest.

Viga, throughout her book, compares her dad to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll was the smiling, loving father and friend to a lonely little girl who was taught that she was ugly and stupid by the angry, often violent, and unpredictable Mr. Hyde.  Mr. Hyde was physically and emotionally abusive to Viga and to her mother.

When Viga Boland was 11 years old, her family moved to Canada, where the physical and emotional abuse continued and at the age of 12, Viga's dad started to also sexually abuse her. The secrets, the lies, the shame and the blame of incest that make a survivors life a living hell began too.  Secrets such as "Let's not tell mama. It would hurt her." "If not for you, I would be having an affair with some other woman and your mother would be hurt." (These aren't exactly Viga's words. They were lies I was told too.) The coercion, the threats and the fear that are part of the daily life of an incest survivor, all of that worked to keep Viga a prisoner in her parents home until the age of 23. 

To find out more of Viga Boland's story of incest, you will have to read her book. I would recommend the book No Tears for my Father, written by Viga Boland to all who are interested in the truth of what it means to be  a victim of childhood abuse, domestic violence and incest. 

You can visit Viga Boland at these websites which are listed at the beginning of her book:

http://www.vigaboland.com

http://www.notearsformyfather.com

http://vigaland.blogspot.com 

http://www.youtube.com/vigaland 

http://vigaland.com 

Patricia

 

Lucinda Bassett Truth Be Told Book Review

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."
                 ---Nelson Mandela

My introduction to Lucinda Bassett came recently when she reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in being interviewed on her radio program. Of course, I said yes. I was talking to a new audience of listeners about being an adult child of an alcoholic and also about healing from incest. Here is the link to that interview if you missed it:

http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2012/12/revisiting-my-interview-on-la-talk-live.html

Lucinda Bassett's book Truth Be Told: A Memoir of Success, Suicide, and Survival will be available to buy on March 5, 2013. I was asked to write a book review. What I know from reading just the Prologue and Introduction of the book is that Lucinda is a courageous woman who cares very deeply about her family. When you lose a loved one to death of any kind, you hurt. When your loved one commits suicide, so many questions are left unanswered. So many words are left unsaid. I can only imagine the hurt that Lucinda and her children feel over the suicide of her husband and their father.

Lucinda talks about the cycle of  guilt-blame-anger-and-shame that she as a survivor of someone else's suicide feels every time she is reminded of her husband and the fact that he took his own life. The prologue to the book was written only three years after his death. Feelings are still fresh and very painful for Lucinda while her children are still in the denial stage of grief. Being young, her children just don't want to deal with the death of their dad. Anger is quick to flare.

In the Introduction of her book, Lucinda starts out by quoting Mother Teresa when she says,

"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.
     I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."

Sometimes I, too, have felt that way in wanting to wish away some of my troubles. Sometimes it just seems like too much for one person to bear. Lucinda is here today as a survivor, stronger because of the experience, knowing more about herself because of the pain and the healing. Through the growing and the healing, Lucinda is now able to reach out and to help other survivors through her books and her radio program. 


Lucinda doesn't call herself a Lightworker, but I do. She expresses that she feels she is "supposed to share what I have learned with others. Others who stand in fear, unable to function, destroyed by some unbearable trauma, believing there is no light at the end of the tunnel---no help, no hope, no happiness. So here I stand once again, humbled and open, sharing my life experience with you...for it is now an open book. If I can come out sane and grateful to be here, you can too." (Prologue, page 4). I can't think of a better description of what I and other survivors do when we share our Light to let others know there is a way out of the darkness of despair and pain.

Lucinda Bassett is a true survivor. I look forward to reading the rest of her book Truth Be Told: A Memoir of Success, Suicide, and Survival when it is published in March 2013. I hope you will join me in reading her book when it comes out.

You can follow Lucinda Bassett on Twitter at this link:   http://www.twitter.com/lbtruthbetold

Lucinda Bassett is on Facebook at the link:    http://www.facebook.com/lbtruthbetold

Lucinda Bassett is on YouTube at the following link:    http://www.youtube.com/lbtruthbetold

I hope that you all had a glorious Christmas season. Mine ended a little earlier than planned because of Winter Storm Euclid blowing through Arkansas on Christmas day leaving us with between four to seven and a half inches of snow in our yard. I walked around with a measuring stick to see how much snow we got. We also have a neighbor's tree laying across our fence in our back yard. We were blessed that we didn't lose our electricity as some of my friends who are on Day 4 with no power did. Most of the snow melted yesterday and today. Tonight's temperature is supposed to be back down to 18 degrees. I am glad that my husband and I got home around noon on Christmas day before the snow started.

Happy New Year to all. May 2013 be the best year ever for all of us.
Patricia

Silence Is The Friend Of Incest

This week I read an article that I want to share with you about silence. The article is posted at a blog called Beyond the Pear Tree. The blog title is "In the Name of Silence". Here is the link:

http://beyondthepeartree.wordpress.com/2012/10/16/in-the-name-of-silence/

I want to share my comment to this blog post. Here are the words that I wrote:

"There has been too much silence in the world already, a silence that allows children to be sexually and/or emotionally and physically abused, women and men to be abused by domestic violence, and allows needless wars to go on. No more silently condoning violences in any form. Bullying happens because no one stops it. Abuse is allowed to go on in the silence of individuals and societies. No more silence. No more secrets that harm."


Silence allows incest to happen within families for generations because no one is willing to call attention to the dysfunction within the family system.  Children are ashamed and afraid to speak out about what is happening to them. Children of incest carry the shame and are often afraid of being blamed for the actions of their abusers.

It is the responsibility of the adult to speak out if they suspect child abuse is happening. I know it takes courage to speak up. I didn't have the courage to face my own family and tell them about the incest that happened to me as a child until I was in my late 30's and early 40's. I know how hard it is.

Fear has to be faced and conquered, so does silence. Healing from incest does not happen until the silence is overcome. Become an advocate for your children and your neighbors' children. Don't let another child suffer in silence praying that an adult will ask if they are being hurt.

Here is a second article that I read just a day or two ago that shows how silence allows sex abuse to continue to happen for years because no adult spoke up to stop it. Not being from England, I don't know as much about the Jimmy Savile allegations about child sexual abuse. The article title is "A lot has changed since Jimmy Savile's time, but shame and stigma still allow sex abuse to thrive". The article is posted in what I assume is an online newspaper called The Independent with the section with the article being called Independent Voices. Here is the link:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comments/a-lot-has-changed-since-jimmy-saviles-time-but-shame-and-stigma-still-allow-sex-abuse-to-thrive-8215067.html

Let me know your thoughts about these two articles.
Patricia


 

Healing From Incest Takes Time

Healing from childhood sexual abuse takes time and much effort on your part and you are worth both. The most important step is learning to love yourself. Most incest victims hate and blame themselves for their abuse. Know that the blame and shame belong to your abusers, not to the child you were then or to the adult you are now. Love both your inner child and the adult that you have become. You are both survivors. Many children don't survive. If you survived, you can heal.

Learn to trust yourself and a few close friends with your story of incest. Telling is more than okay. Your healing depends upon telling someone else the many secrets that you were forced to keep by your abusers. Don't tell just anyone. Tell someone that you trust. You may not trust anyone because of your abuse. In your childhood, you couldn't trust those who were closest to you, if like with me, they were your abusers. Trust is a very big issue and one that you need to do very carefully. Sadly, the world is full of people that you shouldn't trust with your story and your vulnerability. As an adult, there are abusers who will instintively pick up that you are vulnerable and will take advantage if you give them the chance. Believe your heart and your gut when you get signals to run away from these people. This is one reason why learning to trust yourself and your intuition are so important. Really listen to your body. I know how hard that is if you disconnected from your body as a child in order to survive the pain of incest. I also know from my own experience that you can learn to reconnect. Be patient and kind with yourself as you learn to do this. You are blessed to live in a time when many resources are available for your use.

Trust a few close friends with your story or, if it is easier, trust a roomful of strangers, like I did, in 12-Step programs. Those people weren't strangers for long. They totally accepted me and my story of incest.  Today I thank God that my dad was an alcoholic. I was able to find out how I was affected by the family disease of alcoholism and had taken on the characteristics of both of my parents but I also found a safe place to talk about the incest. I talked and talked and talked until I started to feel and the hurt started to leave. Talk as much as you can until the abuse is talked out of your body and mind. Some people will think you are stuck in the memories and will possibly wish you would just shut up. Don't shut up and don't trust those people.  Most people don't realize that you were silenced for so long that you can't let the hurt and anger go with just a few words and wishes. You have to work at and talk your way through the healing process. Writing helps too if you are a writer like me. You are worth whatever it takes to heal. Find a counselor or therapist that will listen and help you work through your pain. Don't settle for just any therapist. Not all are trained to help incest survivors. A therapist that doesn't know what they are doing can do more harm rather than helping you. Sometimes you just don't click with that person. Find a therapist that you can trust and feel safe sharing your story with.

Find others who can love you until you can love yourself. Surround yourself with people who will support you through the long journey to healing. Some won't stay for very long. Those who do will be your true friends. If you trust the wrong person with your story and get hurt by them. Let go of them and move on. Don't stay in an abusive relationship. You do not deserve to be revictimized by anyone. You couldn't do anything about the abuse you suffered as a child. As an adult, you can choose to say no to abuse of any kind and leave if the other person doesn't. Don't trust everyone with yourself or with your story. You deserve to be believed. If others can't treat you with respect and kindness, leave them behind. Move forward into your healing.

As I said before, trust your intuition which will tell you who is trustworthy and who isn't. Start with trusting yourself. Be kind and compassionate with yourself first. Start to listen to your inner voice that has your best interest at heart. Don't listen to any critical inner voices that you got from your parents or abusers. Learn to tune them out. Critical inner voices don't have your best interest at heart. Being critical of yourself is just carrying on the shame that your abusers passed on to you. Don't shame and blame yourself. Being responsible for your own actions is not the same as blaming and shaming. Feeling guilty for making a mistake is not the same as feeling shame because you were taught that you are the mistake. You are not a mistake, now or ever. That is the abuser speaking. Don't listen to that crap any more. You are worthy and lovable. Love yourself and heal. You are worth it.
Patricia

Resources For An Incest Survivor And Adult Children Of Dysfunctional Families

All of the books listed here are books that I have used in my own healing process over the years.  Some of the first ones listed are the very first books that I found and read back in the 1990's. I checked each of them on Amazon to see if they were still available for purchase and they are. I hope that you find them as useful as I did in my healing.  They are not listed in alphabetical order. The books are listed in the order that I remember using them myself over the years.

Affirmations for the Inner Child, by Rokelle Lerner, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 1990, 2010.

Believing In Myself: Self Esteem Daily Meditations, by Earnie Larsen, Simon & Schuster, Inc./Fireside, New York, NY, 1991.

Learning to Love Yourself: Finding Your Self-worth, by Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 1987, 2010.

Compassion and Self Hate: An Alternate to Despair, by Theodore I. Rubin, Touchstone, Rockefeller Center, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 1975, 1998. (Touchstone is part of Simon & Schuster)

Healing the Shame that Binds You (Recovery Classics), by John Bradshaw, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 1988.

Healing The Child Within: Discovery and Recovery for Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, by Charles L. Whitfield, M. D., Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 1989, 2006.

Boundaries and Relationships: Knowing, Protecting and Enjoying the Self, by Charles Whitfield, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 1993, 2010.

Codependant No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring For Yourself, by Melody Beattie, Hazelden, Center City, Minnesota, 1986, 1992.

Beyond Codependency: And Getting Better All the Time, by Melody Beattie, Hazelden, Center City, Minnesota, 1989.

The Language of Letting Go (Hazelden Meditation Series), by Melody Beattie, Hazelden, Center City, Minnesota, June 1990.

Facing Codependence: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives, by Pia Mellody, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1989.

Breaking Free: A Recovery Workbook for Facing Codependence, by Pia Mellody, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY, 1989.

I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, by Ellen Bass, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY, 1991.

The Courage To Heal: A Guide For Women Survivors Of Child Sexual Abuse, 3rd Edition by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1988; HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY, 2008.

The Courage To Heal Workbook: A Guide for Women and Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, by Laura Davis, HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY, 1990.

A Gift to Myself: A Personal Workbook and Guide to "Healing the Child Within", by Charles L. Whitfield, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL, 1990.

Secret Survivors: Uncovering Incest and Its Aftereffects in Women, by E. Sue Blume, Ballantine Books, a Division of Random House, Inc., New York, NY, 1990.

Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child, by Laura Davis, Harper Perennial, a Division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY, 1991.

These are a few of the resources that I used in the beginning of my healing journey from incest and being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.  For me, the alcoholism and the incest were intertwined in my life. That is why you will find so many of these books are about codependence and working with the inner child. The inner child is the one who experienced the childhood abuse and allowed us to survive into adulthood. I will do a second list of resources soon. I hope that I haven't overwhelmed you with all of these but I had so many good resources at my fingertips in the 1990's that I didn't have in the early 1980's when I first told my husband and my sister that I was an incest survivor.  I didn't immediately start working on my incest issues or reading books about it until after I had done some work on healing from codependence and being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic because my marriage was at risk. The 12-Step programs of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Al-Anon helped me to heal enough to finally start working on my incest issues.  Let me know if you have any favorites that helped you that I don't have included here.
Patricia

#Ididnotreport Campaign On Twitter

On Twitter for the past week, there has been a campaign by rape and child abuse survivors that use the hashtag #Ididnotreport .  This campaign is to bring more awareness and to give survivors a voice, some for the first time. My tweets are about why I did not report incest to anyone when I was a child and even when I was a young adult.  Many do not understand the tremendous amount of fear that survivors of abuse, and especially rape live with every day. Nothing is simple for a survivor. Here are some of the comments that I have Tweeted using this hashtag:

#Ididnotreport because I was told to respect all adults and to always do what they told me to do. Tell your children that they can say no.

#Ididnotreport because I didn't know that I had the right to say no to my abusers who were all adults.

#Ididnotreport because I was groomed by my abusers to be silent.

#Ididnotreport because I was too ashamed of what happened to me. I believed it was my fault. Not today.

#Ididnotreport when I became an adult because I was still afraid of being blamed for the incest.

#Ididnotreport because I was a child and afraid of losing my family.

#Ididnotreport because I thought I was to blame for the incest. Today I know differently.

#Ididnotreport because nobody ever asked me if something was wrong. If just one person had asked, I would have told.

If you are on Twitter, I hope that you will join me in Tweeting your own statements using the hashtag of #Ididnotreport .
Patricia

Here is a link to a blogger who first told me about the above campaign through her own blog article:

http://fragmentz.org/2012/03/15/ididnotreport/

Healing Is About Love And Compassion

Just because I disagree with someone does not make them my enemy or me theirs, at least not in my mind.  Compassion gives me the ability to look beyond the disagreement to see what issues may be bringing up stuff for the other person. 

Self-compassion also gives me the ability to look and see if I have any issues being brought up by the disagreement. Through compassion, I can see the possible hurts on both sides.  I can choose to forgive myself and the other person and let go of my own hurts and anger, if I have any.  If I hold on to my anger and resentments, they only hurt me.  They don't hurt the other person.  Only their own hurts and resentments can do that to them.  Compassion allows me to send prayers and love to the other person, as I pray for and love myself. 

Healing is about love, first of myself and then of others.  If I try to love others from a place of hurt and anger, it doesn't work.  For me to love others, I have to come from a place of self-love.  Where love exists, hurt and anger can't stay.

Part of self-love is not hurting myself for any reason. I don't own this self-love 100% of the time.  I still sometimes put the needs of others above my own and I still, when really hurting from an issue, overeat.  Right now I am overeating or grazing as my doctor called it because the idea of writing my memoir is scaring my inner children terribly.  The idea of being that vulnerable and putting the secret of incest into book form is terrifying to them.  Because of that fear, I still haven't written the first word even though I have told several people that I would.

Another equally important part of self-love is not allowing others to purposefully hurt me.  Sometimes that means removing myself from that person's presence. 

With today's access to Facebook, Twitter and emails, sometimes removing myself from that person's presence means blocking them from access to me on the internet.  Many more people have access to me on the internet than those that I know personally in my own town.  Some disagreements can be easily settled and friendships remain in tact.  Others turn abusive and those are the ones that I won't stay in.  That doesn't mean that I am judging the other person.  There is a difference between judgment and discernment.  That doesn't mean that I think the other person is mean or crazy.  I just don't have to allow their issues to be transferred on to me and be used to abuse me with. 

Until I forgive a person, that person is still controlling me.  Forgiveness means working my way through any hurt and anger that I hold towards that person. Forgiveness does not mean putting myself back in contact with that person until they have forgiven me and settled their own issues. It does not mean accepting that person back into my life when they are still raging at injustices, imagined and real, that they believe that I have done to them.  Something else I have learned is, if my heart skips a beat every time that I run into this person online, I still have a connection to this person. I still have a fear of being hurt by this person.  I need to pay attention to this fear and work through it for my own well being.

If you are still raging and still blaming, you haven't reached the forgiveness stage.  Forgiveness doesn't blame.  Responsibility and blaming are not the same thing.  Blaming carries shame.  Responsibility does not.  Responsibility is a two way street.  I am responsible for my behavior and you are responsible for yours. Blaming can keep you stuck in anger and hurt.  Responsibility gives you the tools to work through your feelings and gives you the ability to take back your personal power from the abusers. Personal power gives you choices you might not have known that you had when you were stuck being a victim.
Patricia 

Related Posts:

Judgments - Discernments or Prejudice?
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/judgments-discernment-or-prejudice.html

Tools Of The Ego
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/tools-of-ego.html

Dialogues With Dignity: Progress Over Perfection
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/08/dialogues-with-dignity-progress-over.html

You Deserve Your Own Love Guest Post
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2011/09/you-deserve-your-own-love-guest-post.html

NY Times Article - James C. McKinley, Jr. Writes "Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town"

This article is written about the newspaper article "Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town" which was written by James C. McKinley, Jr. in the New York Times on March 8, 2011.  This article was first brought to my attention in an article by Roxane Gay written at The Rumpus.net and her article "The Careless Language of Sexual Violence." 

In the article "Vicious Assault . . ."the author, James C. McKinley, Jr. only calls this violent act against an 11-year-old girl, still a child, a rape twice.  Mr. McKinley, Jr. instead of calling this act of violence "rape" uses the words: 
"the assault"
"a lurid cellphone video"
"the attack"
"forced to have sex"
"sexually assaulted"
"sexual acts"
These words seem to soften the description of the violent act of rape of a child.  I don't know if he consciously chose to slant the perception of his readers or not.  I pray that he didn't.

"Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town" should be more focused on the rape of an 11-year-old little girl.  She isn't even a teenager yet.  She is just a child. (I don't intend to mean that raping a teenager is any better.  Read on.)  People in the neighborhood that the rape happened in said that the little girl was dressed like a 20-year-old - as if that makes the rape her fault.  Why do people want to shift the blame to the person who was raped rather than to the person who was the rapist? 

18 men and boys raped an 11-year-old little girl.  These rapists were middle school age boys up to a 27-year-old man.  I do not understand the gang rape mentality that has someone thinking that raping by a group is okay.   Why does the author mention the age of the little girl but only says the boys were middle school age and beyond?  What age were those boys?  Were they the same age as the little girl or older?   Again the slant is toward softening the readers view of the rapists.  The reader isn't told how old the boys are specifically like they are the age of the girl child.

Mr. McKinley, Jr. says in his article that someone wondered "how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?"  Again the article is written to shift the blame to someone other than their "young men."  Who would they rather blame?  An 11-year-old child who was ordered to remove her clothes or be beaten?  What choice did she have in that situation?  Can you imagine how frightened that little girl was?  Can you see her in that room surrounded and alone with a group of boys and men intent upon only one thing - raping a defenseless little girl?  Sadly, I can imagine it.

As the 18 boys and men were raping the little girl, some of them used their cell phones to record the rapes and passed those videos around to their friends who had cellphones.  One of these videos was the reason they got caught.  A classmate of the little girl showed the video to a teacher who reported it to the principal who called the police. 

One of the residents of the town of Cleveland, Texas (the Texas town that was shaken by this vicious assault) said " 'It's devastating, and it's really tearing our community apart.' "  What about the little girl who was physically torn apart by the continual rapes done to her by 18 boys and men?  What about the innocent little girl who was taken away from herself by the rapes?  The rapes killed some part of the soul of that little girl - a part of herself that she will never get back? 

In another article on this subject, I read that the little girl was taken from her family and placed in foster care - for her protection.  What does that say to the little girl?  The whole rape thing was devastating to this little girl. She will never forget what happened to her that day.  If she is like most rape victims, she will blame herself, especially if she reads this New York Times post.  Why didn't the author of this article, yes you Mr. James C. McKinley, Jr., find someone who would speak up for this little girl and her pain?  For the town to be split, there had to be someone who took the little girl's side and blamed the rapists rather than the little girl.  Where are their comments?

According to the article, the rapists are no longer in school.  Neither is the little girl who would probably be in about 5th grade.  She was moved to another school district where she knows no one.  In addition to be taken away from her parents, she lost any friends she may have had that could have supported her.  Can you imagine how frightening it is to move to a school where you know no one?  Do the authorities think that the story of the rapes won't follow her to the new school?  When it does, this child is totally alone with no one to support her.  She probably blames herself for being taken from her parents and for being moved to a new school.  This hurting child has no friends and no family to support her because she was placed in foster care - another instance of punishing the victim in order to protect her. 

When is society and the legal system going to stop re-victimizing victims like this 11-year-old child for their own rapes?  This victim is a lonely, frightened little girl.  Imagine if this was your child, your daughter.

This child did not lure anyone into raping her.  She is only 11 years old.  Even if she has breasts already and dresses like an older girl, she is still only 11 years old and a child.  No matter how much make up she may be wearing, she is at that in-between stage of being more child than woman.  She is experimenting with who she is - trying to find her way in the confusing world of pre-adolescense, no longer child but not yet woman.  She craves attention and probably feels all grown up when she gets the attention of a boy older than her.  This is normal for a pre-adolescent girl child.  It doesn't make her a slut.  It doesn't mean she is "asking for it" to get into a car with a man who shows her some friendly attention.  As a child, she doesn't see his sexual motives for asking her to get into the car with him.

The child didn't rape anyone so why does society want to blame her.  The one who is raped is the victim, not the rapist.  I don't care what age the rapist is, they are the abusers, not the victim.  The person being raped is the one who gets the life sentence of fear, hurt, sadness, and loss of innocense.  This child is the one sentenced to problems with her body because of all of the physical damage done by being gang raped by men who are much larger than her in size.  This 11-year-old little girl is the one who will have emotional scars for the rest of her life in the form of flashbacks, depression and maybe even PTSD from the torture of being raped over and over again. 

Where is the concern for this child expressed in this New York Times article?  How could the newspaper or the author of the article be content with releasing this story to the public when it is so obviously slanted toward the rapists and how they will be affected by the rape of an 11-year-old child?  Who is standing up for the child?

I can understand some of what this child felt because I was raped at the age of 11 by an uncle on a weekend fishing trip.  Yes, I got into the car with him and went on the fishing trip because my mother told me to.  I didn't want to go on the trip.  I already knew something wasn't right but nobody asked me if I wanted to go.  I was told to mind anyone in authority and that meant all adults.  I didn't know about sex.  I soon learned all of the things that this poor 11-year-old child is dealing with now because of the rapes.  I know how painful that first time was with just one man raping me.  I can't imagine the horror and the terror of being raped by 18 men.  Someone please take the side of the child.  She is the victim.
Patricia

Roxane Gay On The Rumpus.net Writes "The Careless Language of Sexual Violence"

I was on Twitter last night and tweeted an article from The Rumpus.net named "The Careless Language of Sexual Violence".  Click on the name of the article to go read the article.  Come back here when finished reading. 

Warning:  A rant is coming.  The article may also trigger abuse survivors to anger or rage.  The post is worthy of reading and will educate all of us about how our society views rape and its victims today.

"The Careless Language of Sexual Violence" was written by writer Roxane Gay in response to a New York Times article written by James McKinley, Jr. entitled "Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town".

I only read the first part of "The Careless Language of Sexual Violence" before I went to the end of the article and left the following comment:

"I could not read all of your post.  I am so angry that anybody would dare to blame an 11-year-old girl for her own rape.  I don't care what she was wearing or not wearing, she is a child.  Who cares what is going to happen to those boys who raped her.  They probably won't get what they deserve with our court system being what it is.  They should get a life sentence because that is what the 11-year-old just got - a lifetime sentence of feeling betrayed, not trusting, blaming herself, having to deal with what other people think, a lifetime of being afraid, of feeling ashamed because of what was done to her.  How have we failed to teach respect for women in our society?"

A few hours after leaving the above comment, I went back to The Rumpus.net and finished reading the article along with all of the comments by Ms Gay's other readers.  I am glad that I did.  Ms Gay expresses how society has become desensitized to rape and how its victims are affected.  I have been saying for many years that all of the violence that children and adults watch on TV and in movies helps to build up a tolerance for violence.  I personally believe desensitization toward violence is one reason that bullying is so out of control now.  I believe this same process has made society not as sympathetic toward rape victims as they should be.

I thank you Ms Gay for writing this article.   I applause all of the commenters at the end of the article who defend the 11- year-old girl.  An 11-old-girl is a child by anyone's standards.  Please remember that.  A child is never responsible for their own rape.  Neither is a 20-year-old or an 80-year-old woman or man.  Yes, rape does sometimes happen to boys and men.  Rape is not about the victim.  Rape is about the rapest and his/her need to control and humiliate another person.  Rape is not about sex.  Violence and control are why rapes happen.

My next post will be about the original article by the New York Times - "Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town."
Patricia 

In The Process Of Forgiving, Self-Forgiveness Comes After The Feelings

Forgiveness does not mean "getting over it" as some people will tell you to do.  There is no "getting over" no matter how much you try, no matter how much pain you are in, no matter how much you may wish you could "get over it."  In my experience, "getting over it" just doesn't work.

I tried many times and many ways to get over, under, and around the pain of incest.  I even tried denying my pain and feelings and wearing a smiling, happy face for several years.  None of it worked.  I even tried stuffing it down with food and denied myself access to my dad's family of origin for 10 years in an attempt to be happy and normal.  The reality was Hell instead.  I wasn't happy.  I wore a mask of sweetness with my friends and almost continual feelings of rage that kept escaping and affecting me and those I loved. 

In some ways, I recreated the home of my childhood.  I was the raging controller [my dad].  My husband was the passive-aggressive one [my mom].

I tried controlling and fixing everyone else's problems so I wouldn't have to feel my own pain or look at my own problems.  None of it worked and I still couldn't forgive.  I just hated myself more.  I ignored my physical and emotional needs.  I pretended they never existed, just like my parents did when I was a child.

I often tell others that I was blessed to have a dad and grandfather who were alcoholics because when I  was able to see myself as an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, I was able to finally see who I was and what the family disease of alcoholism was doing to my life.  Add the incest on top of that and the mixture was even more dysfunctional and often intense.

Getting a sponsor in my 12-Step programs was my second blessing in recovery.  Thank you, Jack.  He made me start attending Al-Anon meetings not long after I started Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings.  I can honestly say that Adult Children meetings saved my life and my sanity and helped me find myself where I was finally able to do forgiveness further down the road.  The Al-Anon meetings were about healthy and unhealthy relationships and helped me save my marriage and start a new relationship of healing and forgiveness with myself and my family.

I had to heal me before I could even think about forgiveness.  I had to feel and work through my feelings of anger, rage, shame, hurt, betrayal, trust, abandonment and safety.  I had to first create a feeling of safety before I could begin to trust myself or anyone else.

My 12-Step sponsor had me make a list of people that I needed to make amends to.  Then he told me to put myself at the top of the list.  Then I had to make a list of things that I needed to forgive myself for first.


That list for self-forgiveness included:

Forgiving myself for believing the lies of my abusers.

Forgiving me, the adult, for ever believing that the child me was capable of protecting herself.  I wasn't given the tools to do that by my parents.  I was just a child.

Forgiving me, the adult, for blaming the child me for the incest.

Forgiving me, the adult, for staying silent about the incest for so long.

Forgiving me, the adult, for abandoning my own inner children when they really needed me the most.

Forgiving me, the adult, for adding on more abuse by listening and believing my inner critic voices for so long.

Forgiving me, the adult, for using food to keep my feelings buried inside for so long.

Forgiving  me, the adult, for being so afraid all the time instead of living my life to its fullest.

Forgiving me, the adult, for allowing my rage to control me and for using that rage to hurt others.

Forgiving me, the adult, for living in denial for so long.

Forgiving me, the adult, for being so controlling of people and circumstances and becoming my dad the dictator, in the early years of my marriage.

Forgiving me, the adult, for hiding behind a mask and not allowing the real me to shine my Light for others to see. 

Forgiving me, the adult, for carrying around the shame of my abusers and believing it was mine.

Forgiving me, the adult, for not seeing the abuse of bullying that my daughter went through in her teenage years of high school because I was so focused on my own needs at the time.

Forgiving me, the adult, for not being a better protector of my daughter when a teenage boy made sexual advances toward her when she was 10 years old.

Forgiving me, the adult, for passing so many of my fears on to my children so that my son suffers from panic attacks today.

Forgiving me, the adult, for not being more emotionally present for my children, when I was so focused on my early recovery that they probably felt that I wasn't there for them.  In many ways, I wasn't.

Forgiving me, the adult, for lashing out at my husband with my rage before I reached the stage of being able to control it and hurting the person, other than my children, that I love the most.


The child that I was doesn't need forgiving.  The abuse was never her fault.  She didn't deserve to be treated the way that she was by her abusers.  She was blameless and shameless for what was done by the adults in her life.
Patricia

Links to other posts on forgiveness:

Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker's post
"Forgiveness Is Not Forgetting The Child Abuse"
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2010/10/forgiveness-is-not-forgetting-child.html

Emerging From Broken's post
"Forgive the Abusers? A bit of a Rant"
@ http://emergingfrombroken.com/forgive-the-abusers-a-bit-of-a-rant/

Overcoming Sexual Abuse's post
"What About Forgiveness"
@ http://overcomingsexualabuse.com/2010/10/28/what-about-forgiveness/

Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker's post
"Revisiting Forgiveness"
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/06/revisiting-forgiveness.html

Dear Daddy - Facing My Incest Abuser

June 29, 1992

Dear Daddy,

You used me and sexually abused me when I was just a child.  You betrayed me when you were supposed to be taking care of me and helping me to grow up.  I loved you and you used that to hurt me.  What you did was wrong.  I was just a child.  I couldn't stop what you were doing.  You were the adult and responsible for your own actions.  Nothing you did was ever my fault.  You, as an adult, should have been in control of your actions.  Instead, you took advantage of a little child who did nothing to encourage your actions.  I never wanted you to be anything but my Daddy.

I never wanted to be your sexual partner.  I loved you, but I also hated you for what you were doing to me.  Did you know that I hated you?  Did you know that I was afraid of your temper?  Did you know that I don't sleep well at night because of you?

No longer can you be a part of my life.  Your influence is too painful and too destructive to those I love.  I will not let you hurt me or my family.

I give you back your shame and your anger.  I refuse to accept any part of it.  You are alone because you use and hurt people who try to love you.  I refuse to feel dirty or bad or guilty because of what you did.  I did nothing wrong.

I am putting my life together and becoming who I want to be and you have no place in my life any more.  Right now I don't feel any love for you, I only feel anger toward you.  I feel sad for the life that we could have had when I was a child and for the relationship we could have had as adults if you had just loved me instead.

Your kind of love is too sick and I won't have that in my life.  The price is too high.  I am learning to deal with my own pain and anger just as you will have to live with yours.  Please stay out of my life.  I don't need you.

I feel sad that my children do not have a grandfather that they can love and who can be there to watch them grow up to be adults.  I intend to tell them why you are not in their lives so that you can never abuse them.  I can protect them as I could not protect myself from you and your so-called love.
Patricia


I wrote this letter with the intent of reading it to my dad face-to-face but that didn't happen.  He suddenly disappeared when I started trying to track him down.  Then I decided to mail the letter to him but nobody had an address for him.  I held on to the letter.

Finally one evening months later, I got called to the phone by my husband.  My dad was on the line wanting me to do something for him.  I told him I was glad that he had called because I had something that I wanted to read to him.  I went and got the letter I had written.  When I started to read, he got angry and interrupted me.  I got angry and told him to just shut up and listen.  He said okay.  I was shaking so hard that it showed in my voice as I read the above letter to him.  When I finished, he said that if that was the way that I wanted it to be, then fine, that is how it would be.  We hung up.  I didn't talk to him again until he was in the hospital sometime in 1999.  His sister had called me and told me that Dad had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor.  Surgery was done but all of the tumor could not be removed.  He died early sometime on the morning of January 6, 2001.  He died as he lived - alone.
Patricia

Childhood Issues Can Create Dysfunctional Relationships For Adults

I am reading a book called Becoming Your Own Parent, The Solution for Adult Children of Alcoholic and Other Dysfunctional Families.  The author of this book is Dennis Wholey who also wrote the book The Courage to Change.  I read both of these great books back in the 1990's when I was first involved in recovery and 12-Step meetings.  If you haven't read them, I encourage you to check them out.  They are both a great resource for Adult Children from dysfunctional homes.

Today, I visited one of my favorite blogs Emerging From Broken written by Darlene Ouimet.  In choosing to tell her own story of recovery from abuse, Darlene is constantly told that she is also telling the story of others, both women and men, who read her blog.  She often tells bits and pieces of what could be my own story of incest.  For awhile Darlene has been writing about the lies that formed her belief system during her childhood.  She talks about the dysfunctional family that gave her this false belief system.  Darlene posted two blog articles this week talking about dysfunctional relationships.

Here are the links for Darlene's two blog articles:
Standing up to Dysfunctional Relationship:
http://emergingfrombroken.com/standing-up-to-dysfunctional-relationship/
Standing up to Dysfunctional Relationship Part 2:
http://emergingfrombroken.com/standing-up-to-dysfunctional-relationship-part-2/

Click on the above links and go read the blog articles.  Be sure to take the time to read each of the blog comments too.  They are well worth your time to read.  So many of us know what Darlene is talking about - the dysfunctional family system and its effects upon us in our adult relationships.  Many of us recreate those childhood relationships when we are adults.

Here I am going to paraphrase,combine, and add to my comments that I left on each of her blog articles.  Much of the information also comes from the book Becoming Your Own Parent that I mentioned above. 

Dennis Wholey quotes a number of expects in the field of recovery in his book in explaining the differences between a healthy family system and an unhealthy or dysfunctional family system. One of the experts that Mr. Wholey quotes is "Therapist, lecturer, and consultant Terence T. Gorski, M. A." (page 175)  On page 176, Mr. Gorski says about dysfunctional families that "The norm is struggle, chaos, confusion, and pain.  Relationships chew you up.  Sometimes a relationship gets really good for a short period of time, but doesn't last.  It returns to the norm of being a painful, horrible place to live."

Continuing on Page 176, Terence Gorski says, " In a dysfunctional home the child learns that relationships entail a difficult, painful struggle; they temporarily feel good, but will rapidly decay back into a difficult, stuggling, and painful situation.  The child learns that at five or seven or ten or fifteen years of age."

"Children from dysfunctional environments often end up in bad relationships because they believe on a fundamental level, 'I'm not worthy of being loved and the only way I can get somebody to love me is to trick them into believing I'm somebody that I'm not.' "

On page 177, Mr. Gorski says, "People who come out of a dysfunctional home unconsciously either re-create their family of origin or the polar opposite.  A person either blindly conforms with, or blindly rebels against, what he or she was unconsciously taught as a child.  In both cases there is no free individual choice."

Also, on page 177, Gorski says, " In making the decision to conform, the child decides that the family of origin is good and he or she therefore is bad.  To be good, the child must make the family right.  In making the decision to rebel, the child believes that the family is bad and he or she is too good to live like that.  To be good, the child must do the opposite, whether or not it is in his or her best interest."

Here is part of my comment to Darlene's first post, "Something that I have found true for me is that when I work on my own childhood issues, the relationship issues with my husband often take care of themselves.  I don't say that to mean don't work on your relationship issues.  Believe me when I say that you should work on any abusive or dysfunctional relationship issues that you have.  Many, if not all, of my relationship issues came from my childhood issues.  Relationship issues are often built upon the lies about love and respect that we were taught as children.  Mine sure were."

In my childhood, my dad played the role of dictator and rage-aholic.  My mom played a role of being passive-aggressive.  She was mild and meek, following my dad's lead.  She allowed him to make all of the decisions in our family life.  I saw my dad as strong and having all of the power in their relationship.  I saw my mother as weak and powerless.  I did not want to be weak and powerless like my mother so I chose the role of controller and that left the passive-aggressive role for my husband to fill.  I promised myself when I left home that I would never be controlled by another dictator like my dad.  In rebelling against my dad's control in my childhood, I stepped into that role in my marriage.  I thought if I could control everything and everybody that I would feel safe and not be so afraid.  It seemed to work for a little while.  My husband and I both played our roles well in the beginning.  Nothing about those early years of our marriage made me happy.  I can't speak for my husband and his feelings about those early years but I doubt that he liked it much when his brothers called him henpecked.  I doubt he liked it any better than I did when his grandmother asked early on which one of us was going to "wear the pants in the family."  I didn't see myself as a controller back then and I was very hurt by her comment at the time.  I was continuing the belief system unconsciously as Mr. Gorski talked about in the quote above.  By making myself the strong and powerful controller, I abused my husband as my dad did my mom with his controlling.  By choosing to marry a passive-aggressive person, I also chose to continue the cycle of abuse.  My controlling was right out there in front for everyone to see.  Passive-aggressive behavior is much more difficult to see and overcome because it is more hidden.  It can sometimes be more destructive because it isn't out in the open. 

I want to share with you here, just in case you didn't take the time to go and read the comment section of Darlene's second article, the comment that I wrote about dysfunctional families assigning roles:  "Dysfunctional family systems assign roles to each of its members.  The roles are not flexible and are not up for discussion.  The system is very rigid.

Someone is always the scapegoat.  The scapegoat is the one who is always wrong, always blamed for everything that goes wrong in the family.  The quickest way to become a scapegoat [as an adult] is to dare to be the one to want change, to be the one who demands that the truth be told instead of continuing to believe the lies and secrets of the family.

The dysfunctional family system will do everything possible to keep the family system in tact, even resorting to disowning the one who wants to change or the one who suddenly is willing to share the family 'secrets.'  Yes, it hurts to be that person and you are worth the end result that you get - freedom from abuse."

I remember being hurt once by a comment one of my uncles made about me being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.  It wasn't want he said.  It was the derisive tone of his voice that hurt.  I haven't been disowned by my family for breaking the silence of abuse.  I was the one who chose not to have contact with my dad for over ten years before he died because he was still an alcoholic and I wasn't convinced that he wouldn't do something to try to hurt either of my children.  Many Adult Children are disowned by their families when they decided to talk about the family secret of abuse and dysfunction.  Many of us are labeled as crazy, drama queens and troublemakers because we refuse to continue to play the roles assigned to us in our dysfunctional family of origin.  Many of us decide to stop playing those roles when we realize that the role is not who we are and we realize that in playing the role, we somehow lost ourselves.  Finding out who I am is what most of my journey of recovery has been all about.
Patricia

What Am I Responsible For?

Courage to Change, One Day at a Time in Al-Anon II, Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., New York, NY, 1992, page 85, March 25:

"I came to Al-Anon confused about what was and was not my responsibility.  Today, after lots of Step work, I believe I am responsible for the following:  to be loyal to my values; to please myself first; to keep an open mind; to detach with love; to rid myself of anger and resentment; to express my ideas and feelings instead of stuffing them; to attend Al-Anon meetings and keep in touch with friends in the fellowship; to be realistic in my expectations; to make healthy choices; and to be grateful for my blessings.

. . . . . . . . . .

I am not responsible for my alcoholic loved one's drinking, sobriety, job, cleanliness, diet, dental hygiene, or other choices.  It is my responsibility to treat this person with courtesy, gentleness, and love.  In this way we both can grow.

Today's reminder
Today, if I am tempted to interfere with something that is none of my business, I can turn my attention instead to some way in which I can take care of myself.

'I have a primary responsibility to myself:  to make myself into the best person I can possibly be.  Then, and only then, will I have something worthwhile to share.'
Living With Sobriety"

Last night's Al-Anon meeting was on Guilt and Taking Care of Ourselves.  I was one of the last people given a chance to talk and I passed because everything had already been said and I didn't have anything new to add to the conversation.  I was thumbing through one of my Al-Anon books and found the above reading that I am sharing with you today.  Here are some of my thoughts on my own experiences with blaming, responsibility and taking care of myself.

As an incest survivor and an Adult Child of an Alcoholic, I learned blaming at an early age.  Both parents taught it to me.  When I came into Al-Anon back in April 1989, I blamed myself for just about everything that could go wrong in my life and in yours.  I read somewhere that an abused child accepts blame for their own abuse because it makes them feel that there is something in their world that they can control.  That feels right to me.  I felt so helpless in my childhood that I needed to feel in control of something, even if it was just blaming myself for the abuse.  A young child needs their parents to survive.  You don't want to admit that the person who is in control of your very survival is abusing you.  You need that person in order for you to survive.  You need to be able to trust that person so you blame yourself.  You tell yourself that the abuse is your fault.  You must be at fault therefore, you learn to blame yourself for being molested or for being beaten or for being tortured.  You need the parent that you love so much to be faultless, after all, they are God in your small world.  They can't be wrong.  They have all the power.  Your survival depends upon them.

When I came into Al-Anon, I learned that I wasn't to blame for the incest.  He was the adult.  I was just a child doing what my parent said.  I wasn't to blame.  I was not in control.  This was not my responsibility.  I learned to forgive myself for carrying that blame around for so long.  I learned to take care of myself.

In learning to let go of what was not my responsibility, I started to heal.  I learned that I had needs and wants that were okay to have.  I learned to meet my own needs instead of expecting or hoping that others would do it for me.  I learned that I was responsible for my own happiness, not my husband or my children.  I learned to feel rather than stuff my emotions.  I learned that it was okay to be angry, hurt, sad, lonely, disgusted.  I learned that my rage wouldn't hurt anyone else and it wouldn't hurt me once I quit stuffing it.  I learned that some of my headaches were my own resistance to what is.  I learned that I couldn't change my past but I could change my reaction to that past.  I learned that what I am not responsible for isn't my business.  I learned that I wasn't responsible for fixing you or the world.  I learned that what you do or don't do isn't a reflection of me, it is a reflection of you.  I learned that what you think about me is none of my business.  I learned to respect you and your journey as well as to respect myself and my journey.  I learned that my expectations offer set me up for holding resentments against you.  You are not my judge and I am not yours.  I learned that I often judge myself more harshly than anyone else ever could.  I don't have to be perfect and neither do you.

Now, do you see why I still go to Al-Anon meetings.  I continue to learn more about myself in each meeting that I go to.  I realize just how crazy I once was and how far I have come from being that person.  Thank you, God and thank you, Al-Anon.
Patricia

Related Articles:
Blame Keeps You Stuck---Incest May Be A Part Of My Life Series---Part 7
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/01/blame-keeps-you-stuck-incest-may-be.html

Blame And Resentment Are Toxic Emotions
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/06/blame-and-resentment-are-toxic-emotions.html

Growing Up With Alcoholism In The Family
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/09/growing-up-with-alcoholism-in-family.html

What Does Forgiveness Mean To Me?
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-forgiveness-mean-to-me.html

Inspiration, Denial And Incest

This post is the result of a comment that I received on my last post "What Childhood Incest Taught Me". You will find the words from the comment here in italics when I quote it.

Warning this comment and post may be triggering.

I came through here looking for something inspirational to read and this is what I've found. I am feeling overwhelmingly sad for whoever this is. That life is one noone would choose to bare or even wish on the worst of people.

For inspirational, you picked the wrong post. And for "whoever this is", that is me. These were the lessons that I learned. I know from other comments and friends that these were also lessons that they learned from their own childhoods of abuse.

For anyone who has read my blog for very long, you know that some of my blog posts are inspirational. Some of my blog posts are about the very real facts, feelings, memories and stages of living with and dealing with the effects of incest. There is nothing inspirational about those posts. Yes, I know that some of them are difficult to read. They are also difficult for me to write even though I am in a better place in my life today. Sometimes I still feel the pain, sadness, anger and hurt of that abuse. Those blog posts I write are for other abuse survivors to let them know what my own experiences have been and to let them know that they are not alone. I have been there. I know it for the hell that it can be, especially when you feel so alone and so sad that you wonder if life is even worth living. I have always managed to take the next step. Sometimes it is two steps forward and one step back. That is the road to recovery. There is nothing easy about it.


For your experiences, all of you, I am truly heartbroken.

Thank you for your compassion and empathy. They are appreciated.


But there is something you each must realize. You each have suffered, in your own time, some of you maybe once or twice, others for years. But those times are not here, those years are not these years.

Part of my comment reply to this comment fits here: My question to you is, "Have you experienced any major trauma or abuse in your life?" It doesn't sound like it. If you haven't, you have no idea what it is like or how difficult it is to get over it.


You have to realize that sometimes life hands us so much... and all the while the world is so cruel. We start to feel like that is all that is ever to be dealt us. But it just isn't. You must each move on. I know you may think that this is impossible. But I know that as you read this those encounters are distant, very real, experiences. Key word being distant.

You have probably never had flashbacks or nightmares or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Soldiers aren't the only ones who get PTSD. Survivors of child abuse and survivors of sexual abuse do too. When those symptoms happen, you are not in control of your feelings or actions. You can be thrown back into "those years". Nobody wants that to happen but it does, sometimes on a daily basis. It takes years of therapy to recover from these. "Key word being distant." There is nothing distant about those years when you are in the middle of a flashback or nightmare. You can tell me they aren't real but when you are in the middle of it, they are very real. Have you ever had a flashback? If not, you don't know what you are talking about.


You are each holding so closely to something that with every single thought of it your heart breaks inside. Why are you choosing to hold on?

Why would anyone choose to hold on to the kind of emotional pain that most people can't even imagine, if they had a choice? Just choosing to be happy sounds like a really good reality but it is very often the road to denial. I did that road for a lot of years. That road that says, "I don't feel anything about the incest. I don't hate my abusers. I don't hate myself. I don't feel anything so I can't be affected by the incest. It doesn't affect my life, my decisions, my children, me. Life is fine. Life is great." The road to denial is a road of lies. I was disconnected from my feelings, from myself. I did hate myself. I did hate my abusers. I was so full of rage, sadness and hurt that I couldn't feel anything else. If you deny any feelings, you deny them all. I had a volcano of fire inside of me that caused headaches, stomach aches and other physical symptoms that shows what I was holding in rather than dealing with. I was taught all of this denial as a child. The denial didn't stop until I got sick and realized that denial didn't work. That is the real world of an incest survivor.

Just letting go of all of the pain isn't really an option until you have worked through all of your issues. Then the letting go is possible. Is it an instant possibility, just in the case of a miracle. I do believe in miracles. I also know that denial is alive and well until I choose to let go of it and face the reality of incest.


You have to realize that you are something amazing on the inside. That the real true parts of us are ones that NO ONE can touch but you.

I can agree with the above statement. On the spiritual level, my Higher Self is untouchable by what happens to my body. The truth is that each of us is a Light to the world. Sometimes that Light does get hidden by the struggles of Life. This isn't something that a child who is being abused or an adult who is still suffering from the abuse is even aware of. On a spiritual level, I can even say that "Yes, I chose this lifetime to learn the lessons that incest teaches me. My parents chose to help teach me those lessons." It has taken me years to reach the level of acceptance that this requires. Most abuse survivors aren't there yet. Do I condemn them as stupid or not whole or anything else derogatory because they aren't at this level of understanding yet? No, not at all. There are still some days that I question the validity of those beliefs and they are my own. Do I expect everyone else to accept and live by those "spiritual" beliefs? Again, no, not at all. Is it ok if you disagree with me? Yes, absolutely. Do I want to hear how you disagree with me? Only if it is offered in a respectful manner.


What happened to you, happened to your body. And you each, understandably, allowed it to alter more than just your body. You let your spirits still feel the pain.

I don't know about you but, yes, I live in a physical world which affects my mental and emotional world. I believe that my spiritual world encompasses all of the others and uses those others to teach its lessons. I eventually see the blessings that come from going through the pain but not until I have worked through the pain.

Again you used the word "let" as if the victim of abuse knows that they have choices. Victims don't know that they have choices. Choices didn't exist for me for many, many years because I believed the lies of the abuser who told me he was in control and that I had to do what he told me to do. I had no choices until I got into a recovery program and learned what choices meant. That is when I learned that I was responsible for my own life and my own choices. That is a very big lesson for survivors. Not everyone learns that lesson.


Just imagine yourself as a light inside a dark cave. No matter how dark it is on the outside, no matter how it may storm, it doesn't change that there is light on the inside. You are safe because you are that light.

As an incest survivor, I didn't learn that the world was a safe place. Yes, I have always been aware of that inner Light. That inner Light is probably the only thing that kept me from splitting into different personalities as some childhood abuse survivors do. My Spirit has always been and will always be safe. My physical world has never felt safe.


You are you at the happiest moments in your life, not the you that always returns home to your pain.

You live in a world of duality---Light and Dark, Love and Fear, Good and Evil, Day and Night, Sad and Happy, Calm and Chaos. You can't have one without the other. Without Sad how would you know what Happy is? Without Evil how would you know what Good is? Without Fear how would you know what Safe is or Love is? Hate isn't the opposite of Love, Fear is. Lack of Love equals Fear. You can't know what the "happiest moments in your life" are unless you know what the worst moments of your life are.


Let it go now. Move on. Decide you have this one life, and no matter what the world will ever throw at you will never matter.

I have discovered that those people who tell me to "Let it go now. Move on." are usually one of two types. They either have never experienced what I have and therefore know nothing about the process that it takes to heal. Or, they have their own abuse issues that they want to stay in denial of. If you see me going through my issues and haven't dealt with your own, then my struggle threatens your denial. That is why you tell me to let it go and to move on so that you don't have to become aware of your own unresolved issues.

I feel sad for those who are still in denial of their own issues. I have little sympathy for those who don't know what they are talking about because they have never experienced what I have. If you haven't been there, you have no idea of what it takes to live my life and to struggle to get better. Don't tell me to get over it. If you have been where I am and were able to let go of your issues by healing them, then tell me how you did it. Share your experiences and what worked. Don't share your denial of your issues. I don't need that. I did that, on my own, years ago and I know that denial just helps you continue to live in the pain. Denial heals nothing. When you are in denial, you aren't happy. You aren't free. The only way to freedom is through the pain, not around it.


You are stronger now than anyone will ever know. You can take this world on and actually live free from your past.

Yes, I am stronger than even I knew that I would ever be. I am more courageous than I ever thought I could be. I am more compassionate that I ever thought possible. I am proud to be the woman that I am today. I am the best parent that I know how to be to my inner child.

I don't live completely free from my past. I don't believe that that is totally possible. I don't know that I would want it to be. My past has formed who I am today. Without that past I would not be stronger, more courageous, compassionate, proud of who I am today. Without my past, I would not be aware of the blessings of my life today. Yes, today, I can take on whatever the world throws at me. This is true because of my past.


Some of you maybe have already found a church. But some of you may feel like there are far too many questions. But all I can say is...you can walk make the decision to just say goodbye to all that stuff you can't bring back or change. And never have to think about it again. The person that hurt you had their free will, and they chose to storm boldly away from what was right, and you suffered. That makes it the fault of no one but them, not you and definitely not God. Choose to forget and start living your life in the light. Remember these bodies die, but we will never die. Where are you headed, and lets make it great! "Love your neighbor as yourself" said someone very special. It's great advice. Good Luck.

The comment about finding a church can be a future post all of its own. I "found a church", but many others, not just survivors, choose differently. I am happy with my church. That is my choice.

I don't blame God for what happened to me. I never have. I know that some survivors do. I did turn my back on God for a few years because I thought He did nothing to stop the abuse. A part of me always felt His presence in my life. That presence is what gave me the strength to survive when many others didn't.

I know that some don't believe in a God who could allow such abuses to happen to a child. Others look to God for grace and love. I believe in free will and that you are each responsible for your own actions. I know that some of the abused go on to abuse the next generation. Most of you don't. Many choose to stop the abuse rather than pass it on to future generations.

Some of you choose to share your own experiences, as I do, by blogging about them online. Others choose to write in private journals. Some of you still continue in the silence because you haven't found your voice yet. It is for other incest and childhood abuse survivors that I write of my experiences. Any time that someone survives abuse in any form and can write about that journey, that is inspirational. It isn't light, funny inspiration. It is sad, thoughtful, sometimes tearful. It is always heartfelt. Sometimes it comes from a deep well of hurt. It is always healing to be able to bring these thoughts and feelings to the surface and share them with others. It can be educational to share with others who have never experienced abuse in their own lives. Without awareness, you can stop nothing.

If you come here looking for happy and joyful and light, sometimes you will find it here. Other times you won't. I won't apologize for my words. This is my life. I share it to give strength and hope to other survivors. I also share it to spread awareness of the evil disease of abuse that lives in this world. I look forward to hearing what you think about this post and any other post that you want to comment on. I reserve the right to agree or disagree with your comments.
Patricia

A Wake Up Call And A Committment To Myself

One of my favorite Aussie bloggers, Craig Harper, wrote a recent article that he called "Clarity and Certainty" on his blog RENOVATE YOUR LIFE. You can find the article at the following link:

http://www.craigharper.com.au/news/clarity-and-certainty/

One of the comments that you will read at the end of his article is mine. I want you to be aware of what I wrote so I am writing it here in its entirety.

"You have described quite well what the first 38 years of my life was like. I was a people pleaser and was on automatic control most of time so that I did not have to feel the pain from my childhood of incest abuse. At 38, I got into several 12-Step programs that helped me to wake up to what my life had become and these programs finally gave me a direction.

Even in these programs, I daily saw people who said they were working their programs but who were really still on automatic control and staying stuck in their pain. It is easy to get stuck in blaming others for how your life is going. As long as you are blaming others, you still haven't taken control of your own life.

Recently I have found myself back on automatic control where my body is concerned. I woke up over a year ago and started looking at my health problems. I am overweight and a diabetic. My A1C tests say that my blood sugar is good to great even with the extra weight that I am carrying.

Because of an earlier article of yours last month or maybe early in September, as well as my yearly physical and those test results, I have decided it is time to wake up and take control back of my body. This article is very timely for me.

If I lived in Australia, I would somehow find the money to sign up in one of your gyms. Instead I am going to start using my exercise machines here in my own home while I look for a gym that I can afford to join and feel comfortable in. I will turn 58 in December so I need a place that isn't all 20-year-olds with great looking bodies.

Well, by voicing this here on your blog, I have finally made the committment, that I have been playing with, out loud, in front of others. I think that I will now go to my own blog and say the same thing and make myself accountable to others who are following my journey.
Thanks, Craig
Patricia from Arkansas, USA
Also known as Patricia - Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker"

Now you know the truth. I am making this committment to myself, in front of all of you, my readers. I have been struggling with this for awhile without really making the committment to do anything. Now, since you know my secret, I have to do something. I can't continue on cruise control. I looked at pictures of myself during our vacation last week and I really don't like the way that I look. The weight has slowly crept on to my body over the past 2 years. It hinders my ability to be as active as I want to be in my life.

We did a lot of walking during our vacation, my shins got so sore for about 4 days that it hurt to walk so we didn't spend as much time exploring Mesa Verde National Park as we had planned to do. When we were in Salt Lake City if I walked uphill much, my chest would start to hurt around my heart and I would start to gasp for breath and would have to sit down for awhile. I hate that. It meant that I missed time with my family.

I didn't tell anyone why I had to keep sitting down. My doctor says my heart sounds good. I had a yearly physical just before we left on vacation but didn't get the results until we got home. The doctor told me to lose 6-8 pounds because my liver function was a little elevated. I don't know what that means exactly. The 12-Step programs that I have participated in included Open A.A. meetings because I am not an alcoholic. The liver problem is not from alcohol consumption. I rarely drink even socially because of the alcoholic gene that I carry from my father and grandfather. As a child, I saw how destructive alcoholism can be so I choose not to drink. I am guessing and will ask the doctor if the liver problem has to do more with medications for headaches and migraines that I have had the past few years.

I ask for your love, prayers and support on this part of my journey and I thank you.
Patricia

Out Of My Comfort Zone---A New Al-Anon Sponsor

I am way out of my comfort zone this week, for several reasons.

First, on Wednesday after the Al-Anon meeting, I asked a lady to be my sponsor. That makes me accountable to her for my behavior and growth. When I asked her was during a hug. I started crying---still don't know what that was about. I told her that I have been meaning to ask her to be my sponsor for awhile. My obstacles to asking her have been my fear of being rejected, fear of being blamed for the incest, and fear of not being worthy of her time. Having a sponsor in Al-Anon means seeing her in person for discussions about my recovery, or lack thereof, while using the 12 Steps of Al-Anon to create growth in my life and talking to her on the phone several days a week besides at Al-Anon meetings. I touched a spark of shame that I didn't know was still there. That spark was about not being worthy of taking up someone else's time. That is my biggest reason for not calling someone else on the phone when I need help. Well, this week, I went out on a limb and asked. It left me feeling vulnerable which is a feeling that I still haven't learn to be ok with. Feeling vulnerable means not feeling safe to me.

My first sponsor was a male friend from Adult Children of Alcoholics. I was told that women should have women sponsors and men should have men sponsors so that no 13th stepping goes on. (I think it is called 13th stepping. I am not sure.) It prevents possible sexual abuse happening between the man and woman. At the time that I picked my male sponsor, I was more afraid of being judged by a woman. Most of the women in my life when I was a child were extremely judgmental. That was my biggest fear from women. At the time, I couldn't face that possibility. He was my sponsor until his wife came along. Then she became my co-sponsor. After her death ( http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/07/most-influencial-person-3-recovery.html ), I was very angry at God and didn't want another sponsor that could leave and abandon me. After a few months, I asked another lady to be my sponsor. This was only for a short time before I stopped going to Al-Anon.

Asking another person to be my sponsor is a very big step for me because it means that I have to do the First Step and give up control to another person as well as to God. It means that I now have to work all 12 Steps over again with a new person in charge. It is very hard for me to give any control over to another person in my life.

My new sponsor asked me to be sure and share all of the good stuff in my life too if I am going to share all of the garbage that comes along. Knowing me as well as I do, you will be hearing more about this new part of my journey. I made the committment to call my new sponsor every week which I haven't done yet. We did meet at McDonald's earlier in the week for breakfast and our first discussion as sponsor/sponsee.
Patricia

Lies Incest Perpretrators Tell Their Victims

Lies Incest Perpretrators Tell Their Victims:

1. This is your fault. You are bad, therefore it is ok for me to do this to you. You deserve it.

2. No one will believe you. You are just a kid, no one will believe you over an adult. Your mom doesn't want to know.

3. I love you. The only reason that I am doing this to you is because I love you. You are special to me. We have a special bond between us that you can't share with anyone else. They wouldn't believe you if you told them.

4. Your mother doesn't care. She wouldn't stop this if she knew. She doesn't love me the way that you do. She hates sex. I have to get it somewhere. If you say no, then I will have to cheat on your mother with some other woman. You don't want that to happen do you. It would be your fault if we split up.

5. You don't want to hurt your mother by telling her, do you? This is just our little secret. Besides, she wouldn't believe you. She would be jealous if she knew.

6. You seduced me. It is all your fault.

7. You know you wanted it. If you didn't want it, I wouldn't do it.

8. You don't mean it when you say no. I know you love me and you want it as much as I do.

9. You have to do what I say. I am the adult. What you want isn't important. Do what I say or you will get a beating.

10. What women want doesn't matter. I am a man. I am the important one in this family. What I say goes no matter what. Women are trash to be used for sex when the man wants. That is all you are good for.

These were the lies that I was told as a child by my dad. I don't think they are any different than the lies told to other children from abusive homes. As an adult, I no longer believe these lies. As a child, I didn't know that they were lies made up by my dad to keep me under his rule.
Patricia