Unmasked

"Do you want me to cover your nose or your mouth?
We leave only one open so you can breathe."

Crap. I hadn't thought that far ahead. Momentarily, I panic. Please don't take away my voice. If she covers my mouth I will feel like I have no voice. If she covers my nose I might hyperventilate. Uncertain, I ask what other people have done. She tells me they usually choose to have their mouth covered. I breathe deep and tell her okay, cover my mouth then. God, this takes trust. I am truly at her mercy. I hadn't thought that far ahead, either.

And so my therapist begins. Gently she wipes my whole face down with Vaseline, making sure my eyebrows, eyelashes, and the hither and yon wiry hairs that grow above my upper lip, are covered. Neither of us wishes to turn this into an impromptu waxing session although I've always thought it might be nice to have my eyebrows done. Satisfied that every bit of skin is covered she then cuts strips of plaster. I watch as the powdery mesh piles up on her lap.

Next she dips a strip of mesh into water and starts placing it on my Vaseline caressed skin. First a strip across my forehead, then one along my jawline. One down the center of my nose. One by one she lifts the wet strips and places them on my face. Before too long I sense my expression becoming fixed. Just before she places a strip over my mouth she warns me. We grin at each other, for we both know how I love to talk. I feel my cheeks move up against the plaster as I smile and I tell her she will have to push the wet strips back in place. She works deftly, fingers smoothing out the roughness, as she places layer upoon layer of wet plaster on my face, working quickly before it sets.

She tells me she is going to do my eyes now. Oh, so that's why my eyelashes needed to be Vaselined. I had imagined a mask with eyes open and mouth free. How else can I see the world around me? How else can I know what's going to happen next? Down go my eyelids and as the wet mesh covers first one eye, and then the other, my world becomes dark.

I decide that the only thing to do is go inward, so I sit quietly. I feel the weight of the mask on my face. It does not escape me, the irony of how heavy a mask truly is. I notice how unmovable my face is becoming, my expression set. A swirl of thoughts runs through my mind as soothing Celtic music plays in the background. I sense my therapist's fingers smoothing and touching my mask. Some bits of the mask are thin and soft, her fingers could easily penetrate the shell. Others places are thick and hard already and it would take a lot for either of us to break the protective covering.

I think on these things.

My mind wanders back to my first session with Fr. Charlie. "Do you wear masks?" he asks me. "Oh, no, not me," I proudly tell him, "wearing masks is what other people do". He sat quietly then, leaving my words to hang in the air. Before too many sessions had passed we both knew I wore layers upon layers of masks. I told him that if I had my way, I'd wear sunglasses year round, because then I could let down my guard. Wearing masks took energy.

The Celtic music rises above my meandering thoughts and it reminds me of my favourite movie. I think about William Wallace and his fight for freedom. I love his passion. His determination. His fierceness. I love his freedom. My body relaxes as I let the music wash over me.

I think about what I might feel when my mask is removed.
My face will be smooth because of the vaseline.
Fresh.
Will I feel reborn?
Breaking through my thoughts comes the phrase,
"You have been set free."
Over and over, like a record stuck on a warp,
the phrase repeats itself,
drowning out everything else.

Slowly, it fades.

Next comes a phrase Fr. Charlie has told me countless times:
"You shall know the truth
and the truth shall set you free."

I picture William Wallace
looking at me as he cries, "Freeeedommmmm."

Goosebumps rise on my arms.

Fr. Charlie and my therapist have never met.
It feels like a hop, skip and jump kind of journey,
one leading me to the other though.
And now, in this session,
the one where I am masked and then unmasked,
the two have merged, both so pivotal
in my quest
for inner freedom.

The mask dries.
I move my face,
first my lips
and then my cheeks
and lastly my eyes.
As I do so, the mask separates from my skin.
Gently my therapist pries the mask
off the last strongholds.

I blink in the daylight
and smile at the mask.
The mask that is
and isn't
me.

Hands To Catch Me

The grace of God is beautiful.
I love that one can never predict it's timing.
One day you wake up to find something has shifted inside.
You know you can't take any credit for it.
You wanted it, you hoped and prayed for it
and it was beyond you to make it happen.
But here it is; it's real and deep
and there's no going back.
That's when I know it's real.
No matter how familiar the old way was,
to go back would kill a little piece of my soul.
and something within me says, "No."
And I'm given the grace to keep facing the light.

I've been in therapy the past 18 months
for things pertaining to childhood sexual abuse.
At one point we were ready to
wrap things up and
call it a day.
Then I had a slip when it came to sexual addiction
and that opened a whole new can of worms.
And once that can had been opened
there was no going back, either.
I thought "Oh, shit, shouldn't have been so honest there."
While knowing dishonesty could kill me.
I didn't want to open a new can of worms because
I sometimes feel scared of the process.
Times like that I feel like I'm jumping blindly
of the edge of a cliff,
trusting there are hands to catch me.

A bunch of gunk needed to be scraped off
the edges of a 35 year old wound.
Long held beliefs that were shit really.
The last few weeks I let go
of thought distortions I've held my whole life long.
I'd given them lip service acknowledgement.
Knew they were distortions in my head
but now my heart knows they are bona fide lies.
Do you ever look at yourself and go
"Holy shit, how'd that happen?"
because you're changed and
you didn't do it.
Most humbling.
Fills me with gratitude.
Those shifts give me hope.
Great hope.

The Power of Choice

"You need to find a way to release your anger and embrace your little girl."

I'm sitting in Fr. Charlie's office yesterday and in the space of two hours I've gone from relaxed and joking to angry and shaking to wanting to curl up in a ball and rock back and forth to soothe myself. I used to stifle my emotions, especially sadness, in these sessions. Well, really I used to stifle my sadness anywhere from the grocery store to church. I was talented at shoving tears down into the abyss of my being at will. I cried more during yesterday's session than I have in all my sessions combined over the past 3 years. I know, I know, that's progress. Exhausting progress.

I'm at one of those turning points again where moving forward means risk. I had an experience earlier this week where I saw, in one of those split second moments where the veil drops, that I keep my cards rather close to my chest. I let next to nobody into that place where I reveal the whole of who I am. My biggest protest yesterday was that if I took said risk I wouldn't feel safe. Being vulnerable makes me feel out of control. In reflection this week I realized I process my journey mostly in my head, all by my lonesome. Yes, I process bits and pieces of it with my sponsor, with friends, and here on my blog with you. But the really deep fears, the thoughts that once voiced would make me feel incredibly vulnerable; those I keep to myself.

The worst of it yesterday was that I thought I was somewhere else in my journey. Like I'd been here so many times before and had moved on already. Finding another layer in this particular onion did not feel like something to celebrate. Fr. Charlie would remind me that it's really not the same place, that I'm a few more revolutions around the mountain since the last time I looked at life from this view.

We talked of fear, shame and guilt. Of power, powerlessness and empowering oneself. Much of it centered around the sexual abuse and how not taking the risk means continuing to let the abuse define me. At that point I wanted to kick my abuser(s) into the ground. The fuckers. I simply shook my head in disbelief over where I'm at.

I don't understand it. I don't have to. Oh, but I want to. Living in my head feels much safer than taking that 18 inch journey to live from my heart. (It really is 18 inches between the two. Good perfectionistic alcoholic that I am, I measured.)

Our session ended with celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I love this Sacrament and the peace that washes over me during absolution. What else is there to say to God other than Here I am in all my brokenness, in much need of Your mercy. [Oh, and by the way, I'm getting on a plane in three days and if I haven't surrendered by then, I will when the plane takes off.] I don't know if priests regularly laugh during confession but I really did say that. And Fr. Charlie really did laugh.

On my drive home I mulled over how my not wanting to risk is really about not wanting to trust. I was thankful for the long drive home so I could pray and think and choose. I've heard it said so many times at meetings that sobriety gives us the power of choice.

Last night I took baby steps towards letting another in. I voiced my fears, those thoughts that come from that little-girl-who-has-to-protect-myself-forever place inside of me. I surrendered to what is, however ugly, broken and wounding to my pride it is. I think that's called accepting life on life's terms. It's two days before my plane's left the ground so I'm ahead of schedule. Lord, oh Lord, have mercy.

Hold The Applause

I try hard not to let the past define me.
There was a time when that was all I knew how to do.
Lord knows that in some Christian circles they applaud real loud for doing so.
If you'd asked me who I was I would have answered with one or more of the following:
Abused child.
Sexually abused child.
Sexually abused teenager.
Alcoholic.
Teen bride.
Abusive mother.
Homeschooler.
Chronically ill woman.
The list could go on.

The work I do in therapy and spiritual direction is helping me drop these labels.The more I heal, the more their impact on my day to day life shrinks.

We are all so much more than a label.
Even. my. brother.

As I sat down this morning to write about my visit with my brother yesterday a questioning thought came into my head.

"Are you going to make him into a them?"

Why yes, yes, I was going to.
Before You wrecked that plan by asking me such a question.

Before my brother arrived yesterday I felt a seething anger.
After he left I went immediately to my counter where there were fresh baked muffins, and stuffed one into my mouth. I wanted to stuff 6 more in in rapid succession but I didn't. That gaping hole inside felt like a screaming cavern.

I was going to write about everything that transpired between the anger and the muffins. Nothing more than ordinary and sometimes strained conversation. Telling body language. A sadness about what is. And about what may never be.

I often rant to my family about people who either want to make me an 'it' or people out of their comfort zone an 'it'. It's always other people I rant about doing that of course. Reading this book challenged me to change years ago. Change that is still in the works, obviously. This morning as I sat down to type I got a reminder that to embrace humanity, means embracing not only my own, but my brother's, too. Knowing that doesn't magically make my anger disappear. It doesn't mean I condone his actions. It doesn't make me want to eat less muffins. But it does mean that if I distance myself from his humanity then I reject something of myself in the process, too. It reinforces my identity as a victim.

I'm still feeling a bit stunned by that question popping into my head just as I was getting ready to write this post. I try to be open to guidance. Some days I swear at its arrival. Sometimes I get rendered darn near speechless. And some days I write a totally different blog post than I'd planned.

Sometimes

"I got that for you," my mom says excitedly.
I look at her and think to myself, "you sick, sick woman."
I don't say anything.
I don't encourage her glee.
I make a mental note to myself to put this on the growing list of
what not to do as a mother of adult children.

This morning my older brother is coming to see me. We live 600 miles apart and in the past 28 years since I've left home, he's stopped in for coffee once for about 10 minutes. He has good friends who live in our area and he and his wife come to see them every so often. I never know he's been here until after the fact. I think that's weird and at the same time totally normal because we haven't worked at any relationship in the past 30+ years since he left home. C'est la vie.

My mom, in her infinite manipulation, pinned him down a few weeks ago when she learned he was coming up here to see his friends. She knows it bothers me that he never stops in. What she can't grasp is that it's really none of her business. So she says to him "And what day will you be visiting Hope?" And with that he gives her a date. When she was here last week she was so excited to tell me she had wrangled a commitment out of him. A commitment I never asked her to get.

Last night I was doing up the last of the dishes and wondering if my brother would follow through. Right at that moment the phone rang. It was my brother calling to get directions to my house and to tell us when he'd be here today as planned. Planned by our mother, that is, although neither of us say that.

In a few hours he'll be on my doorstep. His wife of 30 years has never been to our home. I have no relationship with either of them and I feel like I'm about to entertain strangers. I have no idea if he really wants to come see me or if he's simply keeping his word to our mom. Fr. Charlie encouraged me last week to simpy be myself, to speak my truth. I suck at small talk. The deep stuff I can do in a heartbeat. The small talk gets stuck in my throat. I don't know if they'll be here for 10 minutes or a few hours.

This will be the first time I'll be seeing my brother since I've been going for counseling to heal the wounds of childhood sexual abuse. He was the first perpetrator. Sometimes I wonder if he remembers that incident.
The one that changed me at my core.
Sometimes I wonder.

Wound Care

I am on the home stretch as far as appointments go at the sexual abuse centre.
Originally they ask for a one year to 18 month commitment and in November it will be one year since I started seeing a therapist there. Yesterday we talked about where we both thought I was in the process.

It was a good appointment and I came away with some direction, some idea as to what is left to delve into. It's not going to be fun but I am determined to face what needs facing and do what needs doing. I survived the initial abuse. That's the most important thing. The rest is wound care. I don't mean that to sound cavalier, this healing work has been the hardest work I've done in the whole process that was jump started when I went to rehab last year.

I do, however, have a deep sense that I am okay, that I will be okay, that who I was created to be is a bigger part of my conscious living than ever before.
Thanks be to God.

Relaxing Rigid Ways

One week from today oldest son will be married.
I had a dress hanging up in the closet.
One with a deep blue/purple hue.
It made my eyes look that colour, too.
But it stuck to my belly.
The belly that, with a 60 pound weight loss,
is on it's way to China.
Too bad there isn't an Olympic sport for that.

So with just over a week to go
I found a new dress.
One which floats over my skin,
relieving me of the feat of trying to
suck in my belly for 12 hours straight,
(underneath a girdle and all).
The new dress is navy with a beautiful beaded front.
I'll be able to put it on and
forget about what I'm wearing.
That's been my guiding mantra in clothes shopping this past year.
"Do I feel comfortable and confident in this?"
It's good when I ask myself that before I shell out the money.

This period of my life is my first experience
of wearing clothes that flatter my figure
without it triggering feelings of being slutty.
It's a foreign, but getting more comfortable feeling,
to celebrate this body of mine, however saggy it's becoming,
by wearing clothes that don't make my body
look like it's a tall, rectangular box.
I no longer hide my curves
as if I'm ashamed of them.
I walk differently now.
There's a confidence to my step
that is brand new.

There's something hopeful about breaking rigid ways of being
half way through life. Because of the childhood sexual abuse
my perception of sexuality and absorbing responsibility
for anything remotely connected to sexuality were warped.
How do we even begin to challenge warped thinking
when we believe it's normal?

A few months into counseling
to help me heal from the sexual abuse,
I related an incident to my counselor
where I was walking through a parking lot,
on the way into a store, when
a strange man said hello to me.
Instantly I took all responsibility for his hello.
Believed I must be sending out a vibe, a bad one.

I was in grade three when one day a boy I was helping
with his spelling, looked at me in such a way that I knew
he had a crush on me.
My instant sense within was of how much power that gave me.
I never challenged that conclusion in over 35 years,
until my counselor pointed out to me that
"no" I didn't have power over all men.
I'm almost embarrassed to type that,
her words were a brand new thought to me.
She gave me several reasons why a man could say hi to me.
Ones I never even thought of,
was not capable of figuring out on my own.

Hmmmm, I wasn't aware this post
was headed into this territory when
I started typing.
Sometimes when that happens I push
the delete button and start over.

It's only in this past year
that I've started to inhabit
this body of mine.
Started to be in it comfortably
instead of being detached from it
as if it was something to reject.
It's been a relief to learn
and believe that I'm more than a sexual being without
having to reject my sexuality in the process.

I also know when I start typing posts
in this poetry like pattern
I haven't the emotional energy to try and make
sense out of formal paragraphs and coherent sentences.
That I could be detaching somewhat from that deeper place
that I'm learning to live from.
That most likely has more to do with my friend's death
than anything else.
I didn't sleep well last night.
Morning came way too early.
I can feel the tears lining up in my body
waiting their turn to be released.

For today I can do this.
Thank God I don't have to navigate
this journey all by myself.
Thank you for being a part of it.

An Invisible Thread

"The thing about healing is that I have no control over the twists and turns it takes. Don't know what I'm going to feel until it's too late."

I said this through tears to Fr. Charlie yesterday. There are times when 'oh, for fuck's sake' seems far more appropriate than 'glory, hallelujah' to describe the healing process.

A few weeks ago I was writing away - working on an article about women and their struggle with sexual addiction. I was free writing - typing every thing that came to mind, not having a particular direction I was looking for. Often writing is akin to playing for me. I was writing in a "let's see where this will take me" mindset. Playing with fire was more like it because in the midst of this came a paragraph from my own journey. A paragraph that, when I saw it in black and white, left me stunned. It had been 30 years since the incident had happened and seeing it converted from thoughts in my head to words on a page, stopped me in my tracks. It left no room for denial, showing me that despite a black hole in my memory when I was being sexually abused, my response in this particular situation confirmed what the black hole had tried to hide.

Instinctively I knew the paragraph would make an opening paragraph of a book. It's a sick, twisted paragraph but gut honest and pivotal to my story. I promptly printed off everything I'd written, stuffed it into the clear plastic sleeve with other material for the article, and shoved it under a pile of books and papers on my desk.

I haven't looked at it since.

But it's contents have been haunting me.

Yesterday I shared the specifics of that paragraph with Fr. Charlie, the first time I'd spoken of this particular incident to anyone. I couldn't look him in the face as I spoke because I still feel some shame about it. It makes me look more like a whore than anything.

I told him how seeing it all in black and white on the screen had stunned me. How it forced me to face that what I suspected had happened, had. That my involuntary response in the incident showed me that my subconscious knew all along what my conscious mind didn't want to. I could see an invisible little thread tying my whole story together from the sexual abuse to this incident to every other bit of my sexual story. No wonder I felt like I really need a punching bag yesterday. When we talked about forgiveness I told Fr. Charlie that I wanted to beat the shit out of this person first, then I might consider it. He gave me a 'that makes sense' look and left it at that.

We talked about how was I going to honour my story. Fr. Charlie talked about the responsibility to that little girl within me to set her free. Into my mind popped a picture of her coming and sitting in a chair beside my computer. She talks and I type. She isn't sad, she feels important and listened to, and she's ready to tell it all because there's someone willing to listen, to validate her story, to not try and shush her up for speaking the truth.

I looked at Fr. Charlie and told him of the picture in my head.
Then I said, "I can do that."
I don't feel brave, just determined.
It also scares the shit out of me because I have no control over the mix of emotions that may come but I know that until I let her tell her story I will continue to be haunted by that paragraph.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Of Stewardship and Legacy Part Two

You can read part one here.

I had purposely not reread the script before we went to see the play. Maybe because of that or maybe it was just the head space I was in that made the watching of the play so painful. I worked out beforehand with my therapist what I needed to do to feel safe. I chose a seat in the theatre where dearest one was on one side of me and a railing on the other. (No, it wasn't so I could jump if I needed to.) I just didn't want a stranger to sit beside me while I watched. I needed to feel in control of something and where I sat was about the only option.

If you're a parent you know you say the same stuff over and over again to your kids. Some of it might even sound cute or evoke a laugh, a groan, a rolling of the eyes. Some of it might not. The mother in the play held her body in such a rigid way. It matched her words perfectly. Two minutes into the play I heard my words coming out of an actor's mouth. Dysfunctional, control freak lines, 98% of which, had come straight from my mouth at one time or other. (Oy, fucking, vey.)

What hadn't was my daughter's responses. Lines full of anger. Seething anger. I got to hear what would have been healthy and necessary responses on her part had she been given the chance as a kid. As I sat there shaking in my seat a thought flashed through my mind, "At least she's found a way to give voice to her story in a way I haven't been able to do with my mom." That single moment of clarity would later inspire me but at the time I just wanted to put my hands over my ears. And my heart.

At one point in the play the mother relives being raped. My daughter knows none of those details of my own but the scene was so vivid it was as if I was being raped all over again. Damn. I sat there and sobbed as quietly as I could. My body just wouldn't stop shaking. There's nothing worse than being glued to your seat while your brain is screaming, "Run, you fool, run!"

But you know what? I survived.
Not only the initial rape but the triggering of it, too.

I can write that now because I've had 6 weeks of distance between the play and today. It wasn't my initial response. Initially I was on automatic pilot. In survival mode because the pain was so intense I wanted to escape my body. It took several trips of walking around the small town where only daughter lives, before I could work the shakes out of my body. I dreamed that night of the play and the rape and woke up the next morning absolutely drained.

By the grace of God
I didn't binge.
I didn't drink.
I didn't numb out in sexually addictive behaviour.
I stayed in the feelings.
It wasn't pretty.
There was no perfection
other than being
perfectly fucked up.

I came home more determined than ever to face what needs facing so that the abuse loses its punch. I may be at this the rest of my life, my therapist assures me I won't. She assures me that healing can happen to the extent that I won't always be triggered by my past.

As I face telling my story in the radio documentary I'm working on I realized last week that only daughter is the one who has paved the way for me to have the courage to do it. Here is what I wrote to her last week:

"What I really wanted to tell you is that you are the one who is paving the way for me to have the courage to do my story for the radio. That you trusted the creative process over hurting family members with your play and how that really is breaking the cycle for who knows how many generations... of not revealing family secrets or at least not talking about them in such a public way. Not that I think my sexual history is such a secret but it was a very brave piece for you to do and you found the courage to give your story a voice despite my voice echoing in your head. ..... at some level the abuse has to be alluded to in the piece and I am breaking a huge taboo in my family by doing so. And because the communication is not open about the abuse there is no way for me to prepare my parents about what the piece is really going to be about. So I feel like I'm jumping off the edge of a cliff willingly. Or possibly tying my own noose. Yet I know I will be okay no matter what the backlash could be. Anyway I just wanted you to know that I am taking courage for my story and for using my voice from the precedent you've set. And it makes me very teary to type that because watching your play was one of the most difficult things I've ever done. But there really is a bigger picture in life and now this is all unfolding in my own. It doesn't mean that I feel all that courageous yet my gut instinct tells me I have to be true to the story. That it isn't an accident that my pitch was accepted, that the producer poked and prodded in the interview to uncover the abuse and how I felt about the land and that this is the direction the piece is headed. Father Charlie is always talking about the ripple effect in our families when transformation happens. I am very grateful for the ripple effect of your transformation on me."

God help me be a good steward of my pain.

Of Stewardship and Legacy Part One

"I thought a lot about what the stewardship of pain means; the ways in which we deal with pain. Beside being a steward of it, there are alternatives. The most tempting is to forget it, to hide it, to cover it over, to pretend it never happened, because it is too hard to deal with. It is too unsettling to remember.

I think the world is always asking us to do it that way. Our families are always, in a way, part of the family system and so apt to say, "Don't talk about things that cause pain. You can't trust the world with those secrets. Those are family secrets. Keep them hidden. Keep them hidden from each other. Keep them hidden from yourself. Don't allow yourself to feel them." ~ Frederick Buechner (ht to Mich)

Twenty years ago I sat across the table from a friend and broke the silence and secrecy around the abuse I experienced as a child. Physical, emotional, verbal, sexual. In the telling I had a moment of utter clarity where I realized if I didn't change, my then 3 year old daughter was going to sit across the table from someone one day and tell nearly the same story. Utter panic. Utter despair. That's how I felt when that moment of insight flashed through me. By my daughter's tender age I had already heaped physical, emotional and verbal abuse on her and her one year old brother. The newborn in my arms was yet unscathed. It was that moment of clarity, combined with my inability to change on my own strength, that eventually led me straight to the arms of God. The few months between that clarity and my surrender were a living hell.

I can trace my motivation to change back to the day I broke the silence. I so hope to leave a legacy of healing for my children and their children. I hope to see the generational cycles of addiction, abuse and silence broken. This is what motivates me to continue to do whatever I must in order to heal and therefore make the path easier for those who come after me. I don't always like doing the work. In reality I rarely do. But I do like being able to look in the mirror and like what I see. I don't miss the cloak of guilt, shame and self hatred that I used to wear 24/7. And so, no matter how painful the journey, I continue to embrace it. Even though I sometimes whimper, wail and protest first, I've never forgotten that moment of clarity and it still motivates me to choose healing. And while I like to think I'm paving the way for my children to heal, sometimes it happens the other way around.

Six weeks ago we traveled south to see only daughter produce and perform a one act play she'd written. A play about breaking the silence. About telling secrets. About showing what happens when secrets stay hidden and how they can unintentionally harm others. She chose to send me a copy of the script, a way of preparing me for what was to come. That she sent it after I'd been to treatment was a godsend. I read it and thought, "Yep, that's the way it was. Not pretty, but the truth." The play dealt with the warped messages about sexuality I'd given to only daughter growing up as a result of unhealed and unspoken (to her) sexual abuse in my life.

Between that reading of the script and the play being produced I began therapy that was geared to dealing with and healing the effects of being sexually abused as a child. If you've ever tried to wash the face of a toddler who doesn't want their face washed and tries like everything to get out of your grip, that's what the therapy has felt like at times. When the truth gets revealed I want to twist and turn away from the process as much as a toddler wants to escape having a clean face.

The hardest part of the process has been the feelings. Feelings like sadness, anger, more sadness, intense anger. Fear. Insecurity. My body has shaken with memory and I've had showers of grief wash over me from head to toe. I know my feelings won't kill me but I also understand why people choose not to feel them. It's safer that way.

I went to opening night of only daughter's play knowing it could trigger a whole lot of feelings. What I couldn't predict was that in the midst of experiencing body memory and intense emotional pain I'd have a moment of clarity that would pave the way for me to tell my own story.

Hollowing Out A Space

"...our greatest strength was forged in our worst pain and suffering. It was precisely those "worst times" that hollowed out a space in us that wouldn't have existed otherwise. And this space becomes the haven where others find the compassion, understanding and strength we so badly needed ourselves at one time." ~Earnie Larson in Destination Joy

Dearest one woke me up this morning by placing a snowball in my hand. There were snowy footprints on the deck this morning although we were spared the several inches of white stuff that other areas got overnight. As I look out the window it's nearly all melted now. Soon I will go for a walk and savour the crispness of the air and breathe in the smell of decomposing leaves. I love their earthy smell. They remind me that this journey is temporary.

Thank you for praying. I'm slowly regaining my equilibrium. There is an undercurrent of serenity beneath the pain. Yesterday as I went for my walk I started to name out loud all the reasons I was grateful. After a few moments I burst in tears because the gratitude was genuine and that I could have gratitude in the midst of emotional pain overwhelmed me. I never knew it was possible. Typing that sentence has me in tears all over again. God is doing for me what I could not do for myself. And I'm so very aware and grateful.

My home group in AA is called Gratitude 24/7. When I first went I thought that people who were grateful in the midst of pain were lying. I easily wrote off anyone who smacked of Pollyanna. "Ha. At least I'm realistic," I told myself. And while I still have a hard time liking people who are fake and smiley when everything else about them cries pain, I know my ability to sneer in the face of the genuine gratitude of others is just another version of camouflaged pain. In my all or nothing way of thinking one could either be in emotional pain or be grateful but never the two shall meet. I know now that gratitude is cultivated. It is a perspective one chooses. It doesn't deny reality, it exists in the midst of reality.

As I was walking one day this week I was begging God for the grace to show compassion towards myself. When I'm in the worst places emotionally it hasn't been my pattern to have self compassion. In the midst of my pain and the shame that threatened to overwhelm me I knew that the biggest gift I could give myself was compassion. The old patterns, the inner voices that wanted to accuse and condemn me were competing with the new pattern of loving and forgiving myself for being human. And as I prayed the word mantle popped into my head. It was such a random, strange word that I let it sit in my mouth for a while. As I did the line from a song we used to sing came to me. "His mantle over me is love." How true.

Yesterday I went for a long drive to meet with Fr. Charlie. I've chosen to continue seeing him for counseling/spiritual direction even though he has moved to another parish. As I reflect on today's quote it is Fr. Charlie's own hollowed out place, born out of working through his worst of times, that makes him a safe place of compassion, strength and understanding. It was good to be able to just spill my guts to him, no explanation needed.

On my drive home I returned a call to the sexual abuse counselling centre. As I told the woman my experience of having the rape triggered this past weekend and the battle it's been since to simply get through my days she told me she would bump me up the waiting list. It's now about 2 weeks before I get in to see someone.

It felt good to say I need help and then to reach out for that help. None of us can journey alone. It just isn't meant to be.

Yesterday Fr. Charlie asked me if I was still blogging. I told I was but that it was often such narcissistic crap I didn't know what the point was anymore. Today I know I need a place to say, this is my story. And I know those of you who read here regularly can see patterns, threads and growth that I am blind to. For today I embrace that reality.

Releasing the Illusion

Our Essential Nature by Christina Grof

"The process of hitting bottom, of releasing the illusion of control over our situation, is a mandatory step out of the pain of addiction. The experience of surrender is the key to redemption, the gateway to recovery, healing and the discovery of our spiritual potential. It marks the transition from a limited experience of who we are to an expanded one, and it happens to different people in different ways. Sometimes it is dramatic, sometimes it is relatively subtle.... Everything we thought we were - all relationships and reference points, all ego games, defenses, resistances, and denials - collapses. What remains is the essential nature of who we are. The overwhelming power of our addictions, the persons, places, things or activities we have made into our gods, give way to the healing presence of our true divine source, our deeper Self." (emphasis added)~via

I had all kinds of things I was going to ponder on publicly after reading the above quote yesterday. It was going to be a kind of "hurrah, hurrah" post. So much of the quote I have experienced since coming home from treatment 5 weeks ago. The struggle today does not negate the reality of what I've gained to this point. God help me to remember that.

Because today the journey feels pain filled and precarious. Three days ago the trauma of my childhood sexual abuse was in my face as if every cell in my body was remembering. I don't think I've ever let myself feel the pain of it that deeply before. Immediately I closed in on myself and it's been a struggle to not stay in that state. I've had two nights of messed up sleep since. One of them hours of pain where nerve endings repeatedly sent messages to where there was no real pain. I am weary and feeling fragile. I was a nanosecond from throwing my recovery out the door today. But I didn't. I want to fixate on the almost part instead of the didn't. Yesterday I told my addictions counselor that I had thought to myself the other day "fuck doing the next right thing." And after I thought it I got up and did the next right thing anyway. Right now the next right thing is to get dressed and go for a walk. I feel like I walk a very thin line on a daily basis with the things I need to do to keep my interior house in order. When I deviate from the plan chaos threatens to rule the day.
I can do this.
Just not on my own strength.
God help me.

Dropping Some Weight

"You know, Lily, people can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different." ~Secret Life Of Bees

I went through a phase in my spiritual journey where I was convinced that reading adult fiction was, if not evil, pretty darn close. After all, it wasn't true. Uh, ya - thank God people change.

Reading the above quote set me thinking about a conversation I had with my younger sister recently. She is working on a dvd for my parents' 50th anniversary celebration. Something that is a cross between a video and a powerpoint presentation. We have a brother who is a wiz with computers so she spent the weekend at his house getting the vision of the completed work out of her head and onto the screen.

My (two) sisters and I have kept up with one another over the years. My brothers have not. Not with each other, not with us. Any information I get about them comes through my mom. My older brother has been in my house once in 25 years and it's been nearly 20 years since my younger brother has been. To be fair there is quite a bit of distance separating us geographically but even if we had lived closer I am not sure how much more I would have seen them. My sisters and I would have been in and out of each others' houses often.

At one point in their weekend together my sister was telling my brother what was new in her life - that she was going to school and what her dreams were. He looked at her and said, "It's nice to see you have more direction than you had at 18." She shot back, "When I was 18 I was working 3 jobs. What were you doing?" Touche.

I was sitting on my deck the other day reading this book. When I read the above quote I got lost in my thoughts. I thought again about this conversation between my siblings. And I was thinking about how my brother still saw my sister as if she were still only 18. How he had her pigeon holed without much thought given to the 20 years that have flown by since then. He had an idea in his head about who she was and that was that. I thought of a homily I heard a few months ago about the dangers of boxing people in by seeing only one aspect of the truth about them. The priest said when we did, it became destructive truth. Jesus saw the truth about people but he didn't pigeon hole them by it. The priest said that to see one facet of truth about someone and have that truth enclose and define them with no hope for the greater Truth of who they were, was wrong.

No sooner had I thought about how sad it was that my brother hadn't given my sister any room to grow or change in 20 years than into my head came a barrage of questions. "How about you? How about only seeing your brother as the one who offered to take away your virginity when you were 17? And your other brother, the one who forced you to give him a blow job when you were 8? And your mother....isn't there more to her than the abuse she dished out? And what about you? Do you want your kids to pigeon hole you based on one incident of their childhood?"

Sometimes the Holy Spirit feels like a pair of boxing gloves socking it to me. I started bawling my head off as if I had been pummeled. I thought about Father Charlie telling me last month that it was possible to have a relationship with my older brother that was not defined by the abusive incident. I couldn't wrap my head around that. I thought about a movie Father Charlie had told me about - The Mission - where Robert De Niro is carrying a pack of belongings and how he loses his grip on them and they start to scatter. And try as he might, he can't pick them all up. He told me I could choose to drop the baggage I carry.

I believe forgiveness has layers. And over the years forgiveness has peeled away like sheets of onion skin paper. And I have no idea if I am at the bottom of the tablet of paper but I sat on my deck and said outloud, "Ok God, I forgive. I choose to drop the baggage. I choose to stop letting the baggage define me. I choose to stop letting my baggage define them." And I bawled and I bawled and I bawled.

And when the tears subsided I realized that by choosing all this I was also choosing to finally have a voice. That instead of jabbing my finger into their chest and saying, "This is who you are because this is what you did to me" I was now free to stand up and speak my truth with confidence. Now I could say, "This is what happened. This is how your actions affected me. But that is not the whole of who you are."

"You know, Lily, people can start out one way, and by the time life gets through with them they end up completely different." ~Secret Life Of Bees

Touche, indeed.

No Fear

Some women have large purses - I have this tote bag that I throw everything in. I think right now it has at least 5 (small) books in it, never mind the wet wipes, the headache medicine, the bandaids, kleenex, rolaids - oh and my wallet. I am continuously losing my keys in this mess so yesterday I set out to find a bigger key ring that would make it easier to find the keys to the van. Something so I wouldn't have to resort to shaking the tote in order to hopefully hear the jingle of keys in its depths.

I found a rack that had male and female key ringajigs. The kind that have names on them and say for ages 4 and up. No luck finding one bearing my name so I was going to settle for one that said "angel" on it. At the last moment I thought 'no'. I went back and started going through the male selection of key fobs. I found one I liked - I traded my pink and white girly one for a black and red one that said no fear. As soon as I picked it up I thought of the many times it says in the bible "Be not afraid". As I type this I wonder why there wasn't a feminine key fob that said no fear.

This week I painted a picture of the painful path in front of me as I saw it in my head. A sandy coloured background with a deep, red, thick line of paint through the middle. Fine little black dash marks went down the red line and every so often they went off the path and into the sand yet eventually looped back to join the path. Some black tangents went quite a way off to the right and others looked like a small circle. I like symmetry and wanted to paint tangents off to the left of the picture but they didn't appear like that in my head so I settled for having off balanced detours. When the picture came into my head I was instantly pissed off at God for showing me again that my path went through the pain.

I cannot see transformation happening in my life but I have a sense that it is going on deep within. I have been at the this painful place before and have let fear divert my attention. Always. Today I stand and say "no more". I want what waits for me on the other side of the pain. I want it enough to risk giving up my towers of fear for something better.

Many of my fear issues have to do with my sexuality. You mess with a person's sexuality and you mess with something in their core being. I have built walls of fat to keep safe. I have gone looking for sexual distraction to keep from true intimacy. Anything to keep from being known, from exposing the paper thin veil of my soul.

Last week I had a startling revelation when I verbalized to dearest one that I really only understood sex in two basic ways. From a position of power or one of being used. Bleck. The truth is startling sometimes. For sure there have been times of deep intimacy - when the veil has parted and vulnerability has been possible. But voicing my understanding of sex, saying it outloud, made me want intimacy more than any distortion. For over 25 years I have let these two ways define me sexually. Not because anyone else told me that was how it worked but because that was the only grid through which I could make any sense of sex.

I am standing on the path saying good bye to them. The desire for something healthier outweighs the need to hang on. You may wonder why I am sharing such details. But for those of you who have read this about my journey, this post is another step in a line of many little steps. Maybe sharing what the process looks like for me will give someone hope of their own. Often in Christian community all we hear is the after everything is said and done version of life. Entering into another person's pain is not something we are privy to very often. Hell, we don't want to enter into our own pain let alone one another's. We want tales of victory, not struggles of valour.

I have a sense lately that I am saying goodbye to sexual addiction too. Not that I am free of the temptation but simply gaining freedom from the compulsion. Intimacy and addiction do not make good bedfellows. And I want, am willing to risk everything that has felt safe to me, to gain intimacy.

I don't know how our warped views of how things work get cemented so tight in our beings that we go 20 plus years without challenging them. I know I have let fear of how I think men are short circuit the process all along. No matter how much logic told me dearest one was not like the men of my imagination, I couldn't get past the warped ideas in my head.

Along with these realizations comes a feeling of not being hell bent on getting anywhere. I cannot count the times in the past few weeks when it has come to me that all I need to do is be where I am. To feel the chair I am sitting in, to feel my feet connected to the floor, to the earth, to something so much bigger than me. I don't think there will ever be a post where I declare I am forever free of sexual temptation any more than there will be one saying I have arrived. I know I am willing to keep walking on the path to tomorrow. All the detours - all of them - are part of the journey. I will take the revelations as they come and know I may never get another one. I feel strangely at peace about that too. My prayer life has morphed into something I don't recognize. All I can say is that I feel like I am learning to be present to God a few seconds at a time.

Do I feel scared? Yes. I haven't been willing to walk past this point on the path before. I thought walking through it meant losing everything. What man would wait while I said I can't be with you in that way right now? I have always short circuited the healing journey out of fear that no man, my man, would get tired of being married to a women who was so wounded that she couldn't, wouldn't, until it came from a place other than fear. A man who would wait until she trusted the price of healing did not inevitably mean being alone. To walk through this part of the path involves trusting in a way I have never been willing to risk before. All I know is that I know I will be okay as I surrender to the process. It's not about the outcome here either.

When I look at my new key fob I feel no need to declare I have no fear. If I get real still I know that I am having moments of being scared shitless. It's more important that I give voice to my feelings, honour the truth than be at some other place on the path. "No fear" simply reminds me that when I am scared I will be picked up and carried.