I know many people were put out of power or delayed in their travel by this storm – but for a Florida native living in Central Georgia – this storm felt like nothing less than a Miracle to me…. Just look at the beauty!
Tag Archive: healing
One of the best parts of Summer Magic is wishing on these…
I remember when I was a kid I took every opportunity to blow these as hard as I could and make a wish…. Did you ever do that? What did you wish for?
I’ve noticed lately that I am getting more comfortable in my sadness. I am so often sad but I generally hide it behind a mask of fake polite smiles and small talk or jokes. Lately I just allow myself to sit in the sadness… to allow the emotion to wash through me…to wash over me and pass on. I have found that by allowing myself to actually feel the emotion it can run its natural course and I am free to feel other things, like joy, anger, passion, fear… I’ve been numb for so long – numb and lost and I’m ready for that part of my life to be over. I am ready to feel… to feel everything – even if it hurts. Live is too precious to miss. I am tired of running – tired of hiding – tired of protecting bullies and abusers. I will not live my life in fear. I will not hide and pretend that I do not see the evil in the world. I want to do it all… I want to sing, to run, to fight, to dance, to paint, to play, to make a big mess and laugh… I do not want to spend the rest of my life in stasis. I’m ready to rise up. I want to twirl in the yard with my arms flung out and my face to the sky. I want to sword fight with sticks and I want to seek out beauty every day – in every place I am. I want to take long walks by moonlight again and not be afraid… I want to live my life again… and to think… it all began with me allowing myself to be sad… allowing myself to be.
Shaking inside I wake – afraid
and I stare into the darkness
wondering if you lie awake at night
and think about me….
Do you ever wonder if
you could have done better? Or
do you rest easy in your shroud of self-
righteousness and assume you are god?
Here is my heart…. take it
eat it…throw it away… break
it in two… love it… hate it…
just stop refusing to SEE it.
It is hard for me when I think about how Eddie’s abuse affected me. I hate that his actions have had such an influence over my life. It has tainted how I view people. It has made it nearly impossible to trust anyone – even myself. I feel isolated much of the time – afraid that if people really knew me they wouldn’t want anything to do with me. Because of what Eddie did I feel dirty and broken inside and that is not fair. I feel like I am always waiting for the other shoe to drop – waiting to be abandoned and forgotten. I grew up feeling invisible – I became the perfect chameleon, it’s how I survived.
I am still affected by his abuse today – I am so broken and so afraid. I cannot function in a healthy relationship without constant guidance and reassurance. I am afraid to have sex because I dont’ want my marriage tainted by Eddie’s touches. I don’t want to think of his hands touching me when I should be enjoying my husband’s caress. Because of the abuse I suffered as a child I feel powerless and tainted and worthless. My life is still affected in so many areas. I struggle in my marriage because I am unable to accept and trust love and affection. I am affected in my job because I struggle to find my voice. I am affected in my relationship with my family because I am still so afraid of them and I still feel crazy around them – crazy and so small.
One strength I developed because of the abuse is empathy. I truly have a heart for the suffering. I have a strongly developed sixth sense about people and their intentions. It has helped me survive. I developed a tender and caring heart and a strong desire to fight for the weak. I developed and artistic eye and a desire to make the world beautiful. I developed a rich imagination and a poet’s heart. I escaped into words, books and dreams. I found a way to wring pleasure out of almost any small thing – whether it is a gift or just the sight of a butterfly. I am a strong woman. I had to be to survive my childhood. I locked myself away inside the warehouse of my mind and kept myself save in there between the dusty shelves. If I survived this I can do anything. I WILL make it out of this. I WILL get better. I will heal. I am worth fighting for. I can do this.
Father, I thank you for the strength You gave me to overcome my past. I invite you into my heart, into my healing, into my broken places and into my marriage. Come, Jesus. Make the broken whole again…
Excerpt from The Courage to Heal pg xxiv ~” Time will dull the pain, but deep healing doesn’t happen uness you consciously choose it”~
John Eldridge says in his book Wild at Heart that “A wound unfelt is a wound unhealed.” So I have to ask myself – how do I feel? How has living with this abuse made me feel…? Following along in the first chapter of Courage I have journaled the following:
How abuse affected my self esteem:
I feel…..
- Bad, dirty, ashamed
- Like there’s something wrong with me
- Like if people really knew me they would leave me
- Like I hate myself
- Immobilized by fear/can’t get motivated
- Unable to protect myself
- Self destructive
I don’t know how to….
- Identify my own needs
- Feel good
- Nurture myself
- Trust myself
- Recognize my own interests/talents/goals (my heart)
I feel like I can’t accomplish what I set out to do
I feel like I can’t move on with my life.
I feel compelled to be perfect
I feel like I am missing large parts of my childhood…
How this abuse has affected my body:
I have a hard time:
- Appreciating and accepting my body
- Feeling at home in my own skin
- Being fully present in my body
- experiencing a full rang of feelings in my body.
- experiencing my body as a unified whole.
I have:
- Hurt myself ~abused my body
- Used alcohol and drugs
- Had an eating disorder
- Had a physical illness connected to my abuse
- Felt as though I sometimes leave my body.
Sometimes I:
- Am not always aware of the messages my body gives me (hunger, fear, tiredness…)
- Mistrust my body
- Feel numb or disconnected from physical sensations
- Startle easily and have a hard time calming down
- Am unable to relax and feel physically safe.
Relating to intimacy – Sometimes I:
- Find it difficult to: trust people, make close friends, create/maintain healthy relationships, give or receive nurturing, be affectionate, say no/set appropriate boundaries.
- I feel I don’t deserve love
- I am afraid of people
- I feel alienated/isolated
- I rarely feel connected to self/others
- I don’t know how to trust
- I feel betrayed and taken advantage of
- I shut down, get nervous, panic when people get too close
- I cling to people I care about
- I expect people to leave me.
It is hard to take an honest look at my life – to survey the damage like I am taking inventory. I don’t exactly know how to feel about all of this…mosty I look over the different aspects of my life and kind of nod to myself and think…”Well this explains a lot.”
Please bear with me dear readers. I am by far not through this journey yet.
Peace be with you.
Lately I feel like I am drowning in pain. All I can think is, “I don’t know how to do this…” It’s crippling, really…I feel frozen in this spot and I am afraid to reach for help. No one can help me through this. The pain of my past has finally caught up with me and is taking hold of my life… it’s ruining my marriage…it’s permeating my relationships….it’s taking over! I see every relationship or potential relationship through the filter of my parent’s abuse. I can’t go on living like this. It is so terrifying and isolating and maddening. I want to be free of it all. I wish I could wash this off… I wish I could dust my ands off and be done with it. I wish I could change my past and give myself a blank slate – a fresh start… I wish there was a pill for bad memories… I wish…I wish…
Dear M____,
This is the most difficult letter I will ever write to you. I know I have apologized a thousand times to you over the years and I know I have hurt you a million more. I know that you have no reason to hope for me to change, but I promise you I am trying. I realized this morning that I have become an abuser. The cycle must stop with me. You have pointed out to me that I have been abusing myself – but I realized this morning I have been abusing you as well.
All my life I learned that love meant judgement, rejection and pain. Though I had glimmers of real love in my grandmother, sadly, she wasn’t the stronger influence in my life. My toxic parents were…their lessons of love driven home much harder and deeper than hers. This is not an excuse, just an explanation. My life has been filled with overwhelming pain since birth and pain has been my constant companion. I don’t want this anymore.
All of those unhealthy abusive behaviors followed me from my parent’s home into ours. I have neglected you and withdrew into myself and withheld love from you. It does not matter that this was not a conscious decision or done with intent. The result is the same. Pain. Doubt. A crumbling marriage.
I realize this morning that the times I am feeling the most fear and panic and doubt are the times I need to be running to you – not away from you. Because of my fear of love and feelings of worthlessness I have continued my parent’s toxic abuse cycle with you in our marriage. I have been come the thing I hate. No wonder you don’t feel safe with me.
I don’t know why God brought us together but I fear that I don’t have much to offer you. I know I have a long road to recovery ahead of me and I know I won’t get it right all the time – but I promise to get it right more often than I get it wrong.
I want to tell you that I am profoundly sorry fo all the pain I caused you through the course of our relationship. I want to tell you that I truly understand if you don’t want anything to do with me – after all – I am more like our fathers than you mother or my grandmother. I am self-centered and neglectful nd don’t deserve another chance to hurt you. You have this beautiful, loving heart and I have done my best to destroy it. You don’t deserve this.
this is what I can promise you… I love you with all my heart and I am fully committed to you – to us- and I will do everything in my power to break this cycle. I will make better choices – when all of my instincts tell me to withdraw – to hide…I will make a conscious decision to seek your heart that much harder. When I feel like pulling away I will cling to us and to God. I will pray against my strongholds daily and I will seek God in our marriage. I will see you and love you and not hide myself from you. I will fight harder against the lies and patterns I was raised around and I will talk openly about my hopes, beliefs, fears and doubts instead of retreating into my head and locking down my heart.
I take full responsibility for the current problems in our marriage and I beg your forgiveness.
I love you M___. I pray that I haven’t ruined this.
Love,
No Longer Damaged Goods
Dear Mom & Dad,
I am so disappointed in you. I will never understand the way you treated me. Why didn’t I matter to you? Why, when you found out I was molested, was your first thought about how you could protect your reputations and not about how you should/could have protected me? How can you play nice with and spend time with family that treated their daughters like human sacrifices? Why was it so hard for you to love me? Mark loves me and he says I am easy to love – so why is it so hard for you? Why couldn’t you see me? Was I invisible? Was I too much? You always made me feel like I was too much – like loving me would just overload you somehow. Why wasn’t I ever good enough for you? Why did you turn on me? How was it my fault that Eddie raped me and his daughters? It wasn’t my fault, it was never my fault! How dare you blame me! It is so unfair. you should never have had me – you didn’t want a daughter – you wanted another notch in your belt… another blessing to claim… some other piece of evidence to prove you were a man & woman of God. You wanted a trophy not a child. You treated me like a display and when I wasn’t ‘pretty’ when I didn’t display just right you didn’t want me anymore. You would rather think I was possessed by the devil than to think I didn’t believe like you anymore. You would rather count me among the lost souls than to consider you may be wrong in you beliefs and there may be more to life and to God than wrath and anger. It isn’t my fault you don’t know me (or God.) It’s yours. you had plenty of chances to know me and you didn’t bother. I am worth it. I don’t deserve your criticism our your disdain. you don’t know me because you don’t think I am worth it…well, you’re missing out. I am worth it…I am a good woman. I am smart, beautiful and loving. I love God with all my heart and I serve Him. I love my husband and I am a wife to be proud of. Being raped by Eddie was not my fault – it was yours and you are not worthy to be parents.
It was not my fault. It was not my fault.
It was not my fault. It was not my fault.
It will never be my fault.
Love,
No Longer Damaged Goods
Dear Eddie:
How dare you! I don’t know what’s wrong with you! Who would do that to a child? What kind of sick pervert would touch a child like that?!? You are a monster and you don’t deserve to live. I wish you had never been born. You are disgusting! It is never ok to force sex on a child. Children are not sexually attractive. You diseased, filth-ridden, deplorable man! You should suffer for what you did to me, to all of us. You should be tortured slowly over years for the pain you inflicted on us. You are not a follower of Christ! You should never pretend to be…. all those years of preaching while raping little girls… you are disgusting, filthy and an abomination to humanity. You should not call yourslef a man – that is an insult to masculinity. True men protect those they love – they do not torture them. True men do not use their strength to coerce – they use it to liberate. You do not even deserve to be called human – none of what you did to us was humane. I hope you rot in prison – know that you belong there!
Sincerely,
No Longer Damaged Goods
captivatingbitter 