CHAPTER 1
Why Now?
"Hello darkness, my old friend; I've come to talk with you again; because a vision softly creeping; Left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain; still remains within the sound of silence ... and no one dared disturb the silence" The Sound of Silence by Paul Simon
This is my story of life after incest and how not only the experience itself blocked my emotional growth, but how the silencing of incest has created as much turmoil as the experience itself. It was my quest for personal growth that created my need for this exploration. What heightened my frustration was that because most people found this very act of incest repugnant and that it is considered, "a crime too cruel for mind and memory to face the victim remains silent, ashamed and unable to explain the ripple effects of living with a violation of self that no one is really comfortable talking about" (E. S. Blume). By denying my experience, internally I became repugnant.
Why now?
Because the history of incest has been secrecy and silence, and this silence does not teach us how to grow through the emotions, only to conceal and move on.
Because being silent has forced incest to define me. It has kept me a prisoner.
Because being silent has kept me scared and it has controlled my inner life. It has prevented me from living fully, from feeling, from being free enough to answer simple questions like "tell me about you" without panic and fear. Not only did I not have the skills to talk about myself, I didn't want to for fear I would slip and say something that would be considered unspeakable.
Because the embarrassment I felt showed every time someone said something to me that I thought might lead to a real conversation.
Because forgetting was no longer useful.
Because denial controlled my inner life; the denial had such a hold on me, I denied my childhood existence. I had no pictures. No stories. No connection to who I was, except for what I held inside.
Because I was unhappy living someone else's rules, shame and guilt that were not mine.
Because I was tired.
Because I was angry; I was safe and had been for a long time, but I was more afraid than ever.
Because it was time for me to be honest to myself about myself.
Because it has prevented me from being able to love clearly.
Because there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not living with incest.
Because there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about healing, about feeling better.
CHAPTER 2
Denial
"Until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex; but eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories and make peace with them." (Iyanla Vanzant)
Pinpointing how the abuse affected me has been difficult; and it has permeated everything – intimate relationships, sexuality, parenting, and work. I was tired of people asking me what was wrong because of my lack of expression. I was irritated. I was tired of living as if I didn't have a childhood. No sharing of memories of my childhood with my children. That part of my life was unreachable, stuffed away. I was invisible. I played roles, I identified with these roles, but had they become mine, or were they defined around other people's values, expectations? As my roles and responsibilities broadened, the person I was inside was still hiding; still living a life of fear that my cover, my secret would be uncovered and I would rather die than be held accountable for this humiliation. Through all of my accomplishments, I was unable to articulate how I felt about anything and that kept me restless. The numbness was too strong. The fear engulfed me. With every passing year, I felt this uncontrollable downward spiral of darkness that only I would be able to figure out. My coping skills were entrenched, but falling apart. I had managed to minimize the incest to such a degree that I minimized or pushed down everything good that may have been a part of me. When I started asking questions, the denial got stronger. Fear of facing the truth became alive, as real as if my life was in danger. For me there really wasn't a difference. I did not want to believe the horror and trauma in my life. I knew that if I said the word, I would die which isn't really that farfetched, a part of me did die with each layer I unraveled.
The year, 2000 ... It was when my life was finally in order and all of the excuses for despair, the forgetfulness, the distractions, the work, had been used up, that I could no longer deny the aloneness that I felt inside. I managed to create this perfect external world, yet I felt like I was falling apart.
My emotional state was fragile. What made all of this so hard was that I had three healthy children, a decent marriage, a good education, a nice house, and my first counseling job. On the outside, everything was great. But something was boiling inside, a stirring that I had been familiar with, but the anxiety it was creating was bigger than I had ever experienced. Because of this unraveling, and no language developed to articulate the emptiness, I started looking for answers. I discovered The Courage to Heal Guide for Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. The first thing I noted was that I was about 14 when this book was written and that it was written by two women. It was never mentioned in any of my psychology classes and neither was the topic of incest. This is where the questions started to form. It was safe, as long as no one saw me reading it. It validated that the coping skills that I developed as a child were essential because "a child could not afford to feel the full extent of the terror, pain, rage. The agony would have been devastating. I could not have done my arithmetic with other 2nd graders had I known the depth of my sorrow; and, I could not go anywhere or run, because I relied on my parents to take care of me" (39). While reading the Courage to Heal, I could no longer deny that the word victim pissed me off and that kept me silent. I had minimized the experience so much that being a victim seemed weak. I was not weak, ever! I was beginning to sort through the feelings, the coping strategies, and the usefulness of this information. I had feelings, but I did not have the words to describe them. One thing I needed to admit before any changes could be made was that keeping silent was weakening my resolve. The fear of sharing my story, even in a private journal, paralyzed my defenses. Denying and minimizing the abuse was a perfect coping strategy for survival. Survival is not living.
Healing required that I look at my patterns of coping. These patterns became entrenched. They took on a life of their own. There were a lot of positive things about these coping behaviors that I wasn't sure I was ready to give up. These behaviors or patterns emerged when I was only beginning to develop personality, language, feelings. While I knew I could no longer hide in denial, I was afraid that I would lose the parts of myself that were really very viable, powerful and self-reliant. Like, somehow, this healing was an "all or nothing" surrender. Since, I didn't have the words to describe, really, anything about any of this, I had to educate myself about expression of feelings and understand and find a viable answer to the question, "how do you feel," when all I had was – "I don't know." It was the beginning of pinpointing how incest influenced my development.
I was looking for the why in all of this. If I could find an explanation, I could be free to break the silence which would free me from the fear that prevented me from healing. Of course, there was no reasonable why, at least not in the present. I was awash in an accumulation of past feelings, future dreads; all similar, all lumped together as one. I recognized that I felt empty inside. I was increasingly tired, even bored. Sleep helped me to regain energy. It helped me to shut out the outside world and experience peace. It helped me to forget, cleared my mind. I was out of touch with the terribleness of my life and my nervous system was breaking down. I was, most of the time, too upset by everything to be upset by anything in particular. I was depressed about the past and anxious about the future. Everything was a colossal effort. I was falling apart. I wanted the nothingness to end. I learned to live with my past and move on. Now I wanted to be honest and I wanted to be free from the pain.
"Acknowledgment of pain is very important, denial is deadly. Avoid the pain, it will eat at you until the feelings are fully felt, fully healed. You have to address your pain, put words to it, feel it in your heart or they will be transferred into the body some other way, anger, frustration, depression. Saying yes, means letting in the pain full force, knowing you will not only get to the other side of it, but also gain something in the end, if you look for it (excerpt from Susan Jeffer's book, Feel the Fear ... Do it Anyway)"
It was time to take a "fine tooth comb" to my life – everything needed to be questioned. It was time to find the words that would help me to connect the feelings to the memories that I worked so hard to separate from. I needed to honor and understand that there is a child's point of view inside me that still needed to be heard. I needed to discover where I emotionally cut myself off.
This would require that I remember. It was frightening to see things as they really were. It was difficult to define the constant ache that I felt in my stomach and it took a lot of energy and time. The more I questioned, the more exposed I felt. I was frozen in fear. I could not do this alone. I was lucky that the therapist that encouraged me to go to a group meeting several years back was still available. He already knew some of my story and because I trusted his guidance, he was essential in helping me work through this shame. He helped me to understand that distractions were a good thing and that forgetting can be clearing to the mind. I began to understand that the shame I was feeling was blocked by compulsive behaviors like workaholism, substance use, exercising, and keeping order. I was so busy escaping from the intense pain, I became addicted to distraction. I had to let go of the denial.
Feelings, without words, was the worst. Because I didn't know how to explain what I was doing, I remained silent. In the beginning I was so fragile, so emotional, so raw, and so alone. I knew I had to continue to go through the pain. I had to trust that I would feel better soon. At the same time, I needed to be careful, be guarded. How do I explain a past like mine without scaring people away; to not embarrass myself as well as them? I had to protect my family and myself. I knew this was necessary. Timing was so important, what I say, how I say it, counseling was tricky. Always be careful, I didn't want my words to cause anyone any pain. I was so vulnerable to that fear.
My experience, while personal, I could handle. What I couldn't resolve was all of the emotions generated by this act of incest; other people's emotions that initially became internalized as if they were my own. I was Humpty Dumpty, a shell. Well protected on the outside, so hollow on the inside. As I opened the door to this getting real process, to find meaning, a flood of emotions and sadness that had been held in so deeply, so tightly, so unconsciously, was beginning to leak out. It was shocking, uncontrollable sadness that I now know was always mislabeled depression. I was not depressed. I was deeply wounded; sad to the core of my being. My heart hurt, really physically hurt. I cried all of the time. During this phase of healing, I did not have any questions. I did not have any understanding; just pain and layers and layers of denial. I remember the exact moment that I knew, "I could not deny, minimize or place this experience in a vague never, never land" (Bass). It was real. I was at an appointment with my therapist. I was resisting the truth of my experience so hard, and I was exhausted from the fight. I had no energy. I was curled up in a chair in his office, so distraught, so ashamed, so guilty, but more importantly, so afraid. It took months of grieving before I could really start the process of understanding and forming questions.
Moving on was delicate. I could not be rushed. I could not be pressured. Other people's words screaming in my thoughts, "Let the past be the past" "get over it" and all kinds of unspoken pressure to remain silent and strong. How? I wanted to find a way to continue on as if nothing ever happened. I was now open with pain I couldn't share with anyone. I was too fragile, too vulnerable and afraid if I did share, I would be locked up in the psychiatric ward, and not sure that I wasn't a viable candidate. I couldn't take the chance that I would be dismissed or told that my feelings were out of proportion to the events that took place. My tears, my sadness, so personal, so private. No language developed to describe the feelings and to express the pain. I was a living marshmallow.
CHAPTER 3
Finding the Words
All of my struggles, addictions, anxiety, and stomach problems, have been due to unexpressed emotions. Developing the language, the words, and the understanding; and then sharing my understanding is something that took a very, very long time to get to. In the meantime, I had a husband, three children, and I was working full time. Dedicating the enormous amount of energy needed to put words and meaning to my personal madness was a balancing act. Pushing through the grief and admitting that my childhood memories were real was one thing, sharing wholeheartedly and speaking out loud about my trauma was profound. I was living out my daily life as if everything was "as it should be" yet, bit by bit, I was losing the person I had so carefully constructed. Outside of a once every-two week counseling session that lasted one hour and left me on hold until the next appointment, I had no one I could talk with about my unraveling.
I accepted that this was my experience, it was for me to understand, and that this was my pain to work through. It wasn't that I didn't want to share and give more of myself, I just couldn't. This period of healing was difficult on my marriage. While I was able to maintain work, and children's activities, I really was not emotionally present. The trauma was so deeply settled inside of me. I was so overwhelmed, ashamed and afraid that it took all of my energy. I needed to sleep, a lot, to regain the strength to continue to heal. The guilt I felt for giving myself this time was insurmountable, but I didn't really have a choice.
Reiki or " laying of the hands" is an effective technique for prevention of diseases and energy imbalances on all levels of your being. It is a highly effective tool for personal transformation, growth and change. It is a natural healing modality designed to strengthen systematically your absorption of vital life energy. When tensions develop in your body, or blocks occur in your mind or emotions, your flow of vital energy can stagnate and be depleted excessively. You begin then to break down physically and emotionally.
I needed energy. I was frustrated with talk therapy and needed more. Gaye was a Reiki master. Initially, I did not understand the benefits of Reiki, but Gaye was able to move my energy and helped release the tension in my body. Gaye spent hours with me. I met with her weekly, and eventually felt I was getting more from this energy work than from talk therapy. This form of healing was essential to me being able to learn how to get out of my head, quiet myself, and feel the emotions that I was holding onto so tightly. With this ability to calm the flood of emotional pain, I felt safe enough to continue reading and began to find the words to express my emotional pain. It helped me connect to my inner guide and identify my physical pain. All of this took a very long time, years of pain takes years to recover from. Questions started to form. With the safety of knowing that Gaye would be able to assist me with holding onto the energy I needed to move through the stages of pain that I was going to need to go through in order to find the understanding that I wanted, I was able to do the work of "remembering."
