The Price of Mother's Day

Trigger warning for self-harm, estranged mother-daughter relationships

I want to carve my pain into my arms, to watch the blood drip down onto this pristine white floor, mixing anger and grief, loss and love as if somehow it will cleanse my heart of the secrets it carries.

I played good daughter today. I called my mother, told her the truth, told her that I love her. I buried everything else inside through that stilted, brief phone call, voices of my siblings in the background. Siblings who were there, with her today.

I hid out in my apartment all day. Actually I hid in my bed, curled up with the man who loves me watching movies on a laptop. Periodically I checked Facebook, comforted and stifled by the words of others. Words of acceptance for grief like mine. Words I wanted to like, to share to shout from the virtual rooftops.

Instead, I sat silent, withdrawn, pulled away. Immobilized by fear. Fear  of it getting back to my mother, of causing more pain for her than I’ve already caused. Fear of further estrangement from those who believe my family to be supportive and loving. Fear of fucking it all one more time.

Today I choked on my own truth. The truth that my Mother is a complicated woman who I have a complicated relationship with. The truth that I am not a mother, may very well never be a mother because I don’t want a child who will bear the scars of my mistakes. A child who may very well thirty years from now fight tooth and nail to call me, to reach a hand across a divide that cannot be bridged. A phone call that costs her everything, that leaves her wrung out. Too many emotions, not enough words.

I don’t want to pass down this legacy to my daughter. Each year I’m reminded on Mother’s Day of the cost my heart pays for that choice. Each year I question if the cost is too high. Each year I work to remember that even though she never protected me, never bonded with me, my Mother loved me as best as she could. Each year I hide my truth from myself and everyone else in the name of love that tastes of guilt and obligation.

When Impatience Becomes My Friend

Same song, umpteenth verse. I sit down to write, and fight to put one word after the next. Crafting any kind of sentence is torture. (and then my inner editor harps yet again about how I write in a passive tone, with too many gerunds and when am I going to step up to the plate and write something good "blah blah blah")
The two combine and equal too many pieces of half finished writing. Story plots scattered in multiple files, 15 unfinished (read: barely started) blog posts. This is the point at which it would be easy for me to quit. To declare that I'm not a writer and walk away from it all. But I'm not going to do that.

One of my major character defects is my impatience with myself. There's little compassion or grace for this to be a journey - whether that this is healing and recovery or coming alive or finding myself and my voice as a creative. My frustration with myself, with my limits sets me up for failure every stinking time. But I don't stay there.

That same impatience that steals my words, fuels my judgements, is the same drive that keeps me moving forward. That impatience, when it's not running my life, it turns into being driven, in a positive way. It means I show up yet again to write, to put one painstaking word after the next on the page. Impatience doesn't allow those story plots and fragments to get lost in my file system. It continues to pull them up, to stare at them, to write 50 words that are complete and utter shit because that impatience it motivates me.

Impatience tells me that this is not all that there is. This is not all that I will ever be. Impatience reminds me that I'm worth fighting for.

Notes Along the Journey: Interfaith Marriage

His lack of faith doesn't change that this is the man I trounce at cribbage. The one who vacuums our floors because the vacuum cleaner hates me. This is the man who texts to let me know he's running late because he remembers my irrational fears that he'll leave me or die unexpectedly.

This is still the man who held me through nights of endless flashbacks. The one who bound the wounds I inflicted on myself. He was the voice of reason in the middle of my insanity and despair.

He has struggled to face his past, to pursue his own recovery this past year and a half to give our marriage a fighting change. He's been the one to go toe to toe with me, holding his own, holding us when I was ready to walk away.  The one who has fought to take down his walls and share his heart, even as every protective instinct screamed for him to run and hide.

His rejection of the Divine doesn't change these pieces of who he is.

AND

None of these things change how I feel. Betrayed. Angry. Confused. Grief-stricken. It doesn't change my need to scream that this is not how the story is supposed to go. There isn't room for one more plot twist. It feels like the cruellest of ironies. As I have begun to find my footing in my faith again, to find glimpses of hope in how I could be part of community, he has slipped further away.

The loneliness threatens to drag me under. There are a few brave women I have found who are talking about this. I'm grateful for their words, their stories.

It's hard not to wonder where did I fail, to not demand an answer as to why God is passionate and intentional about pursuing my heart yet seems to not give a shit about my husband's.  That sounds like the God of my childhood, not the Divine being that I've grown to know and love. In all of this though, I feel held. I have a deep knowing that this story isn't over. I don't know the ending, but I know that honesty is necessary for growth.

I'm left in the same place I was before this bombshell - learning to love my husband in ways that are healthy and sustainable for both of us.

Real Talk Tuesday: I Give Myself Permission

Growing up we often told each other that it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. It was true and not true. In my world, half the time I got in trouble for asking for permission in the first place. Permission has always been something external, this mystic power that authority figures held over me. There is fear here as I consider what it would mean to take that power back, to allow myself to be the one who grants permission in my own life.

What if though permission wasn't about power and control? Just because I've always known it as that, doesn't mean that it has to continue to mean that in my life now. What if permission could be a gift, a mercy, a treasure that I welcomed into my life? I'm learning to see permission as a doorway, one which leads me further into hope and healing.

It is in that spirit that I wrote this letter to myself:

Dearest Me,

You have fought against the rules and restrictions of others, battled to find the right way, the way that brings acceptance and belonging. I give you permission to stop. You're allowed to go your own way because you already belong. There is already acceptance of you here.

Acceptance of your humanity - in all of it's glory and mess. You have permission to get it wrong. To react badly. To not always map everything out with multiple contingency plans, just in case. You have permission to get it right. To respond with brilliance. To point others towards wholeness. To feel settled and comfortable in your own skin.

You have permission to stop apologizing. Your existence is no longer something that needs to be forgiven.
You have permission to struggle, to have bad days that stretch into bad weeks, which stack up into awful months. You're allowed to ask for help on those bad days, to admit that you cannot do this all on your own. That doing the laundry or the dishes or cooking one more meal is more than you can handle. You have permission to have good days. Glorious days. Days when you skip and dance and twirl and laugh. Days when you accomplish it all with energy and joy to spare.

Your performing for others, for God - those days can be over now dear one. You can let those chains fall off your shoulders. Who you are is beautiful, right here, right now and you have permission to celebrate that, to struggle with it, to wrestle with it until it is a truth worn deep in your bones.

You don't need my permission, but you have it. It's a gift. There are no strings here waiting to trip you up, to tangle you in impossible expectations. There is no fine print, no gotcha.

I am here, cheering you on, as you live out your story. A story that doesn't get wrapped up in 30 minutes with a neat bow covering up the messy bits. You have permission to own your story, to shout it from the rooftops, to whisper it in trembling bravery. Your cage is unlocked and you have the only key. That key is your permission to leave this cage of fear and lies. You no longer have to live here.

You have permission to be loved, cherished, accepted.

Love,
Me

Linking up with Marvia Davidson for Real Talk Tuesday. Come join us. :) 

Stories From the Past: A Beginning

I'm linking up with Marvia Davidson's Real Talk Tuesday talking about truth. This is my truth. 

I couldn't settle to sleep, so I stayed up all night reading Every Shattered Thing by Elora Ramirez. If you haven't read this book, you need to. It wrecked me. Because while I've never been a victim of human trafficking, I have a good friend who is. This shit is real. It happens. And the lucky ones escape.

My words are tumbling around in my brain, as I fight tears. Because this story, it reminded me of something I'd forgotten. It reminded me of how bad the abuse was. About how it really is a big deal. I forget that. I forget now that it isn't happening every day. Now that I don't live my life in terror. Now that I don't have to worry about my room being searched or being caught doing something that would dishonour the family.

I've buried my stories. The fear and terror. The shattering of my soul. I've told them, detached, clinical. Listing the details as though they were nothing. Because they were normal. But Stephanie's story, it reminds me that it's not normal. Her desperation, her tenuous grasp on hope, it reminds me of my own. I forget how far I've come. I minimize the healing that still needs to happen. It's easier that way. It's easier to shrug it off. It's easier to live my life half-connected, but that's no life at all. It's this washed out watercolour existence, that has more colour than my life ever contained so I think this is living.

I'm still surviving. In too many places and too many ways. I'm surviving. I'm still hiding. Hiding my words here, hiding my face, my passions, my dreams. I'm hiding the nightmares and sleepless nights. I'm hiding the daily pain, the constant reminders of medical treatment and care that I was denied.

I don't tell. I still don't tell. I feel like I've written this post a million times here already, and somehow I need to keep writing it. I need to keep telling myself the truth, because really that's what this is about. It's about truth. My truth. I forgot what it was like to find stolen moments of time. Time to myself, hidden away from the parents. The lies upon lies that I told praying that he wouldn't catch me in it, that he wouldn't take away the tiny pieces of freedom that I had earned.

I understand what it is to be property. My value was in the work I could do around the house, the free babysitting, the way that I bolstered his image as a good father - and when I didn't bolster his image then came the rages. The screaming words hurled at my soul - the ones that I don't have to hear ringing in my ears any more because I wear them, carry them in my bones. They weigh me down and keep me trapped.

fat, lazy, rebellious, witch, liar, bitch, slut, disappointment, demon-possessed, why can't you be better, why can't you be like so and so...on and on, his words defining me, shaping me. Demanding respect, demanding love, demanding affection, demanding unquestioning, unthinking obedience. Demanding, pushing, pulling, tearing at my skin.

And I feel the numb set back in, the fog settling back down, sinking deep into my bones. I feel myself start to float away from these memories, back into myself, back into the present because what's back there is too much, too hard, too painful.

It isn't enough though that I survived it, that I was given a place, a home to escape to. I owe it to myself to heal, to come alive, to be the person that he was desperate to destroy. I don't know how. I don't know how to unlock these stories. I still don't know how to tell. Yet I'm convinced and reminded yet again that I have to tell them, in halting words and imperfect details. I have to tell them so that maybe my soul will stop shattering with every anniversary, phone call, visit, sleepless night, flashback, memory, and trigger. I don't know how to heal from this. There isn't a manual. But I'm determined to try.

Ugly Truths: A Rant and A Confession

I feel like the red-headed bastard child. The one that is tolerated, but no one actually bothers to converse with. The child being permitted just this once to sit at the table with the grown ups, the real women. 

I've chosen not to have children. It's not that we can't, we don't know, we've never even tried. I spent most of my relationship with my husband long-distance until 6 months before we got married. I wanted time for the two of us to live in the same country, the same time zone before we became responsible for a tiny human. Only now it's been 5 years and I'm still saying no - because of his addiction, because of mine. Because when I don't get enough sleep, I physically cannot function. Old mostly managed health problems flare to the surface under stress, sleep loss, poor eating habits - all the things that come with a newborn. Because I still can't see a doctor for a women's exam due to the flashbacks and triggers that set me back in my healing for weeks. Because I won't subject a child to his emotional neglect and abuse. Because of a million reasons all of which boil down to this - I can't be a responsible mother yet. 

I'm angry. I'm angry because I know I'm making the right choice for me, for my marriage. I know it deep in my bones that this is a not now. I'm angry because there only seems to be room for SAHMs in the church. Career moms feel excluded. Single friends feel excluded. I feel excluded, looked down on - because in the very needed push to affirm those women who have made the choice to stay home with their children there has been another message sent. One that says we will only see you when you produce a child. That declares that motherhood is the highest calling of a woman and what God has designed us to do. For those of us who either by choice or by circumstances outside of our control do not have children  - not only do we have to deal with the social and societal ramifications of that choice, we're told that you will never truly understand God's love for you, that your calling and life choices are second best, and that you can't love anyone unconditionally. 

People tell me it must be nice to have so much free time. The bold ones when they find out that I'm not a mother and I don't work ask "so what do you do all day?" I'm usually so taken aback by the accusation that I mumble something incoherent to justify why I'm not working, not parenting, not doing something with my life that you can deem as valuable before escaping the conversation. 

Here's the real answer: I invest in me and the people around me. I fight to deprogram my brain from all the lies and false teachings and brainwashing that I endured for 22 years. I fight to stay sober, to live my life un-medicated and to not just feel my feelings, but to honour them even when I've thrown up yet again from crying the tears that couldn't be cried then.

 Everybody loves to point out that I'm free now, that I've made so much progress in my healing, that I'm so strong. It takes a hell of a lot of work day in and day out to be me. To show up in a world that I do not understand. I've had to learn new cultures - first when I left home and discovered a whole new world that was radically different than what I'd be taught to fear about it. Then when I moved from Canada to the USA - and to a very conservative side of the state. I don't understand this world I find myself in. It makes no sense. I fight to hold onto who I am, when I'm constantly swimming against the current. 

I spend my days working, wrestling with trauma. Mine, others. My phone rings, chirps, beeps with messages of pain and panic from women who feel unseen, unheard. Women who are fighting to live, fighting the lies of their pasts, fighting to not medicate, to live one day at a time. 

I get it. I'm fat. I'm socially awkward. I don't have the right clothes. I loathe small talk and getting to know you ice breakers. I no longer cover my scarred arms and that makes you uncomfortable. My story of being abused in the Church, by the Church makes you look at how you parent, raising ugly hidden questions you'd rather not see. 

I go to these events that are supposedly for all women. I watch you fawn over each other's perfect outfits, make-up and hair dos. I listen through speakers that assume that we are all wives and mothers, all white conservatives. I hear about events and opportunities - none of which fit my schedule, all of which require extra money that I do not have. You spread a little Jesus over the top, to go with your matching napkins and table centrepieces. I walk away feeling unseen, unheard, and unwelcome. 

And yet, I'm showing up again, protecting that small ember of hope that this time will be different. This time it's something I'm passionate about. This time, maybe there will be women there who are willing to be real, authentic and look past all the things I'm not to see who I am. To see my heart and my passion for women to heal and no longer be bound by the chains that have been wrapped so tightly that they are choking to death. I'm summoning every last scrap of brave that I have and putting all the tools I've learned in the last 8 years into my bag to take with me because I believe that one day, one of these times I will look around that room and see you. 

I will see your heart trying not to spill out of your eyes because your husband is addicted to porn and you have done everything you can to make yourself be enough for him. All the perfect clothes, and make up, are you trying to fill that ache inside of not being enough for the man who vowed to love, honour and cherish you. I will see you, the frazzled nerves from it being a miracle that you made it there and didn't forget a child at home because your husband is deployed yet again and the only way you have to cope with the loneliness and the fear is to form your life around your children. I will see that behind all your stories about your daughter is the remembered years of interviews and inspections, invasive questions and dashed hopes as you struggled through the adoption process. I will see the loneliness that hides behind your too cheerful chattering words. Your voice begging to be heard; your heart begging to be nurtured.

I show up hoping that today is the day I can see you and realize that none of us feel enough at these events but we show up, holding onto hope that we will be seen. 

Patterns and Cycles

Bewildered
How did we end up back here?
Arms curled around the empty ache
As if to somehow hold myself together

Weren't we happy, connected, together?
Growing towards one another

Wrenched apart
Walls slammed into my face
Silence echoes
Mocking
Tearing at our bond

Pushed away
To stumble and fall
Blame rains down on my heart
From lips that once spoke affirmation

Defending the fragile nature of my becoming
From one sworn to cherish
Bruises would feel like welcome relief
From the battering of criticism against my soul

Intimacy has fled
Chased out
Time poured into everything but us

I exist
Shrouded in loneliness
Huddled against the shame
Trapped by unreasonable expectations

The dam breaks
Tears spill from swollen eyes
Recognition
Dawning awareness

Grief-stricken apologies
A return to different choices
The bond repaired, rewoven
Until the next time.

Sobbing on the Kitchen Floor

It's one of those seasons again.
The ones where I'm his yo-yo,
never certain which way his fingers will flick me.

Will I go hurling towards the floor yet again?
Will this be the hit that shatters my heart,
or will it only be a dent, a scratching of paint?
Or will he stop half way down, and jerk me in a circle,
weaving me in intricate patterns and knots?

He filters what is told to others,
making me the bad guy,
the unreasonable wife,
the too-fragile one,
the ball-buster.

My words become his justification
to continue to toy with my heart -
 my words,
yanked out of context,
 thrown back in my face,
slightly twisted,
 just a little bent.

He's learning to pull me close,
to hold me in his hand without having to hurl me back to the floor.
It's a learning though,
and my heart, MY heart bears
the consequences and scars of his progress.
I didn't think there was room on my heart for more scars.
Somehow he found the few unmarked places
and stabbed me clean through.

When I'm My Best Self

The idea for this came out of my having a bad day. The judgements in my head have been spinning out of control and the tapes of the past are trying to drown out my own voice. This is why I wrote it all out, all the ugly truths of who I can be.

In writing about my worst self, the words at first came fast and furious. All these horrible things about myself. Yet as I kept writing I started to hear my voice again. My voice telling me who I am when I am my best self.

When I'm My Best Self

My best self is kind

gentle, compassionate

She values herself

beauty and scars, growth and tantrums, 

She sees good in others

extending kindness, mercy, grace, and love,

She is light

shining in darkness, holding out hope, standing, dancing, a beacon

She is brave

unashamed, whispering truths and roaring at injustice, 

She is creative

outside the box, breathing in colour, living in words

She is tenacious

relentless in pursuit of wholeness

She is organized

Thriving on routine and structure, carefully planning, balanced

She has empathy

seeing, feeling, believing the pain of others, holding their hearts and stories in hers

She is humanity at it's best

Loving herself and others well, being true to herself

When I'm My Worst Self

There are these tapes in my head. The ones that play 24/7. When they were recorded they sounded like other people, but now, I get them confused with my own voice. One of the tools that I have in learning to value myself is to write what's true. At the moment, what feels true is only true when I am my worst self. I'm not always this person. But sometimes I am - usually when I'm hurting, angry, anxious, lonely, or tired. I've worn myself out, trying to challenge these tapes head on. It hasn't worked. What has worked is accepting what piece of truth they may offer and allowing the rest to go. Funny thing is, what truth I find in these tapes is generally true only when I am at my worst.

I'm tired of only seeing these things about myself, so I thought I'd write them out. All the pieces of my worst traits or my best traits turned destructive. My hope in writing this is not to bash myself over the head, but to make room for me to write When I'm My Best Self.

When I'm My Worst Self

My worst self is petty

Nit-picking, anal retentive, obsessed with detail

She is harsh

Judging , comparing, evaluating, cold and distant

She lacks empathy

Without mercy, perfectionist, grace-less

She holds herself as separate

Different, other-than, sometimes superior, usually inferior, less-than

She sees herself as childish

Needy, desperate, whiny, weak, lacking

She feels desperate

Grasping,  impatient, merciless, insane

She is selfish

Seeing only her pain, her past, her dysfunction, her problems

She is undisciplined

Lazy, scattered, disorganized, lacking in her follow through

She lives in terror

Scared, worried, nervously waiting for the other shoe to drop

She is humanity at it's worst

Vindictive, small-minded, bringing death to herself and others

A Plural Life in a Singular World

You don’t end up as a poly-fragmented multiple without severe, prolonged, horrifying trauma before the age of 7. I know this. All the literature agrees, well all the literature that acknowledges multiplicity as real, as possible. I laugh at the idea that something that I live can be debated still as to whether it even exists.

It’s always existed for me. I split before conscious memory, long before narrative memory. I will never get to know why. There is no story that I can tell, no threads to weave together into a tapestry that explains why when I was a preschooler I already had 5 distinct separate personalities. My abusers refuse to acknowledge the harm they did to me and I do not yet have the strength to force a confrontation. It’s around the age of 4 that I have conscious narrative memories. That is where my stories start - the first time that he thought I was demon-possessed and decided to cast it out of me. The first time that a friend wanted to play a game with me - a game that I've learned to label for what it was - sexual molestation and object rape.

There’s the story of the bullying, the name calling, the being pushed down on the playground. Of being excluded, always, forever left out. These are stories that I could tell, that I need to tell - and every story, every incident shattered me further. My words feel too small, too insignificant to do justice to the harm done to my very being in the name of God, love and family. I don’t have a before. All that I have is the abuse and the aftermath.

I can’t tell you the story, the first story where I learned that because I was a girl I was less than, I was evil. I can’t tell you the story because it was in every interaction with my father. I saw it every time he belittled my mother. I was taught it every time that the story of Adam and Eve was told. It was Eve’s fault, she destroyed the perfect world God had made. I have a three year old part inside who’s name is Eve. We only found her a year ago - locked in an internal hell, perpetually being punished for being a girl, for being sin, for being totally depraved to the very core of her being. Christianity taught me that. My good private Baptist school taught me that. My current church teaches me that. It’s taught every time a man gets up to speak and a woman doesn't. It’s taught every time a man is put into a leadership position over a woman. It’s taught in ways that are driven into the depths of women’s souls.

To stay in my church right now is telling Eve, this precious piece of us, two separate messages. Because we rescued her from that hell - both her and the young boy that was created to torment her for all eternity. We rescued them and have been teaching them both that they are more than that story from so long ago. We are teaching them that they each are beautiful and worthy and loved. But when I stay, I'm telling Eve that there’s a piece of that old story that tormented her for so long that is true. She is different, less than, over-looked and unseen because she is a girl. I can’t stay in a place that tells this beautiful piece of my heart that she is evil.

I must leave, and I don’t know where to go. It’s only been in the last 4 weeks that the internal structure that has kept us trapped in a cycle of torment and obligation about our faith has stopped. It’s shifting, changing once again as we take this next step to healing. This is my hard thing - my internal world, that is more real to me, more a part of me than anything else on this earth and this next step in my healing, finding a church that doesn't add garbage into my still open wounds. I want to live open and honest as me, as us. I don’t want to be the poster child for healthy multiplicity. Most multiples who heal choose integration into one whole self. That’s not an option for us. We've never known a life without each other’s company, opinions, voices, and our internal landscape. It’s not easy to live as a plural person in a singular world. We are always checking our tenses, terrified we said too much, that we spoke as a harmonious collective instead of a solo voice. It’s the secret that doesn't get talked about - not with the family, not with most of my friends, not in the places that I minister. There just doesn't seem to be room for all of me.

Yet all of me is here, we exist - and the more that we write, the more the struggle to stay singular seems worthless. And we’re scared. Scared people will run away like they have in the past. Scared people won’t engage with us as we are. Scared that we will turn into this sideshow freak. Scared to write this, even more scared to post it. We've been kicked out of things before for being plural and owning it. Our biggest fear though is that we’ll be ignored. The one thing I cannot bear is silence.

There’s no tidy neat bow to wrap this up with. I hate that this is an on-going writing, something that continues to surface. This healing from abuse is painful. Living in the aftermath is even worse. Maybe that’s why my eye keeps being drawn to trees growing out of rock faces. Trees that are thriving, and growing in the most difficult and beautiful of places. Maybe my eye sees what my heart doesn't dare hope for yet - that there is beauty here, growing out of these hard places.

Beauty From Hard Places

There's a theme showing up over and over as I wander through nature.  My eye is drawn to several things time and again. Pine cones, new buds, water, the interplay of light and shadows. These are all important.  There are things here for me to hear and see. My mind wanders over the thoughts and images, seeing new life - it's fragile beauty. It's tenacity. The trusting brave that winter is over. It reminds me that growth takes time. First grow the new shoots and then come the buds. It will be months before the full beauty of the blossoms is seen.

There's another thing that my eye is drawn to - trees growing out of rocks. Life from harsh environment. Life and beauty in these hard spaces. The roots have to dig deep to anchor the tree, to dig under the rock, to dig even into the rock. It's a message my heart needs, and one that I don't always want to see.

I know too well the struggle of growing in those hard places. Fighting all the time for the basic essentials that I need to survive. I've spent so long begging for a transplant - and in some ways I got one when I moved to be with my husband. But that transplant wasn't to a beautiful garden where all my needs are magically taken care of.  It was to a different type of hard place, new rocks mixed in with the old ones.

It's easy for my soul to scream to the heavens that this is not abundant life. My screams are answered with these trees growing out of cliff faces and on rocky river shores. They are answered with new life mixed in with the left over dead growth from winter. They are answered with bare branches that are teeming with tiny new buds.

There is life here in this hard place.  There can be growth here, now.  It will take time. It will take tenacity. It will take trust. And one day there will be the stirrings of beauty, not somewhere else, but here in the middle of the rocks.

Dark Days

{Good Lord this post sounds melodramatic. It's not meant to be. It's honest. As honest as I know how to be right now. I'll be back to a more balanced place in a little while. Too often I don't acknowledge my own dark days. I'm trying that here, with this.}

Some days my broken gets too big. It eclipses every thing else in my life. I sink down, mesmerized with my own pain, sucked into the aching hole of my own private dark places. When I say some days, I mean at least once a week. Introspection is a good thing.  At times I go overboard and know myself a little too well. I forget to look around. I've spent long years believing I was other and alone. I was told to get over my broken, to see that others suffer more than I can imagine.

I've heard the platitudes and comparisons with a little Jesus sprinkled on to make those who offer such filth feel righteous. They ring in my mind, in my memories.  Some are etched in my soul. Other still block my ears and blind my eyes, tricking me into believing that what was is still now.

My voice is panicked, defiant, and silently screaming. There is no objectivity. Things that I know are right for me are called back into question once more. I back into the corner, desperate for protection, needing permission to choose for myself, to function, to breathe.

This is the fallout I hate. I hate my brokenness at times. I hate the way it dominates everything, that THIS, this is what I know. It's all I know. Trauma and recovery. I wish I could rip my heart out of my chest, to find some way to let all the darkness pour out of me once and for all. Darkness I never invited, never wanted, never deserved yet that darkness haunts me, torments me, taints me.

I lost the first 22 years of my life to abuse and I've spent the last 8 finding myself and healing from all the damage. I don't know anything else. The only beauty that I possess comes from ashes. Most days I embrace the mystery along with the pain - the mystery of why this was allowed in my life.  The mystery of the purpose that it may one day serve. The mystery of abuse done in the name of a holy merciful God.

On these types of days, I loath the mystery. I demand answers. My heart's voice screams "why?!" until it's hoarse. There are still no answers. No more of a response now than there was back then. My pain swallows me and everything I know, all that I have learned is once more lost in the howls of a soul in agony.

How long will you forget me, Lord? Forever? How long will you look the other way when I am in need? How long must I be hiding daily anguish in my heart? How long shall my enemy have the upper hand?Answer me, O Lord my God; give me light in my darkness lest I die.  

Psalm 13:1-3

Fasting from Self-loathing

When I walked into therapy almost three years ago, I was nervous, defiant, ready to run.  I was there because I knew that I was drowning in my attempts to heal myself.  I needed help, badly but help had not actually helped in the past.  That "help" had heaped more shame, judgement and damage on my shattered self.  The Spirit in me though wouldn't let it go.  I committed to doing one intake, one sit down to see if one therapist was competent and trustworthy.  That was all I had in me.  I couldn't risk bigger than that and I fully expected to be disappointed.  That was the beginning of a beautiful therapeutic relationship, one that started with the question what do you want to get out of this?

This week in looking at self-loathing, I'm reminded of that question and my answer.  Three years ago I knew that I couldn't continue to survive my own self-hatred.  Even though I was no longer cutting and planning my own death, the thoughts were there and the feelings that had driven those behaviours in the past continued to build in intensity, only now, they had no outlet. I thought I was going to explode.

I hated my body.  It was too fat, too pale. too freckled, too scarred, too weak, too female. I hated myself.  I was too needy, too broken, too controlling, too angry, too desperate. I had a lifetime of pain that told me that how I saw myself was true. All these messages about my worth were carved into my heart by the abuses that others had heaped on me.

That question though, that question opened the door for hope to peek in. My goal then is the same as it is now...to learn to see myself as God sees me.  One day I will write the posts that declare that to the very depth of my being, I know that I am His and He sees me as I am - Beautiful and Beloved.

That day may not be today, yet this week has been a week of looking back to see how far I've already journeyed.  There has been a sweet sense of being able to breathe a little easier, of finding my second wind. I find myself laughing.  March has always been the culmination of what I had nicknamed my "suicide season". Historically this has been the month where there was no logical thought left and the screaming, howling pain had erased everything from my hearing but the relentless drumbeat of despair.  This March I've seen glimmers of hope.  The drums have been quiet.  The pain is there still.  There's no magic cure for that.

This year though, I've seen the beginning of "become" turn what I thought would always be true on it's head. As I sit with this week's fast, I feel rest instead of struggle. There is more work to be done, and I am already taking the steps laid out in front of me. The steps that bring me out of hatred and despair. Today I will own myself, my body and agree with my Creator that I am very, very beautiful, trusting that He sees beyond the limits of my own vision.

Starting

It still feels surreal.  I'm actually doing this, Story 101. I'm nervous and so very excited.  I want to learn it all these next 10 weeks.  I want my voice back.  It's mine damn it - given to me by the One who knows me best.  My physical voice is a muscle - one that requires discipline, practice, repetition and care to be all it can be.  My written spirit voice is no different.  These 10 weeks are boot camp, a launching pad for me to no longer hide my words away in fear.

This is the first step toward secret dreams.  Ones I have only started to dream again.  Ones that I only dare to whisper to myself.  Story 101 is my next step in this journey of becoming me.  I know that I know that I know this is where Spirit has lead.

In the next 10 weeks, I can guarantee that there will be moments of wondering now deluded I must be to even imagine that I could write anything that others would find value in, much less bother to read.  This is no different than any other becoming thing that I have been lead to in the last almost 8 years since I found my freedom.  I never thought I could be as free as I am from the chains of the past.  Yet those chains keep falling off.

When the dark days come, let them come.  I have faced storms and doubts before.  I am learning to stand and lean into the driving pounding winds and rains.  Every time those storms strip away things that I no longer need to be bound by.  Every stripping away reveals another piece of hidden beauty, beauty that would not have been revealed without the stripping power of the storm.

Even precious metals need fire and hammering, gems require cutting - all to bring out the glorious beauty that can only be glimpsed in the raw potential.  If I am that precious, then I know I too will need refining for my beauty to be displayed to it's fullest extent.  The beauty is there - this is the next step to it being held, first by myself and then by others.

Addiction and Recovery

Addiction sucks.  Whether it's my own, or my husband's, or in the life of my friends...it sucks.  There's nothing pretty about it.  It's ugly and nasty and sucks the life out of everyone that it touches.

I hate:
my own addictions - self-harm, nicotine, food, codependency
my husband's addiction - intimacy anorexia (IA)
addictions in the lives of my friends - food, drugs, alcohol, food, sex, nicotine, codependency, IA

I love:
the wholeness of recovery
the miracles I get to witness
that beauty is made out of ashes in front of my eyes every day

I struggle:
with the process
the setbacks and relapses
with the pain inflicted

Here's what I'm learning though.  There is beauty in the authenticity of living my recovery.  There is freedom in living a life without secrets.  There is an aliveness, a rawness in living without medicating my feelings.

It's hard work.  It's living with an openness of my heart towards others that is not easy, especially when those others are in pain or causing me pain.  It also means learning boundaries and self-respect.

I am amazed at how far I have come.  I was the girl who said that there was no way, no how that a 12 step program would help me.  I was too different and besides, my issues stemmed from the spiritual, emotional, verbal, psychological, physical and sexual abuses that were inflicted on me for most of my life.  Oh how wrong I was - and I'm so glad that I was wrong.  Recovery allows me to see my healing as a process, a journey, one which requires me, my Higher Power and my community.

I'm grateful for the people that have come into my life because of my recovery.  I'm currently leading a group for partners and spouses of addicts. They are beautiful women that I am so amazed by each and every week. It's holy, humbling work. It's stretching and growing me in ways that I didn't know I could be stretched.

Recovery has shaped me into the woman that I am today. I wouldn't be alive without it.  I wouldn't have a marriage without it.  Living out the steps has given me back my life.  I am profoundly grateful that God has used recovery to bring in pieces that I was missing in my healing journey.

Detaching and Protecting

I've been detaching from people all week long.  Part of it stems from having been overwhelmed with people last week.  The weekend helped to balance that out.  But I'm detaching still.  My heart is behind my walls again.  I'm protecting myself.  But why?  What the hell is going on that my instincts for self-preservation have kicked in?  

My reaction is disproportionate to the present circumstances, which of course means this isn't about the present, but is about the past.  22 years of trauma tend to make for a hell of a lot of triggers.  I know the big ones, but this one? 

What is it about re-framing how I see that is setting it all off?  Is that even the trigger?  It seems to have started there, but it could just as easily be held over from last week.  Sometimes I wish this was easier.  Right now I'd settle for a book or an idea or even some good questions.  My questions just seem to keep my brain spinning in circles right now.  

Here's what I do know.  

I'm homesick.  I miss President's Choice Blue Label products and their decadent chocolate chip cookies and deluxe white cheddar mac and cheese.  I miss my chosen family - it's been 5 1/2 long years since I last got to hug them.  It's an ache that never goes away and I don't want it to go away.  Because loving them is worth hurting every day that I'm not there doing life with them.  I'm building something incredible here - and I know this is where I'm called to be.  This space, this time has been carved out for me to have all the pieces that I need for me to do the deep healing that's necessary for me to even live day to day life.  For my marriage to even have a chance at lasting or being healthy, this is where I need to be.  Maybe one day I can have all the people that matter most to me living in the same country, or at least on the same side of the continent.  

I am grieving still for the marriage that I thought I would have.  The one where my husband isn't an intimacy anorexic.  The one where recovery was something that was there for other people.  The one where I didn't have to gear up and fight every day.  I knew marriage was hard.  I knew for us it would be horrific - it's all kinds of messy when two abuse survivors marry.  But I didn't expect it to be hell for the first 5 years.  It's better than it's ever been and I'm impatient.  I hate that he has to chose every day to be brave and connect with me.  I hate that connecting with me requires him to be brave.  I hate that he was hurt so badly, abandoned and neglected to the point that no one is trustworthy.  

I am wrestling with God, faith, belief and what that all looks like in my life.  I am still de-programming from the toxic abusive bullshit I was taught in the name of God.  It's hard, painful work.  I am still questioning how an all-powerful God allows abuse, especially that done in His name.  

I'm tired of being patient and waiting.  I'm tired of everything taking hard work.  I'm tired of continuing to pay the price for the sins of others.  

I am tired.  I don't know how to even begin to re-frame any of this.  I don't want to let go of my judgements.  yes they hurt me, they hurt people that I care about.  But letting go of one more thing?  I already feel stripped of my defences.  And yet I know this is what I'm called to do - to live with my heart wide open. This week I'm running away from that calling and that's why I'm detached.  That's why my walls are up and I can't seem to engage with my course.  This week requires an openness of my heart that I'm not ready for yet.  I'm learning - and I'm not there.  Not yet. 

Biting Back My Words

I'm biting back my words.  I'm shying away from writing the hard truths, the pieces that desperately need expressing right now.  I ended up writing an email to one of my sisters tonight.  There are so many things stirred up.

I feel invisible.  It always seems to go that I either share myself as this broken damaged emotional mess or as the strong competent "I survived that shit" leader.  Both are me.  Neither are the whole truth.  I want to scream all the horrid truths that I've internalized about myself to the world.  I want to carve them into my body as an ever present reminder.  I wonder if that urge will ever go away.  It's been 3 years and 364 days since I last self-injured.  And right now I miss it, crave the false release it will give me.  I crave the false comfort it offers and the lies that I can wrap myself in to numb my heart from the depth of my pain.

I hold fast to the belief that if people really knew me they'd run for the hills.  I feel, no I know that I'm branded by all the abuses done to me, convinced that everything about me screams "victim" and "easy target". It's all lies, but they are lies that at least part of my heart still believes, still holds onto and still wraps around herself as a false sense of security.

Meredith Andrews does a song, Pieces, and the first verse feels like where I'm at tonight:

It's a complex puzzle you call your life
It's an uphill climb, it's a constant fight
And it wears you down
Feeling like you're alone, like you don't belong
And you won't be loved if you don't measure up
And you wear your scars
Like they're who you are

I am so sick of the lies I believe.  It's hard to see them as lies.  It was true.  I was alone.  I was abused by those who were meant to protect and love me.  That abuse was swept under the rug and I was told that I needed to be a better daughter.  Called out on being bitter and rebellious. No shit Sherlock. That's kind of what happens when I come to you for help and all you can offer is that I need to forgive him.  Then you sent me back there.  Time and again.  God I'm angry.

How do you learn to belong anywhere, to anyone when you're raised cut off from the world?  No media, no unapproved friends, and every move in tightly controlled.  I only belonged when I fit someone else's labels and niche that they had carved out for me.   Even now in my marriage I'm only starting to carve my own niche, having given up on being who my in-laws needed me to be, and who my husband thought I should be.
It's only been in the last year that I've started to be loved for me.  It's taken therapy and hard work. It's taken letting people see me.  It's taken my husband starting recovery for himself and his crap.  And yet the flip side is that for years I've known somehow, somewhere buried deep down that God doesn't give a shit about my trying to measure up.  He loves me - wildly.  It's hard to hold onto that.  The truth is getting stronger.  I tend to lose sight of it when I start the next round of healing and that's where I am right now. I know the way God loves me is like this whirling crazy dance full of colours - and I'm not connected to it.  It's held separate so that I can feel the pain that needs to come out.  It feels like walking back to the beginning.

And my scars...yeah I wear them like they still get to define me.  I spent 12 years cutting and the last 4 staring at my scars as they slowly fade to white lines.  It's not just those scars though, all the invisible scars define me even more.  Yet I know that God has scars too, and His scars, His scars mean that I'm Beloved.

These are some of the words that I'm biting back, that I've locked away, to only allow to spill out when I'm too tired to filter anymore.

Rest in who He is, He knows how to make your pieces fit - Meredith Andrews, Pieces