Finding The Book

It's safe to say that I have always had a harder time of it in the winter. In Seattle, it is relentless. Day after day of rain and gray skies. I log onto a weather website each weekday hoping to see that bright orange sun icon hovering over the ensuing weekend days. I haven't seen that sun in what seems like too long.

The weather has an effect on mood. I can feel it. I just might have a mild case of seasonal affective disorder. Just mild enough to put my mood on simmer. I'm willing to put up with it if it means living in Seattle. The mountains are so close to the city and there are four great seasons.

In the back of my mind is a discussion I will soon be having with a close family member and friend, about my abuse. He doesn't know the details, and it's the details that will forever change his world not unlike the way they have changed mine. We will soon talk. In a week or two, and I feel it will be the right time to tell him. There is no right time I guess. More accurately I would say that I feel 'compelled' to tell him.

I trust him, even though he loves and admires my abuser. My instinct tells me that he will be responsible with the pain that I share with him and he will be as respectful as he can be. But I don't know what to expect really.

I made it through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, not without difficulty. I have a beautiful wife who cares about me, it can be hard to be a scrooge. I think I have always felt my worst during this time of year. If I get sick it's usually in December. If I get depressed, it's usually in December. My body has it's own clock and it knows December well. Having said that, I think I had more fun than I have in quite a while.

We had a Christmas party (social gathering! What is that?!). I spent Christmas at the families house and we all pitched in to cook dinner. That may be the first time that's happened and I enjoyed it immensely. I think next year I will propose we take less advantage of my mother's cooking prowess again and make it a team effort. Though I think we will leave it up to mom to figure out the gravy situation. It wasn't pretty!

So what does all this have to do with a book? It's no ordinary book. In fact, it has been out of print for quite some years, despite it's popularity in certain circles. I ran over to the bookstore on the strip, hoping to find a copy of it. Alas, none to speak of. So I checked Amazon. "This book is currently out-of-print and unavailable at this time." I finally found an online seller with one copy! The book was in 'average' condition and they wanted $70 for it!

The contents of my wallet include two dimes, a penny, and a credit card a few bucks from being maxed out.

So I don't have the book. You are probably running at a threads-width of patience to know what makes this book so damn special. It was written in the 70's by two well known adventurers. It contains 50 of the greatest adventures you could think of, all in North America. I have only been on ONE of the 50, but it was the best ONE adventure that I have been on in nearly all of my life.

So i'm trusting the author on the other 49. I decided two days ago that my NEXT GREAT ADVENTURE would be to do all 50. I was so excited that I sat down at my computer and pulled up the calculator program. I am 33 years old now. I calculated that if I did 4 of these adventures a year, I would be finished by the age of 46.

It would take me 12.5 years to accomplish EVERY adventure. I have never been a consistent fellow, so this would take all the persistence and will I could muster to keep to this mission.

These are difficult adventures too. No walks in the park by any measure. I don't even have the skill level to accomplish some of them, yet. I will need to train. I will need to get into the best condition of my life to complete most of them.

I don't even know if I can call this mission of my a 'resolution'. I wasn't even thinking about New Years when it struck me. I just wanted to set a bar for myself. I thought that I want to do something that get's my heart rate up, something that invokes an internal HOLY SHIT! I AM GOING TO DO THAT?!

50 adventures. One at a time. Starting now.

It's a goal, and the path is going to be the best part about it. I want to be able to tell you about the time I "froze my ass off in sub-zero temperature in the snow" or how I "woke up to one of the greatest sunrises ever." I can't even imagine what the next 12.5 year will be like.

We want to be thrivers, that's the goal. As a survivor, it has become very easy to forget the people and things I love. I love my wife. I love our dog. I love my brothers. I love adventure and self-discovery.

It all starts when we are ready. I hope you are ready for your next adventure. If not, you soon will be. Trust me. Even if you can't find the damn book!

Holiday Musings from the Psyche of Sarah Elise

JOY is alive and well in the here and now. The above shot is moi and my husband the delicious human being that he is.




First picture is of me with my youngest son. The second is of me with my first born son, who opened me up in so many ways. Fritz pictured above. My horse. I am unaware of how he is doing these days as I do not speak to the incest family. In the here and now, joy is doing a dance.


Oh boy, here come the holidays...In years past the PTSD would be stirred up like a sandstorm. It gets easier as the years go by, thankfully mainly due to the healing effect of my family, my kids and husband. We have a clean slate with which to begin our nouveau familial style. I love my boys and husband so much. I feel that they inspire me and bless me...not just in the usual ways, but when I feel lost in the past, they bring me to center and keep me going just by being themselves. This is one of the ways motherhood and partnership heals me.

When one of them has a need, or a want, as they do a zillion times a day, I am snapped back into here and now. The here and now, this has been my focus. I tend to criticize myself and tend toward perfectionism in myself that I would never expect of anyone else. Perfectionism is a synonym for masochism, and self sadism. I feel so grateful for my family, and for surviving the trauma of my mother abandoning me, and my father raping me all those years, not just sexually but emotionally and spiritually. When I met my husband, I was in an unhealthy place, still tied to the blood family on my father's side. I was self destructive. The sight of him was like a reflection, and the image was of safety, goodness, love, and family. As the horses once did, Troy reflected my innate goodness back to me and I him. Wow. What a gift.

It was a momentous milestone for me to break away, ignoring the drone of bad advice and misguided emotional "support", telling me to come home and live there and be close. Be close. The incest web. I said no thanks to that and stayed with the man I would marry and become a mother with. It was very hard as the family, as most dysfunctional families do, knew how to manipulate me. I really left home in 99, I just kept going forward, years passing, rising like a phoenix. Very daring for me. The one thing they really had to wield were the horses. I began riding when I was 3. My horses gave me a sanctuary, they loved me unconditionally. They were magical. As I grew my grandmother, my father's mother, was "grooming" (interesting choice of words, huh?)me as she put it, to take over the family business. I elected a very different path and the shit hit the fan. Both my grandmother and grandfather tried making me feel so guilty if I ever desired anything outside of the horses. This was sacrelige! Of course I did desire other things, especially my own interests as most teenagers do, but their guilt worked.

I miss those horses. In 2004 I had to walk away from them, and one special one in particular. I chose my baby, my husband, their lives and mine over the horses. Over the family, over the pull of the incest web. In 2004 I even cut ties with my grandparents for good, filed a rape report against my father, received flowers from Eve Ensler, and began examining my relationship with my mother. The year of emancipation. My breaking away from them and thus the genesis of my breaking the cycles really began years earlier, in my mind. I was digging out of prison, misguided at first, in that I tried escaping through drugs and unhealthy relationships. I guided myself into the realm of true escape after I grew tired of hurting myself for things someone else did to me. I put myself first. My own mother never put me first, she left me with my father. My heart felt like it was being mutilated when I thought of my child ever feeling that. Over the years I have stayed in touch with that pain, and the pain of my father's abuse. It has kept me more empathic. Somehow she, my mother, lacked that fierce maternal bond. I was attached to both of my parents deeply, as children are. I am also incredibly bonded to my kids. My husband thinks I am more bonded to them and in touch intuitively with them than anyone else on earth. I love that he thinks that and am proud that I am!! Not apologizing for my goodness folks. Not gonna play it down either, I am a pretty great mama!

I give them what I never had. I feel the enormous ache and grief over my own losses as a child, I vow every second of every day that not only will I NOT repeat things, I think of what I WILL do. What can I add? Asset based thinking here, what can I give, not just what can I avoid doing. I can make a conscious effort to show my love and manage my anger and model healthy things for them. I add cafe dates, volunteering at my son's school, I teach them to be aware of mother earth and all her creatures, I honor their innocence and vow to protect it no matter what, I watch them grow and learn and try to appreciate the challenges they present me, like being more patient. Watching them safely develop and explore their bodies and express their emotions so freely is amazing and challenging. I was never allowed to feel my anger or even my joy fully. Especially not anger. Oh hell no, no anger for Sarah. And joy stifled by the always present threat of things falling apart as they so often did with my dad. He could never deliver a promise, hold down a job, keep a stable home for me. I remember when toys had to be brought back because he could not afford them. I still struggle with letting my hubs go out and shop for me at the holidays. I freeze up and feel like I am 7 again, walking through K&B, trailing my dad as he walked up to return gifts. John Lennon played in the background, singing about so this is Christmas, and what have you done? He promised a house and a dog, a job that he would keep, a mom for me, he promised to not touch me there anymore. All broken, all broken. I chose my husband because I knew that he would never do such things, although the sick little girl inside of me wanted a jerk to replay trauma with.

As for the past, the holidays I think of them. All of them, horses, people, red velvets ribbons. Are they ghosts? I don't know. William Faulkner said "The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past. " Interpret as you will, but it's all about tending the wounds and simultaneously living in the here and now. We used to decorate their stalls with stockings and wreaths and we had parties for all the clients. People came and brought gifts and food, we even had a costume contest for the HORSES!! I miss so much their soft faces, their whinnies, their cantering up to me, the smell of the barn, like cedar and shavings... and I miss being so good at something. (I won all kinds of awards all of my life, equestrian success was a huge part of my having any self worth.) I love Angela's metaphor, though it is more literal than metaphorical for those of us who have experinced abuse, of the sword of trauma piercing us. I remember thinking to myself about five years ago, this is like an iron maiden. I feel like I am in one of those iron maidens, knives coming from every direction. Horrifyingly accurate. It is like a sword, all of it, not just being raped. Not being protected, no armor. The armor should have been my mother, my grandparents. My uncle and aunt who chose denial. The sword is out and now we tend the wound. I am tending the wound. Part of tending the wound so it does not get infected is acceptance of what was and cultivation of hope for what NOW can be. NOW, the reality is that as a parent I must accept that I AM good. I must accept that goodness. It is so hard to accept our own goodness at times. I can not explain why my mother and father, grandparents and uncle did not see my goodness and honor it as I do my children. Blinded by their own unhealed wounds, enormous gaping wounds infected with drug addiction, emotional numbness, denial, inability to protect the vulnerable ones, and fear. Infected and blinded. It was what it was. I am who I am today and though a part of me still needs to cry, rage, and ask questions, thats part of what helps me walk solidly on my healing path.

In the meantime, in the now, I am creating, with my husband and family, joyous, grateful, creative and impassioned energy for our new family tree. I know the reverberations will be felt into the next generations, and the little girl I was will feel the ripples too. I invite her to be here now, now and always.

Let's all invite our parts, our little ones inside, to come and be here with us now. They are waiting for our love and safety so they can leave the dark rooms, where they have been alone and crying, and come into the light where they belong. We can parent them now. If you are not a parent, you actually are a parent, because we all have inner children who need love, they are all the children we once were at certain times. The traumatized ones need us. And we will rise up like the phoenixes, and be here for them now.

Namaste and Love to All~S

Points with Purpose

From thousands of tragic events, a beautiful drawing is born.

David Ilan, a celebrity artist has created a project named Points with Purpose. Through his specialized technique he gives dots a greater meaning by associating each dot with a real person who has been raped or sexually abused.

I love this project not only because it is a beautiful and empowering tribute to the female survivor but more personally, the woman who is sketched in the drawing looks very much like my sister Maggie, who passed away in 2001. Maggie was not only my sister but also a survivor of incest and domestic violence, and very much the reason for my advocacy today. The likeness is actually quite amazing and though coincidental, I believe that everything happens for a reason and I was meant to stumble upon this amazing project.

If you have been raped or sexually abused you can join the project on his site (It's free), giving your real name or an alias, and have the option of sharing your story. David will add one dot for every person who joins until the drawing is complete.

The final drawing will be of a woman looking confident, proud and beautiful. By joining the project, thousands of people with a shared tragic experience will work together to form a work of art meant to show others who go through similar experiences that they too can feel confident, proud and beautiful again.

Make a point of telling your story today: http://www.pointswithpurpose.com/

A Mother's Choice

Often, we hear of men who molest young girls and women and receive too little jail time or often, no penalty at all for their crimes. Tonight, on television was a story of a mother who was the co-abuser to her daughter of 7 years old. The reason for her decision, she wanted to "prove her love" to her husband. The ultimate sacrifice, in her mind would surely win over his commitment and perhaps allow some sense of normalcy to their lives. Normalcy stemmed from incest, an interesting and obviously distorted reasoning, an excuse to commitment the ultimate betrayal.

These stories are not new to me, having read hundreds of thousands of emails over the years depicting torturous and unbelievable acts of abuse. However, it always takes a moment longer for me to come to terms with mothers who turn on their own children, in order to gain the "love" of a man in their life. They themselves, abuse victims in the hell that is intimate partner violence. Part of me feels torn by the understanding that they face their own fear and pain and yet, I cannot condone the line that is crossed from victim to abuser.

There were so many levels to this particular case, but what I was struck by was an issue that screams true for so many women; needing a man in order to feel validated, worthy, loved. Often, women (and men) who are survivors of abuse will do find themselves doing things and allowing things to be done without questioning the impact of their decision. There is a laundry list of reason why such things happen, but one very important factor is conditioning.

If you are told that you are useless and unworthy each and every day of your life, parts of you, if not all of you will begin to believe it. There is truth behind the saying "thoughts are things" in that what you believe you become. If you are a vulnerable child your choice and sense of reality outside of your caregivers is drastically reduced and the name and expectations placed upon you will be your burden until you are old enough or fortunate enough to learn otherwise. For all of us, I believe this means being our own teachers.

A few years ago, I found myself in a relationship with a man who was quite older than me. I didn't realize at that time, that a large part of my connection to him was based on my relationship with my father. An odd and somewhat disconcerting realization, however one that looking back and being a survivor of incest, makes a lot of sense to me now. To make a long story short, I allowed myself to stay in this relationship and undergo behavior that I now see as abusive on many levels.

I fell in love with a man, and allowed him to control me in order to gain his affection and approval, much like I did with my father. The difference here is that I am no longer the abused child of 4 years old, but instead a grown woman making adult choices. The catch? On many levels, in the decisions that I made in that relationship (and others like it), my inner child, the one who learned what love was from her father, was still seeking love in the same way from men who could not give her what she needed. Self-worth, validation, self-respect, a true sense of self are all things that we must find in ourselves and that cannot be resolved by others.

I see myself as fortunate to have gotten out of that relationship before marriage or children. I can only imagine how much more complicated life would have been had my life changed even slightly to the left or where it is today. I see my mother and sister in my own experience, yet they were not as fortunate. My sister, passed and my mother having spent 30 years with an abusive husband. I see that choices that she made. I try not to judge her and yet, sometimes I do, still. I wish that all women and men will see their worth and never make the choices that will endanger themselves or their children. We must break the cycle now before it is too late.

Rekindle

Every so often we have to remind ourselves what we are living for. What gets our juices REALLY flowing. It can be so easy to just float out to sea, in the busy-ness of work, of the day-to-day, in the midst of depression. There are so many things overpowering our time and attention. We all just lose track.

So I found a tree with a nice green lawn below it. I laid down, watched busy people, at all rates of speed, walk, run, jog right by me. Then I looked straight up at the leaves and branches, with the strong rays of the Sun shining through them, making them almost transparent.

I had my IPod with me. So I fired up a song I hadn't shuffled out in quite some time. Music always helps me focus on me, my life. If I was going to focus, then I had to let go completely. Why the hell not? So I extended my arms out to my side, spread my legs, kind of like if I were to make angels in the snow.

What makes me excited? I mean, really brings a solid knot in my stomach, sends water barely peeking out of the tear ducts in preparation for the flood. I think of when I was a child, and my mother bought me my first He-Man action figure. I could remember it was a hot day like this, we were baking in the car. My mom rushed to roll down the windows, but I was oblivious. I pulled out the plastic packaging. It was He-Man, with a jagged double-edged axe, and bulging muscles all over his body. I couldn't believe the moment was here, so I took my time, ran my hand across the clear plastic, read every word on the package. Then I tore it open, grabbed the muscle bound toy with authority, and proclaimed myself the "Master of Grayskull!"

I wanted to find that again. To be that full of excitement and anticipation. I missed that about childhood. I miss that feeling terribly. We don't let ourselves feel that committed to something. Where we risk the ridicule, the judgments of others, because we are so consumed by emotion, by our clarity of purpose, by that which is best in us.

So there I sat, in the grass. I saw Monkey Face. In the plains of Eastern Oregon sits a large tower of rock, with a distinct rounded top. Just below the top sits a small cave, shaped very much like a mouth, and just above that sat the 'eye'. People climb that monolith, straight up it's side. I had been in that area almost 20 times, and had talked about climbing it for the past two years. I even had the balls to go out there with the INTENTION of getting to it's top. But it wasn't my time yet.

I could see myself working like Spiderman up it's side, climbing into the mouth, and pulling my body to it's top. Then I clutched both hands into fists, raise them above my head, and my entire body shook, like some kinetic lightning bolt fed into me.

As I saw this picture, I made it brighter, I brought it closer, so I could make out the expression on my face. In that moment I FELT like the Master of Grayskull.

But it hasn't happened...yet.

I know that there are more important things in life than climbing a piece of rock. But what can be more important than what that represents to me? That's real power.

The power to forget yourself and find yourself.

Chris

WSO

Reflection in an instant

I have a friend who lives her life in goodness. Like many of us, she is a caregiver. She spends her days helping others. She also lives her life in fear, each day looking over her shoulder and doing the best she can to stay safe. Her life, one of unbelievable turmoil and incredible strength. She fights for the rights of so many but like many of us, forgets or is sometimes unable to see how worthy she is of love, how much she is already loved or simply that she is not alone.

This road is long and tiresome sometimes. Many of us have lived experiences that are unspeakable, or at least unbelievable to utter. We compare our wounds and work incredibly hard to lift ourselves up to a place where we can recognize our strength. We are not defined by our past but it can be unclear just how much of it has contributed to our struggle to simply, "get through" the day.

So, I write this short blog in response to the pain I shared in a moment of disclosure. A moment where the world came crashing down and the realization that what was normal, can no longer be that again, but that we must redefine what normal is and rebuild foundations. I speak to all of those that have experienced pain, confusion and fear.

To those who have been granted second, third and forth chances, that we should know that even in the darkest of hours; there is light. That there is love and friendship.

That there is hope. We all need hope.

Ophelia