Happy New Year… Please???

New Year's Day.

Hmm…  I have been putting this blog off.  Very well, to give myself some credit.

Since my birthday, really.  You know, when I do the birthday recap, what have I learned this year, and what do I hope to learn next year thing…  Which I had every intent of doing, but then Frau GateKeeper decided, once again, to use my birthday (and, one month later, Christmas) as an opportunity to remind me just how worthless I am, and seems to have successfully recruited some other close relations into my "shunning", which -- as was obviously the intent -- hurt like hell.  So I wasn't really in the head space to recap the year, or think of anything positive about it, and the only thing I wanted to learn was how to do some very naughty things that would probably land me in prison.

So I figured I could be forgiven for postponing the annual wrap-up to New Year's.  Which… well, I guess it's still New Year's Day, but I've been studiously avoiding this all week, not to mention the numerous naps, and games of Angry Birds and casket solitaire that have happened today.

And even Pollyanna-Me is having difficulty finding the silver lining I always want to include, lest I convince someone (or myself) that life just sucks and you might as well give up now.  Reading some other bloggers I follow, I see I'm not alone in that this year.  Strangely, that gives me comfort.

I know a few who have refused to choose a word for the coming year, because 2013 was just so devastatingly disappointing.  I'm tempted to join them.  But I'm also stubborn -- even if I have to work past the naps and Angry Birds and casket solitaire...

You see, last birthday, and last New Year's, things were already pretty damned sucky.  Frau GateKeeper was having a hay-day, and her attacks were at an all-time high.  (These attacks have gone in waves over the years, as somehow she keeps forgetting my initial disclosure of my father's sexually abusing me, plus forgets the numerous times she's since heard me telling the truth about it and attacked me for it each time -- and with each wave the attacks have escalated to the point where I've finally realized I'm just not emotionally safe anywhere near the woman, and never will be.)  But the thing is, at the time, I thought that was the worst it was going to get.  That I'd finally realized there was no safe way to connect with her, removed myself from her firing range -- and while it hurt, at least I was finally doing something to protect myself, and would never allow anyone else to treat me so badly again.  I was down, but digging myself out, and ever hopeful for the future.

And so, when choosing my "Word of the Year" for 2013, I chose "Daring".  I envisioned myself throwing away those chains that had held me back for so long, taking those daring leaps and soaring.  The year did, in fact, begin with me doing just that -- making some incredible connections to help make the Katie Project come into reality, dancing (!) for One Billion Rising, assisting fellow survivors through peer groups, writing again, and starting to feel like I was finally doing my life the way I was supposed to all along.

When, WHAMMO!, the universe decided to pull a 180 on me.  Apparently, "Daring" was not supposed to be my word of the year, the universe made it a tie between "Betrayal" and "Abandonment".  Those have certainly been the themes.  From the GateKeeper and her newly-recruited minions to my husband to friends I thought I had to even my damned (now ex-) therapist*, the people I thought I could count on to be there for me through thick and thin were dumping me in the ditch or tossing me under the bus or dumping me in the ditch after running over me with the bus.  It was down to me and two girlfriends (later, a third) -- and with the resurgence of my abandonment issues and C-PTSD flare-ups, I wasn't really able to count much on me, either.  Even my own brain and body were turning against me.

[* A little break for an important Public Service Announcement:  Contrary to my previous assumption, the title "Psychotherapist" is NOT regulated in Ontario -- while they are bringing in new regulations, at the moment anyone and their dog can claim to be a psychotherapist, and not have to belong to any of the regulatory bodies, let alone follow their rules and policies.  Including, you know, things like ethical behaviour or -- something I thought was a no-brainer, myself -- CONFIDENTIALITY.  Not to mention, having the skills required to work with clients in a healthy and helpful manner.  As we later found out, this woman has quite a (ridiculously bad) reputation among ACTUAL psychological health practitioners, and every time we've related anything she said to REAL therapists, they have a hard time keeping their eyebrows stable.  Initials are S.F., working in Simcoe county.  Run for your life (quite literally -- she apparently believes mockery and humiliation are proper ways to deal with suicidal thoughts, and you can't be depressed if you jump up and down) and search out someone actually registered with the OCSWSSW or OACCPP or other governing body to get the competent, professional, and confidential help you deserve.]

So the annual wrap-up is: from March through December, I got very little done.  None of the dreams or goals I'd laid out for myself were attained or completed.  Zero to report.  Nada.  Niente.  The Katie Project is on the back burner until I have the mental and emotional energy to give it the attention it deserves.  I've barely booked any gigs because I don't know when I'll get the energy back.  I haven't written anything.  This entire year has been one gigantic unpaid sick leave, and if one more person asks me what cool projects I'm involved in, they might find themselves wiping snot from my nose as I wail from the corner in a foetal position.  I have no cool projects.  Trying to stay grounded and present and snot-free has been my overwhelming project this year.  I'm not sure if I've even succeeded at that.  No, I know I haven't.

What did I learn this year?  Everything I'd worked so hard to un-learn in the decades before (I'm unworthy of love, loyalty, compassion, having my basic human needs being met, etc.).

But then, girlfriend #1 (bless you, Ali!) introduced me to the Trauma Centre.  And I've been learning a lot.  Of the good stuff.  Seems I hadn't quite finished in the cognitive therapy department -- I've been hanging on to a lot of really bad assumptions, and using them as excuses for others to treat me really badly, or to ignore my own senses, or deny my own feelings.  Yes, even after decades of therapy, I've still got a few more mountains to cross…  Both Don and I have been lacing up our hiking boots, jabbing in the pitons, and helping each other across the terrain (when we aren't threatening to jab the pitons into each other's legs, of course…).  It hasn't been fun.  It hasn't been easy.

And, after a "Couple's Intensive" workshop weekend we went on in the fall, and the first bit of advice given to me from Terrence Real, I'm learning not to smile.  Which is harder than it seems.  When you've spent over 40 years denying your feelings, it's difficult to even acknowledge them, let alone show them.  A cheery smile and laugh has always been my best defence -- I embarrassingly remember being fired from a job for the first time (retail clothing sales, I was awful at it!) and laughing hysterically, hearing in high school that a good friend had lost his leg in a horrific accident and giggling like a fool, or my first husband and I deciding to divorce while I skipped merrily on the sidewalk as he watched, dumbfounded.  Feeling or showing anything but cheery has always been a dangerous thing for me, from keeping up appearances in my birth family and keeping secrets about my father, to present time when the GateKeepers et al feel the need to punish me every time I admit to having been hurt, for hurting now, or for taking the necessary steps to avoid being hurt again.

It's all very clear when you're looking at it from the outside.  When your trauma brain hasn't gone on walkabout or into a wingy fit.

I deny my own feelings in order to avoid being attacked for them.  When I do get attacked for them, instead of thinking "what an asshole for trying to make me feel what they'd rather I feel", I go into "I shouldn't feel that, what's wrong with me?" and the cycle continues.  I've got my work cut out for me… or rather, my trauma therapist has her work cut out for her!  OK, it's me doing the work, but her showing me how.  This may be long and expensive.  :)

This, of course, is probably just the tip of the iceberg.  She does have to work slowly with me, so my brain doesn't go on walkabout or into a wingy fit.  I'm seriously considering getting a PTSD dog.  Don thinks it's just one of my ploys to get him to let me have a puppy.  He could be right, but the way my brain and body have been rebelling this year, I truly feel that it would be practical as well as adorable.  :)  If you agree, you can offer to write me a letter of recommendation to include with the service dog application that Don may or may not know about ahead of time…  ;)

It's amazing what stays in the body.  And in the brain.  I've learned how to live on less sleep again, because the nightmares and hyper-vigilance have done a number on my usual 8-hour necessities.  Of course, considering how unproductive I've been this year, you might argue that I haven't really learned how to live on less sleep…

I'm learning how to get back into my body.  Which I can't say I like very much.  There are some really good reasons why I abandoned it years ago and retreated into my head -- it hurts too much.  Going back in really and truly is painful.  There's a lot of shit stored down there that I was hoping to forget in the next move (never works, but I keep hoping…).  I'm kind of surprised it hasn't already killed me in my sleep -- but maybe that's why I'm not sleeping much.

I'm learning how to trust my gut -- which, as many friends will remember, was a mantra taped onto the fridge in my previous house.  I obviously should have posted a new one here.  I'd get a tattoo if I weren't so freaked out by needles.  I'm slowly learning that it's not my job to make people feel better.  "No Rescuing", "Not My Responsibility" and "Trust Your Gut" were the three mantras staring from my old refrigerator.  I'd forgotten them in the last six and a half years since the move, obviously.  Time to re-learn.

OK, how's this -- I've learned that I'm capable of more learning.  And probably still require a lot of it.  But I've now got experts working with me, and I'm learning.  And I've learned that I've got two amazing girlfriends who I love beyond belief, and while I don't wish anything bad to happen to them, I hope I can be there for them in the same way they've been here for me this year.

What do I hope to learn in 2014?  Everything I've missed so far.

There, that's not too much pressure on myself, is it?

I have hopes, I have dreams, I have goals.  Of course.  Most are the leftovers from 2013.  So stating them for a second year reminds me of disappointment and fills me with dread.  I really don't want to pressure myself.  I can't afford to pressure myself.

So the overarching theme, my "Word of the Year" for 2014 isn't about goals or achievements or who or what I think I ought to be.  It's about what I need to do for myself.  For the people around me.  For those who love me and know what that word really means.  Who understand that "Love" isn't a word, or even a feeling, but an action.  A series of actions, a series of decisions, not something you merely write at the bottom of a Christmas card or say as you're pummelling the target of your "love" into a ditch under a bus.  A word to show myself and those around me what I *AM* worthy of.

Initially, I though my word was going to be "Healing", but that seems to imply an outcome, a goal -- something I'm capable (more than capable!) of falling flat with again.  Too much pressure.

This next year's word isn't about pressure, it's about giving myself what I need.  Giving myself what I've always needed, but was never given, so I always assumed I didn't deserve it, or was too demanding for wanting it in the first place.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes so beautifully, it is time for me to start "Warming the Stone Child".

My word for 2014: "Nurture"

Happy New Year, everyone.  That's a wish from the bottom of my heart, for all of us, but especially for those who I know were struggling with 2013 as well, and who are having difficulty staring into the face of yet another year.  We can do this.  We deserve to do it well.

As The Universe told me this morning, "[we are all] infinite, powerful, fun-loving gladiators of the universe, with eternity before [us] and the power of [our] thoughts to help shape it."

I'm putting on my tiara and hiking shoes, packing a nice bottle of Rioja, some good brie, and my new toolbox, and sliding in to a nice, hot bath.  How about you?

Gratitude -- yes, really

There's nothing like an annual holiday to bookmark life events, or life quagmires.

Thanksgiving last year, I was in a state of wide-eyed anticipation, eager to get started and continue on a number of projects dear to my heart, looking forward to family visits and other usually-joyful occasions.

The year in between, however, has been characterized by betrayal, abandonment, and loss.  Each of my closest primary relationships -- other than the girlfriends, god bless the girlfriends! -- in fact, has dealt me a blow of abandonment and/or betrayal this year.  In spectacular fashion.  And may I defy the censors and emphasize, in spec-fucking-tacular fashion.  This is a year which has left me crumpled in a heap on the floor, from which I am still attempting to gather up my pieces, and hoping some of the prettier ones will be krazy-glue-able back together.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this year has truly sucked.  In spec-sucking-tacular suckitude (bite me, spellcheck!).

The year that was supposed to hold such joy and promise and kick-assedness and taking-on-the-world and making-my-dreams-come-true and shiny happy rainbow coloured puppies and ponies has instead been one of despair and desolation and getting my ass kicked into the deep, dark ground.

Happy Freakin' Thanksgiving.  Gobble gobble gobble PITY PARTY!  (Great head space for a Thanksgiving post on gratitude, eh what?)

Listening to everyone giving thanks for their shiny happy rainbows, reading Twitter and FaceBook posts about their thankfulness for smiling puppies and ponies and people who stick by them no matter what and love them the way they deserve... I knew I was supposed to come up with something...  Dear lord, I spent four months blogging about "The Week in Awesome" towards the beginning of this anno horribilus, surely I could come up with SOMETHING other than "I'm thankful I haven't stabbed anyone in the eye with a fork, so have yet to be incarcerated as a dangerous offender."

(Although, considering the year it's been, I should probably be quite proud about that awesome fact...)

And I thus was spending the first half of Thanksgiving weekend fully entrenched in "waah, waaah, waaaahhhh!" mode.

But then I came across this quote in a friend's FB post:

It is relatively easy to feel grateful when good things are happening, and life is going the way we want it to.  A much greater challenge is to be grateful when things are not going so well, and are not going the way we think they should...

The religious traditions encourage us to do more than react with passivity and resignation to loss and crisis; they advise us to change our perspective, so that our suffering is transformed into an opportunity for growth.  Not only does the experience of tragedy give us an exceptional opportunity for growth, but some sort of suffering is also necessary for a person to achieve maximal psychological growth.

In his study of self-actualizers, the paragons of mental wellness, the famed humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow noted that "the most important learning lessons... were tragedies, deaths, and trauma... which forced change in the life-outlook of the person and consequently in everything that he did."

[Robert Emmons, from "Thanks!" ]

...and was floored, humbled and challenged.

Opportunities for growth abound right now.  Heck, by the time I deal with them all, I'll be eight feet tall with a brain the size of Texas!  ;)

But yes, this conglomeration of tragedies and traumas forced me to (finally) take my dear friend Ali's advice (did I mention my awesome girlfriends?) and "enrol" myself at the Trauma Centre, to deal with the next stage (how many friggin' stages are there, fer cryin' out loud?!?!?) of my recovery from that childhood rife with opportunities for growth.  And just a couple of months in, I can feel myself drop-kicked off the old plateau and zooming to new heights.

To a place where I know that, no matter who I am or what I do, I don't deserve to be treated as anything less than human.  That speaking my truth is not punishable by violence (physical or emotional).  That I have every right to expect honesty, loyalty and integrity from the people who demand it of me.  And that those who claim to love me had better put their actions and behaviours behind their words, and not just at those moments when they want me to do something for them.

Yes, I realize this all seems like kind of a no-brainer to most people, but... you might need to read some previous blog posts to get a wee hint at how very foreign these concepts are to someone who was groomed from an early age to be paedophile-fodder / caregiver / rescuer / doormat / outlet-for-your-rage, sire / secret-keeper.  (Plus, holy crap... I must say that I'm discovering more and more layers of that grooming via my ongoing therapeutic work -- there's probably a LOT of people right now praying the secret-keeper brainwashing is gonna stick, because the forget-everything-or-at-least-believe-you're-only-remembering-because-you're-the-crazy-one brainwashing is rapidly being chiselled away as I come to fully realize the depth and breadth of my abuse...)

As it turns out, while I obviously haven't allowed any more physical or sexual abuse back in my life, I had sunk back into the caregiver / rescuer / doormat / secret-keeper mode quite easily, while also harbouring dysfunctional thoughts such as "I don't deserve", "I am less than" and "I am unworthy", and training others to use, abuse and ignore me, because that was surely my place in the world.

Egads.  The things we do to ourselves...

And, using that whole frog-in-a-gradually-brought-to-a-boil-pot-of-water analogy, I guess it really did take the "perfect storm" of betrayals and abandonments before I could snap out of complacency and acceptance-of-shitty-treatment and say "Hey, cut that out!  I deserve better!"  To do a total re-wire (work in progress, of course...) and reprogramming of what I would and would not accept and expect in my life.  To try to salvage and rebuild the broken relationships with those who are willing to join in the new programming and also do the work this process requires.  To stop tap-dancing my ass off to somehow single-handedly build a healthy relationship with someone whose only goal is to tear me down and who wouldn't know "healthy" if it bit them in the ass.  To put the reluctant ones on hold until I can get a better handle on things.  To make my own needs and safety on equal footing with, or even (gasp!) more important than other's desires.  To treat myself as sacred.  (Yes, I threw up in my mouth a little just typing that one -- I did warn you, it's a work-in-progress...)

To treat myself as sacred.

Not the one who gets the leftover crumbs, if there are any, after everyone else's needs have been attended to.  Not the one who only gets to speak up if there's zero chance of anyone being even slightly bothered by what I have to say.  Not the one who quietly waits in the corner for someone to recognize that she's a human being as well, and is worthy, as much as, and deserving.

No-one else will recognize these basic truths if I don't recognize them for myself.  No-one else will treat me as human if I'm telling them not to worry about treating me with basic common decency.

If I want people to treat me as human, I have to treat myself as sacred.  And I have to keep reminding myself of this until it stops making me want to vomit, and I'm nine feet tall with a brain the size of Australia.  (Still 5'6", but... work-in-progress, didn't I mention?)

And I wouldn't have remembered to do this, were it not for this year turning out so very different than originally planned.

So, here I am: grateful for all the terrible things that were done to me this year.  Not grateful in a way that means I will accept this kind of treatment from anyone ever again -- yes, I'm looking at you, assholes-in-waiting, so just put it out of your mind -- but grateful for the reminder that, as a card-carrying human being, I do not deserve to be mistreated, and I am well within my rights to refuse to accept violence of any sort (without that being an invitation for more violence!).

I am grateful for the opportunity to re-draw and fortify my boundaries.

I am grateful for the opportunity to rebuild my life on more solid foundations.

I am grateful that there are people willing to rebuild with me, and some awesome girlfriends cheering me on.

I am grateful for the reminder to not be less than, to reclaim my voice, to be the best me I can be, and to know that whoever and whatever I am at any given moment is the best me I can be under the current circumstances.

Yessirree, I am grateful to the gate-keepers, the liars, the abandoners, the cheats, the betrayers, the backstabbers, the assholes and the abusers.  They have shown me who they are, and reminded me of who I am.  I am not who they want me to be.  They do not define me, but I can take these circumstances and use them to better define myself.  Be who I want to be.

I am grateful to those who are willing to learn along with me that I do deserve better, and are willing to make the effort to offer up the treatment I deserve.

I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow, and reshape my life into something better.

I am and forever shall be grateful to the Trauma Centre for the incredible work they're doing -- for me and for everyone who needs their services.  Grateful to Ali for pointing me there.

I am grateful to the girlfriends, most especially Ali and Lisa, who make me laugh, and cry, and mix some mighty tasty martinis, and who have been there for me even when I've pretended I don't need anyone there for me.

I am grateful that the liver is a forgiving organ.  Because... see previous point about my girlfriends' awesome drink-mixing abilities.

I am grateful for my honorary and chosen family.  I can't change my blood, genes, nor history, but I can decide who to keep close to my heart, who to trust, who to share my life with.  I have a beautiful pool of people who fit the bill.  :)

I am, indeed, grateful that I have not stabbed anyone in the eye with a fork this year, and therefore have yet to be incarcerated as a dangerous offender.

I am grateful that those projects and dreams that had to be put on hold for a while will still be possible when I'm ready to pursue them again.

I am grateful that I have the resources available to take this next step in my healing and recovery.

I am grateful that, this time next year, I'm going to be eleven feet tall, with a brain the size of the planet.

Dance like nobody is watching

Well, I'm pretty sure nobody's watching, or the neighbours might have called the paramedics by now...

I have spent the day rehearsing the dance steps for Thursday's "One Billion Rising" flashmob at Barrie's Five Points (between 5:00 & 5:30 -- please join us if you can!).  This is what the dance is supposed to look like:

Break the Chain

I'm afraid that when my husband caught me rehearsing last week, he thought I was having a seizure or something, and ran up the stairs to rescue me.  I am hoping someone warns the paramedics that I'm not dying, just dancing -- and sends them to help those people dying of laughter.

What I lack in talent, I shall make up for in enthusiasm!

At girls' night on Saturday, I recruited my friend Lisa to join me in dancing -- fortunately, she was already quite drunk by that point in the evening!  ;-)  Our friend Betty, who actually DOES know how to dance, tried to give us a lesson, and was very helpful, though you probably won't be able to tell (trust me, you should have seen the "before" pictures!).

I can do this, I can do this, I can do this...

Participants were invited to share a video of "Why I'm Rising".  I took a big breath and contributed the following:

Why Alyssa Wright is Rising

My "moves" have improved, slightly, from that brief demonstration.  Hopefully I'll be able to get some photos and/or videos at the event that make it look like I've actually spent the day practising.

Because I don't dance.  Let alone in public.  I believe the last time I did so was as a nine-year-old, playing a Russian Rose in a ballet recital.  My one and only ballet recital.  There's a reason for that.

But a funny thing started to happen today, as I spent the day practising my "step right, and party, step left, and party, now pivot, pivot, and party, party" and "step-ball-change, step-ball-change, swag, swag" (for the record, it took me until about 8pm to realize it wasn't break-ball-change, break-ball-change, which would have fit the step, honestly... at least the way I was doing it!).  No, I'm not just talking about how my 40-something knees started to give up with all the jumping around (although that happened too!).  I actually started to... you know... move my body with the music.  You might almost call it... er... dancing?

And I realized... not only do I not dance, I don't really walk.  At least, not in a fluid, happy-with-my-body kind of way.  I tend to walk so nobody will notice me.  I tend to walk as if my entire lower body was involved in a Kegel hold.  You know, if those muscles stretched all the way through my gluteus maximus and into my lower back.

Swaying hips?  Nope, not me.  Ass is firmly clenched, so as to eliminate any chance of a sway as my legs do the least they have to do to get me from here to there.  Dancing, should it happen, is in tiny little arm movements (as witnessed above), feet barely leaving the floor, knees maybe bending a tiny bit... maybe.

But as I got more comfortable with remembering the steps (other than the bridge, which I totally fail at every time!), and watched the dance students in the instructional video, and absorb the rhythms... my hips... started... SWAYING!  They swayed to the left, they swayed to the right, they did some weird gyrating thing I didn't think they were capable of... My hips were dancing!  Not only that, but my feet left the floor.  My arms wound around, my spine undulated... MY WHOLE BODY WAS DANCING!!!

For the first time in my 40-something years, I was actually comfortable in my body.  Comfortable letting it do its thing without worrying about whether someone would think I was an idiot or, more scarily for me, that I was trying to show off or be seductive or something (why I ever thought MY dancing might be seen as seductive, I'll never know... I may be dancing now, but let's be realistic!).

Letting my body express the music instead of hiding behind my cello.  Which, let's face it, covers a substantial part of my torso, hiding any swaying potential.

But today, I am dancing like nobody is watching.

I have no idea if I'll be able to recreate this phenomenon when someone actually IS watching, but... I'll give it my best shot.  Because:

This is my body, my body's holy
No more excuses, no more abuses
We are mothers, we are teachers
We are beautiful, beautiful creatures

I have no idea if I'll be able to get through the dance without laughing, and I KNOW I won't be able to hear that last line without bawling -- it has happened EVERY TIME today, and the song has been on CONSTANT rotation since 9am (you'd think I'd be used to it by now?!?).

My word for the year was "Daring".  I think I should get bonus points for February.  :)

Even without the points, though, I know I'm helping.  Not through my fabulous dance moves (!), but through standing in solidarity and protest.  And in the hope and faith that we can change the world -- one tiny heart (or vagina) at a time.

Until tomorrow, my friends -- Dance, Rise.

Book Report: The Ultimate Betrayal

Actually, the full title is "The Ultimate Betrayal: The Enabling Mother, Incest and Sexual Abuse" by Audrey Ricker, PhD.

And that sub-title is my biggest "beef" with the book -- that the subtitle might alienate people from reading a book they could probably get a LOT of help from.  Because, as the author explains inside the book, it's not necessarily about the possessor of the double-x-chromosome, or even necessarily a parent she is talking about in this book, it's the abuser's enabler.  Because of the nature of Dr. Ricker's practice, she usually does see female survivors of paternal sexual abuse, but she has also seen other survivors, and these patterns have proven true of ALL enablers, not just mothers in father-daughter incest.  These same patterns have proven true when the father is the abuser of a son, when the mother is the abuser of a son or daughter, if the abuser is a sibling or a distant relative or a family friend.

The subtitle also seems to ignore the non-enabling mothers -- the ones who figured out what was going on, and got their kids the hell out of the abusive system, charged the perpetrator, and got their kids the help they needed to recover.  They are out there, I've witnessed some in action (and wished they'd been around when I was a kid).  These kids who were believed and supported, of course, are not the ones who end up in years or decades of therapy -- so while it's understandable that Dr. Ricker can only base her studies on the cases she's seen, the subtitle does play a bit into the old "blame the mother" attitude that would probably prevent people from reading the book as well.

With those two gripes in mind, I'm going to switch terminology from Dr. Ricker's choice into my own: "The Enabler".  Because, as she does explain early on in the book, these patterns are true of sexual abuse enablers across the board, regardless of their chromosomal make-up.

With that out of the way, may I once again exclaim: Oh, Thank You, Good-Timing-With-The-Book-Buying-Fairy!!!

Because this book helped me SO very much in the latest Gate-Keeper incident -- seeing the patterns for what they were, pretty much predicting events before they happened, allowing me to prepare for them, but also allowing me to centre myself, not take it on, not try to twist my brain around something that never would make sense, not try to do something to "deserve" better treatment, because the Gate-Keeper was (and is) incapable of treating me any better.  Which is, honestly, a pretty sad place to be, but also quite a relief to finally be able to stop tap-dancing and realize it was never, ever about me.

I would advise that, if you're going to read this book, make sure you've got some sort of support network, because there is going to be a lot of anger, a lot of grief, and a lot of mourning, and you're going to need to talk through a lot of stuff with someone else.  If you don't have a therapist or organized support group, you should probably consider visiting an online support group -- such as Pandora's Aquarium, which I found recently and has been a great place to talk with people who "get it".  Yes, family (OUTSIDE family, don't even THINK of talking with members of the incestuous family about this, because as well-intentioned as they might be, they've been roped into the same damned patterns and may not be able to see things as clearly as an outsider) and friends can be a good support, but you need a professional specifically trained in childhood sexual abuse, and/or a support group of people who have been through the same things you have and understand what you're going through.  I can't stress this enough.  Take good care of yourself, this is going to be one hell of a ride!

The book is a combination of assessment checklists, illustrative case studies, and exercises for self-healing.  The pangs of familiarity I felt with every single case study were truly heartbreaking, the assessment checklists eye-opening, and the self-care exercises... difficult, but helpful.  I think I'll need to keep going back to them a few more times.  Because it seems I am, once again, a ridiculous over-achiever when it comes to having symptoms of incest and CSA.  There's a lot more work to do...

In the introduction, Katherine Trimm states what should be obvious but is often ignored: there is no correlation between socio-economic status or race for CSA -- it is Family Dysfunction that puts children at risk.  Dysfunctional parenting enables the abuse perpetrator.  A quote, if I may, because the intro sums it all up so perfectly, I don't wish to paraphrase:

It is usually less traumatic for a child to be victimized by a stranger than by a family member.  Not only does the dysfunctional family increase the risk to the child, and increase the psychological damage, but the dysfunctional family also fails to provide the supportive parental relationship that helps the child to recover.

Thus, we have the triple whammy of the dysfunctional family.  First, the dysfunctional family puts the child at risk.  Second, parental involvement in the abuse aggravates the injury to the child.  Third, the lack of functional parenting impedes recovery.  This is why understanding the family dynamic in child sexual abuse is so key to protecting the child.  And, when we fail to protect the child, understanding the dysfunctional family dynamic is necessary to understanding how to help the child heal.

(underlines are mine)

She goes on to refer to the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, and a number of rather frightening statistics, and then another quick quote that has been underlined and asterix-ed and given several explanation points in my copy:

The family should be the first line of defense for the child. ...To stop the violence, "parents should educate their children about appropriate sexual behavior and how to feel comfortable saying no." ["Child Abuse." AHA Fact Sheet #4. Englewood, CO: American Humane Association, 1993.]

But this kind of responsible parenting is not likely to occur in a dysfunctional family.  Further, as this book makes clear, in the enabling family, not only is the child not given protective messages.  Instead, the child gets the message that he or she cannot say no, or even has the right to say no.  It is obvious how this facilitates the perpetrator. 

Later, in her own preface, Dr. Ricker outlines, quite clearly and simply, the Enabler's role in "the drama of abuse".  The Enabler's role consists of four basic tasks:

1. Refusing to interfere with the incest
2. Discouraging the victim from hating the perpetrator by pretending that the family is perfect
3. Giving the victim the unspoken but clear message that (s)he is a temptress/temptor who is inherently bad
4. Making the victim need attention from the abuse by denying him or her the love, validation and soothing every child needs.

Did I mention the word "over-achiever" yet?  ;-)

***********************

The book begins with a series of five daily "therapy sessions", for which she suggests you allot an hour each day -- honestly, I'd allot more, just so you have time to deal with the fallout.  You might also want to do them in a room without sharp objects, and with the comfort food of your choice, and a blanket or teddy bear or whatever symbol gives you comfort.  This will not be fun.  BRING KLEENEX.

The first session seems benign enough -- a series of 26 questions regarding your Enabler, and how (s)he acted towards you as a child, to each of which you are supposed to write down Yes, Sort Of, Sometimes or No.  (For those checking up on my overachiever status, I answered No to 4, Sometimes to 2, Sort Of to 2, and Yes to 18, unless you count the number of "Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes"-s I wrote down, in which case, my Yes count is 25.)

In the second session, she tells you what the answers to the previous day's questions mean.  I won't spoil it for you, because if you're going to do this yourself, you need to answer honestly.  But, without giving you the punchline, I can say that a total of 10 Yes, Sometimes and/or Sort Of answers means HOLY CRAP!  (For those of you counting, even without my double, triple and quadruple Yes answers, I still totalled 24 -- over-freaking-achiever.)  The rest of the session is dedicated to feeling all your feelings about those answers, and what they mean.  Schedule this one for a day in which you don't need to face the public!

The following three sessions are used to process, grieve, sort through, and see the light at the end of the tunnel regarding these answers.  Let me stress: Schedule these five sessions for a week in which you have no outside commitments.  Make sure you have a support system in place!!!

*******************************

The book then moves into the most common / ever-present characteristics of the Enabler, with a chapter dedicated to each, including assessment checklists and case studies:

1. The Enabler's Matriarchal / Patriarchal Status

• acting as a central figure around whom all family member's lives revolve (e.g., consulted on all decisions, often provides indispensable services such as babysitting or making loans or taking on trips)
• main capital is approval
• often a "spouse-worshipper", putting Perpetrator above children in attention and/or affection
• no-one is ever willing to (openly) defy him or her

2. The Enabler's Control of the Survivor's Feelings

• need to control others' feelings
• not allowing the victim's own feelings about the abuse to count
• deciding what the victim will feel -- especially about him or her, the Enabler

3. The Survivor's Loyalty to the Enabler

• loyalty at any price -- loyalty to the Enabler more important than loyalty to self or reality
• all children remain loyal -- even Victims/Survivors remain loyal until therapy makes it impossible
• demands the Victim/Survivor continue to keep family secrets quiet (!), thereby hobbling healing
• often "inspires" loyalty among all siblings not by being strong, but by being weak -- power lies in the ability to inspire worry and protectiveness from the children (complete parenting reversal)
• Enabler often believes himself or herself to be the most victimized family member of all

4. The Enabler's Destruction of the Survivor's Self-Esteem

• Victims/Survivors learn that their only worth to others is sexual -- makes them more vulnerable to the Enabler's attacks on their self-esteem
• for the Victim/Survivor to believe that the Enabler is wrong about anything is to risk making the Enabler furious enough to destroy him or her (Gate-Keeper incident, anyone?)
• Victim/Survivor becomes the bad one for saying bad things about the family
• Victim/Survivor accused of being too needy (for expecting basic compassion, etc.)
• Enabler's feelings and well-being is more important than the Victim's/Survivor's -- anything else is met with declarations of selfishness and guilt
• Enabler's blame-the-victim mentality is internalized in the Victim/Survivor
• Victim/Survivor becomes addicted to the parent(s) -- can't give up hope that the Perpetrator and Enabler will one day tell her (s)he's fine and will give him or her the approval (s)he has craved since childhood

5. The Enabler's Emotional Alienation of the Survivor

• engineer the situations and family dynamics by which the Victims are excluded
• Victims/Survivors must behave in certain ways or they become emotional outcasts
• insists the abuse never happened (!)
• all but excommunicates the Victim/Survivor for speaking up, and lavishes gifts and attention on the other family members
• the sacrificing of the Victim for the other children becomes a way of life for the whole family

6. The Enabler's Scapegoating of the Survivor

• Victim/Survivor is blamed for the abuse
• Victim/Survivor becomes the bad person for his/her accusations ruining the lives of the Perpetrator and/or Enabler
• Victim/Survivor is held responsible for lack of protection, not Enabler or other (adult!) parental figures

7. The Resilience of the Enabler
(this one I found really interesting, as I hadn't ever thought of this before...)

• despite their child's sexual abuse at the hands of their partner, the Enablers are able to go on with their own lives, to pursue successful careers, and to have positive relationships with other children and new partners -- meanwhile, the Survivors find their lives at a standstill, emotionally devastated, in need of psychiatric medication, unable to develop or tolerate healthy relationships, or even in some extreme cases, to live independently
• the abused child remains alive, still inside the Survivor's brain and body, able to watch the Survivor move on in life, while being unable to move along with him or her -- holding him or her back, or erupting as PTSD and/or DID when triggered
• many of the Survivor's Enablers spend energy and time on their own success, while ignoring the needs of their Survivor children

8. The Enabler's Self-Image as a Good Parent

• these Enablers believe themselves to be excellent parents, and have convinced others they are exemplary as well
• Enabler is so dissociated from reality that (s)he cannot and DOES NOT see what is going on, often literally in front of their eyes -- a part of the Enabler's brain is just not going to compute anything that detracts from the official story
• in order to keep the "Good Parent" myth and appearances going, the Enabler was willing to sacrifice one child
• while most Enablers could be said to be good parents in some respects -- made sure the child's physical needs were met and the child survived to adulthood -- they failed to meet the most basic emotional needs of the child, and failed to protect the child from abuse, and no good parent would sacrifice a child to ongoing sexual abuse (one might say "no shit, Sherlock", but I've bolded this for my own sanity)

9. The Survivor's Relationship to the Perpetrator's new Wives/Girlfriends
(Not applicable to me, but may be helpful to others)

• the Perpetrator's new partners often know of the abuse, but fool themselves into thinking it's a clean slate now, and will not happen again
• the new partner may not know, and the Survivor ends up becoming blamed for wrecking another marriage
• the Survivor may hope the new partner will become the parent his or her birth-parent never was
• there may be jealousy (in either direction) between the Survivor and new partner

After this run-down of the common patterns, there is a middle section that suggests these patterns can also occur in the parents of sexual assault victims, and greatly affect the Survivor's healing.  I'm not entirely comfortable with this section, but I can see that rapists choose their victims based on subtle cues, and that many people have these characteristics trained into them ahead of time, as well as their self-preservation"radar" trained out of them.  I'm just not positive that rapists are always so calculating, or that having perfect parents would necessarily ward off rapists.  She doesn't put it that simply, of course, and it's definitely worth a read -- I'm just saying "I don't know, I'm not 100% convinced".  I can certainly see how it would apply to acquaintance rape, not so sure about the scary-person-on-the-street type.

The second section gives a low-down on the various after-effects of sexual assault.  After a lifetime of "normalcy", PTSD symptoms can sneak up on you decades later.  Some of the most common symptoms are:

• Panic attacks
• Terror of being attacked again
• Recurring nightmares
• Flashbacks
• Irritability (piss off, I have an excuse! ;-) )
• Insomnia

There are many more symptoms, but these are the most obvious and prevalent.  These can often be triggered by a news story, meeting a person you hadn't seen since the time of the abuse / assault, or even a song coming on the radio.

Dissociation and DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) are also common symptoms -- ranging from feeling "not quite there" or viewing life from the outside at times, to total black-outs of time, to actual fragments of personality or full-blown separate identities that emerge when needed (or when they're decidedly not wanted).

Self-harm is a very common symptom -- this can be as simple as drinking too much, but burning and cutting are very prevalent, especially for incest survivors (an outward manifestation of inside pain, control of the injury).

These symptoms and more are dealt with in this final section, along with some coping strategies for the more "minor" ones -- and the regular insistence to find professional therapy for the more destructive ones.

*****************************************

In case you haven't noticed yet: I LOVE THIS BOOK!!!  And I can't believe I'd already had the foresight to buy it earlier in the fall, and had promised myself to start reading it just before my Gate-Keeper's most recent attacks began.

This book helped ground me during a crisis.  But more than that, it opened my eyes to the patterns that had insinuated themselves in my life, probably even before my birth.

It showed me, plainly, that I never stood a chance.  That no amount of tap-dancing or good behaviour or perfection was ever going to have protected me, that I never would have been able to "earn" protection from the people who were supposed to be my care-givers.  That I did deserve better.  That the fact that I didn't get any better was not because of me, but because nobody was there to give it to me.

Which was a sad place to find myself, just before the holidays.  At times a very angry place.  A relieved place.  Mourning the loss of the Family Myth.  Mourning the loss of the parents and caregivers I wished I'd had, but never did.  Mourning the loss of all those years when I'd been convinced I was the wrong-doer, and needed to make amends to my poor, suffering family.  Mourning the loss of all those years when I thought I didn't deserve any better, and kept finding myself in relationship after relationship with the same god-damned patterns, neurotically hoping for a happier ending.  Grieving all the damage caused to a little girl forced to grow up too soon.  Grieving all the damage repeated over and over again to the adult trying to make sense of it all.

It doesn't make sense.  It was never designed to make sense.

I felt like the sacrificial lamb because I WAS THE FRIGGING SACRIFICIAL LAMB.  I felt like my thoughts and feelings and well-being didn't count, because making them count would have destroyed the whole system.  Because, as far as the system was concerned, my thoughts and feelings and well-being DID NOT COUNT.

But they do count now.  I count now.  I know I never will count to the Gate-Keepers, and I'm not going to try any more.  There are SO MANY PEOPLE in the world for whom my thoughts and feelings and well-being DO count, and I don't have to tap-dance a single step in order to deserve their love and compassion and caring.

Let the Gate-Keepers do what they will.  I've got the secret key to their instruction manual now.  And I've got the greatest antidote of all -- I know that my thoughts, feelings and well-being count.  I trust my gut and my perceptions.  On the days I don't, I can point to page 43 or 86 or 112 in the manual and say "oh yeah, that's you not me".  I know they will never give me what I needed as a child.  I will no longer expect them to see the error of their ways and give it to me now.  I'll give it to myself, thank you very much.  As will the people who actually DO love me, instead of just using that word to manipulate my consent.

This book was not easy.  There was wailing and gnashing of teeth.  But there WAS a happy ending.

****************************************

I apologize for this "book report" taking so long -- I know I had promised it weeks and weeks ago.  The day I finally felt ready was the day of the school shooting, which changed everything.  It didn't feel right to write about the book until I was back in the right head-space.  Happy to report I finally am.  :-)

In the meantime, I've finished reading another gem, which I shall try to report on next week!

But what about the kids who lived?

Like many, I have spent the last day and a half alternating between tears, confusion and anger over Friday morning's mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.

28 people shot to death, including 20 children.  And while theories may be cobbled together by whatever bits of evidence remain, we will really never know why, or what was going on in the gunman's head, or what -- if anything -- could have been done to prevent this.

More restrictive gun laws would be the first thing that spring to mind, of course.  Not to mention better access and less stigma attached to mental health services.  I understand that various people are going to have difficulty with each of those statements.  I'll stand by them anyhow.

If the murderer had gone into a school with a lead pipe as his weapon, less people would be dead.  Period.

Yes, at least part of his intention seems to have been to cause harm, and he probably would have found a way to do so with or without more restrictive gun laws, but it would have been far more difficult for him to do so, perhaps even giving him some time to come to his senses, or for someone else along the chain to notice something wasn't quite kosher.  And the argument that he could have illegally obtained a firearm just doesn't hold much importance, since it appears the firearms he used were all properly obtained and registered.

I got a bit of a raised eyebrow from someone (who didn't know me or my own story) when I tweeted yesterday "What a different day this would be if mental health services were more readily available than personal firearms."  He was -- and rightly so -- concerned with a perceived mapping of mental health onto mass killings.  I have read others' concerns about that issue, and understand where they're coming from.

But, as you'll hopefully remember from your own elementary school math classes, saying all A = B does NOT mean that all B = A.

As someone who has 30+ years as a "customer" of mental health services, I can safely assure everyone that I have never been a mass murderer.  (I can't even bring myself to set up a mousetrap, fer cryin' out loud!)  I'm pretty certain that 99.999999999% of my fellow mental-health-care consumers are in the same boat.

HAVING MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES DOES NOT MAKE YOU A MASS MURDERER.

But I think it's pretty safe to say that someone who murders his mother, opens fire on elementary school classrooms and then shoots himself in the head PROBABLY has some pretty major issues, and could have used some help in the mental health department.  Which, "mental health" cutting a pretty broad swathe, does not mean he necessarily had a mental illness or personality disorder -- it could have been addictions issues, a traumatic event that made him "snap", PTSD trigger, emotional breakdown, seriously messed-up perceptions of the world, or simply never having been given all the necessary emotional tools for his toolbox.  A "diagnosis" at this point is neither possible nor helpful.  But it's pretty damned obvious this guy needed help in the emotional and decision-making spheres, and did not receive it.  Why not?  Again, we'll never know for certain.

To the people who are afraid of mass murders being associated with mental health issues, I'd argue that the danger of stigma arises because the only time we seem to talk about such things is when disaster strikes.  We don't talk about mental health issues unless we're forced to.  Which is kind of freaking ridiculous, because with the previously-mentioned wide swathe that "mental health" covers, ALMOST EVERYONE has mental health issues at one or more points in their lives.  Almost none of them become mass murderers.

We need to start a dialogue, to share our stories, to show everyone that mental health is as important to ourselves and our society as physical health.  To show that going to a counsellor or psychiatrist or support group when you need an emotional "tune up" is no more embarrassing than going to the dentist when you have a toothache.  Even the most well-adjusted, lovingly-raised, tragedy-free people out there (I'm sure there are some, right?) have things happen to them in their lives that they need help with -- the loss of a loved one, workplace stress, dealing with teenaged kids... whatever.  We aren't all born with 100% of the self-knowledge and emotional intelligence we need to handle every single situation we come across in life, and we shouldn't expect ourselves or each other to have it all together.

You don't need to be a gun-toting murderer to need mental health services.  Getting help with your mental health does not make you a gun-toting murderer.

And yes, I stand by my statement that if mental health services were more accessible than firearms, yesterday would have been a very different day.

Twenty children died yesterday (mercifully quickly, according to the coroner's report).  Six school staff.  The gunman and his mother, leaving behind the brother initially accused and now probably dealing with more emotions than he can name.  Twenty-seven families who had been looking forward to the upcoming holiday break, but will spend it in grief and mourning instead.

These are the people mentioned in the media reports.  These are the lives mourned.  And rightfully so.

But what about the other lives ruined yesterday?  There are reportedly 626 children enrolled in Sandy Hook Elementary, in kindergarten through grade four.  By my calculations, that means the majority of witnesses to this violence were between the ages of 4 and 9, and the kids reported killed were ages 6 and 7, meaning that a bunch of their 6- and 7-year old classmates directly witnessed their murder, and probably narrowly escaped their own.

Which means that 600-or-so children have just had a lifetime of PTSD dumped on them.  (And don't even get me started on the poor kids who had reporters' microphones stuffed in their faces mere moments after their escape.)

Which kind of gets me back to the wish that mental health services were as easily accessible as firearms.

We can only hope that these kids and their families are all getting access to trauma counselling right now.  Yet, considering the ages of those kids, the effects probably won't surface until the funding for that emergency counselling runs out.  Which, in the United States, means that only the lucky kids whose parents have an amazing health plan (not to mention the knowledge of when and how to access care) will get adequate treatment for their trauma.  And when they become adults and (hopefully) get health insurance of their own, even if mental health is miraculously covered by their plan, their PTSD will be a pre-existing condition, and therefore not likely covered.

God Bless America.

And thanks to everyone who helped create this fate that I was born in the land of OHIP (that's our provincial health care plan, for those outside of Ontario).

I can NOT imagine where I would be today if I'd ever had to consider the price of my own psychiatric and other mental health treatments.  Actually, I can.  I'd be depressed, dissociative, and with zero tools in my toolbox to handle my other PTSD symptoms, not to mention handling life-in-general.  I would, to use a technical term, be totally f*cked.

From what I can gather in unravelling and re-associating my past, I was these kids' age when I first started to dissociate.  And with no psych degree or statistics to back this up, I think kids that age can be REALLY AWESOME at dissociation.  I sure was -- a freaking overachiever, as always.  ;-)

Have yet to develop the emotional tools to deal with the trauma you're experiencing?  No problem -- just pretend it didn't happen.  Or it happened to your imaginary friend.  It's awesome.  I'm not being sarcastic, it REALLY IS AWESOME.  I am fascinated by the human brain's ability to save its own life.  To keep it safe from things it doesn't know how to deal with, and keep those things neatly packaged away until it's got the knowledge and tools and support it needs to be able to deal with it.  While I thought I was stark-raving mad during some of the middle bits, my brain was actually keeping me sane and safe.  I am in awe of my brain.  :-)

But my brain was only doing what these kids' brains are about to do -- it's just that most kids don't (fortunately!) need to access this particular brain function.

These kids are going to survive and forget and let themselves remember when they're able.  They will appear to be "normal", they will appear to have bounced back long before the adults, they will play and joke and play on the monkey bars and be kids again.

Until something triggers them, or until their brains start to let the memories seep back in.

And whether it's the former or latter scenario, this will be the time when THEY think they're stark-raving mad.  This will be the time when they need a strong support system.  This will be the time they need some kick-ass mental health services.  This will be the time when the people around them need to remind them that this is the brain reacting to trauma, that it's OK to ask for help, that it's normal to NEED help in dealing with this.

Trauma isn't a rainy day when you wish it were sunny.  TRAUMA IS F*CKING TRAUMA.

Having seen how "well" (yes, that IS sarcasm) their country has dealt with the PTSD of their own First Responders and Veterans, I don't have much faith that they're going to look after these kids any better.  After an initial flurry, they'll leave it to the parents -- forgetting, of course, that the parents have now likely been dealt with PTSD symptoms of their very own, and may not be fully capable of dealing with their children's issues adequately, even if they could afford to do so.

Do I seem angry?  Yup, I'm angry.

Yes, I'm angry that there isn't stricter gun control.  Yes, I'm angry that the gunman got to the point where shooting random children seemed like a good idea.  Yes, I'm angry that the Godless Westboro Baptist Church is actually planning to picket the children's funerals.  Yes, I'm angry that those insensitive reporters thought the story was more important than the children's well-being.  Those are the obvious angers.  There are many people angry about all those things.

What I don't hear is any anger over what's happened -- and is going to happen -- to and for the survivors.  Right now, they seem to be considered the lucky ones.  They are soooo not the lucky ones.

Suffer little children to come unto me...

Right alongside the 28 dead souls, there are going to be 600+ lost souls.  That's what's really making me angry.

I hope it makes some others angry too.  I hope some of those angry people are in a place where they can do something to help those kids who are still alive, but who died a little inside yesterday.  I hope that, once all the hooplah is over, amidst all the anger and calls for prevention of future occurrences (all of which are good calls, don't get me wrong), that someone bothers to help the surviving victims of Friday's massacre.

I challenge the U.S. and Connecticut governments to provide free mental health care to these children in perpetuity.

Because even an angry girl can dream.

The (belated) birthday breakdown -- double entendre intended

After declaring last year that I would treat my birthdays a la Merrill Markoe's "It's My F---ing Birthday" heroine (see here if you missed it and are bothered by said missing), it seems I totally blew it on the first chance I got... oy!

Well, better late than never, right?

So... Part I is the birthday recap, Part II will be what have I learned this year and what do I hope to learn in the coming year.

Ahem...


Birthday Recap

The birthday week started out quite well, with Therapy Monday (yay therapy day!) being followed up with our FINALLY having a fully-functional kitchen for the first time in almost a full year.  (Yes, I said it with my outside voice, so you just know the gas stove is about to explode... send hunky firefighters!)

My BEST GIFT EVER wasn't even a birthday gift, as far as I know.  On Tuesday, our friendly neighbourhood postal worker (no, she really IS friendly) knocked on the front door with a large-ish package for me.  I will admit, I was more than a little apprehensive, after the last very-large package delivered to the door (see here if you don't get the reference), but... I didn't recognize the handwriting as anything familial, so started to breathe again.  And then I noticed the "Official Gate-Keeper Survival Kit" printed in red along the bottom of the envelope...  Mwahaahaaaaa!  Friend and fellow survivor DVS, in her forever-creative way, had sent me a care package.  Inside was a card with a chocolate bar taped to it and the instructions "Step One: EAT CHOCOLATE" on the envelope.  I pulled out the remaining package contents and read the card, which explained it all:

Gate Keeper Survival Kit

Just add Alcohol

(preferably in a sippy cup so pudding doesn't get in it)

1. Chocolate -- eat first to set the mood
2. Pudding, chocolate of course and apparently fat-free so eat as much as you like!
3. Shower Cap -- so you don't get said pudding in your hair... that might be nasty.
4. Nourishing mud face mask -- looks like chocolate pudding and deeply cleanses
5. Softening body scrub for when you want to sit back & relax
6. Scandal survival handbook... how the rich & famous handle it!  AKA National Enquirer

(If you don't understand the pudding references, visit the bottom of this post.)

This was totally unexpected, and had me hooting and laughing for hours.  Then Don came home, and I hooted and laughed some more.  I seriously needed some hooting and laughing this month...

Later that day, once of my cello students also gave me an awesome birthday gift, without realizing it.  She bashfully came into her lesson, admitting she hadn't really practised in the past week, because she was too busy trying to figure out how to play two of her favourite songs.  I asked if she'd had any luck, and she produced HER OWN HAND-WRITTEN MANUSCRIPT of the two songs.  I asked her how she'd figured it out, and she said she'd listened to the songs a few times and tested things out on her cello to make sure she'd written them down correctly.  I withstood the urge to burst into happy tears and hug her on the spot, but did tell her what an amazing thing she had just been able to accomplish, especially when she's only been playing cello for two years.  And then I did my best to not grin and blubber like a crazy fiend throughout the rest of her lesson, as she played her arrangements and tried to figure out how to make them better.  ONE PROUD MAMA, let me tell you.  :-)

Wednesday was another musical gift, although one that did remind me of how much I've been missing since leaving the musical metropolis.  I'd been asked to sub in on a chamber music concert, and had half-heartedly said yes, because I didn't really know anything about the organizers and, sorry to say, this is an area where volunteer community orchestra members are considered "pros", so my expectations are not terribly high.  Well, those expectations were blown out of the water, as I found myself playing with people who ACTUALLY WERE pros.  First music high I've had since playing with Victor freakin' Wooten in Feb.'11 (see here for that reference) -- and that was just the rehearsal (the concert was Friday).  Granted, the majority of the players had been imported from further south, but it was so refreshing and revitalizing to be able to play a concert with only one rehearsal together and have it not suck, to work with players who spent the rehearsal discussing phrasing and dynamics, instead of just trying to get the right notes, who actually gave a crap about the music.  I was finally excited about my chosen profession again.  Halle-freaking-lujah!

Perhaps it was this newly-reawakened longing to live closer to potential musical collaborators, perhaps it was the cumulative effects of this past month, perhaps a bit of both, but on Thursday -- the actual birthday day -- I was fighting one nasty bitch of a depression.  To the extent that I caught myself staring at the paper-slicer / guillotine in my office and fantasizing about what might happen if I used it to slice my fingers down to the first knuckle.  Fortunately, the majority of me thought that this was a bad idea, but the bit of me that came up with the idea did take quite a bit of talking down.  Which freaked me out a little (!), because I haven't had any self-harm ideas since my high school years -- in which I would flatten myself against the back wall of the subway platform (and preferably at the front of the train), just in case a part of me decided to jump, as I hoped that would give the other parts of me time to talk that bit out of it before the train came.  I imagine this finger-slicing bit of me was at least closely related to that bit.  I suppose this self-destructive fragment could have been triggered by this month's goings-on, although it seems rather strange that she would re-appear just when I'm more determined than ever to stay alive, be fully functional, and shout my story to the rooftops.  Maybe she's still terrified of that concept.  Or maybe, as with all the other dissociated bits that have taken their own sweet time to make an appearance, she now knows it's safe to show herself, to become integrated with all the other shards, where she'll be loved and protected, at last.  I will go with the latter for now, barring any future finger-mutilation urges.

Suffice it to say, my fingers are still fully intact.  Hence the typing.  :-)

And I managed to get my public face back on again in time for my sweetie to take me around the corner to Era 67 for dinner.  There, we were greeted by my birthday twin, Cory, who made sure we were treated right.  :-)  That's me and my birthday twin below (he's the one with the Movember 'stache, in case you were wondering).

Regular readers of our Brights blog are probably clamouring for the food and beverage report.  I'd hate to disappoint!  We'd brought a bottle of our favourite Amarone, but wanted to give it a chance to breathe (nice excuse, huh?), so Cory decanted the wine while I had a Cosmopolitan and Don a rye & water (Cosmo is so much prettier!).  We usually split an appetizer, but Cory said the shrimp appetizer only had 4 shrimp, so we figured we'd each have an order.  He failed to mention that they were MUTANT shrimp, however.  Yes, that piece of battered yumminess that resembles a turkey leg below is actually a shrimp!  Note to self: go back to sharing an appetizer.

A (slightly inebriated) woman at the table next to us and her husband were enjoying an anniversary dinner together, and we got chatting away -- they made fun of Don for taking pictures of food, but they obviously don't understand that sometimes the most interesting things we have to say are food-related.  ;-)  (Seriously, I've actually had readers of our Brights blog COMPLAIN when I forget to include the food and beverage report in our tour reports...)

My main course was maple cranberry salmon over a bed of wild rice.  Maple cranberry salmon is almost as good as wine.  Almost.  Sadly, I was so full from those Pterodactyl legs shrimp that I could only make it partway through.  Don also had to take home a doggie bag (very rare occurrence!) for his breaded pork chop on a bed of garlicky mashed potatoes.

Just when we thought we could eat no more, Cory presented us with a special birthday treat: a warm butter tart on creme anglaise, garnished with fresh fruit -- we ordered some Dalwhinnie to wash it all down.

We waddled home, painfully.  Where we decided to have some more birthday single malt and stay up talking until the wee hours as we digested.  This might have been a mistake, as I had a 10:00 cello student the next morning!  (I did manage to wake up, and be vaguely coherent for said student, although promptly went back to sleep and didn't wake up until it was time to get ready for the chamber gig!)

Fortunately, our stomachs and livers had recovered adequately for the Birthday Dinner Party / Sleepover (kind of like when we were kids, only this included wine and boys).  Seven friends and one Chocolate Lab (the canine, not edible variety) joining us for another night of too much food and beverage.  It started with champagne and a toast to moi that had me already teary (and I hadn't even drunk the champagne yet), with some antipasto appetizers that Lisa & Paul brought.  Then Don headed to the barbecue, Lisa and I headed to the wine, and everyone bustled around to get the rest of the food ready.  First, Ray custom-mixed salads for each of us, then we had Ali's creamy roasted red pepper soup, then steak for the carnivores and maple-teriaki salmon for the pescavores (if that's not a real word, it should be).  For each course, Ray played sommelier, pouring (lots of) wine to match each dish.  Once again, we were rather stuffed.  But wait, there's more!  Roy and Sue had brought not one, but TWO birthday cakes -- see the dessert picture from Thursday.  Much chatting and laughter into the night.  Lisa was the first to change into pyjamas, followed closely by Ali.  I went to change into mine, and my body said "jammies!  bed!  they won't notice..." so I never returned downstairs.  Apparently they sent a scout to make sure I was OK, but I was already fast asleep.  Most of the others filed off to their respective beds shortly thereafter, other than my beloved hubby and Ray, who were reportedly up until 5:45 drinking scotch and talking.  So, for once in my life, I was actually the first person to wake up the next morning!  (Other than Ali, who had to head to the farm to play with horses.)  Don made us all breakfast, and everyone was on their way home before he realized just how hungover he truly was...  Other than the hubby's hangover, it had been the perfect Birthday Weekend, surrounded by people who love me and support me, and who have stuck by us both in some pretty trying times these past couple of years.

I spent the afternoon in joy-filled, feeling-the-love bliss.

To quote myself:  Do you see where this is going?  Because I did not see where this was going...

Yes, friends, there was one birthday present left to be delivered: a brand-new cannonball-to-the-gut, courtesy of the Gate-Keeper-of-the-Month.  Perfectly timed, perfectly aimed.  As one friend (and cannonball recipient) commented: "of course, she KNOWS it's your birthday weekend, so... why not piss on the parade?"

You see, after her previous cannonball -- in which she attempted to turn my husband, best friend, and various other friends, family and supporters against me by saying I was lying about my childhood sexual abuse, but if it had occurred she hadn't known about it, gaslight, lie, deny, denydeny, denysomemore...  I had, in a weak moment of believing she might still have some semblance of sense and reality about her, sent her a "cease and desist" letter, including some samples of evidence I had on hand (from the oft-mentioned two filing cabinets, ancient hard drives and basement full of boxes) to disprove just one of the lies she had consistently been including in her e-mails to my friends and family -- said lie being that she had never known of the abuse, and we had never spoken of it before.  Thinking, of course, that being able to back myself up with hard evidence -- including her own damned handwriting -- might appeal to some hidden logical side within, or at least scare her self-preserving side out of being caught in more bold-faced lies in the future.

She did not reply to me, of course -- I'm still non-existant for her.  She completely avoided me, and once again turned to my friends and family, to once again try to convince them I'm a lying piece of shit.  Completely ignoring the documentation dealing with my 1983 disclosure and her own actions (though mostly inactions) upon said disclosure, later (witnessed) discussions with her about my past abuse, and even later written correspondence to and from her.  Attempting, in fact, to use one of those pieces of her own correspondence as proof of her original point that we had never discussed the matter before.  Which makes about as much friggin' sense as... well, I can't even think of a good simile for such a bizarre thought pattern, so my fellow writers are going to have to chime in here.

And I will admit, I should have known better, but there was still a little part of me that had been hoping that seeing but a smidgen of the (two filing cabinets, etc.) evidence I have of my story would have shocked her into an "aha! I should stop abusing her over her abuse story" moment.  Yes, foolish in hindsight, but I won't be holding out that candle again, never fear.

In fact, I had had very little hope she would "cease and desist" for my sake -- because, seriously, what kind of person reads the diary of a little girl who wishes her father would stop raping her, and then sporadically and unpredictably goes on the warpath against that girl for the next 30+ years over it? -- but thought she'd at least go into self-preservation mode once she knew that I could back up my story quite easily, and it was really her own credibility she was destroying.  But... sigh... I guess even saving face and keeping things quiet takes a back seat to roiling around in the same old patterns she's been employing since... well, probably before I was even born.

Which (finally) brings me around to Part II:

What Have I Learned This Year?

A. Lot.

First of all, there's the purely practical.  In beginning to research for this book-I-promised-my-nightmares-I'd-write (read here and here for that explanation), I have learned far more about childhood sexual abuse, incest, codependence, enabling, toxic people, domestic abuse and family dysfunction than I really ever wanted to know (but everyone really should know).

In that research, and in diving in deeper to my own story and opening up more about it, I have met some wonderful people, and joined forces with some amazing dragon-slayers.

I have learned, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am not alone.  That none of us are.  That, while each of our stories is unique, there are common threads running through them.  Common patterns that we all thought were ours alone.  Ridiculously, depressingly common patterns that I so wish had been explained to me and my brother and sister survivors, victors and thrivers when we were kids.  "Survival Ed 101".

What a different childhood (and resulting adulthood) we could have all had if, instead of teaching us "don't take candy from strangers", we had been taught "no adult should tell you to keep a secret", "nobody else can tell you what your feelings are", "trust your gut",  "nobody, even the people you love, is perfect", "if you're afraid of something, there's probably a good reason for it", "you have the right to say no to anything that makes you uncomfortable", or "you deserve to feel safe and secure and loved, no matter what."

In reading these case studies, and my brothers' and sisters' stories, these messages were all lacking.  Yes, there are a few lucky ones whose caregivers learned of the abuse and stood up to fight FOR them, and did whatever they could to get them out of harm's way, and provide them with the necessary tools and resources for healing.  These seem to be the minority, unfortunately.  (Or, at least, they didn't end up so messed up as adults that they needed enough therapy to turn themselves into a case study!)  The majority of folks -- at least those who needed therapy and trauma counselling in later years -- are the ones who had nowhere to turn, either because of family dysfunction or organizational dysfunction, or perhaps even a bit of both.  These are the kids who weren't taught it was ok to say no, they were taught they didn't have the right.  That they shouldn't ever say bad things about Uncle Fred or their baseball coach or their pastor.  That they should never question anyone in authority (i.e., a grown-up).

I have learned that we all have internalized and externalized these messages in very similar ways.  That these messages have continued to be reinforced in very similar ways.

And yes, the similarities are more than a little bit on the depressing side, but it's also really great to be able to sit back and say "oh yes, you're currently re-enacting case study L -- this really isn't about me, is it?"  I've FINALLY learned to not take the Gate-Keeper-of-the-Month's -- or any of the Gate-Keepers' -- antics personally.

I have finally learned that there is absolutely nothing I can or ever will be able to do to stop those antics.  I have learned to save my energy.  I have learned to hug and squeeze and love that little girl inside and give her the things she was never able to receive, to remind her that she won't ever be able to get those things from the people she was supposed to get it from, but that there are literally hundreds of people in her life now who are ready, willing and eager to give them to her, and she doesn't have to tap-dance up a storm to get them, they're just hers.

I have (again, finally) learned to give up hope that these Gate-Keepers are capable of change.  As one friend recently said: "She's never going to be able to see your truth.  She's never going to want to see your truth.  This is how she treated you 40 years ago, this is how she treated you 30 years ago, this is how she treated you 20 years ago, this is how she treated you 10 years ago, this is how she's treating you now.  She is still denying and fighting your truth, and in doing so, she is very clearly showing you hers: this is who she is, this is who she was, this is who she always will be.  You need to believe her."

I finally do.  We went through this whole scenario ten years ago (minus her trying to drag family and friends into the cyclone I refused to step into this time) and I had to shut of all contact.  After a while, toes were dipped, cyclones remained calm, and I went back in, thinking we had graduated into a state of at least agree-to-disagree.  I was wrong.

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me for forty-plus years... well, I finally got the message.

I laughed with Don last night -- there are a number of friends for whom I lament that they keep ending up with the same kind of partner, and it keeps ending the same bad way.  But geez, at least they're falling for DIFFERENT people -- I've just been falling over and over again for the same patterns with the same damned person!  How many people have been breaking their hearts and tearing out their hair watching me do this?  (Don't answer that, the guilt might slay me!)

I have learned that it's my right -- and probably responsibility -- to protect myself from and stay away from the toxic people in my life.

I have learned that there are lots of non-toxic (and probably free-range organic) people ready to take their places.  I have learned that I don't have to tap dance to make them love me (which is good, because I was never meant to be a dancer...)

As others from the past learn of my story, I have learned that I don't remember as much as I thought I did -- there are apparently some fragments still missing.  One friend recently recalled watching in horror as my father ripped off my clothes and beat me mercilessly with a hairbrush in front of her when she came home for lunch with me in grade 3.  (I do remember being afraid of his spankings, but didn't remember the hairbrush part, nor that he did it in front of friends.)  Another who remembers feeling terribly uncomfortable around him, but didn't have the knowledge or vocabulary to put her finger on it as a kid.  Another who felt it was her duty to stay with my sister at all times, although she didn't really know why.  Another who recalls a super-inappropriate incident with him when she came to visit, that scared her into never coming back to the house (even after hearing her story, I have zero recollection of it myself, though I do remember thinking I had done something wrong and she didn't like me anymore).  There are many little pieces to keep gathering in -- my work is nowhere close to done.

But I AM in a safe place in which to do it now, so I imagine these memories will come back more and more quickly, once they see it's OK.

2-4-6-8 Think it's time to integrate.  :-)

I have, or at least started to, absorbed the lesson I wanted to learn last birthday -- that it's OK to meet my own needs, that it's OK to look after myself, that it's OK to be me.

Mission accomplished.

What do I hope to learn in the coming year?

Well, I want to learn more about these hitherto-unknown bits and pieces of fragmented-little-kid me.  What shattered them, what they have to tell me, what they have to teach me.

Although what I most want is to DO.  To do something with all this information, with all this learning, with all this barfing-up-of-my-intestines.  To dig myself out from this legacy and, in turn, help others with their shovelling -- or, EVEN BETTER, to prevent them from needing a shovel in the first place.

I want to learn my passions.  Not my reactions, but my passions.  Because I'm a bloody passionate person, let me tell you.  :-)  But I feel I've been reacting for so long, doing what has to be done and what I figure ought to be done, that now that I'm without a life-and-death situation or a particular crusade, I've been feeling a little aimless.

And yes, I realize it's kind of silly for someone who's starting up a charitable organization and writing a book and running a performance career and might-be-about-to-be-talked-into-another-solo-album to feel aimless, but... maybe I just have to get used to the fact that doing the things I'm passionate about is actually an aim... not to mention a passion...

Well, click my ruby red slippers together, we're still in week one and I just gave myself the answer to the thing I wanted to learn...

OK, I guess I need to re-learn a couple of the things about meeting my own needs and being me being enough.  Positive reinforcement and all that...  Maybe I should give myself a follow-up exam.

I would love to learn how to not let the Gate-Keepers send me into a big barfy braincloud -- although I have a feeling that the events of the last month have taught me that already.  The braincloud came in the beginning, but the more recent attacks sent me more into the "this again? give me a break!" mode.  Of course, I could see the more recent ones coming -- guess we'll have to see what happens when it comes out of the blue (because you just know it will...).

Gotta learn how to run a charitable organization!

Can't wait to learn what kind of nutbars are willing to read a darkly humorous book about child abuse!

But, seriously...

I guess what I really want to learn is how to take care of that little girl.  To make sure she has all the tools in her toolbox, yes, but to make sure she knows they were supposed to be hers all along.  And that the reason she never got them isn't because she didn't deserve them, but because there was nobody around who had them to give.

She doesn't need a hammer to change a lightbulb, and she really shouldn't stick a screwdriver in the toaster unless it's unplugged, because it's not as much fun as it looks (although her tap-dancing might improve...).  That she doesn't need to earn or find justification for being loved.  That being loved is a lot less scary than the toaster scenario.

That there is nothing wrong or shameful in being true to herself, or her story.