I'm new here, and there's this can of worms.......

[Spunout]

For someone who's renowned for their honesty, was a blogger with haters and everything who accused me of 'oversharing' more than once........I'm finding it really hard to talk about the fact that right now, I'm engaged in a group for adult survivors of childhood abuse, and it's bringing lots of stuff up.  I'm this extroverted character, madly in love with my man and the father of 7 of my 8 children, living a chaotic hippy lifestyle, talk about birth, sex and death with all and sundry........and haven't told barely a soul that I'm doing this group, and even in my family we don't really talk about it. 

It's like all the parts of my abusive childhood live in separate parts of my brain, and it's hard to draw them all together.  When they're all separate, they don't seem that bad you know?  But when I finally manage to string them together or write them down.......

I'm not sure really how to talk about it......it's all so weird and convoluted, and I've SO got that magical mystical relationship with my abuser going on.  It's such an epic story.  I was really pissed the other day when we were talking about grooming tactics in my group, and I realised that all the memories I've got about my dad were of him grooming me.  Isolating me.  And my stepfather.  Really pissed that it was just a tactic, and REALLY didn't mean that I was special.....

It's so hard to talk about.  I've got no memories until the day my dad died in the Granville train accident.  He died in 1977, when I was 7, and he was 49 which is 7 x 7.  See that magical attachment slipping in?  I have a few memories before the day he died.  Mostly of him spoiling me, slipping me pocket money, grooming me.....  As the youngest of his seven children, he waited for me to pick a favourite.  As you might understand, the rest of my siblings hate me to this day, for being so spoilt.  I have not a single memory or smell or anything of my mother.  And only a few memories of two of my siblings, who I later had flashbacks of holding me down.  I've got one memory of meeting a school teacher on the stairs, I must have been in first grade.  And we hugged each other!  We loved each other!  And it's the only memory of her I've got.   Over the years, I've had indications that there may have been ritual abuse going on at some point during this fog.  But I can't be sure.

So on the day he died, (and trust me, there's a whole magical story to that one too) they sent me to bed before they knew if he was dead or not.  It took them a long time to reach his body.  In the middle of the night I knew he was out in the garden, and I went out to talk to him.  He told me he was dead and I couldn't touch him, and he talked to me for a long time, though I can't remember what he said.  Then I came inside, and in the morning I had mud on my feet.  They told me he was dead, and I said I knew, and I walked into my brothers room, and looked around at the posters on his wall, which I'd never seen before, and thought he looked like an interesting person to get to know.  And that's when my memories start.

6 months later, my mother remarried another man.  He was a member of her church, (I was born a mormon), so that was good enough for her.  He told her on their honeymoon that he'd married her because of me.  And she let that go......  So from when my memories start, I was left in a family who resented me for being my fathers favourite (and copping his abuse), and then joined with another father and step father who were sexually abusive, and my memories were miserable and pretty evil in general.  My whole family enjoyed torturing me in various ways.  Which really does my head in.  If what I remember is so evil, what the * have I blocked out?!?!?!?!

The next great trauma was when I left home at 14, and got betrayed by EVERYBODY in my life, and lost my home, family, friends, cat, piano, cello, everything.  Which was good ultimately....but traumatic. 

At 24 I had flashbacks and body memories when in bed with my girlfriend at the time, and the body memories lasted 6 hours or so, and involved my dad pulling my nappy off me and abusing me as a two year old.  I told my sister, who by then was a stand up comedienne talking about incest (from our stepfather only), and she told me I was full of *, making it up, it never could have happened, and has refused to talk to me ever since.  That was 15 years ago.  There's been so much pain.....

So me and my love and my babies have gone a long way to healing a lot of our childhood abuses.  We insist on total and complete honesty to ourselves and each other, and we've accepted our darkest selves and each others, and we're pretty awesome.  But we've managed to keep traumatising ourselves in our living situations.  We've lived with family, and on communities, and we keep triggering off psycho's, getting betrayed, and getting chased out of homes.  We keep unconsciously recreating the trauma of our childhoods.  (My love has child abuse from many, and his own PTSD) For the sake of all of us THIS NEEDS TO STOP!!!!  We've GOT to find ourselves a home with no neighbours, no observers, and no overlords who can tell us what to do.  We need to retrain ourselves, and show our kids what a home as a sanctuary looks, feels, smells and sounds like.  And safety.  We need to keep working on our boundaries too, so our kids and us can finally collect some long term friends. 

And even though I'm quite brilliant, do fibre art in a completely unique way (fibre and spinning is my THERAPY and meditation), have written and self published two books, blogged, and juggled about a million impressive balls......I totally sabotage myself, never quite make it, and specialise in spectacular rejections

I feel like I'm invisible, no matter how amazing I may be.  Like there's this film of glad wrap between me and life and any kind of material success.  I've done quite a few amazing things that nobody would ever know I had anything to do with.  I had a woman hold my hand once, go all misty eyed, and start channeling while talking to me once, telling me that I'd always have a profound effect on people, but never get acknowledged..........and I don't want that fate.

My mother is a whole other kettle of fish.....very cold fish too.  Hated me as the favourite of my father, hated how I looked like him, just hated me in general.......till I got pregnant with my first daughter, then she turned into super, accepting, supportive mum.  Till she finally got her off me when my daughter was 14, and then she completely dumped me and all my other kids back into the soup.  So I never had her, got her in a really lovely way, and then lost her again. 

When life is really good, and things are looking up, it's hard to not hear the little voice inside me saying that if my own mother and father could have hated me that bad, who am I to think that anyone will ever really love me, and how could I deserve that?  How could anything successful come to a creature like that?

Has anyone got any directions they could point me in to work on these things?  Helpful resources?

Ha.  Funny how much I managed to say after all.  Just wish I could do it in real life

[woodsgnome]

Thank you for sharing so well. It takes a lot, even 'anonymously', to express so much so beautifully and yet still feel stymied. Finding a level of true safety can be so elusive. But we keep trying, sometimes defying our best hopes in the process.

I'm going to risk sharing a favourite author's little book that's helped me a lot recently. The title sounds kind of off-putting, but it's not happy talk, it's just a collection of prose/poetry that describes the author's own ongoing healing journey in as realistic a framework as he can.

So the author's name is Jeff Foster, the book is "Falling in Love With Where You Are". One quote from him: "Regret is the longing to change the past. Fear is the desire to control the future. Peace is the surrender to Now." That journey takes us into a lot of pain, and he doesn't shy away from the scars they leave on us. Positive, yes; realistically so, as it includes those journeys through the muck and mire as well as the bright times.

I sometimes exhaust myself trying to find ways to cope and/or understand what I can never make sense of about my abusive roots. Then a book like this floats in and uses language in a new way that clears so much en route to rediscovering the essential aliveness we all strive for.

Thanks again for sharing your story; hopefully you'll feel free to just be yourself here. 

[Spunout]

Got tears streaming down my face, seems to be what happens when just about anybody acknowledges me in this   Thank you so much for your reply, and that quote made complete sense.  I'm going to go off and find that book   I think joining this forum is going to be a good thing   Thank you again!