Mother’s Law
I do not know why my mother
Chose to hurt me;
How her life was twister
Or why her love so painful.
I only know that by every law
Sacred to all mothers
She betrayed her daughter.
My mother broke my heart.
Perhaps her mother also betrayed
And even back through
Ten or one hundred mothers
It is possible that trust was broken
I have inherited the Child’s
Pain from all These mothers of mine
Who with malicious hands
Did sooth and then hurt
I pull their needles One
by One out of my body
Soul freeing my self Releasing
Pain that was pushed in.
I reach back into my genetic
spiral code through my own cellular
Memory to a host of Mothers
Who kept the sacred law.
I open my Soul and spirit
To these light mothers of mine
And they reach forward in time
Touching my heart ever so gently
I know that I can mother my daughter
Sedimentary Geology
I have pushed down
In layers
The organic material
Of the Psyche
fear, anger, memory,
pain, humiliation, guilt,
love, betrayal
I have held these dead
Matters of the Give Away
Under great pressure
For Ever
They did not decompose
Change is made
In the waiting
Which is done
Carefully bringing it up
I find diamonds
Hidden in the shale
An Oil Well drilled
and tapped feeds me
I will burn
With a very bright light
For Ever
Friday, September 18, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
Claire's Story
I’ll tell you right from the start that this is a story that has a good ending. Well, a good enough ending. “Super mom,” I’m not. But my child is eight now, and, by my standards; I’d have to say that he’s having a normal childhood. And he seems to think I’m a normal mom. Isn’t that great?
I’ll tell you the story of my childbearing year, but you have to know that understanding about the incest and other abuse and trauma came a few years after the birth. It was mostly my sinking efforts to mother a toddler that eventually made me seek help from a therapist. Only well into the process of coping with the posttraumatic aftereffects of the abuse in therapy did I have it come clear how me and my pregnant body worked out a way through the minefield of the maternity year.
We planned to get pregnant. We’d been married nearly a decade, and it seemed like it was time. The day my period should have come, the nausea started. Except for rare moments of distraction and during my sleep, it didn’t leave me until the 22nd week of gestation. It was my 24-hour companion for about four months. It is the main reason I will never be pregnant again. Carsickness or a bout of stomach flu always confirms for me that I could not tolerate another moment of that awful sensation—not by choice. I didn’t vomit except twice. I just had the sensation that swallowing my own saliva or food would make me vomit. I could drink. And anytime I got the slightest sense that I might be able to eat, I did. Often I could accept food if I was watching a good movie or eating out in a restaurant.
Things got easier in the fifth month, and they stayed that way until the seventh month. Then I started to contract. Since I was at 34 weeks, a point where the baby would be okay if my contractions became labor, my caregivers did not intervene with medications. I just took it very, very easy for a few weeks because it made me feel that I was giving the baby the best chance to be born near term. I was especially motivated to do this because I had planned to give birth with nurse-midwives in a freestanding birth center, and if I went into labor before 37 weeks, I would have to deliver in a hospital.
The contractions only made me worried, but they didn’t hurt. By this time my baby was dancing around all the time, and I felt reassured by his everyday pattern of activity that he was fine. I cried a lot during this time. The Persian Gulf War had just started, and thoughts of suffering and war seemed to fill me with grief, especially because I could not help but wonder if I would someday have to surrender my first born son to war. I just cried and cried.
The 37th week came and went. I kept contracting. I assumed that my resting was keeping that baby in there, so, wanting to get this labor business over as soon as possible, I got up and got busy. I expected my cervix to open and let him out. So you can imagine how completely beside myself I was when my due date was 10 days behind me. I’d been contracting for 7 weeks. My baby felt huge. I had gotten to the point where I refused to think about labor. All I could let myself think about was holding that baby.
When I’d discussed feeding plans with my nurse-midwife at the beginning, I’d said that I planned to ‘try’ to breastfeed. She said that I shouldn’t be tentative about it. Either do it or not do it, but sitting on the fence usually means you’re looking for an excuse to stop doing it. That made me mad, and I blurted out to her that I’d been molested and ‘breast stuff’ was complicated for me, so I meant exactly what I said when I’d said I’d try: If it didn’t go okay, that’s it. End of pressure tactics. She wrote in pencil, discreetly, on the inside cover of my chart ‘history of sexual abuse’.
Oh. Is that what that was?
I’d been molested by an adult at a camp the summer I was thirteen. I’d remembered this twelve years after it had happened when, in a conversation with my husband, we’d been reminiscing about the awful times in gym class during puberty when we’d felt so very bad about our bodies. Remembered emotional state. Zap. Remembered experience of body and soul shame. As the flashback was happening, my husband saw it for what it was, and gently drew the story out of me. So when the midwife asked me about breastfeeding, I knew about that…episode. From this vantage point, I can call it an episode. It was only the tip of the iceberg, it turns out. But knowing about that night of abuse and how it had affected my relationship with my breasts, I was able to tell my midwife to back off and let me cope according to my own needs, taking the baby’s needs into account as best I could.
Turns out that breastfeeding was a challenge in the extreme, but he and I managed it for seven months. I consider it to be one of the crowning achievements of my life. A grueling victory snatched from the hands of a child molester. And an act of sweet generosity to my child and myself, full of warmth and comfort (after the sore nipple stage). I would not trade knowing and remembering that I nursed my infant for anything. I had no idea I had that kind of fierce perseverance in me.
But I jump ahead. Had I been the first woman to remain pregnant forever, you’d have heard of me. Of course I did finally begin to labor in earnest. (Just in case any of you are pregnant and experiencing pre-term contractions now and wondering how you’ll know if they become real labor…trust me. You’ll know.). The deep achy tightening of productive contractions came –welcomed—with a deep rush of adrenaline. My hours in active labor were wonderful. Challenging, but wonderful. I was the center of a small universe: midwife, nurse, husband, sister, bedroom, and bathtub. Finally it seemed my cervix was all gone, and they said I could start to push whenever I felt like I needed to. And I lay down on the big double bed on my back, and I drew up my knees to bear down, and…the paperwork about my labor says I pushed for an hour and fifteen minutes there. My husband and sister say I pushed for a long time there. I wouldn’t know. It’s a blank. But eventually they got me up to empty my bladder, and I was present again. The baby was born minutes later as I knelt on the bed. No more of that recumbent position. No. No. And the baby was huge and happy. And I was fine.
Over the next days and weeks, I had several follow up visits. Some were routine, but a few were because I just had a lot of trouble breastfeeding. Then too, I was glad of the contact with the midwives because I just couldn’t stop crying. I felt bursting with pride at this incredible thing I’d done, and yet all I could feel when I looked at that perfect little one was grief, grief, grief. I could not understand it. The emotions were so intense that I could not sort them out or make them calm down. I thought the tears would simply never leave me. I thought I’d float away, and he would miss his mama, but he would not be able to find me because it would all have gone blank as soon as I finally wore out my ability to tolerate the intensity of the grieving pain.
Eventually I wore out. I wouldn’t say I felt peaceful. I just felt like a dry autumn leaf. Resigned. Powdery. Lightweight. Just waiting to blow away or disintegrate. And, by turns, I began to feel normal things too. Like fatigue, humor, boredom, longing for grown-ups to talk to, longing to go to work again, longing for a babysitter. Reassuringly normal feelings.
It is true that there was a sort of gap between how I’d envisioned myself mothering and how I was managing in reality. But I think this is normal. I felt normal.
Until my boy started to get on toward a year or more. There came that time when they start to have a will of their own, and they sometimes cry in anger, asserting themselves. And it terrified me. I had to get him to stop. When he out and out cried like that I’d fill with adrenaline as though my life were in danger—as though his life were in danger. It all became very confusing. I was afraid I’d hit him or shake him to get him to stop it, so I’d find myself sitting outside on the front stoop while he wailed in the safety of his crib. I prayed that the social worker who lived across the street wouldn’t turn me in for neglecting my baby. But we were safer if I got outside where the piercing cry was muffled for me.
Other things start being obviously ‘not right’ then too. I sometimes would cry uncontrollably and feel nauseated. I’d spend whole days lying on my bed the whole time he was at daycare instead of working. I felt the gap between how I wanted to be with him and how I seemed to be as a mother widening. And then came some way, way stronger than usual reactions to things that were related to memories of being molested. Adrenaline rushes and strange sensations and panic and dread. I started to feel as though I was ‘losing it’. Or worse. Maybe I was becoming mentally ill, like my mother.
No.
No. That would be intolerable for me and for my family, and I would NOT allow it.
It was time to go back to see that therapist who had helped me process the initial flashbacks of being molested at camp.
I did not know then that that decision was the first step on an odyssey of remembering and adapting and growth that has run right alongside all the other events of my life over the past several years. I understand now that when I was my baby’s age, crying like that…well, it WAS dangerous. Little by little flashbacks and body memories and emotional memories have come up to the surface enough for me to learn about my history what I need to know to heal. And what I need to know to mother my son.
The four months of pregnancy nausea makes perfect sense to me now. So do the endless contractions. I understand them as body memories and expressions of distress and anxiety, which came from a place in my knowledge of my life where there were no words. And ‘going away’ from the labor pain when I found myself in that awful position again…it was a well-practiced form of self-protective dissociating. And the ceaseless feelings of grief during the pregnancy and postpartum? That makes sense to me if I understand it as being ‘triggered’ by the feelings of bonding with my baby. I had long ago turned off all intense emotion because usually it was bad: terror, despair, and loss. So when the feelings of maternity started raging around in me, those wonderful feelings that seem to make so many other women ‘glow’… they made me wail with grief. It got all mixed up. Who is the baby/Who is the mother? Which role am I feeling? I feel motherlove, and it zaps me into feeling babyneed. Round and round. So much loss.
But the baby I mothered is a schoolboy now. He still freely expresses his needs for being occasionally babied a bit. Sometimes he curls up next to me on the couch to read. Sometimes he still holds my hand when we cross a street. Sometimes he asks if he ever had a pacifier when he was a baby. He laughs straight-out and simply when I tell him that he was never fooled by any size or shape of rubber nipple, and so, no, he’d had several given to him, but he’d never adopted any of them. This is a kid who flat out relishes having been a baby and having his mother nearby to give him tiny tastes of youngest childhood as needed during these rough and tumble days of elementary school where he is having to leave the joys of being mothered for more rare moments.
I was lucky. Mine was a wanted pregnancy. My partner was present and unquestioningly willing to carry the weight of caring for baby and mother when I was not capable of carrying my load. Many times he was able to give me the reassurance that meant the most to me, saying, “You feel like you are going crazy, but you are acting okay, and our son is fine and loves you just like any kid loves a good-enough mom.”
Being a ‘good enough’ mom is not how I ever would have described my goal for mothering. My therapist gave me that term; “No need to berate yourself for not being ‘supermom’. ‘Good enough’ parents will do just fine for most kids.” I sense this is true. And I know that all of the work that goes with being some ideal of a ‘supermom’ was not humanly possible for me. I had to spend too much time in therapy and learning to take care of myself to be able to achieve any pinnacle of maternal accomplishment. But I have kept my child safe, as far as I know. And he is not afraid of me. He has faith in me and expects that I’ll do what he needs me to do for him when it’s important. And I am strong and mostly good-humored. And I look forward to the rest of my life as his mom. I look forward.
I’ll tell you the story of my childbearing year, but you have to know that understanding about the incest and other abuse and trauma came a few years after the birth. It was mostly my sinking efforts to mother a toddler that eventually made me seek help from a therapist. Only well into the process of coping with the posttraumatic aftereffects of the abuse in therapy did I have it come clear how me and my pregnant body worked out a way through the minefield of the maternity year.
We planned to get pregnant. We’d been married nearly a decade, and it seemed like it was time. The day my period should have come, the nausea started. Except for rare moments of distraction and during my sleep, it didn’t leave me until the 22nd week of gestation. It was my 24-hour companion for about four months. It is the main reason I will never be pregnant again. Carsickness or a bout of stomach flu always confirms for me that I could not tolerate another moment of that awful sensation—not by choice. I didn’t vomit except twice. I just had the sensation that swallowing my own saliva or food would make me vomit. I could drink. And anytime I got the slightest sense that I might be able to eat, I did. Often I could accept food if I was watching a good movie or eating out in a restaurant.
Things got easier in the fifth month, and they stayed that way until the seventh month. Then I started to contract. Since I was at 34 weeks, a point where the baby would be okay if my contractions became labor, my caregivers did not intervene with medications. I just took it very, very easy for a few weeks because it made me feel that I was giving the baby the best chance to be born near term. I was especially motivated to do this because I had planned to give birth with nurse-midwives in a freestanding birth center, and if I went into labor before 37 weeks, I would have to deliver in a hospital.
The contractions only made me worried, but they didn’t hurt. By this time my baby was dancing around all the time, and I felt reassured by his everyday pattern of activity that he was fine. I cried a lot during this time. The Persian Gulf War had just started, and thoughts of suffering and war seemed to fill me with grief, especially because I could not help but wonder if I would someday have to surrender my first born son to war. I just cried and cried.
The 37th week came and went. I kept contracting. I assumed that my resting was keeping that baby in there, so, wanting to get this labor business over as soon as possible, I got up and got busy. I expected my cervix to open and let him out. So you can imagine how completely beside myself I was when my due date was 10 days behind me. I’d been contracting for 7 weeks. My baby felt huge. I had gotten to the point where I refused to think about labor. All I could let myself think about was holding that baby.
When I’d discussed feeding plans with my nurse-midwife at the beginning, I’d said that I planned to ‘try’ to breastfeed. She said that I shouldn’t be tentative about it. Either do it or not do it, but sitting on the fence usually means you’re looking for an excuse to stop doing it. That made me mad, and I blurted out to her that I’d been molested and ‘breast stuff’ was complicated for me, so I meant exactly what I said when I’d said I’d try: If it didn’t go okay, that’s it. End of pressure tactics. She wrote in pencil, discreetly, on the inside cover of my chart ‘history of sexual abuse’.
Oh. Is that what that was?
I’d been molested by an adult at a camp the summer I was thirteen. I’d remembered this twelve years after it had happened when, in a conversation with my husband, we’d been reminiscing about the awful times in gym class during puberty when we’d felt so very bad about our bodies. Remembered emotional state. Zap. Remembered experience of body and soul shame. As the flashback was happening, my husband saw it for what it was, and gently drew the story out of me. So when the midwife asked me about breastfeeding, I knew about that…episode. From this vantage point, I can call it an episode. It was only the tip of the iceberg, it turns out. But knowing about that night of abuse and how it had affected my relationship with my breasts, I was able to tell my midwife to back off and let me cope according to my own needs, taking the baby’s needs into account as best I could.
Turns out that breastfeeding was a challenge in the extreme, but he and I managed it for seven months. I consider it to be one of the crowning achievements of my life. A grueling victory snatched from the hands of a child molester. And an act of sweet generosity to my child and myself, full of warmth and comfort (after the sore nipple stage). I would not trade knowing and remembering that I nursed my infant for anything. I had no idea I had that kind of fierce perseverance in me.
But I jump ahead. Had I been the first woman to remain pregnant forever, you’d have heard of me. Of course I did finally begin to labor in earnest. (Just in case any of you are pregnant and experiencing pre-term contractions now and wondering how you’ll know if they become real labor…trust me. You’ll know.). The deep achy tightening of productive contractions came –welcomed—with a deep rush of adrenaline. My hours in active labor were wonderful. Challenging, but wonderful. I was the center of a small universe: midwife, nurse, husband, sister, bedroom, and bathtub. Finally it seemed my cervix was all gone, and they said I could start to push whenever I felt like I needed to. And I lay down on the big double bed on my back, and I drew up my knees to bear down, and…the paperwork about my labor says I pushed for an hour and fifteen minutes there. My husband and sister say I pushed for a long time there. I wouldn’t know. It’s a blank. But eventually they got me up to empty my bladder, and I was present again. The baby was born minutes later as I knelt on the bed. No more of that recumbent position. No. No. And the baby was huge and happy. And I was fine.
Over the next days and weeks, I had several follow up visits. Some were routine, but a few were because I just had a lot of trouble breastfeeding. Then too, I was glad of the contact with the midwives because I just couldn’t stop crying. I felt bursting with pride at this incredible thing I’d done, and yet all I could feel when I looked at that perfect little one was grief, grief, grief. I could not understand it. The emotions were so intense that I could not sort them out or make them calm down. I thought the tears would simply never leave me. I thought I’d float away, and he would miss his mama, but he would not be able to find me because it would all have gone blank as soon as I finally wore out my ability to tolerate the intensity of the grieving pain.
Eventually I wore out. I wouldn’t say I felt peaceful. I just felt like a dry autumn leaf. Resigned. Powdery. Lightweight. Just waiting to blow away or disintegrate. And, by turns, I began to feel normal things too. Like fatigue, humor, boredom, longing for grown-ups to talk to, longing to go to work again, longing for a babysitter. Reassuringly normal feelings.
It is true that there was a sort of gap between how I’d envisioned myself mothering and how I was managing in reality. But I think this is normal. I felt normal.
Until my boy started to get on toward a year or more. There came that time when they start to have a will of their own, and they sometimes cry in anger, asserting themselves. And it terrified me. I had to get him to stop. When he out and out cried like that I’d fill with adrenaline as though my life were in danger—as though his life were in danger. It all became very confusing. I was afraid I’d hit him or shake him to get him to stop it, so I’d find myself sitting outside on the front stoop while he wailed in the safety of his crib. I prayed that the social worker who lived across the street wouldn’t turn me in for neglecting my baby. But we were safer if I got outside where the piercing cry was muffled for me.
Other things start being obviously ‘not right’ then too. I sometimes would cry uncontrollably and feel nauseated. I’d spend whole days lying on my bed the whole time he was at daycare instead of working. I felt the gap between how I wanted to be with him and how I seemed to be as a mother widening. And then came some way, way stronger than usual reactions to things that were related to memories of being molested. Adrenaline rushes and strange sensations and panic and dread. I started to feel as though I was ‘losing it’. Or worse. Maybe I was becoming mentally ill, like my mother.
No.
No. That would be intolerable for me and for my family, and I would NOT allow it.
It was time to go back to see that therapist who had helped me process the initial flashbacks of being molested at camp.
I did not know then that that decision was the first step on an odyssey of remembering and adapting and growth that has run right alongside all the other events of my life over the past several years. I understand now that when I was my baby’s age, crying like that…well, it WAS dangerous. Little by little flashbacks and body memories and emotional memories have come up to the surface enough for me to learn about my history what I need to know to heal. And what I need to know to mother my son.
The four months of pregnancy nausea makes perfect sense to me now. So do the endless contractions. I understand them as body memories and expressions of distress and anxiety, which came from a place in my knowledge of my life where there were no words. And ‘going away’ from the labor pain when I found myself in that awful position again…it was a well-practiced form of self-protective dissociating. And the ceaseless feelings of grief during the pregnancy and postpartum? That makes sense to me if I understand it as being ‘triggered’ by the feelings of bonding with my baby. I had long ago turned off all intense emotion because usually it was bad: terror, despair, and loss. So when the feelings of maternity started raging around in me, those wonderful feelings that seem to make so many other women ‘glow’… they made me wail with grief. It got all mixed up. Who is the baby/Who is the mother? Which role am I feeling? I feel motherlove, and it zaps me into feeling babyneed. Round and round. So much loss.
But the baby I mothered is a schoolboy now. He still freely expresses his needs for being occasionally babied a bit. Sometimes he curls up next to me on the couch to read. Sometimes he still holds my hand when we cross a street. Sometimes he asks if he ever had a pacifier when he was a baby. He laughs straight-out and simply when I tell him that he was never fooled by any size or shape of rubber nipple, and so, no, he’d had several given to him, but he’d never adopted any of them. This is a kid who flat out relishes having been a baby and having his mother nearby to give him tiny tastes of youngest childhood as needed during these rough and tumble days of elementary school where he is having to leave the joys of being mothered for more rare moments.
I was lucky. Mine was a wanted pregnancy. My partner was present and unquestioningly willing to carry the weight of caring for baby and mother when I was not capable of carrying my load. Many times he was able to give me the reassurance that meant the most to me, saying, “You feel like you are going crazy, but you are acting okay, and our son is fine and loves you just like any kid loves a good-enough mom.”
Being a ‘good enough’ mom is not how I ever would have described my goal for mothering. My therapist gave me that term; “No need to berate yourself for not being ‘supermom’. ‘Good enough’ parents will do just fine for most kids.” I sense this is true. And I know that all of the work that goes with being some ideal of a ‘supermom’ was not humanly possible for me. I had to spend too much time in therapy and learning to take care of myself to be able to achieve any pinnacle of maternal accomplishment. But I have kept my child safe, as far as I know. And he is not afraid of me. He has faith in me and expects that I’ll do what he needs me to do for him when it’s important. And I am strong and mostly good-humored. And I look forward to the rest of my life as his mom. I look forward.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Jennie's Story
"THE FOUND TREASURE, MY VOICE"
I grew up in an alcoholic home, the second of four children (three girls and one boy). We were all one year apart in age. My father was violent and abusive, my mother extremely needy and passive. As a little girl I learned to take care of my mother; cooking, cleaning, nursing the wounds on her ulcer-filled legs caused by varicose veins, and soothing her emotionally after one of my father's tirades. Although we lived under the same roof, my parents, siblings and I lived in separate worlds. We kept many secrets; we had no voice. Needless to say, I followed the protocol of a child living in an alcoholic home where there was no connecting or bonding, only disconnection and confusion.
I can't remember my mother ever telling me "I love you." I do remember her always shouting at us "You kids are driving me crazy"! I'll never forget what she taught me about death. She said, "When you die, worms will come and eat up your entire flesh. Only your bones will remain in the coffin." We did not live far from the only funeral parlor in our neighborhood. Whenever we passed by it we would go in and she would make me kneel on the kneeler in front of the coffin and asked me to pray for the deceased stranger. Today I continue to struggle with some fear of death. I now know that my mother tried being a "good" mother according to the way I suppose she was raised. She would buy us new clothes for Easter and sacrificed a few dollars so we would have toys for Christmas. Today I know that for the most part only our custodial needs were met.
Growing up in this environment with the dynamics of my family life as a role model for living, I never questioned if we were a "normal" family. I never felt loved in my family. Love? What was that? I was too busy trying to survive. As I got older there was a part deep inside of me that said "There's something wrong with this picture." I began to tell myself that when I grew up and became a mother I would not be like her (my mother).
I was in grammar school, perhaps eleven years old, when a classmate of mine introduced me to his uncle who was thirty years old. I became enamored with him. He was charming and paid so much attention to me. I visited his apartment with a group of friends several times.
One night when everyone was gone leaving the perpetrator, his friend, and myself, he took me into the back room where he raped and abused me physically. He threatened that if I didn't let him do as he wished, he would have his friend do the same. This happened on more than one occasion.
The first time that it happened I was numb, in a daze. After it was over I went home. It haunts me to this day that I cannot remember how I got home. It was about one a.m. I had not arrived home from school because the perpetrator kept me prisoner the entire time. My parents thought I had run away so they were waiting up for me along with my aunt. They were all frantic. When I entered our apartment my father pounced on me, beating me. My aunt had to pull him off of me. In all of the screaming, beating and chaos, I don't remember what my mother was doing. Anytime there was violence and terror inflicted on us by my father, I can never remember what my mother was doing. As I see it today, I was violated by my perpetrator, then again by my father, all in one day. The next day I woke sore all over my body. I went to school as if nothing had happened. I dismissed what happened to me and buried it in the deepest part of my conscience. I never told anyone for years. Today, my mother still does not know.
During my adolescence I rebelled, skipping school, drinking, and attempting suicide twice. No one ever asked me why I no longer wanted to live. I was depressed and didn't even know it. I dreamed of the day I would meet my knight in shining armor who would take me away from the hell in which I lived. At the age of fourteen I met my husband, Roberto. He came from a family of ten children; a family who was also dysfunctional. We were the blind leading the blind. Two ships lost at sea.
At the age of eighteen I married Roberto. The one who rescued me. Although he loved me, like my father, he too was emotionally unavailable. Three months later I was pregnant with my first child. I was elated because I knew that with this child I would be the mother that my mother was not. From the time she was in my womb I whispered to her, "I love you. I love you." I was ill with this pregnancy with morning sickness and kidney infections. When I went into labor my husband dropped me off at the hospital, leaving me there and going off to work. He didn't even wait in the waiting room. Back in 1972, the fathers were not allowed in the labor and delivery rooms. I was very afraid.
When Amanda was born, my heart knew no greater love than the one I felt for her. The joys of motherhood those first few months had no measure. When Amanda was nine months old I enrolled in school to become a registered nurse, leaving her in the care of my favorite sister-in-law. Shortly after I began school I learned that I was pregnant again. The female obstetrician whom I had at the time had convinced me to try a new I.U.D. which was experimental at that time. I was not informed about this experiment. When she told me I was pregnant she was upset with me for ruining the experiment. She humiliated me, leaving me to feel used and lonely. After I got over the initial shock of the entire matter, I eagerly awaited the arrival of my new baby. When Alicia was born, I looked into her beautiful eyes and knew that this child was meant to be. She was a pure joy. At this time things were not well with Roberto and I, and I continued to suffer from depression.
In 1976 I graduated from nursing school and became employed. All was well until 1977 when I suffered a mental collapse; I was severely depressed, ridden with anxiety and in and out of hospitals for various physical ailments. That period of time was to be the beginning of a period pf psychotherapy, which included a string of therapists. I was treated with antidepressants and tranquilizers. Gradually the depression improved but I was left with the enormous task of facing many issues in my life.
I continued to battle the demons of depression and care for my two girls. I wanted to be the mother that mine was not. I used what little strength I had to drive them to school, dance classes and joined the P.T.A. in their school.
I 1979 I became pregnant again. Although I was ridden with tremendous anxiety, I wanted desperately to have a son. I was very ill with this pregnancy and spent most of the nine months in bed. On Dec. 6, 1980, God blessed me with a beautiful, healthy son. We named him Eduardo Roberto.
Several years later a scandal erupted in a day care center in our neighborhood. It was alleged that several of the workers had sexually abused many of the children there. I remember being filled with anxiety. I couldn't sleep. When my husband made love to me I felt as if he was raping me. I didn't know where the feelings were coming from. I mentioned to two of my therapists that I "thought" I might have been raped when I was eleven. They looked at me and changed the subject. Naturally, based on their reaction, I figured that the abuse was not the cause of my depression and that perhaps it was due to the fact that I was raised in an alcoholic home. For years afterwards I continued in therapy and read a lot of material on adult children of alcoholics.
In 1992, Amanda disclosed to me that she had been sexually abused when she was five by her cousin, who was age 16 at the time (my favorite sister-in-law's son.) I cannot put into words what I felt at that moment. In total shock, I felt the pain, mortification and despair that come from hearing news of immeasurable harm done to a loved one. I could only tell her how sorry I was. At that moment I wanted to lie down and die.
Amanda's disclosure slowly brought to the surface my own sexual abuse. I began to toy with the idea that perhaps what happened to me was not my fault, that I too was abused. I quickly dismissed that thought.
What ensued was an all-encompassing obsession with what happened to my child. I felt as if we were Siamese twins. I couldn’t separate myself from her pain. I grieved, mourned, cried out to God of the injustice that was inflicted upon my precious child. I declared vengeance upon the perpetrator. I wanted blood; I wanted death. My grief and my insanity was such that I pressured my husband into selling our deli business, putting our home up for sale, and moving to Florida in 1994.
Thirteen months later we returned, almost broke, as our home in N.Y. didn't sell and it was difficult paying two mortgages. In one year I buried a sister-in-law, a brother-in-law and my father-in-law. I was surrounded by the death of my loved ones and the slow death of my soul. I continued to grieve for the pain and trauma of my child.
I wanted Amanda to begin to deal with issues arising from her incest. I wanted her to heal; for I saw what a self-destructive path she had taken in life. I began inquiring about support groups for survivors. My efforts were rewarded when I received a flier announcing a conference for survivors, which was to be held in N.Y.C. in Jan. 1999, sponsored by the Incest Awareness Foundation. I immediately planned to attend with Amy.
The night before the conference I couldn’t sleep. Many questions were dancing in my head. "Should I attend the conference for myself?" "Am I a survivor?" "Can I face the pain of what was done to me?"
The first day of the conference I was there for Amanda, but by the second day the bubble of my denial burst and I came to admit the truth that I, too, was an incest survivor. By the last day of the conference I had set up a meeting with Amanda’s perpetrator’s parents, my husband's brother and wife and their daughter who was also molested by the same person. We disclosed to the parents what their son had done to our daughters. Today I do not have any contact with many relatives, who have formed a support group for the perpetrator.
With the strength and confidence that I received at the conference, I began seeing a therapist specializing in incest survivor therapy, attending a few 12-step programs, reading literature on the subject of incest and doing everything I possible could to help myself on my healing journey. Throughout this entire process my greatest source of strength came and continues to come from the higher power that I call GOD. I began to learn to separate my incest from Amanda's. I learned to detach, so that I could work on my recovery and she could work on hers. I FOUND MY VOICE, which was lost for the majority of my life. I spoke to all who would listen about what happened to Amanda. I told relatives, friends, and clergy. My two sisters have become my dearest and most loved supporters. I wrote letters. The shame surrounding this tragedy began to slip away. What a gift! The taboo of incest is being dispersed, although we have a lot of work to do as survivors. As I continue to tell my story more people are learning about incest.
Last year, due to the excessive stress of my struggle to find my voice, I became very ill and was hospitalized for almost one month. I was diagnosed with systemic lupus. Today, due to my illness, I am not driven as if I were on a treadmill to pursue justice for myself, Amanda and other survivors in a state of frenzy. Today, I peacefully work in a pro-active manner to share my strength, courage and hope with others. Healing has come from sharing my story. All of my life I have minimized the traumas of my childhood. It has taken me over forty-five years to find my voice. Because I have found my voice, I can help others do the same. I am currently working on starting a support group for mothers of survivors called "M.O.S.A.C. (Mothers of Sexually Abused Children)” and working on a newsletter, which I will call "Find Your Voice." Amanda is working hard on her recovery, attending 12-step meetings and reading literature on incest recovery. She's moving slow, but she's moving. I've learned that everyone's recovery must come on his or her own time.
Today I continue to work on my recovery with the guidance and strength I receive from God. I continue to grieve for the loss of a mother. Despite all of the pain, struggles and tragedies in my life, I rejoice today because I am becoming the person God created me to be. I've only discovered this through my healing from my abuse...what a way to discover yourself.
Because my husband has been in psychotherapy for the last two years, our marriage is becoming the union that God intended for it to be. I do love my husband very much. I rejoice and am grateful for my three wonderful and oh so different children, Amanda, Alicia and Eduardo. At times I lament about who I could have been if I had been born into a "normal" family, but I don't regret being a mother to my children. Motherhood has been the most joyful and fulfilling role in my life, a true gift from God. Despite any imperfections and mistakes I have committed, I believe I have been forgiven.
To those mothers contemplating motherhood I say, don't be afraid. Ask your higher power for strength and guidance. Much of your suffering will be rewarded with this tremendous gift. It will change your life. Your children's lives do not have to be like ours.
When I was a little girl I prayed to God, "Please let me be a good mother." Today I know that He has honored me with what I needed to fulfill this wish and continues to do so, one day at a time.
I grew up in an alcoholic home, the second of four children (three girls and one boy). We were all one year apart in age. My father was violent and abusive, my mother extremely needy and passive. As a little girl I learned to take care of my mother; cooking, cleaning, nursing the wounds on her ulcer-filled legs caused by varicose veins, and soothing her emotionally after one of my father's tirades. Although we lived under the same roof, my parents, siblings and I lived in separate worlds. We kept many secrets; we had no voice. Needless to say, I followed the protocol of a child living in an alcoholic home where there was no connecting or bonding, only disconnection and confusion.
I can't remember my mother ever telling me "I love you." I do remember her always shouting at us "You kids are driving me crazy"! I'll never forget what she taught me about death. She said, "When you die, worms will come and eat up your entire flesh. Only your bones will remain in the coffin." We did not live far from the only funeral parlor in our neighborhood. Whenever we passed by it we would go in and she would make me kneel on the kneeler in front of the coffin and asked me to pray for the deceased stranger. Today I continue to struggle with some fear of death. I now know that my mother tried being a "good" mother according to the way I suppose she was raised. She would buy us new clothes for Easter and sacrificed a few dollars so we would have toys for Christmas. Today I know that for the most part only our custodial needs were met.
Growing up in this environment with the dynamics of my family life as a role model for living, I never questioned if we were a "normal" family. I never felt loved in my family. Love? What was that? I was too busy trying to survive. As I got older there was a part deep inside of me that said "There's something wrong with this picture." I began to tell myself that when I grew up and became a mother I would not be like her (my mother).
I was in grammar school, perhaps eleven years old, when a classmate of mine introduced me to his uncle who was thirty years old. I became enamored with him. He was charming and paid so much attention to me. I visited his apartment with a group of friends several times.
One night when everyone was gone leaving the perpetrator, his friend, and myself, he took me into the back room where he raped and abused me physically. He threatened that if I didn't let him do as he wished, he would have his friend do the same. This happened on more than one occasion.
The first time that it happened I was numb, in a daze. After it was over I went home. It haunts me to this day that I cannot remember how I got home. It was about one a.m. I had not arrived home from school because the perpetrator kept me prisoner the entire time. My parents thought I had run away so they were waiting up for me along with my aunt. They were all frantic. When I entered our apartment my father pounced on me, beating me. My aunt had to pull him off of me. In all of the screaming, beating and chaos, I don't remember what my mother was doing. Anytime there was violence and terror inflicted on us by my father, I can never remember what my mother was doing. As I see it today, I was violated by my perpetrator, then again by my father, all in one day. The next day I woke sore all over my body. I went to school as if nothing had happened. I dismissed what happened to me and buried it in the deepest part of my conscience. I never told anyone for years. Today, my mother still does not know.
During my adolescence I rebelled, skipping school, drinking, and attempting suicide twice. No one ever asked me why I no longer wanted to live. I was depressed and didn't even know it. I dreamed of the day I would meet my knight in shining armor who would take me away from the hell in which I lived. At the age of fourteen I met my husband, Roberto. He came from a family of ten children; a family who was also dysfunctional. We were the blind leading the blind. Two ships lost at sea.
At the age of eighteen I married Roberto. The one who rescued me. Although he loved me, like my father, he too was emotionally unavailable. Three months later I was pregnant with my first child. I was elated because I knew that with this child I would be the mother that my mother was not. From the time she was in my womb I whispered to her, "I love you. I love you." I was ill with this pregnancy with morning sickness and kidney infections. When I went into labor my husband dropped me off at the hospital, leaving me there and going off to work. He didn't even wait in the waiting room. Back in 1972, the fathers were not allowed in the labor and delivery rooms. I was very afraid.
When Amanda was born, my heart knew no greater love than the one I felt for her. The joys of motherhood those first few months had no measure. When Amanda was nine months old I enrolled in school to become a registered nurse, leaving her in the care of my favorite sister-in-law. Shortly after I began school I learned that I was pregnant again. The female obstetrician whom I had at the time had convinced me to try a new I.U.D. which was experimental at that time. I was not informed about this experiment. When she told me I was pregnant she was upset with me for ruining the experiment. She humiliated me, leaving me to feel used and lonely. After I got over the initial shock of the entire matter, I eagerly awaited the arrival of my new baby. When Alicia was born, I looked into her beautiful eyes and knew that this child was meant to be. She was a pure joy. At this time things were not well with Roberto and I, and I continued to suffer from depression.
In 1976 I graduated from nursing school and became employed. All was well until 1977 when I suffered a mental collapse; I was severely depressed, ridden with anxiety and in and out of hospitals for various physical ailments. That period of time was to be the beginning of a period pf psychotherapy, which included a string of therapists. I was treated with antidepressants and tranquilizers. Gradually the depression improved but I was left with the enormous task of facing many issues in my life.
I continued to battle the demons of depression and care for my two girls. I wanted to be the mother that mine was not. I used what little strength I had to drive them to school, dance classes and joined the P.T.A. in their school.
I 1979 I became pregnant again. Although I was ridden with tremendous anxiety, I wanted desperately to have a son. I was very ill with this pregnancy and spent most of the nine months in bed. On Dec. 6, 1980, God blessed me with a beautiful, healthy son. We named him Eduardo Roberto.
Several years later a scandal erupted in a day care center in our neighborhood. It was alleged that several of the workers had sexually abused many of the children there. I remember being filled with anxiety. I couldn't sleep. When my husband made love to me I felt as if he was raping me. I didn't know where the feelings were coming from. I mentioned to two of my therapists that I "thought" I might have been raped when I was eleven. They looked at me and changed the subject. Naturally, based on their reaction, I figured that the abuse was not the cause of my depression and that perhaps it was due to the fact that I was raised in an alcoholic home. For years afterwards I continued in therapy and read a lot of material on adult children of alcoholics.
In 1992, Amanda disclosed to me that she had been sexually abused when she was five by her cousin, who was age 16 at the time (my favorite sister-in-law's son.) I cannot put into words what I felt at that moment. In total shock, I felt the pain, mortification and despair that come from hearing news of immeasurable harm done to a loved one. I could only tell her how sorry I was. At that moment I wanted to lie down and die.
Amanda's disclosure slowly brought to the surface my own sexual abuse. I began to toy with the idea that perhaps what happened to me was not my fault, that I too was abused. I quickly dismissed that thought.
What ensued was an all-encompassing obsession with what happened to my child. I felt as if we were Siamese twins. I couldn’t separate myself from her pain. I grieved, mourned, cried out to God of the injustice that was inflicted upon my precious child. I declared vengeance upon the perpetrator. I wanted blood; I wanted death. My grief and my insanity was such that I pressured my husband into selling our deli business, putting our home up for sale, and moving to Florida in 1994.
Thirteen months later we returned, almost broke, as our home in N.Y. didn't sell and it was difficult paying two mortgages. In one year I buried a sister-in-law, a brother-in-law and my father-in-law. I was surrounded by the death of my loved ones and the slow death of my soul. I continued to grieve for the pain and trauma of my child.
I wanted Amanda to begin to deal with issues arising from her incest. I wanted her to heal; for I saw what a self-destructive path she had taken in life. I began inquiring about support groups for survivors. My efforts were rewarded when I received a flier announcing a conference for survivors, which was to be held in N.Y.C. in Jan. 1999, sponsored by the Incest Awareness Foundation. I immediately planned to attend with Amy.
The night before the conference I couldn’t sleep. Many questions were dancing in my head. "Should I attend the conference for myself?" "Am I a survivor?" "Can I face the pain of what was done to me?"
The first day of the conference I was there for Amanda, but by the second day the bubble of my denial burst and I came to admit the truth that I, too, was an incest survivor. By the last day of the conference I had set up a meeting with Amanda’s perpetrator’s parents, my husband's brother and wife and their daughter who was also molested by the same person. We disclosed to the parents what their son had done to our daughters. Today I do not have any contact with many relatives, who have formed a support group for the perpetrator.
With the strength and confidence that I received at the conference, I began seeing a therapist specializing in incest survivor therapy, attending a few 12-step programs, reading literature on the subject of incest and doing everything I possible could to help myself on my healing journey. Throughout this entire process my greatest source of strength came and continues to come from the higher power that I call GOD. I began to learn to separate my incest from Amanda's. I learned to detach, so that I could work on my recovery and she could work on hers. I FOUND MY VOICE, which was lost for the majority of my life. I spoke to all who would listen about what happened to Amanda. I told relatives, friends, and clergy. My two sisters have become my dearest and most loved supporters. I wrote letters. The shame surrounding this tragedy began to slip away. What a gift! The taboo of incest is being dispersed, although we have a lot of work to do as survivors. As I continue to tell my story more people are learning about incest.
Last year, due to the excessive stress of my struggle to find my voice, I became very ill and was hospitalized for almost one month. I was diagnosed with systemic lupus. Today, due to my illness, I am not driven as if I were on a treadmill to pursue justice for myself, Amanda and other survivors in a state of frenzy. Today, I peacefully work in a pro-active manner to share my strength, courage and hope with others. Healing has come from sharing my story. All of my life I have minimized the traumas of my childhood. It has taken me over forty-five years to find my voice. Because I have found my voice, I can help others do the same. I am currently working on starting a support group for mothers of survivors called "M.O.S.A.C. (Mothers of Sexually Abused Children)” and working on a newsletter, which I will call "Find Your Voice." Amanda is working hard on her recovery, attending 12-step meetings and reading literature on incest recovery. She's moving slow, but she's moving. I've learned that everyone's recovery must come on his or her own time.
Today I continue to work on my recovery with the guidance and strength I receive from God. I continue to grieve for the loss of a mother. Despite all of the pain, struggles and tragedies in my life, I rejoice today because I am becoming the person God created me to be. I've only discovered this through my healing from my abuse...what a way to discover yourself.
Because my husband has been in psychotherapy for the last two years, our marriage is becoming the union that God intended for it to be. I do love my husband very much. I rejoice and am grateful for my three wonderful and oh so different children, Amanda, Alicia and Eduardo. At times I lament about who I could have been if I had been born into a "normal" family, but I don't regret being a mother to my children. Motherhood has been the most joyful and fulfilling role in my life, a true gift from God. Despite any imperfections and mistakes I have committed, I believe I have been forgiven.
To those mothers contemplating motherhood I say, don't be afraid. Ask your higher power for strength and guidance. Much of your suffering will be rewarded with this tremendous gift. It will change your life. Your children's lives do not have to be like ours.
When I was a little girl I prayed to God, "Please let me be a good mother." Today I know that He has honored me with what I needed to fulfill this wish and continues to do so, one day at a time.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Margaret's Story
A memory: I was perhaps two or three years old. My brother was born when I was four, so I know it was before then. My parents, two older sisters, and I lived on the third floor of a brownstone in a city. I could see the kitchen out of the door where I napped on my parents’ bed. It was during my naps that someone, a man, would touch me. I would feel as though I was not breathing. I slept on my stomach, and think I had my head pushed up against a pillow, or maybe the wall. To this day, I do not like it if something is against my head while sleeping or making love.
A memory: I was 12 years old. I went with a friend while she was to baby-sit. The two children were sleeping and she invited two men to come over. I don’t remember where or how she knew them. They were from another city and didn’t go to school with us. In fact, they were older than we were by several years. I watched television while she went into the parents’ bedroom with both of them. After a while, they called me in. One of the men had his hands down her pants and up her shirt. The other guy grabbed my arm, pulled me into the bathroom, pulled down my pants, pushed me onto the floor and raped me (although I didn’t know that’s what it was then). I wasn’t even sure what happened other than it was extremely painful and, somehow, I knew not to tell my parents. Once again, my head was involved in that it was shoved against the wall of the bathroom. I heard a noise out in the kitchen, and managed to push him off of me, stand up, and put myself back together. When they left, the guy said, “God, you’re ugly. You look like a Mac truck ran over you.” I went home and never said a word to anyone. I did know that something about what had happened was bad.
A memory: That same girlfriend’s father snuck up from behind me as we were walking down the narrow sidewalk between his house and the next. He grabbed my front pubic area with one hand while he grabbed my breast with the other and whispered in my ear that he could make me feel happy.
A memory: A friend of my father’s would ask me to sit on his lap. While sitting there, I always noticed that he had something hard under his zipper. I didn’t know for many years that it wasn’t a wallet. I was between the ages of seven and 12. After my friend’s friends raped me, I realized what that was in his front pockets and refused to sit on his lap any longer, even though my parents would try to insist.
A memory: I was a committee member on my high school health club. A speaker came to do an assembly on sex and condom use. I was assigned to take the speaker, in his car, down the road to the offices and back. On the way back, he drove several miles out of the way and raped me. I told no one, as he threatened to let my parents know that I’d had sex with a grown man and had asked for it.
The sexual abuse and its results or effects on my life are sometimes hard to separate from lots of other things for me. My father was a blue-collar worker with the government. He was a hard-working, hard-drinking Irishman, and very proud of his WWII veteran status. My mother was a homemaker because my father insisted on it. I can remember that some years she worked part-time in early winter to make extra money for Christmas gifts, but always worked at food counters so she could be home for us after school and in time for dinner. My father’s shift was over early and we ate dinner at 4:30.
I am the middle of five children. The fifth child was born after the first child had married and left home. My early years included many episodes of watching my parents fight, of watching my father hit my mother, and of being hit hard and often by both of them. As a young teenager, my father once pinned me against the wall with his hands around my neck. At that moment I’m pretty sure I learned that men could not be trusted, and they had the power to kill. It wasn’t long after my father began to hit my mother, and from somewhere came the strength to punch him in the stomach. He doubled over, and he never hit me again.
Twice my siblings and I were placed in a local orphanage for several days while my parents were jailed for their behavior. My cousin was a state policeman, and my first experience with the law was his what appeared to me to be enormous boots. While my father always had a job, and we had a car, we rented an apartment, partially due to my father’s outlook on what was “taking charity.” My father did not take advantage of any of the veteran’s plans for WWII returning soldiers. I always believed that because of my father’s drinking and my mother’s unskilled knowledge of money management, we never seemed to have extras. I wore hand-me-downs except at Easter. My father was paid every two weeks, and typically lunch on payday was non-existent or strange things like catsup sandwiches. We did go on a camping vacation each summer where we tented or rented a cottage for a week at nearby lakes. With all that went on, somehow my parents managed to make camping trips and Christmas time fond memories.
My childhood also included some very strange messages that I was unlikable, too smart for my own britches, a bookworm, overweight, and unattractive. I had two older sisters. It always seemed to me that I paid the consequences for their misbehavior. I was forbidden to date at all. My first date out of high school was the first man I chose to make love with, and I am still married to him today.
I had no recall of most of the memories until my father’s death in 1985. I was working as a nursery school teacher, and attending college for my BA degree at an adult off-campus program. My father died the day before my youngest child’s 7th birthday. As part of the college program in which I was enrolled, students resided at the campus for nine days of intense classroom lectures, curriculum development, etc. My father died in early November, and I went to attend a residency in early February. There, probably because of some of the people I met, and because I had so much time to be with my grief, all of these memories began to flood back. I became a friend of a man who shared with me that he had been sexually abused, and somehow that allowed me to open the dam. It didn’t stop for months, and it was frightening as hell.
Through thick and thin, as they say, stood my husband. My husband comes from a completely different background, class status, educational status, and religion. This meant he truly, no matter what he tried, could not understand, and in some cases barely believed, it was all true. But he was and still is the one of the few people in my life who loves me unconditionally. His real support of me through life is unending.
Because most of my memories returned after my children’s births, I’m a bit unclear how to fathom or pull apart how these things might relate. I feel, though, that what was most important to my ability to not have these things affect my birth experiences and mothering was that I believed, as I still do, that I could do all of that really well. Loving children, loving babies, doesn’t involve or have any relationship to my weight, my looks, and maybe even my “smarts.” I didn’t even count on books to tell me how to do it right. I knew I knew how to do it. Maybe because my mother didn’t tell me anything about sexuality or a woman’s plumbing, I could believe in myself to know I could do it. I knew when I became pregnant the first time (and I was only 21) that I could make this child’s life completely different from my own. It wouldn’t just be from overprotection, but it would be from teaching my babies that they were worth something, that they were important, wanted, and loved. It is openly stated in our family that it is the action you take that may have a consequence, not the feeling. All feelings are okay, all actions are not. Sorting out our feelings can be learned. This is another place my husband enters this picture, because he was raised in an emotionally cold home and knew that his children had to know how to recognize and experience their emotions – all of them.
During my childhood, although I lived in a city, we were near a river and a park. To be outdoors for me was my escape. To read a book outdoors in all kinds of weather was true heaven on earth. When I became pregnant, I knew that it was built into me to know what to do, as it’s built into a river to know where to flow, and that I could trust my body to know what to do. I was never afraid. I had and have a strong and clear belief in my ability to give birth and to be a mother.
As my children grew older, and I began to remember and deal with the memories of my childhood, I began to realize that this equated with power. That I, although I still didn’t think anyone but my husband thought I was pretty or smart, could change history, so to speak. That I had what it took to raise children who were loved for who they were, that I could break the cycle of violence, and that I could have children who were taught about the bad things in the world, but who didn’t have to experience them.
I honestly can’t tell you where I’ve gotten the strength to deal with what I’d been dealt. Sometimes I think it’s because I always felt someone else had it worse. I’m grateful each day for life. I call myself a survivor because I believe I lived in a war zone for the first 18 years of my life; the next 18 years of my life I spent trying to “catch up.” Fortunately, I’ve slowed down a little and realized that just appreciating what I have is really living.
Giving birth is something I’ve always wished I could have done a dozen times! My husband and I had compromised with three children, but two became a great many to afford some days. The experience of giving birth, the feelings, both physical and emotional, I completely enjoyed. And I know it isn’t just remembering the good things now – during my labors I knew nothing was more wonderful to be doing than that.
My early experiences have made me who I am. To deny the experiences is to deny the source of what makes me a strong woman now. Through my recovery I sought out books to read on alcoholism, psychology, family dynamics, and self-help books of many kinds. For a while I attended a women’s support group. I went to a counselor for about two years right after my memories began to surface. But always, somewhere inside of me, I knew I had the answer – that no one else had my answer. I would also become impatient with the other women I met who seemed to use their memories and experiences as excuses for being who they are. Sometimes there was just too much whining and making excuses for not getting on with getting stronger. During my recovery I wrote a lot. I wrote in journals, and I wrote a poetry of sorts – most of which is filled with anger and sadness.
A memory: I was 12 years old. I went with a friend while she was to baby-sit. The two children were sleeping and she invited two men to come over. I don’t remember where or how she knew them. They were from another city and didn’t go to school with us. In fact, they were older than we were by several years. I watched television while she went into the parents’ bedroom with both of them. After a while, they called me in. One of the men had his hands down her pants and up her shirt. The other guy grabbed my arm, pulled me into the bathroom, pulled down my pants, pushed me onto the floor and raped me (although I didn’t know that’s what it was then). I wasn’t even sure what happened other than it was extremely painful and, somehow, I knew not to tell my parents. Once again, my head was involved in that it was shoved against the wall of the bathroom. I heard a noise out in the kitchen, and managed to push him off of me, stand up, and put myself back together. When they left, the guy said, “God, you’re ugly. You look like a Mac truck ran over you.” I went home and never said a word to anyone. I did know that something about what had happened was bad.
A memory: That same girlfriend’s father snuck up from behind me as we were walking down the narrow sidewalk between his house and the next. He grabbed my front pubic area with one hand while he grabbed my breast with the other and whispered in my ear that he could make me feel happy.
A memory: A friend of my father’s would ask me to sit on his lap. While sitting there, I always noticed that he had something hard under his zipper. I didn’t know for many years that it wasn’t a wallet. I was between the ages of seven and 12. After my friend’s friends raped me, I realized what that was in his front pockets and refused to sit on his lap any longer, even though my parents would try to insist.
A memory: I was a committee member on my high school health club. A speaker came to do an assembly on sex and condom use. I was assigned to take the speaker, in his car, down the road to the offices and back. On the way back, he drove several miles out of the way and raped me. I told no one, as he threatened to let my parents know that I’d had sex with a grown man and had asked for it.
The sexual abuse and its results or effects on my life are sometimes hard to separate from lots of other things for me. My father was a blue-collar worker with the government. He was a hard-working, hard-drinking Irishman, and very proud of his WWII veteran status. My mother was a homemaker because my father insisted on it. I can remember that some years she worked part-time in early winter to make extra money for Christmas gifts, but always worked at food counters so she could be home for us after school and in time for dinner. My father’s shift was over early and we ate dinner at 4:30.
I am the middle of five children. The fifth child was born after the first child had married and left home. My early years included many episodes of watching my parents fight, of watching my father hit my mother, and of being hit hard and often by both of them. As a young teenager, my father once pinned me against the wall with his hands around my neck. At that moment I’m pretty sure I learned that men could not be trusted, and they had the power to kill. It wasn’t long after my father began to hit my mother, and from somewhere came the strength to punch him in the stomach. He doubled over, and he never hit me again.
Twice my siblings and I were placed in a local orphanage for several days while my parents were jailed for their behavior. My cousin was a state policeman, and my first experience with the law was his what appeared to me to be enormous boots. While my father always had a job, and we had a car, we rented an apartment, partially due to my father’s outlook on what was “taking charity.” My father did not take advantage of any of the veteran’s plans for WWII returning soldiers. I always believed that because of my father’s drinking and my mother’s unskilled knowledge of money management, we never seemed to have extras. I wore hand-me-downs except at Easter. My father was paid every two weeks, and typically lunch on payday was non-existent or strange things like catsup sandwiches. We did go on a camping vacation each summer where we tented or rented a cottage for a week at nearby lakes. With all that went on, somehow my parents managed to make camping trips and Christmas time fond memories.
My childhood also included some very strange messages that I was unlikable, too smart for my own britches, a bookworm, overweight, and unattractive. I had two older sisters. It always seemed to me that I paid the consequences for their misbehavior. I was forbidden to date at all. My first date out of high school was the first man I chose to make love with, and I am still married to him today.
I had no recall of most of the memories until my father’s death in 1985. I was working as a nursery school teacher, and attending college for my BA degree at an adult off-campus program. My father died the day before my youngest child’s 7th birthday. As part of the college program in which I was enrolled, students resided at the campus for nine days of intense classroom lectures, curriculum development, etc. My father died in early November, and I went to attend a residency in early February. There, probably because of some of the people I met, and because I had so much time to be with my grief, all of these memories began to flood back. I became a friend of a man who shared with me that he had been sexually abused, and somehow that allowed me to open the dam. It didn’t stop for months, and it was frightening as hell.
Through thick and thin, as they say, stood my husband. My husband comes from a completely different background, class status, educational status, and religion. This meant he truly, no matter what he tried, could not understand, and in some cases barely believed, it was all true. But he was and still is the one of the few people in my life who loves me unconditionally. His real support of me through life is unending.
Because most of my memories returned after my children’s births, I’m a bit unclear how to fathom or pull apart how these things might relate. I feel, though, that what was most important to my ability to not have these things affect my birth experiences and mothering was that I believed, as I still do, that I could do all of that really well. Loving children, loving babies, doesn’t involve or have any relationship to my weight, my looks, and maybe even my “smarts.” I didn’t even count on books to tell me how to do it right. I knew I knew how to do it. Maybe because my mother didn’t tell me anything about sexuality or a woman’s plumbing, I could believe in myself to know I could do it. I knew when I became pregnant the first time (and I was only 21) that I could make this child’s life completely different from my own. It wouldn’t just be from overprotection, but it would be from teaching my babies that they were worth something, that they were important, wanted, and loved. It is openly stated in our family that it is the action you take that may have a consequence, not the feeling. All feelings are okay, all actions are not. Sorting out our feelings can be learned. This is another place my husband enters this picture, because he was raised in an emotionally cold home and knew that his children had to know how to recognize and experience their emotions – all of them.
During my childhood, although I lived in a city, we were near a river and a park. To be outdoors for me was my escape. To read a book outdoors in all kinds of weather was true heaven on earth. When I became pregnant, I knew that it was built into me to know what to do, as it’s built into a river to know where to flow, and that I could trust my body to know what to do. I was never afraid. I had and have a strong and clear belief in my ability to give birth and to be a mother.
As my children grew older, and I began to remember and deal with the memories of my childhood, I began to realize that this equated with power. That I, although I still didn’t think anyone but my husband thought I was pretty or smart, could change history, so to speak. That I had what it took to raise children who were loved for who they were, that I could break the cycle of violence, and that I could have children who were taught about the bad things in the world, but who didn’t have to experience them.
I honestly can’t tell you where I’ve gotten the strength to deal with what I’d been dealt. Sometimes I think it’s because I always felt someone else had it worse. I’m grateful each day for life. I call myself a survivor because I believe I lived in a war zone for the first 18 years of my life; the next 18 years of my life I spent trying to “catch up.” Fortunately, I’ve slowed down a little and realized that just appreciating what I have is really living.
Giving birth is something I’ve always wished I could have done a dozen times! My husband and I had compromised with three children, but two became a great many to afford some days. The experience of giving birth, the feelings, both physical and emotional, I completely enjoyed. And I know it isn’t just remembering the good things now – during my labors I knew nothing was more wonderful to be doing than that.
My early experiences have made me who I am. To deny the experiences is to deny the source of what makes me a strong woman now. Through my recovery I sought out books to read on alcoholism, psychology, family dynamics, and self-help books of many kinds. For a while I attended a women’s support group. I went to a counselor for about two years right after my memories began to surface. But always, somewhere inside of me, I knew I had the answer – that no one else had my answer. I would also become impatient with the other women I met who seemed to use their memories and experiences as excuses for being who they are. Sometimes there was just too much whining and making excuses for not getting on with getting stronger. During my recovery I wrote a lot. I wrote in journals, and I wrote a poetry of sorts – most of which is filled with anger and sadness.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Kathy's Story
I’m not a writer, so I will just start from the beginning. I am the youngest of three children, a brother and a sister. My mother’s third husband was the man who abused me and, later I found out, my sister. He adopted the three of us while we were living in Germany. I remember he used to take pictures of my sister and me when he was dating my mother. I think I was about six.
As far as I knew, he was my father. He was in the Air Force, so we moved a lot. We had moved to California, and it was there that the abuse started. I was about eight. I don’t remember a lot, just some fondling at first. He used to have Playboy Magazines around all the time. I don’t think Mom knew about them.
When I was about 11, we got transferred to Germany. The abuse got more frequent there. Then, when I was 14, we got transferred to Texas. The abuse really became bad there. There was so much going on with my brother and other things, that some of it is blurry. There was a lot of fondling, and he used to suck on my breasts a lot.
At that time, I was feeling so bad about myself that I started to drink, and do drugs, and hang around some shady characters. My sister got married when she was 18 to get out of the house. He used to blackmail me, saying he would tell my mother about things I did if I didn’t let him do stuff to me. He used to watch me put tampons in.
I had to go to the hospital because I had a staph infection in my left breast that had burst. The doctors said I was too young to have that, and assumed I was sexually active. I never said a word. I remember I used to pick at my breasts and make sores so he would leave me alone. It didn’t work.
My mother had to go into the hospital at one time, and I was in a panic because I had to stay at home with him, by myself. It was a feeling of sheer terror. I will never forget it. He would climb into bed with me, and do things. I used to drink beer before I went to school, and some dope, and did a lot of drugs. My self-esteem was at an all-time low. I was abused every day, several times a day. I was scared when my sister got married, because I would be the only one with him.
I had sex for the first time at 15, and hated it, but I continued to have sex with a lot of men. I spent a little time in jail, a lot of time drunk and high. I hated myself and everybody else. I would hurt people on purpose.
My healing has been long and hard. My father was accused of molesting two of his other stepdaughters. I told my mother about it, and she somehow figured out he had done it to me. I had never said anything to her. I was about 23 at the time. She called the OSI of the Air Force and told them. Somehow I was convinced to testify against him, and was the only one. I was flown to a base in Kansas, and had a guard with me at all times. I had to tell eight men what he had done to me, in great detail. It was all coming back so fast; I had a breakdown. We won, but all that happened to him was he lost all eight stripes, benefits, and retirement. That was it! I was devastated!
I came back to Texas to try to get a grip on things. I saw two counselors. I was suicidal, and homicidal, at the time. I was so messed up. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I used to pray to God that when I went to sleep, I wouldn’t wake up.
I slowly became better and met Russell, who is now my husband. We have two daughters, aged 10 and 11. They are my life.
But it has been difficult for me. I was afraid to have children; because I was worried I might abuse them, which has not happened. I am over-protective at times. I watch every man that comes near them.
I became a Christian a few years ago, and went through a course, Covenant Healing. It has helped me a lot. I’m over the abuse itself, but the effects are never going to go away. I’m learning things at 38 that I should have learned at 8 or 10. I have had a hard time knowing what it’s like to be 9 or 10. I can’t relate to my girls that way. They don’t know about the abuse, but I will tell them sometime. I don’t know what is normal for a family. I guess a lot. I do know I don’t want to be like my mother, so I try hard not to be.
There are things I don’t know how to deal with. On Friday afternoon, the girls wanted their cousin to stay the night, but she was busy, and so were the other friends they called. They were bored, and acted like they lost their best friend. I didn’t know what to do! My first thought was that nobody liked them, that it was my fault. I didn’t know what to do. I felt so sorry for them.
The questions I have are so stupid, I feel. Like, what do I do when they have a problem at school? How am I supposed to act? How do I play with them? How do I relate?
When my oldest daughter had a problem with a boy at school, I didn’t know what to do. I called a friend. I thought I should go to his mother and confront her! But my friend told me what I should do. The solution was so easy, but I didn’t know it. What I’m saying is, it has affected me in the way I react, act, and solve situations. I don’t know what it was like to be a normal kid, so I don’t know how to handle it. I try my best, and think I am doing a fairly good job. I try to teach my girls to love themselves, be kind, and treat everyone they way they want to be treated. I believe I have broken the cycle of abuse in my family, and I believe they have a good life.
I’m growing up with them, learning what I should have learned. I have gone on with my life, and can enjoy it. My faith in God has really helped me. The abuse doesn’t control me like it once did. I control it, and the way it affects me. It will take a lot of pain, tears, anger, more pain, tears, and anger, patience, courage, and a strong will, and a lot of hope. But if I can make it, anybody can.
As far as I knew, he was my father. He was in the Air Force, so we moved a lot. We had moved to California, and it was there that the abuse started. I was about eight. I don’t remember a lot, just some fondling at first. He used to have Playboy Magazines around all the time. I don’t think Mom knew about them.
When I was about 11, we got transferred to Germany. The abuse got more frequent there. Then, when I was 14, we got transferred to Texas. The abuse really became bad there. There was so much going on with my brother and other things, that some of it is blurry. There was a lot of fondling, and he used to suck on my breasts a lot.
At that time, I was feeling so bad about myself that I started to drink, and do drugs, and hang around some shady characters. My sister got married when she was 18 to get out of the house. He used to blackmail me, saying he would tell my mother about things I did if I didn’t let him do stuff to me. He used to watch me put tampons in.
I had to go to the hospital because I had a staph infection in my left breast that had burst. The doctors said I was too young to have that, and assumed I was sexually active. I never said a word. I remember I used to pick at my breasts and make sores so he would leave me alone. It didn’t work.
My mother had to go into the hospital at one time, and I was in a panic because I had to stay at home with him, by myself. It was a feeling of sheer terror. I will never forget it. He would climb into bed with me, and do things. I used to drink beer before I went to school, and some dope, and did a lot of drugs. My self-esteem was at an all-time low. I was abused every day, several times a day. I was scared when my sister got married, because I would be the only one with him.
I had sex for the first time at 15, and hated it, but I continued to have sex with a lot of men. I spent a little time in jail, a lot of time drunk and high. I hated myself and everybody else. I would hurt people on purpose.
My healing has been long and hard. My father was accused of molesting two of his other stepdaughters. I told my mother about it, and she somehow figured out he had done it to me. I had never said anything to her. I was about 23 at the time. She called the OSI of the Air Force and told them. Somehow I was convinced to testify against him, and was the only one. I was flown to a base in Kansas, and had a guard with me at all times. I had to tell eight men what he had done to me, in great detail. It was all coming back so fast; I had a breakdown. We won, but all that happened to him was he lost all eight stripes, benefits, and retirement. That was it! I was devastated!
I came back to Texas to try to get a grip on things. I saw two counselors. I was suicidal, and homicidal, at the time. I was so messed up. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. I used to pray to God that when I went to sleep, I wouldn’t wake up.
I slowly became better and met Russell, who is now my husband. We have two daughters, aged 10 and 11. They are my life.
But it has been difficult for me. I was afraid to have children; because I was worried I might abuse them, which has not happened. I am over-protective at times. I watch every man that comes near them.
I became a Christian a few years ago, and went through a course, Covenant Healing. It has helped me a lot. I’m over the abuse itself, but the effects are never going to go away. I’m learning things at 38 that I should have learned at 8 or 10. I have had a hard time knowing what it’s like to be 9 or 10. I can’t relate to my girls that way. They don’t know about the abuse, but I will tell them sometime. I don’t know what is normal for a family. I guess a lot. I do know I don’t want to be like my mother, so I try hard not to be.
There are things I don’t know how to deal with. On Friday afternoon, the girls wanted their cousin to stay the night, but she was busy, and so were the other friends they called. They were bored, and acted like they lost their best friend. I didn’t know what to do! My first thought was that nobody liked them, that it was my fault. I didn’t know what to do. I felt so sorry for them.
The questions I have are so stupid, I feel. Like, what do I do when they have a problem at school? How am I supposed to act? How do I play with them? How do I relate?
When my oldest daughter had a problem with a boy at school, I didn’t know what to do. I called a friend. I thought I should go to his mother and confront her! But my friend told me what I should do. The solution was so easy, but I didn’t know it. What I’m saying is, it has affected me in the way I react, act, and solve situations. I don’t know what it was like to be a normal kid, so I don’t know how to handle it. I try my best, and think I am doing a fairly good job. I try to teach my girls to love themselves, be kind, and treat everyone they way they want to be treated. I believe I have broken the cycle of abuse in my family, and I believe they have a good life.
I’m growing up with them, learning what I should have learned. I have gone on with my life, and can enjoy it. My faith in God has really helped me. The abuse doesn’t control me like it once did. I control it, and the way it affects me. It will take a lot of pain, tears, anger, more pain, tears, and anger, patience, courage, and a strong will, and a lot of hope. But if I can make it, anybody can.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Kathy's poem
A Rhyme
This survivor took an axe
and gave her father forty whacks.
As he lay there on the floor
She gave the b%^$#@ forty more.
Even now, she wasn’t done
she cut his hands off one by one
Now the b%^&$# won’t be able
to fondle me under the table
or run his hands along my chest
under my shirt to touch my breasts.
It felt so good, imagining
myself really doing that awful thing
hurting him. HURTING HIM!
like he did me.
the hurt that hurts everlastingly.
Are you fussy, little one?
Are you the one that sucks her thumb?
No, that’s my other little one.
Here. Suck this and make me come.
Are you wet? Let’s change you, hon
being naked is lots of fun!
Now, you watch where I put my thumb.
I know that feels good, little one.
Take that, and that, you lousy scum!
I broke, no, smashed his hands, his arms
without them he can’t work his charms
on other babies and little girls
and ruin their innocent little worlds.
That’s where it all started, all this crap
when I was a baby- and you figure that?
The hurt has lasted thirty-nine years
filled with pain and unspent tears.
My insecurities, all my fears
all date back to those first few years.
This survivor took an axe
and gave her father forty whacks.
As he lay there on the floor
She gave the b%^$#@ forty more.
Even now, she wasn’t done
she cut his hands off one by one
Now the b%^&$# won’t be able
to fondle me under the table
or run his hands along my chest
under my shirt to touch my breasts.
It felt so good, imagining
myself really doing that awful thing
hurting him. HURTING HIM!
like he did me.
the hurt that hurts everlastingly.
Are you fussy, little one?
Are you the one that sucks her thumb?
No, that’s my other little one.
Here. Suck this and make me come.
Are you wet? Let’s change you, hon
being naked is lots of fun!
Now, you watch where I put my thumb.
I know that feels good, little one.
Take that, and that, you lousy scum!
I broke, no, smashed his hands, his arms
without them he can’t work his charms
on other babies and little girls
and ruin their innocent little worlds.
That’s where it all started, all this crap
when I was a baby- and you figure that?
The hurt has lasted thirty-nine years
filled with pain and unspent tears.
My insecurities, all my fears
all date back to those first few years.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Stacey's Story
I think it was Virginia Wolfe who said, “If one woman told the truth about her life, the world would explode.” I don’t know if my writing will articulate what it is that I would like to communicate, but I will try, as I tend to ‘disassociate’ whenever I get on this subject. I spent time in therapy on issues revolving around my mother being abusive, without really delving into the actual subject and how it created the field for other ‘problems’ I had. Also, I had not remembered the actual sexual abuses at the time of my ‘formal’ therapy. Interestingly, it is only recently that I have been able to look at how the dysfunctional parts of my life correlate to coping mechanisms, not something isolated. For instance, I had always been very down on myself for having whatever shortcomings it was that made me have really long, slow labors … I didn’t put the obvious together until reading an article about it on the web.
My abuse was most overt when I was a very young infant, between six to 18 months, up to three, but before I was able to speak. My mother choked me to near death several times. I still can’t sing today, not that I can’t carry a tune, or have an unpleasant voice, but I can’t make sound come out in front of other people (except children). Also, she was obsessed with private parts, including mine, and with penetrating me with objects. She spent the rest of my life with her abusing me other ways, sort of like a hostage situation… how can I explain? I was kept in a playpen all day, with no outside activities, experienced physical abuse, a lot of slapping, restrictions for no reason, emotional ‘stuff,’ was kept in inappropriate clothes, bad haircuts, et al… things that by themselves seem ridiculous…all the way to when I was a teen, and she wouldn’t sign papers so I could take advantage of a college scholarship I had won, with no explanation. So, you could say that I did not gather information about being a good, loving person and parent from my mother.
It seems a complicated conundrum why people do not want to believe that a mother is capable of such cruelties, and that it is far more common than people think. Is it partially because people want to ‘dump’ the responsibility of childcare onto the mothers, and if they can’t do it, that means they would have to actually think of a better system, like taking a little pressure off women?
I am still not sure how I got from there to here in as good shape as I have! It’s not always easy. I believe my worst problems have to do with self-esteem, my ability to assert myself in the world, confidence in my ability to ‘do,’ difficulty trusting other people, and most of all, a skewed thinking about the nature of the world. I am looking at the world again after giving the rightful name to things, you could say.
Of course, I went through several abusive relationships. The topper was my divorce from my ex-husband (who was a lot like my mom . . . surprise!). I put him through law school, had to divorce him, and he fought me for custody of our five-year-old son, who was the center of my world. This lasted for four and one-half years. I could have had it over with sooner, but I was so devastated and dis-empowered that I could not assert myself very well.
I’ve never had sexual problems, either over or under doing it… I feel comfortable with all that. Never had menstrual problems. But, my sense of self and body image was devastated, especially as far as being seen by others goes. I was anorexic and bulimic for a while as a teen/young adult, but just stopped. When I hit puberty, I felt like a piece of meat. I always felt extremely lonely and sad, empty, and angry as a child. I felt I was not loved. I had a lot to offer, if only I had the chance. Most strongly, however, was the feeling that no one should ever have to go through what I did. I got pregnant at age 28, and was craving a child by that time. I was dating my ‘ex’ for only a few months. He was ‘wrong’ for me as a husband, but due to a personal crisis at the time (my beloved older brother had just died), he was comfortable for me, outgoing, took care of things, talked about a ‘future.’ If I had not gotten pregnant, I would never have married him, and almost didn’t.
I absolutely loved being pregnant! I was ecstatic about having a child. While pregnant, I felt ‘filled,’ not alone. I had a purpose to serve another in an honest and unconditional way. I enjoyed the ripeness and fullness of my body. I felt more ‘real.’ I was, and am, a real ‘earth mother’ type, a huge fan of Mothering magazine. I was extremely healthy during the pregnancy, had no morning sickness or other problems. My family and now husband were all happy and supportive. In fact, it was the most positive time in my life until then. Even my mother treated me well.
The 38-hour birth was different, however. I had a great medical support team. The Chicago Women’s Health Center has been here since the 70’s, completely woman-centered, into empowering women, making your own decisions. I found it after the gynecologist I was going to (a woman) seemed to be giving all her patients the very uncomfortable colposcopy procedure that she invented.
Anyway, my doctor was wonderful. My bag of waters broke at 1:00 a.m. I was sleeping on the squishy couch as I had been all month because I was so big; I couldn’t get comfortable in bed. My contractions were five minutes apart from start to finish. My labor, which started out in the hospital birthing center, ended in the delivery room with a dosage of pitocin, and five to six hours of pushing. My doctor never gave up on me; bless her a thousand times. She knew how much I didn’t want a cesarean. She even spent the night at the hospital to be near me. Staff would come into my room and say, “Oh, it’s so peaceful in here, and the lady across the hall is screaming and going crazy.” I comforted myself with the fact that my son was in such great shape, and had great Apgar scores. They told me the babies like it nice and easy.
Looking back, my other support people were a nightmare, my ‘ex’ chasing after me with a tape recorder to tape my moans for posterity, his family being there for his support and making fun of the way I cursed softly, and his brothers and sisters filing past me as I labored naked in the shower, him watching the ball game during the birth. But, I was not able to make it different. Pushing was my favorite part, because I was active and doing something. I didn’t like sitting around waiting, and in pain. The nurse that helped me during pushing was great. I was tired and she was pushing on my perineum to focus me and yelling for me to push. From what I gather about the activities of abused women, that sounds opposite from what one should do, but she was perfect. She was real and right there with me, even though it was difficult.
After extricating myself from this bad relationship, I went through a lot of growth and learning. I subsequently found a wonderful partner and mate who is a gentle, sensitive, beautiful soul. We have been together over nine years. We decided to have a child; she is now three years old.
Despite being in a great relationship, and this being my second child, I was not more successful in having a quicker birth. This one, in fact, was longer – three days. I went into labor Friday night, and gave birth Monday morning. I had a midwife this time, and tried my best to have a home birth. My main midwife, to be honest, wasn’t all that great for me. She was kind of distant, not warm. If it had been my first birth, I would have been really unhappy with her.
Again, it was a healthy pregnancy, even though I was older. I got really big again. Even though I had remembered about my mom at this time, I didn’t relate to it much. I felt very alone, not connected to anyone attending this birth, like I was not being taken care of well enough. This is actually the first time I have said this.
My mate, however wonderful, was not as comfortable with the birth in that it was so new for him, not that he wasn’t happy about it. For my ex’s credit, he was the oldest of six kids, and all the birth stuff was old hat. I had lost touch with my old friends during my long divorce, due to me not wanting to burden them, and now I was kind of alone in the friend department. I would have loved to have some of my old women friends there for support, but they had moved away.
We had some younger artist friends there, who weren’t on the same wavelength either. In fact, there was a lot of partying in the kitchen while I labored alone in the bedroom. Do you see a pattern here? I still was not able to assert my needs, even with a supportive partner. The midwife kicked the extras out immediately, thank goodness. I got stuck at nine and one-half centimeters and stayed stuck, even though some of my contractions were really long, five, six, seven minutes. The world would turn white; with a ‘tear’ pattern in the middle, the worse the pain, the bigger the hole. I threw up a few times. I still can’t drink lemonade with honey.
Again though, I hung in there, remaining calm, and for the most part, really positive. We packed up for the hospital on the coldest day of 1997, and during the bumpy ride, the baby was already in the birth canal. A few moments of pitocin and five (count them) pushes and she was out!
The hospital was great, beautiful birthing rooms, and the doctor in charge was great. He said, “I know you were trying for a home birth. I’ll let the midwife run the show.” Amazing, huh? Unfortunately, he had to run and do a cesarean, and the second in-charge doctor came on board. She was not so nice. She had a need to assert her position and intervene. She put a scalp monitor on the baby, against my wishes, even though in the canal it was useless. I sat up and told her no. She lied and said it just rested against the baby’s head. It fell off, so she did it again! There were two scabby bumps on Elizabeth’s head.
My son, age 11, got to cut the cord, and everyone got to stay the night, unlike the first birth where, because I got switched to delivery with pitocin, I lost birthing room privileges. I feel that perhaps I needed the official ‘something’ of the doctors to get my body going. Because that is against everything I believe in. I am disappointed in myself. I wish my body worked better. It seemed to mirror my inability to make things happen in my general life, despite knowing what I want to happen. Well, everyone has to struggle with something.
I have breastfed both of my children. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else. I breastfed my son until he was two, and my daughter, at three, is still nursing before bed. I had to go out of town in order to wean my son. I practiced family bed with both of them, until they went into toddler beds, and practice non-violence. Spanking my son is one of the reasons I divorced my ‘ex.’ I try to keep to child-centered parenting, and respect the core being of these little (and now not so little) people. I obviously enjoy breastfeeding, though am ready to wean when the time comes.
I have noticed more ‘triggering’ with my daughter. I was awestruck with the natural purity of her little body and being, how free she is able to be, due to not being abused. It was, in fact, extremely painful, making me feel/see something I lacked, but joyful to see someone else have it, a sublime experience to be sure. That she can move her legs around in that 360 degree curve that babies do is amazing. I can’t relax my body like that. She has also taken her time potty training, and I noticed that I didn’t mind, that the covering of diapers made me feel safe for her. I suppose there is more of that kind of thing to come, but I will have to deal with it. I hope that my personality does not keep my daughter from anything in the world that she needs to experience. I hope I can manifest some of my dreams in the world that I want to, for her to see. I certainly have learned how a parent should not act, and because of this, the every day act of loving my children is healthy for me.
My abuse was most overt when I was a very young infant, between six to 18 months, up to three, but before I was able to speak. My mother choked me to near death several times. I still can’t sing today, not that I can’t carry a tune, or have an unpleasant voice, but I can’t make sound come out in front of other people (except children). Also, she was obsessed with private parts, including mine, and with penetrating me with objects. She spent the rest of my life with her abusing me other ways, sort of like a hostage situation… how can I explain? I was kept in a playpen all day, with no outside activities, experienced physical abuse, a lot of slapping, restrictions for no reason, emotional ‘stuff,’ was kept in inappropriate clothes, bad haircuts, et al… things that by themselves seem ridiculous…all the way to when I was a teen, and she wouldn’t sign papers so I could take advantage of a college scholarship I had won, with no explanation. So, you could say that I did not gather information about being a good, loving person and parent from my mother.
It seems a complicated conundrum why people do not want to believe that a mother is capable of such cruelties, and that it is far more common than people think. Is it partially because people want to ‘dump’ the responsibility of childcare onto the mothers, and if they can’t do it, that means they would have to actually think of a better system, like taking a little pressure off women?
I am still not sure how I got from there to here in as good shape as I have! It’s not always easy. I believe my worst problems have to do with self-esteem, my ability to assert myself in the world, confidence in my ability to ‘do,’ difficulty trusting other people, and most of all, a skewed thinking about the nature of the world. I am looking at the world again after giving the rightful name to things, you could say.
Of course, I went through several abusive relationships. The topper was my divorce from my ex-husband (who was a lot like my mom . . . surprise!). I put him through law school, had to divorce him, and he fought me for custody of our five-year-old son, who was the center of my world. This lasted for four and one-half years. I could have had it over with sooner, but I was so devastated and dis-empowered that I could not assert myself very well.
I’ve never had sexual problems, either over or under doing it… I feel comfortable with all that. Never had menstrual problems. But, my sense of self and body image was devastated, especially as far as being seen by others goes. I was anorexic and bulimic for a while as a teen/young adult, but just stopped. When I hit puberty, I felt like a piece of meat. I always felt extremely lonely and sad, empty, and angry as a child. I felt I was not loved. I had a lot to offer, if only I had the chance. Most strongly, however, was the feeling that no one should ever have to go through what I did. I got pregnant at age 28, and was craving a child by that time. I was dating my ‘ex’ for only a few months. He was ‘wrong’ for me as a husband, but due to a personal crisis at the time (my beloved older brother had just died), he was comfortable for me, outgoing, took care of things, talked about a ‘future.’ If I had not gotten pregnant, I would never have married him, and almost didn’t.
I absolutely loved being pregnant! I was ecstatic about having a child. While pregnant, I felt ‘filled,’ not alone. I had a purpose to serve another in an honest and unconditional way. I enjoyed the ripeness and fullness of my body. I felt more ‘real.’ I was, and am, a real ‘earth mother’ type, a huge fan of Mothering magazine. I was extremely healthy during the pregnancy, had no morning sickness or other problems. My family and now husband were all happy and supportive. In fact, it was the most positive time in my life until then. Even my mother treated me well.
The 38-hour birth was different, however. I had a great medical support team. The Chicago Women’s Health Center has been here since the 70’s, completely woman-centered, into empowering women, making your own decisions. I found it after the gynecologist I was going to (a woman) seemed to be giving all her patients the very uncomfortable colposcopy procedure that she invented.
Anyway, my doctor was wonderful. My bag of waters broke at 1:00 a.m. I was sleeping on the squishy couch as I had been all month because I was so big; I couldn’t get comfortable in bed. My contractions were five minutes apart from start to finish. My labor, which started out in the hospital birthing center, ended in the delivery room with a dosage of pitocin, and five to six hours of pushing. My doctor never gave up on me; bless her a thousand times. She knew how much I didn’t want a cesarean. She even spent the night at the hospital to be near me. Staff would come into my room and say, “Oh, it’s so peaceful in here, and the lady across the hall is screaming and going crazy.” I comforted myself with the fact that my son was in such great shape, and had great Apgar scores. They told me the babies like it nice and easy.
Looking back, my other support people were a nightmare, my ‘ex’ chasing after me with a tape recorder to tape my moans for posterity, his family being there for his support and making fun of the way I cursed softly, and his brothers and sisters filing past me as I labored naked in the shower, him watching the ball game during the birth. But, I was not able to make it different. Pushing was my favorite part, because I was active and doing something. I didn’t like sitting around waiting, and in pain. The nurse that helped me during pushing was great. I was tired and she was pushing on my perineum to focus me and yelling for me to push. From what I gather about the activities of abused women, that sounds opposite from what one should do, but she was perfect. She was real and right there with me, even though it was difficult.
After extricating myself from this bad relationship, I went through a lot of growth and learning. I subsequently found a wonderful partner and mate who is a gentle, sensitive, beautiful soul. We have been together over nine years. We decided to have a child; she is now three years old.
Despite being in a great relationship, and this being my second child, I was not more successful in having a quicker birth. This one, in fact, was longer – three days. I went into labor Friday night, and gave birth Monday morning. I had a midwife this time, and tried my best to have a home birth. My main midwife, to be honest, wasn’t all that great for me. She was kind of distant, not warm. If it had been my first birth, I would have been really unhappy with her.
Again, it was a healthy pregnancy, even though I was older. I got really big again. Even though I had remembered about my mom at this time, I didn’t relate to it much. I felt very alone, not connected to anyone attending this birth, like I was not being taken care of well enough. This is actually the first time I have said this.
My mate, however wonderful, was not as comfortable with the birth in that it was so new for him, not that he wasn’t happy about it. For my ex’s credit, he was the oldest of six kids, and all the birth stuff was old hat. I had lost touch with my old friends during my long divorce, due to me not wanting to burden them, and now I was kind of alone in the friend department. I would have loved to have some of my old women friends there for support, but they had moved away.
We had some younger artist friends there, who weren’t on the same wavelength either. In fact, there was a lot of partying in the kitchen while I labored alone in the bedroom. Do you see a pattern here? I still was not able to assert my needs, even with a supportive partner. The midwife kicked the extras out immediately, thank goodness. I got stuck at nine and one-half centimeters and stayed stuck, even though some of my contractions were really long, five, six, seven minutes. The world would turn white; with a ‘tear’ pattern in the middle, the worse the pain, the bigger the hole. I threw up a few times. I still can’t drink lemonade with honey.
Again though, I hung in there, remaining calm, and for the most part, really positive. We packed up for the hospital on the coldest day of 1997, and during the bumpy ride, the baby was already in the birth canal. A few moments of pitocin and five (count them) pushes and she was out!
The hospital was great, beautiful birthing rooms, and the doctor in charge was great. He said, “I know you were trying for a home birth. I’ll let the midwife run the show.” Amazing, huh? Unfortunately, he had to run and do a cesarean, and the second in-charge doctor came on board. She was not so nice. She had a need to assert her position and intervene. She put a scalp monitor on the baby, against my wishes, even though in the canal it was useless. I sat up and told her no. She lied and said it just rested against the baby’s head. It fell off, so she did it again! There were two scabby bumps on Elizabeth’s head.
My son, age 11, got to cut the cord, and everyone got to stay the night, unlike the first birth where, because I got switched to delivery with pitocin, I lost birthing room privileges. I feel that perhaps I needed the official ‘something’ of the doctors to get my body going. Because that is against everything I believe in. I am disappointed in myself. I wish my body worked better. It seemed to mirror my inability to make things happen in my general life, despite knowing what I want to happen. Well, everyone has to struggle with something.
I have breastfed both of my children. I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else. I breastfed my son until he was two, and my daughter, at three, is still nursing before bed. I had to go out of town in order to wean my son. I practiced family bed with both of them, until they went into toddler beds, and practice non-violence. Spanking my son is one of the reasons I divorced my ‘ex.’ I try to keep to child-centered parenting, and respect the core being of these little (and now not so little) people. I obviously enjoy breastfeeding, though am ready to wean when the time comes.
I have noticed more ‘triggering’ with my daughter. I was awestruck with the natural purity of her little body and being, how free she is able to be, due to not being abused. It was, in fact, extremely painful, making me feel/see something I lacked, but joyful to see someone else have it, a sublime experience to be sure. That she can move her legs around in that 360 degree curve that babies do is amazing. I can’t relax my body like that. She has also taken her time potty training, and I noticed that I didn’t mind, that the covering of diapers made me feel safe for her. I suppose there is more of that kind of thing to come, but I will have to deal with it. I hope that my personality does not keep my daughter from anything in the world that she needs to experience. I hope I can manifest some of my dreams in the world that I want to, for her to see. I certainly have learned how a parent should not act, and because of this, the every day act of loving my children is healthy for me.
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