Tiny Buddha

Tag: abuse

  • An Improbable Story of Healing and a Girl with a Wand

    An Improbable Story of Healing and a Girl with a Wand

    “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~Maya Angelou

    It’s the worry, I think. The constant worry. Is she safe? Will she make the right choices? Will she find a young man that will cherish and support her? The worry is always there. It never leaves.

    She recently visited Los Angeles for the first time. A business trip. She had a few hours to kill. What to do? The Wizarding World Of Harry Potter! The girl is not shy. Flying solo would not be a problem.

    Later that night I get the call. The hot topic was how to properly pick out a wand. She even texted me a visual aid. And apparently, she’s a Ravenclaw. A “sorting hat” made that determination.

    I could have sworn she was Gryffindor!

    Yep. Two nerds. Later that evening, I get another text, “Goodnight, Old Man.” I respond with, “Goodnight, Dweeb.” Our banter always brings a big smile to my face.

    The thing that hit me so hard about that conversation was her innocence. She’s twenty-seven years of age and yet that precious part of her remains.

    My armor is old and unyielding. Well worn from decades of struggle. But with her, all that melts away.

    Her innocence brought tears to my eyes. Like a toddler falling for the first time. A primal flood of emotion. The kind you can’t run from.

    I was never supposed to have a twenty-seven-year-old in my life. It was never supposed to happen. Now what? I mean, okay, fine, feel the feels. But this went way beyond emotions. Feelings.

    I had become a role model. A guardian of sorts. This was never supposed to happen. Not to a guy like me. I was cut from a different cloth.

    My father’s version of parenting began with a right hook and ended with bruises. His rage, the look in his eyes, was terrifying. And my mom, in spite of her good heart, was an alcoholic nearing the end.

    She died of cancer when I was just twenty-eight. Ten years later, my father passed. I got the news from Google. A random search done on a whim. I had not seen him in over twenty years.

    This was my life. The only life I had ever known.

    Losing my mom was tough, for sure. But more than anything, it was a relief. I know that sounds horrible but it was. Even more so with my dad. I was finally free. The burden had been lifted. The darkness was no more.

    That was the cloth I inherited.

    So I had to go it alone.

    I would make my own luck. I would craft new DNA. Whatever the price, I was willing to pay it. Which helped me to break down walls. Healing? Not so much.

    By age thirty, I was making six figures without a degree. I’ve run ad agencies, been a top-tier management consultant. I’ve directed and produced two short films and a play.

    I rose above the right hook.

    I rose above the mother that was never there. I rose above the odds that predicted my doom. Which brings us back to the spirited young lady in my life.

    Brooke had wrapped up college and was about to enter the workforce. It was not going well. Friends suggested a trade agreement. Brooke’s legendary organizing skills for a few coaching sessions.

    No big deal. A little pro bono work.

    A few months in, her walls collapsed. All the pain and fear. Years of struggles. Tears running down her cheeks. There she was standing before me. All of her.

    It took me a few days to process everything. Being a caretaker? To a twenty-two-year-old girl? The Universe was clearly stoned. How else to explain it? I had no answers.

    But as each day passed, my resolve deepened.

    Someone had to stand up for this girl and that someone had to be me. Because, you know, an almost fifty-year-old single man, mentoring a single twenty-two-year-old girl, that doesn’t throw up any red flags!

    My life is rarely boring.

    I still believed this would be a no-brainer. Easy breezy. Provide some counsel. Buy an occasional lunch. Help Brooke on her journey.

    Like I said, no big deal.

    Our brokenness is always there, beneath the surface. Stirring. Churning. Waiting to heal. It just takes the right set of ingredients. The right circumstances.

    For me, that was a 5’4” twenty-seven-year-old with a Harry Potter wand in her hand.

    It’s actually kind of perfect, given the people involved. As the years passed, the trust between us grew. And she started opening up. The real stuff. Career. Boys. Life. Roommates. Money. Insecurities. We talked about everything. Still do.

    Which included calling her out when need be. That always felt odd. She’s not my spawn but at times, I seriously have to wonder.

    I took all the calls when her world collapsed. I occasionally cooked her breakfast, which included insane amounts of bacon. We started going to movies and just hanging out.

    And more of my armor fell. Piece by piece.

    And more her armor fell. Piece by piece.

    Then I noticed something. Several somethings, actually.

    She was doing a lot better. She was growing into a confident, successful young woman. And she would emulate me. Which was kind of crazy. And totally awesome.

    I had to be a legit role model. Holy crap!

    And then the check-in phone calls and texts started happening. She needed a comforting voice. My voice. I had become that voice. Wait! What? When did that happen? And wow, that happened?!

    It was all very humbling and beautiful.

    When the holidays rolled around last year, we decided to meet for breakfast and exchange gifts. Kerbey Lane, an Austin favorite. It was my turn to rip open presents.

    I knew it was a book. You always know when it’s a book. But this was no ordinary book, this was Tsugele’s Broom, a favorite from her childhood.

    And it came with very specific instructions.

    The book told the story of an independent young woman in search of a good man. Brooke’s instructions were simple. When I believed she had found such a man, I was to return the book.

    What the hell was happening? More tears welled up. Is it always like this?

    I was suddenly overcome by a profound need to immediately hug her. Unfortunately, that almost resulted in me knocking over our table. A gymnast, I am not.

    A few people looked up. I blushed. She had a good laugh.

    This young woman. This dweeb.

    I love her so very much. And I worry.

    Adulting. Right?

    Wow, that’s happening.

    The right-hook childhood. The dark trauma of my youth. All that stuff is slowly healing. Beneath the surface. The deep kind of healing. A soul scrub of sorts.

    And so it is with her.

    I get to watch that happen. I get to be a part of that process.

    Because as it turns out, I am cut from a cloth that can protect. I am cut from a cloth that can love and not abuse.

    That is the cloth I wear now.

    And it took a Ravenclaw for me to see it!

    Which is not to say that it’s all roses. There is still work to be done. And we’re finding those answers together. One moment at time. Two imperfect nerds finding their way.

    A middle-aged man. A twenty-seven year-old girl with a wand.

    In this life, I got to be an almost dad.

    Ya know?

    It’s kind of a big deal.

    In my final moments, whenever they may come, I’ll remember Brooke’s first tears. The tears that called me out. And the fact that I answered that call.

    There is so much more to you than you could ever realize. Seriously. It’s true. So answer the call. Whatever that may look like for you. Answer the call.

    Find the cloth you thought impossible to wear.

    Because it’s down there. Somewhere.

    Keep looking.

  • Making the Hurt Visible: How I Stopped Hating the Man and Learned to Listen to Myself

    Making the Hurt Visible: How I Stopped Hating the Man and Learned to Listen to Myself

    “Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” ~Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

    We’ve just passed the year anniversary of an event that has greatly changed our country. The shock of the election results last year sent waves of powerful emotions rippling through our nation.

    Personally, I felt the effects as intense and immediate grief. It was as though I had just lost my dearest companion.

    I had days of shock, despair, feelings of intense cold with physical shaking and episodes of vomiting and nausea, followed by weeks of sleepless nights, spontaneous sweating, nightmares and feelings of imminent danger. Everything felt like a threat. Everything felt like an unbearable reminder. It was all so devastating… and so embarrassing.

    I was ashamed of how deeply I registered the experience and found it difficult to talk about even with those I loved. I was confused as to why it felt so intense, why I felt choked when I tried to speak of how I was feeling, and assumed it was something wrong with me. I was the living example of the liberal snowflake.

    As I began talking to others I realized that I was not alone in this experience, and I began to be curious as to why it registered so deeply with myself and some others, and yet did not in some of my friends who had similar political ideologies. They were still disappointed and disgusted with what had happened, but it did not register in such a visceral way.

    Personal and systematic abuse shaped us all in invisible ways. The answers I found to why I related so physically to the event go back very far into my personal history, and if you believe in such things, my ancestral history also.

    As a small child family gatherings held a sense of dread for my sister and me. While we enjoyed the food and presents usually involved, there was also the regular ritual of uncle Joe.

    Uncle Joe would call us floozies and comment that our legs were too skinny, our knees looked like washerwoman knees, and no one would find us attractive.

    There were also the sneak attacks of him grabbing us and holding us down and tickling us while we screamed for him to stop. It was always in the middle of the room with everyone watching, and him narrating the scene, saying how much we really loved it, how silly we sounded screaming stop because we were laughing, and everyone could see we enjoyed it.

    At the beginning and end of gatherings he would demand a hug and kiss; didn’t we love our uncle?

    I remember feeling helpless, humiliated, and ashamed for my tears. It was expected for us to swallow our feelings and put on a happy face. We needed to be polite.

    If any adult came to our aid or defense I do not recall it, and I’m sure if anyone did they would have also been told that they were being too sensitive. He was showing his love for us, and why didn’t they appreciate it? We should feel lucky to have an uncle who loved us so much.

    This kind of story is so commonplace, so ubiquitous, that many may read it and still question what was wrong with that situation. But this is how the very damaging abuse called gas lighting works.

    The perpetrator takes advantage of someone weak or vulnerable. They deny the victim from having a voice in the story, then re-center the story to be about themselves, about how great and wonderful they are or, conversely, how they themselves are being abused in the situation. And they mostly are not even aware that they are doing it.

    Even in writing this down I feel the tension in my body rise. I feel the tremors involuntarily start in my limbs, my breath gets shallow, and I have trouble even wrapping my head around the words to adequately explain the experience.

    In Psychological Harm is Physical Harm Nora Samaran writes of how this kind of abuse shapes the brain and how someone can react to this behavior for the rest of their life. The systematic silencing of one’s voice and denial of one’s reality can cause someone to become incapable of talking about it.

    Uncle Joe was not the only person in my life who behaved in this way. It was everywhere, from the doctor who told me that it didn’t hurt when he burned off my warts with dry ice, to my father who told me to quit crying or he would give me something to cry about, to the teachers who seemed to always ignore my correct answers, but hear the boy behind me who repeated what I just said as if it was his own idea. It was on television, in movies, in the music I heard on the radio.

    I internalized the patterns and found myself over and over in the same frustrations, the same endless arguments, the same feelings of invisibility.

    I sought out the dynamic in my relationships, sometimes in more obviously abusive partnerships, but often in the subtle and almost invisible forms of minimization. I felt like I was talking, but the people I was talking to didn’t seem to register what I was saying.

    It was like being caught in a nightmare, where you are trying to speak but what comes out of your mouth is unintelligible. You know what you are trying to say, but what my partners heard was something altogether different. It was crazy making.

    Because of the systemic normalization of minimizing and denying the feminine perspective, I came to deeply distrust my own mind.

    I did not have to even be told my perceptions were not important; it was done in the subtle shrugging off of my suggestions, the deep sigh that made me feel my words were ridiculous, the automatic response of the males in my life to say “yes, but…,” “ I don’t think you get what’s going on,” “you are misunderstanding,” even when I was describing my own feelings or experience.

    And the many years of work I did getting a handle on my own anger issues and automatic reactions made me super sensitive to the claims that I was the one being too aggressive, making too big a deal out of something, or just being mean.

    I automatically took on the blame and responsibility of any argument. I was being irrational, I was not being clear enough, the words I used were hurtful; therefore, they were invalid.

    Mathew Remski discusses this quite eloquently from the male perspective. He talks of the behavior of minimizing being so embedded in his make up that it takes continuous concentrated effort to even notice when it is happening. And that it also takes the help of his partner continuously pointing out when it happens.

    It is a lot of work to be constantly vigilant monitoring our behavior, and it can feel almost impossible to overcome. I know because I, and most other people who have had the experience of personal or systematic marginalization do this every day with our own behavior. The constant rewriting of our own experiences to fit within a system that cannot accept our true feelings, which center the collective narrative on a cis, white male perspective.

    When the campaign happened, the behaviors I had deep visceral reactions to became public. Instead of being hidden away in the most intimate relationships or invisible private conversations, they were being played out on a very public stage.

    I felt myself reacting to them all as if they had happened to me personally (because they had, just not by this particular person).

    When one of the most powerful positions in the world was given to a person who was so blatantly abusive and disrespectful, who openly mocked his victims, who rewrote every story so the blame was scattershot anywhere but his direction, who played out the usually hidden abuses so many of us feel intimately on a scale so huge it permeated the globe, it felt to me that the years of hard work I had done to reclaim my identity had been wiped out in a single night.

    It validated the claim of every person who had told me I didn’t know what I was talking about; if I was uncomfortable it was because my expectations were not reasonable; if I felt abused, hurt, ignored it was hurtful and unfair to the person I was accusing; that pointing out my pain or the pain of others was downright impolite and my behavior. The mere fact that I had a perspective of my own, was intolerable.

    I found relief through somatic therapy. Somatic therapy works directly with sensations of the body and translating them into the emotions that we may be storing there. It requires one to become present in the now, opening to the deeply buried layers that bubble up from the subconscious when we have knee-jerk reactions and strong emotions.

    Translating the subconscious reactions we have into conscious and conscientious actions creates the space to make our hurt, and the hurt of others visible. To do this I had to dive into the depth of the grief to see where it stemmed from, not just place it was most recently triggered. This was a place that made every fiber of my being long to run away, numb out, cease to exist.

    But the leaning into the pain instead of running away allowed me to recognize and accept my own feelings and reactions as tools of learning. I had to relearn to trust my instincts and see myself as a reliable source of information. I learned that I am valid, my feelings are important, and I have a right to be heard and to take up space.

    I saw the ways I was complicit in my own harm. I had given up the right to my own perspective, internalized the doubt that my experiences are real, automatically responded to my strong emotions as unreasonable, and I had agreed that the feelings and needs of others were more important than my own.

    When I saw that I had agreed to these things subconsciously, I was finally able to decide for myself that I did not want to do these things and could make the choice to stop.

    It was and continues to be hard work. But now I listen when strong reactions come up, and instead of automatically silencing them I ask, what they are here to tell me? My anger, fear, guilt, depression, despair, all have a message they are desperately trying to get me to hear.

    With deep listening my reactions can be transformed into conscious actions. Actions that let my voice be heard, centering my own story and needs, and allowing others to express what they need to express as well. It also gives me a very low BS tolerance threshold.

    In claiming my own story I suddenly found it intolerable having it minimized in any way and could no longer be silent when it was.

    This is a deeply inconvenient perspective to have. Going against the grain of society and allowing myself to be impolite while remaining as compassionate as I can muster leads to many awkward and uncomfortable conversations. It leads to conversations where I have to put my personal safety on the line in order to stand up for my personal integrity.

    There is also the need for great delicacy and diplomacy. You cannot hope for others behavior to change when you make them the enemy.

    We all have the capacity to hurt; we all have the capacity to heal. I am the victim of abuse in cases related to my gender, and at times, my age, but have also been the perpetrator in cases where my privilege, be it from my white skin, my middle class upbringing, my citizenship etc. have blinded me to the ways I have contributed to the minimization and abuse of others.

    Learning to have compassion for myself and my own tender emotions also requires me to have compassion for those who have harmed me. In the cases of my intimate circle, these are people I love and respect, and I want to be able to still love myself and need to allow for others to love themselves. I see the great hurt many of the people who have treated me this way carry around, you do not abuse without having first been abused yourself.

    Unfortunately the abuse of toxic masculinity (the culture of oppression, patriarchal values, or the many names this behavior is known by) has become so embedded in our culture that we do not even recognize it as abuse. It is the norm; it’s just the way it is.

    It is invisible to the unconscious eye, until we make it visible. We are all damaged by it, but some are made to pay a dearer price, and some are allowed to gain privilege.

    Those that gain privilege may have less of a motivation to change the patterns and a harder time seeing the ways they do harm and the ways it benefits them. It takes a lot of self-awareness and the ability to make yourself vulnerable. Accepting the responsibility of having harmed others and making amends is a very painful truth to accept, and so many will avoid this at all costs.

    And this responsibility is passed down through the generations. If one generation cannot make amends for the harm they caused, the pain, guilt, and responsibility are handed down to the next; only the further it goes from its origins, the more subconscious it becomes, and the more difficult it is to bring the surface and recognize it.

    But this is also the way it is healed, once and for all. It is not appealing work to dig deep into the ugliest depth of our suffering, to name the ways we have suffered, the ways we have caused suffering, the ways we have allowed both things to happen. But not doing it makes those parts of ourselves most in need of tender care the least visible.

    So in this year when all I really wanted was for this guy, who made all my alarm bells go off, to shut the hell up, I was moved to look at all the ways I had let this weak and damaged person, and so many others like him, convince me I had to shut the hell up. I lovingly listened to my own story and convinced myself to speak up instead.

  • Why I Drank, How It Destroyed Me, and How I’m Healing My Self-Hatred

    Why I Drank, How It Destroyed Me, and How I’m Healing My Self-Hatred

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual assault and self-harm and may be triggering to some people.

    Hi, I’m Adriana and I’m an alcoholic.

    When I look back at my life, I realize it was inevitable that I’d end up here.

    By the time I was nineteen, I’d already had a history of self-harm through cutting, a byproduct of my depression and anxiety. I was anorexic. I’d had a near cervical-cancer scare not once, but twice within a six-month period, leaving my gynecologist back in Sydney speechless. “I have never had a case like yours.”

    I’d survived an abusive relationship that, I believed, left me with no other choice but to end my life. If I were going to die, I’d rather die by my own accord, not his. So, I swallowed forty Panadol pills, two at a time, within thirty minutes. I felt my body slowly shut down as each minute passed by, and ironically, it was the first time in a long time that I felt alive.

    I’m not writing about the sugarcoated life many have engaged with on my social media feeds over the years. I am here to introduce you to my self-hatred, which you don’t see each time I post a filtered photo on my Instagram page.

    I fell in love with the wrong person when I was seventeen. The first six months together were filled with happiness. I was convinced he was the one I’d spend the rest of my life with, and at seventeen my hunt for a husband was over. Hashtag winning.

    I couldn’t have been more wrong.

    Over the course of the ten months that followed, he routinely beat me, and I covered up the evidence to protect him. He psychologically raped me, repeatedly telling me, “Who’s gonna love you when I’m done with you?” He even sodomized me.

    He threatened my life if I didn’t listen to him or if I dared to tell anyone the truth. I had two friends who begged me to walk away, but no matter how powerless I felt, their concerns meant nothing to me. So over time, they gave up trying.

    He told me when to speak—“Don’t be too funny, Adriana. I don’t want people liking you more than me.” He also told me what to wear, and I had to ask permission if I wanted to go out. Worst of all, he stripped me of my right to feel human, true to the nature of how insidious an abusive relationship can be. In this case, love really was blind.

    I internalized the trauma to such an extent that I carried the shame, guilt, and pain with me throughout my twenties. I forgave him long before I forgave myself, which led me to a path of unconscious self-destruction.

    It was my fault for holding onto those first six months and hoping the real him would return. It was my fault that I let him treat me the way that he did. It was my fault for not leaving, particularly after the first time he hit me. It was my fault because surely I was doing something wrong that would trigger him to hit me. It was my fault because by staying, I was asking for it.

    So I did what most young people do when they’re nineteen and single: I started my clubbing career and my relationship with Jack Daniels. A year before, alcohol repelled me; now it was my savior. This also led to the introduction to a string of dysfunctional people I’d come to call my friends.

    You know, you should never judge a party girl. Every party girl has a backstory, but in my case, no one cared enough to find out. They just bought me more drinks.

    People would say they envied my life—how I had zero Fs for the world around me—but what most people failed to see was that, in reality, I had zero Fs for myself.

    Then I entered the permanent hangover I now call my twenties.

    I started going to festivals and was introduced to ecstasy. I still remember the first time an e hit my bloodstream. Like most users, I tried to relive that feeling every time I popped a pill. Eventually, ecstasy became boring, and I started experimenting with pure MDMA. It was a little bit riskier and more dangerous, but it didn’t matter because I didn’t matter.

    I was then introduced to cocaine when I was twenty, and that became my favorite drug of them all. Cocaine meant that I could drink more. It also meant that I had something in common with people who I usually wouldn’t associate with.

    Cocaine turned me into a version of myself that was confident and unstoppable. When I was high, I used to think to myself, “Imagine you were this confident and unstoppable but didn’t need cocaine to get you there.” Just imagine!

    I often found it funny how the drug was commonly referred to as “the rich man’s drug,” yet it left me feeling emotionally bankrupt.

    At twenty-one, I was partying in Las Vegas with some friends when I got busted with an eight ball of cocaine—and got away with it. Fortunately, I was given a slap on the wrist and banned from entering half the hotels in Vegas for life. Personally, I was more devastated because that meant that I could never be a Playboy bunny.

    I remember the undercover policewoman taking me down to the public toilets, handing me over the bag of coke, and asking me to flush it down. I took this as an opportunity to bribe her into letting me keep the bag.

    You’d think that an incident like that would encourage me to hang up my party dress and clean up my ways. But it didn’t. I continued down this path, playing roulette with my life.

    Not all was tragic. I did find myself in a loving relationship a year later, and for three years lived a ‘normal’ life. He loved me, and I loved him as much as I could. But what is love when you don’t love yourself? This voice inside my head constantly whispered, “You’re not good enough for him.”

    Once that relationship ended, I was straight back to my self-destructive ways, drinking heavily on most nights.

    On one occasion, I decided it would be “cool” to bring a guy home and drink skull cafe patron out of the bottle. Mind you, I was already intoxicated. The next morning I woke up peacefully in my bed. A few hours later, I received a message that read, “I need you to take the morning-after pill ASAP.”

    I thought, hmm, it’s not my ideal situation; sh*t happens, I suppose. It’s $30 in Australia, and you can buy it over the counter, fortunately, but the problem was, I couldn’t remember having sex.

    To this moment, I don’t. I had blacked out.

    I felt so exposed, vulnerable, and disgusted with myself. Then the shame kicked in. Who the hell did I think I was? What was I becoming?

    I decided I needed to stop drinking, and I was successfully sober for three months. I survived parties, lonely nights, and even the ultimate test, a big fat Croatian wedding.

    I never considered that I had a problem with alcohol. I thought that alcoholism was a condition you could learn to control.

    In my late twenties, I decided to move myself from Sydney to London to “find myself.” We all know the saying that you must “lose yourself” in order to “find yourself,” and I did just that.

    London is a fascinating city to lose yourself in. There was always an occasion to drink. I wasn’t one of those wake-up-and-drink-right-away type people. I was more self-respecting than that; I waited till lunchtime and continued until I blacked out! But as a high-functioning alcoholic, I still made my work deadlines.

    I was always around people who didn’t just use drugs; they abused them. And no matter how much I knew the difference between right and wrong, I was perpetually on a quest to distract myself from myself.

    There was no one more delighted to meet another person who was more messed up than me. “Great,” I thought. “Let’s talk about your problems; I’m not ready to talk about mine.”

    I slept my way around, seeking someone who would understand and rescue me. I was bed hopping, using sex as a way to validate myself and feel worthy. It was nothing less than a cheap thrill.

    I attracted males who were misogynistic and dominant and resembled the character of my first love. Everyone had an agenda to take a piece of me. I was aware of this; I just didn’t care.

    I had one who would eventually tell me that maybe I shouldn’t be so upfront and honest about my past with the next guy because “it may turn him off.” But it was okay for him to turn me over in my sleep, get on top, and insert himself inside of me because he was in the mood. This was the many occasions that I was raped.

    Then there was the one who slapped my face as I told him to get out of me, but he kept going, smiling as he watched the tears roll down my face.

    Before I forget, there was another who was more than willing to buy me cocktails all night while telling me he couldn’t wait to take advantage of me later on, but made me call my own cab when I threw up all over his bedroom. Apparently we had sex too.

    We can sit here and go on about my clouded judgment when, in actual fact, this dialogue and connection was just my comfort zone.

    A year ago, completely fed up with myself and my chemically addictive ways, I decided it was time to kill myself. I was emotionally exhausted and starved. My body no longer felt pain, and I could longer taste alcohol. I was so deep in depression I could feel it in my blood.

    I planned my suicide, step by step, over several days and kept reminding myself that the world was better off without me helplessly roaming within it, without a purpose, doing more harm than good.

    I was a bad person because I was a broken person, as many boys had told me. I may not have intentionally hurt those around me, but I had a decade-long struggle during which I perpetually hurt the one person I never knew how to love, myself.

    I started writing my suicide letter and decided I needed some background noise. On the front page of YouTube was a video titled “How to overcome procrastination by leaping afraid,” by Lisa Nichols. This video would end up saving my life and distracting me from my open wounds that were so desperately trying to dry up.

    There is nothing that scares an addict more than sobriety and having nothing to turn to when that darkness from your past begins to appear and say, “Hey, remember me?” But I knew my problem with alcohol was fueling my depression and, therefore, contributing to my self-hatred. I had to break this cycle of hate.

    I sat in my silence and said, “Adriana, you have two choices right now: You can continue down this path, knowing you’re going to keep doing the same thing, getting the same results; and I’m pretty sure that’s what Einstein defined as insanity. Down this path your addictions will kill you or you may do it yourself—whatever comes first. Or, you can do something you haven’t done in the last ten years: give sobriety a chance and see if things are different on the other side.”

    I was twenty-nine when I said enough. My grandfather was sixty. Some people never have an age. Some people simply drown and instead of living to their full potential. They just exist.

    Every year on my birthday, I would blow out my candles and wish for love. Last year, my wish came true, and I started the tumultuous road to recovery, healing, and self-love. It may be a cliché, but it’s true: Who’s going to love you if you don’t love yourself first?

    I knew that the life I dreamed of was on the other side of my fears, and getting sober was a stepping stone. I just celebrated eight months of sobriety, and although this may not seem like long, it’s the longest I haven’t poisoned my blood in ten years.

    It hasn’t been easy. I have cried alone in my room. I had cried walking down the street. I have cried at parties and events. I’ve had breakdowns in several AA meetings. I have cried during a yoga class when the tears were triggered by the damage I had done to my body. I felt it all.

    I heard voices telling me I’d fail and I should just stick to my old ways, the ways I knew best. I almost relapsed twice in the first three months because I was tempted to show my new friends who my old friends knew me to be.

    But I am healing and getting stronger.

    I’ve learned that we find our greatest strengths in our darkest shadows, and there is no way you can know what happiness is until you figure out what it isn’t.

    The relationship we have with ourselves is the longest relationship we’ll ever have. Yet, we spend prolonged periods of time neglecting ourselves to suit the world around us.

    We chase happiness in momentary triumphs instead of simply choosing it by putting in the work to keep ourselves self-aware and on our own paths of personal enlightenment.

    We avoid taboo topics like addictions because they make people uncomfortable, but we are more than willing to engage in these addictions because they make us more comfortable with ourselves.

    We are united by owning our struggles and sharing our stories and divided by our quest for perfection and appearing perfect to the world around us. Perfection is an illusion, and God, did I learn this the hard way.

    I don’t deny my demons because instead of feeling ashamed of them, I’m now proud of how I’ve overcome them. And I know my greatest strengths have surfaced from my deepest struggles. Because of what I’ve been through, I’m more compassionate with others in similar situations, and I’ve also developed a strong sense of determination to do the inner self-work required to get past my trauma.

    How many of you can look yourself in the eye and say, “I love you” without knowing deep down that you just lied? I’m still learning, but courtesy of sobriety, I’m getting there.

  • Breaking the Chains of Victimhood When You’ve Been Abused

    Breaking the Chains of Victimhood When You’ve Been Abused

    “Toxically shamed people tend to become more and more stagnant as life goes on. They live in a guarded, secretive, and defensive way. They try to be more than human (perfect and controlling) or less than human (losing interest in life or stagnated in some addictive behavior).” ~John Bradshaw- Healing the Shame That Binds You

    Do you feel like a victim? Are those around you suggesting that you are acting like a victim? Are these same people telling you to get over it and move on? Do these judgments and statements feel harmful or helpful for you?

    Most people making these harmful statements and suggestions do so with very little understanding or experience with being a victim. They have not taken the time to really listen to your story of what has happened in your life. They make their judgments from the place of never being a victim or not being willing to accept that they were.

    People with a history of victimization do not need tough love, harsh words, or anyone’s reality check. Those things are most likely part of what happened to them. They need love, support, empathy, and compassion. If you are unable to give these things to them, the best thing you can do for them is to please stay out of it!

    With that said, how do we break the chains that our victimization has had us bound in for so long? I know that many of the people I’ve worked with, like me, never totally allowed themselves to be a victim. We have lived our lives from the perspective that our victimization was somehow how our fault. It is this thought process that keeps us stuck.

    I was sexually abused at the age of five by my mother. At that age, I didn’t have the cognitive ability to understand that my mother was at fault or that she could ever hurt me. I only had the ability blame myself; I must have done something wrong or been bad.

    In order for us to break the chains, we must be willing to give the responsibility, shame, and guilt of what happened to us back to our victimizer. When we hold on to these feelings we are kept in limbo. It keeps us trapped between the pain of our victimization and the feeling that we were responsible for what happened to us. It’s no wonder we feel trapped.

    In my case I unconsciously chose to bury the feelings from my abuse as deep and hidden in my psyche as I could. Of course, today I know that they never went anywhere except out of my conscious thoughts. Those feelings continued to work in my life like background programs running on a computer. Not seen, but affecting every area of my life.

    “I think the first step is to understand that forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. Forgiveness liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself.” ~T. D. Jakes

    Forgiveness is the last link in our binding chain. But, how do we get there? The most important thing to understand about forgiveness is that it comes at the end of a process. Very often we stay stuck because we misunderstand this process and think that it starts with forgiveness.

    That may work for a while, but it’s like cleaning a room by throwing everything in the closet and closing the door. It’s merely an illusion, and a temporary fix at best. Forgiveness is more than a cerebral action. To be complete it must include our soul, heart, emotions, and our physical body.

    I know for myself it had to start with the complete acceptance of the fact that I was victimized. No more minimizing what happened or making excuses for my victimizer. No more false macho pride telling me I was a punk to admit I had been taken advantage of and that it hurt.

    My start was sitting alone with myself. No music, phone, TV, or reading material. Just me, myself, and I. You would think that this wouldn’t be very difficult. Well, it was for me, and after about ten minutes I thought I was going to rip out of my skin. The difficulty with it was that I was forced out my fantasy world and into reality. I was no longer running, ducking, dodging, or sneaking away from my life.

    It was too much for me to handle on my own, so I decided to seek professional help. I found a great therapist who worked with me one on one and in a group setting. I always suggest to people to err on the side of caution and do this work with a professional.

    I was stepping into a part of my emotional world that I had spent a great deal of time and energy avoiding at all costs. I knew that the way to forgiveness was through my abuse and its emotions, not over or around it. To do that, I needed an experienced guide.  

    In therapy, we talk a lot about recovery by discovery. The peeling back layers of the onion. This describes my journey through my emotional quagmire to a T. As with most things, the first layer was the hardest. That was because my first layer was composed of anger, which has always been the hardest emotion for me.

    I had been told all my life that it was not okay for me to be angry. I was too big and I might hurt someone.

    When my siblings maliciously teased me and I did not have the words to stop them, my only resolve was to beat them up. In my parent’s eyes, I was then the one acting inappropriately and was punished. By making me the perpetrator in the situation, they basically were shaming my anger.

    So a great deal of work was needed for me to be all right with tapping into my anger. Once I became comfortable with feeling angry, the next obstacle was to be able to tap into my anger while working in a session with my therapist and closing the lid on it when I was done.

    My anger had been bottled up and pressurized for so long it was like a blast furnace. I had to learn to cap it off so I did not leave with it raging and blast those around me like a flamethrower.

    Once that work was done, I learned that the anger was covering my pain. So my process became one of removing layers. Finding and releasing the anger, then feeling and dealing with the pain. Over and over again until I reached its core, which was all pain.

    I will always remember spending a whole session with my therapist on the floor sobbing and wailing as my body released waves and waves of pain and hurt.

    Then a miracle occurred: I was done. It was over. Not like a faucet was turned off. It was like a vessel becoming empty.

    It was shocking and I looked at my therapist expecting her to ask me why I closed down. She looked at me with the most beautiful and empathic look I have ever seen and all she said was “You are done.” Not with all the work that I needed to do but with being a victim of my sexual abuse.

    I was now in a place where I could completely forgive my mother with no residual feelings of attachments. I have learned that what works best for me when I have made big shifts like this in my healing is to ground them in a ceremony.

    So, I wrote my mother a letter and traveled to where her ashes were cast. I read the letter out loud and then burned it. The last thing I did was to say aloud that I forgave her and have a friend cleanse me with burning sage. I walked away feeling complete and resolved.

    Did that mean that I was whole and complete? Of course not; I still had a lot of work to do. But I now knew that I had worked through the biggest and most painful victimization of my life. If I could do that, I could handle and was willing to do any other work needed to be done.

    The greatest act of love I have ever given myself was the willingness to do what I needed to do to heal. It no longer feels like work but it is now a blessing I have been given. Every day I pray that all those who need to heal choose to do this work. My hope is that you do!

  • Break the Cycle: How to Stop Hurting Others When You Were Mistreated

    Break the Cycle: How to Stop Hurting Others When You Were Mistreated

    “What’s broken can be mended. What hurts can be healed. And no matter how dark it gets, the sun is going to rise again.” ~Unknown

    I grew up with difficult and hurtful parents who spoke critically, with the intent to demean.

    Each word of sarcasm, each thinly veiled joke or put-down undercut my self-esteem. Each knocked me down a rung in life and kept me from my potential.

    Rampant comparisons to other Indian kids succeeding academically, attacks of my mediocre performance at school, and harsh language were my mother’s weapons of choice.

    When someone attacks your self-esteem repeatedly, you feel beat down. It feels like you were meant to fly, but your own family is making you drown.

    Then, your natural tendency might be to do to others what someone has done to you.

    My tendencies were to judge and compare others in my mind, to taunt and verbally attack them. It was fitting then, I guess, that my career path led me to becoming a lawyer, now an ex-lawyer.

    As I got into the habits of sabotaging and hurting others, I never thought much about it. I just assumed that because my parents had talked to me harshly and treated me badly, I had the license to do the same to others.

    Others could handle the pain because I had. Others could endure a verbal lashing because I had. Others could handle emotional abuse because I had.

    You, too, might have grown up in a household that wounded you deeply. You might have never been able to leave the shadow of the pain and suffering you experienced. And you might have learned to treat people as others once treated you.

    I’ve come to believe that just because others hurt us, that doesn’t mean we have to continue the cycle of abuse.

    You don’t have to fall into your natural, default behaviors. You can change. You can choose different actions and make different decisions. You can break the cycle of negativity, criticism, and abuse.

    Here are six steps to heal the pain you felt and end the cycle of hurt.

    1. Work on forgiving those who hurt you.

    This may be much more easily said than done, but forgiveness is the key to healing. If you can’t forgive today, at least set the intention to forgive. It doesn’t matter how tragic or traumatic your past was; you must forgive for yourself. You’ll feel like a heavy weight has been lifted from your shoulders. You will be able to breathe much more easily.

    It helps to put your abuser’s behavior in perspective so you can see their actions in a different light.

    Try to understand what influenced their behaviors and characteristics. For example, with my parents, they were likely raised in a similar way. Also, culturally, parents in Asia tend to be direct and hold you to high standards because they want you to succeed in life. Their intentions may have been ultimately good, but the way they went about parenting was misguided.

    Look at them through a lens of gratefulness. What could you appreciate about them, in spite of the pain they caused? Is there anything you can appreciate about the pain? I owe my sense of compassion, which is the foundation of my work, to my parents. Because of how I was hurt growing up, I now do work that reduces suffering and helps people find peace.

    Look at them through a perspective of love. If you saw them through a loving prism, how would you explain their actions and behavior?

    2. Work on your own healing.

    Instead of burning in anger and hatred, focus on what you need for your emotional and mental health.

    Assess the damage they’ve caused, look at the impact their behavior has had on your life, and determine what you must heal.

    Visit a counselor if necessary. Find coping mechanisms. Write about your hurt. Open yourself to a spiritual practice. Seek the tools that can help you heal your emotional wounds.

    Cultivate love for yourself. Speak to yourself gently. Let go of your high demands and expectations of yourself. Notice if how you treat yourself is similar to how the people who hurt you in the past treated you.

    3. Look for alternative role models.

    Watch your behavior and notice what you do when others hurt or anger you. How do you react when others push your buttons?

    If you don’t know how to respond or react differently from the people who raised you, look for alternative role models. Seek people with positive and emotionally healthy ways of responding to personal situations.
    Study them. Take notes. Notice how they handle trying circumstances. Model their behavior in your own interpersonal relationships.

    4. Learn positive and empowering behavior.

    If you were taught destructive and dysfunctional ways of being and speaking, opt for alternative ways. Hold back on hurtful words, convey your needs with softer language, and respect other people’s boundaries. Practice listening intently instead of responding rashly to what others say to you.

    Recently, someone told me that I couldn’t park my car in a particular part of a lot and had to park much further back and walk. The area I had parked in was for the vendors of the event I was attending.

    My first reaction was to fight back, use the parking lot rules against them, ask for the manager, and make a big scene about how unjust it was for me to have to move my car a couple blocks away where there was clearly space right there.

    Then I noticed the person was wearing a volunteer badge and had an overwhelmed expression on his face. I opted not to do what my defacto behavior was and instead chose understanding. I tried to see that he was doing the best he could and was just looking out for the vendors, who were critical to a successful event.

    Even if this person was wrong and even if it was unfair, I could still make his day a little less stressful and more pleasant. I could avoid arguing, making a scene, or verbally attacking someone who was trying their best to serve others.

    5. Focus on your reactions instead of the behavior of others.

    You can’t control others’ reactions, but you can learn to notice, change, and improve your own.

    Look for triggers and other behavior that provokes you. Notice your immediate reaction when people treat you badly, disrespect you, or lash out against you.

    Instead of immediately engaging with this behavior, withdraw, reflect, analyze, and take a thoughtful next step.

    This is what I had to do when I was talking to a woman I had recently met, who was not a fan of the type of writing I do.

    I found her remarks dismissive and non-supportive, and felt like lashing out. I wanted to attack her in some way or put down some part of her life that she valued, but after several days and after much calming down, I focused on my reaction. I let the anger simmer, re-evaluated her simple preference for fiction writing, and came to the conclusion that different people have different reading preferences.

    I was still hurt and told her so without demeaning or attacking her in return. I was able to communicate that I was hurt, which she apologized for, without hurting her. A win!

    6. Spread your light.

    Remind yourself that even if you grew up with challenging people and the darkness of human behavior, you get to choose how you treat others and show up in the world.

    You can operate by the default of hurting others—or, worse, seek revenge—and mimic the harmful and negative habits you witnessed growing up, or you can actively take different steps and make different choices.

    You can bring yourself out of the darkness of bad behavior, cruelty, abuse, and negligent child rearing. You can go out in the world choosing love and spreading your light of compassion and understanding.

    You can be the conduit who transforms pain into healing, not only for yourself but for everyone around you. You can show others who are hurting that forgiveness, understanding, love, and compassion are possible even after you’ve been hurt. And in doing so, you can help make the world a less hurtful place.

  • When You’re Hooked On an Abusive Partner and Scared to Walk Away

    When You’re Hooked On an Abusive Partner and Scared to Walk Away

    “We set the standard for how we want to be treated. Our relationships are a reflection of the relationship we have with ourselves.” ~Iyanla Vanzant

    I’ll be honest. I knew my ex was a screwed-up guy. My head told me that not long after we met. The alarm bells were screeching. Could I hear them? Of course! Did I listen to them? No. My heart told my head to sod off and I agreed.

    Here was a charismatic, gorgeous man focusing all his attention on me. I was the only one in his universe. Fireworks that would rival Sydney’s New Year’s Eve were going off. The sexual chemistry was intense. He was the best drug ever.

    The high of being with him was intoxicating. Nervous butterflies were on a rampage in my stomach, which did a bit of a flip every time I saw him. And that’s how I knew he was the one. Yeah, right.

    Like most narcissists, it took a while for his darker side to kick in. But when it did I was already way too hooked on him; I needed more. So, I ignored all the warning signs. The ones that were there in front of my face, with bells on.

    When Mr. or Mrs. Charisma has hooked you in, they have you. Then their dark side starts to come out. They start to become a bit moody. To pick a fight, usually over something “you’ve done.” So, you start to change your behavior in anticipation.

    If his anger was over something you wore, you change your wardrobe to clothes less “slutty.” If she doesn’t like your friends, you stop seeing them. But no matter what you try, nothing works. The goal posts just get moved. They find another reason to blame you for their anger.

    Abusive people have all the answers as to why they treat you poorly. Past girlfriends or boyfriends have betrayed them. They’ve had a difficult childhood; bad luck has let them down. So, you believe them and keep ignoring the warning signs.

    To you, this is still that gorgeous person who swept you off your feet. You can still see the good beneath the dark side. You think: all they need is someone like you to take care of them, to bring that charming side back to the fore. And that makes you feel needed, secure.  

    But then the abuse gets worse. When they go into a rage now, they may storm out and disappear for days. They may even show the first signs of physical abuse. A push or a shove. Something that shocks you, as it comes out of the blue. (Something they’ll later dismiss as not being violence).

    But the thought of breaking up and never seeing them again terrifies you even more than how they’re treating you. Hooked in as you were by the drug of when they basked you in their sunshine, you can’t or don’t want to see the real person they are. You ignored the early warning signs, now you deny the reality. It’s true what they say. Love can be blind.

    When their rage has calmed down and they reappear, you’re relieved to see them again. It helps that the remorse they now show is equal to the severity of their latest abuse. They say how sorry they are. They sob in your arms. They’re “ashamed” of what they’ve done. They’ll “never do it again.” Blah, blah, blah.

    They admit that they need you more than ever to help them change. And of course, this is music to your ears. But this honeymoon period never lasts. The verbal and / or physical abuse, followed by remorse, repeats itself. Over and over, in a cycle.

    This cycle of violence (emotional and/or physical) is a toxic turning of unpredictable highs and lows. With each spin, it breaks you down. Any shred of self-esteem you have starts to erode.    

    You feel worthless and almost deserving of their anger. You start to believe it when they say you’re to blame for it. But you somehow rationalize it all by thinking that all they need is you to fix them to make the abuse go away. All you need to do is to love them more.

    You don’t realize it, but loving them has become an addiction for you. You’re addicted to an unavailable person—someone who is not there for you and who doesn’t care for you. They may even be more focused on their own addiction, to alcohol and/or drugs.

    Your head might be screaming at you to leave. But you just can’t. In your heart, you feel you love you them. “They need me,” you rationalize. You might even feel guilty if you abandon them.

    You are just like an addict. If you admit that your life has become out of control and walk away, you’ll lose the very thing you are addicted to. That high you get from their charismatic, remorseful, attentive side. What you need to make you feel good again. After each dreadful low, you are desperate for a fix, that high, again.

    But at some point, you will reach rock bottom—the abuse will become extreme. If they’re physically abusive, they may have even tried to kill you. My ex did, by strangling me. He wrapped his hands around my throat when I was seven months pregnant and with a demonic look in his eyes he screamed, “Die, you c***! Die.”

    Like many women, even after that, I still loved him! My heart kept screaming at me not to leave him. Yes, even after he almost killed me.

    If you’re lucky your head will start to outweigh your heart. You’ll stop denying that this person is no good for you. Finally, you’ll dig deep and find the courage to walk away. I did. But not before going back to him many, many times.  The drug-like pull back toward him was so great. The high, after we first reunited again, was better than the pain I felt when I was without him, alone.

    When you leave an abusive person, the withdrawal feels as agonizing as, I imagine it might be, weaning off heroin. It did for me, at least. You’ve been numb for so long that a gamut of emotions pour out at once. Shame, anger, loneliness, guilt—you name it, you feel it. It hurts.

    I have never sobbed like that before in my life. I was so overwhelmed by the rawness of them. But you need to feel these emotions, as painful as they are. You need to thaw out. To go cold turkey in order to recover.

    Unless you look hard at why you were addicted to an unavailable person in the first place, you risk going back to them. Or replacing them with a different drug, in the form of another abusive person. Either way, like any addict, you risk losing your life.  

    You need to ask yourself the same questions I did:

    Why is it I still love someone who abuses me? Why is it I need to numb myself with someone who is like a drug to me? Someone you know is no good for you, but is the only thing that will make you feel good again. Hopefully, like me, you’ll realize your addiction started way before you ever met this person.

    I’m sure you know already that it has something to do with low self-esteem. If we don’t love ourselves, we’re attracted to those who treat us as though we are unlovable. But it’s not enough to just tell someone they need to “love themselves more.” “You need to work on your self-esteem!” That’s easier said than done. Believe me, I know.

    First, you need to understand why it is that you feel you are unlovable, or not good enough. How you came to be so low in self-esteem that you let a person abuse you. Only then can you break the cycle of addiction to them and recover.

    You may be like me, having grown up in a comfortable, happy home. Never having experienced verbal or physical abuse before in your life. Or you may have suffered it in your family and be repeating the negative patterns of your past. Either way, the root of low self-esteem is if, in some way, your emotional needs were not met as a child.

    It might be, for example, that one of your parents had an addiction say, to work or to alcohol. The other parent was then so focused on rescuing them that neither could meet your emotional needs.

    It may be as simple as having a parent who was controlling. You weren’t allowed an opinion or any feelings of your own. And if you voiced them, they shut you down, so you learned to mistrust your gut instincts over time. Or it might have been they were such perfectionists, the only way to gain approval was to be perfect in every way.

    Our experiences are unique to us, so only you will know. But try to work it out.

    If our emotional needs aren’t met as a child, we grow up to have that fear we’re “not good enough.” We also fear abandonment, as we know how painful that is already.

    Our parents may have been there when we were kids, but couldn’t deal with us on an emotional level. So, we choose a partner whose baggage matches ours. Someone whose needs weren’t met as a child either and who is as insecure as we are. Even better if they have problems that we can rescue them from—an addiction or a traumatic past.  For if they need us, if they depend on us, then in our subconscious minds, they’re less likely to abandon us. To do what we fear most.

    Besides, if we can be their rescuer, then we can focus all our attention onto them. By doing so we can deny, ignore, we can even numb our own feelings of insecurity and fears inside. It’s them that has the problem, not us! And it’s such an effective drug, we might not even be aware those feelings exist at all. I wasn’t.

    The trouble is, this is a dysfunctional dance. The steps feel familiar, of course, as you’re recreating scenes from childhood to master them. But two people who are insecure are incapable of fulfilling each other’s needs.

    To feel secure, both have the pathological need to feel in control. While I was ‘rescuing’ my ex, I felt in control and confident he wouldn’t leave me. But that left him feeling vulnerable, afraid I would see his flaws and walk away. So, he would need to push me away to regain his power.

    Now I was the vulnerable one. Terrified he would abandon me, I would forgive him anything to get him back again. If I couldn’t, it would reinforce those painful childhood feelings I had of being unlovable. It would reveal the depth of my insecurity and fears.

    And so, I tried to please him, to prove I was worthy of his love and my weakness gave him strength again. The love he then showered onto me was just the drug I needed to numb those fears away and gave me security to start rescuing him again. And so, the cycle begins.

    But is this love? I had to ask myself the same. He was a man who treated me as worthless, I knew that. Yet I couldn’t leave him. I still “loved him.” Or so I thought. Until I understood that this is not love, but an addiction. An addiction to someone who could never love me, who could never meet my emotional needs.

    He said he loved me all the time. But he never showed me I was lovable. I told myself, too, that I loved him. But in fact, I just wanted to rescue him, to turn him into something I had projected him to be, not who he was. A pity project, perhaps, that could distract me from how f***ed up I was.

    When I finally left, I had to treat my addiction to this unavailable man the way any addict does. Go cold turkey. Thaw out. I had to feel all those painful feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. Those hideous emotions that poured out.  But that was the only way to heal.

    I had to go back to the root cause of my lack of self-esteem, where it was seeded in my childhood. Not to judge my parents. Like me, they were doing the best they could at the time. But to understand how I’d come to be this way.   

    As painful and as hard as this is, once you get it and face those fears down, your insecurity will start to melt away.  And little by little you begin to love yourself.  I started by doing one nice thing for myself each day. Eventually, I found that self-esteem that everyone had been going on about.

    You only attract someone equal to what you think you are worth.  Abusive people, who previously saw a chink in your armor, will now see you and run a mile. They’ll see that you get they’re not good enough for you.

    Those people who are self-confident and don’t need you to rescue them, will no longer terrify you.  And among them will be the one, like I have since found. The person who treats you with kindness and respect. The person who meets your emotional needs and brings out the best in you.  The person who allows you to be vulnerable, but safe. They’ll never use that vulnerability as a weapon against you.

    Sure, they could walk away any day. But you’ll no longer fear that. For if they do, you’ll just figure it’s not meant to be. You’ll still be there. And you’ll be enough to meet all your own emotional needs, with or without a partner.

  • Healing from Childhood Abuse: Get Help and Take Your Life Back

    Healing from Childhood Abuse: Get Help and Take Your Life Back

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

    “No one loses their innocence. It is either taken or given away willingly.” ~Tiffany Madison

    Childhood innocence. When I think of it I always picture a baby lying on their back, playing with their feet. They are laughing, cooing, smiling, and lost in a sense of wonder. Full of joy, love, curiosity, and awe. When you look at them you can’t help but smile, and their joy and laughter are infectious. At this moment, they are perfect.

    Now have all that taken away from them through abuse, abandonment, or neglect, removing their ability to feel safe, joyful, loved, and whole. You have taken their soul and spirit from them. Imagine the handicap that this child has to live with. I’m sure for most it’s hard to wrap your head around it.

    Well, let me tell you what I have learned through my experience of being sexually abused, neglected, and abandoned in my childhood. I grew up lost, scared, on guard, and alone. I found it hard to fit in or connect with people. I was unsure of everything, especially myself. I did not know who I was, what I wanted, or which direction to go in.

    I bought in to my father’s harsh criticism of most things I did. I never felt like I could please him or live up to his expectations, so I just stopped trying. I didn’t just stop trying to please him; I stopped trying anything. However you want to frame it, I gave up or gave in.

    Childhood abuse makes it impossible to sustain all those things that make life worth living. I feel that it was only through the grace of god that I didn’t take my life. Just existing is no way to live. Dragging yourself through your life can be exhausting, tedious, and unfulfilling.

    I became a casualty of the abuse I endured. Today I know that without the help that I needed my downfall was inevitable. It was the natural conclusion of the path set forth for me in my childhood.

    I hear the redirect all the time—stop being a victim, just get over it, and your parents did the best they could. Do we tell rape victims to stop being a victim and just get over it?

    Some might be appalled by this comparison. It’s easy to do when you, yourself, have never suffered abuse or neglect.

    When I was sexually abused at age five, I was as powerless as any rape victim. I didn’t have the physical ability to protect myself, or the cognitive ability to understand what was happening to me or put it into words to tell someone.

    The same can be said for any child that has suffered neglect. If they have been neglected all their life, it becomes the norm for them. They don’t even realize that it should or could be any different for them. And if they do, there is almost nothing a child can do to change it.

    I understand it is hard for those who have never experienced abuse or neglect to wrap their heads around it. What they need to know is that it happens all the time and is more prevalent than anyone wants to admit.

    What amazes me about child abuse is how it seems we have ducked our head in the sand about it. Studies show that one in four women have been abused and one in six men. If you average that to be one in five, considering the US population is almost 323 million, that means that there are about 64.5 million child abuse survivors in the US alone.

    In the US today there are approximately 22.5 million dealing with cancer at any time. Please understand, I am not comparing the two at all; just using the numbers to make a statement.

    More than 65 million people in the US today are suffering the effects of child abuse, and yet it is not really on our radar. Like any horrible disease, child abuse is crippling and debilitating. It affects us emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually, making the problem hard to detect and harder to treat.

    It didn’t surface for me until I got clean and stopped managing my feeling with drugs. By managing them, I mean numbing myself.

    At eighteen months clean I found myself curled up in the fetal position on my couch in a tidal wave of emotional pain. I felt I only had three options, which I considered in this order: kill myself, get high, or reach out for help. Through grace I was able to call out for help and get myself in to an ACOA (adult children of alcoholics) therapy group and one-on-one sessions with a therapist.

    Children who have been abused or neglected were victims. What keeps them in that mode is that they blame themselves for what happened to them, as if they somehow deserved it. No one does.

    If your parents or caregivers physically hurt you, sexually violated you, neglected you, or emotionally scarred you through shaming, belittling, or humiliation, you were a victim. And no matter what they told you—no matter what you were like as a child—it was not your fault.

    The process of healing and recovering from what has happened to you starts with accepting that you were a victim.

    This will allow you to begin releasing your shame and recognize that those who abused or neglected you were responsible for what happened, not you. And that will enable you to work through the negative emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual effects of your abuse.

    I used drugs and alcohol to “get over” what happened to me in my childhood. I used the love, compassion, understanding, and support of the people I entrusted to get through what happened to me and reach the other side.

    Finding recovery brought me to people that would care about me and love me as I was. These people brought me to the professional help that I needed. That help brought me to people who understood me and have lived in my shoes. Those people brought me back to who I was and wanted to be as a child before my innocence was taken.

    If you are dealing with the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional family please, find a support group to attend in your area. If you need more extensive help, the people in those support groups will help you find professionals in the area that can treat your issues.

    Help is available to everyone, but you need to reach out and ask for it. I know because I have done it, and I am just like you.

    You don’t have to live your life feeling depressed, unworthy, or dependent on unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as drugs, alcohol, or food, which will only temporarily numb your pain. You don’t need to spend the rest of your days following the trajectory chosen for you when someone else took away your innocence.

    It is possible to reclaim who you could have been, but you have to first acknowledge that you were a victim, confront the pain and the shame, and let other people in so they can help.

    Are you willing to reach out for help so you can take your life back?

  • Why I Forgave My Cruel, Abusive Father

    Why I Forgave My Cruel, Abusive Father

    “It’s not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people. But it is such a powerful place, because it sets you free.” ~Tyler Perry

    I still remember the day when I told my mother that I no longer wanted to be at home. I’d had enough of so much pain and sorrow, and the constant yelling. Soon after, I watched my mother cry bitterly as she made the decision to get a divorce.

    I was ten years old at the time.

    My father had always been a very strict man, who used to believe that his ways were the right ways.

    He considered himself “successful” because he had his own house, his own car, a high salary, and a family. He was indeed a success at his office, but his employees didn’t seem to respect him.

    They described my father as a man who liked to give orders and to keep things under control—and also a man who liked to tell hurtful, humiliating jokes at others’ expense.

    I don’t remember my father having any friends, nor seeing him invite anyone to our home for Christmas.

    Father was always working hard, two daily shifts for five years. He later told me he did that to give us a good future, but he was never present.

    I don’t recall him playing with me that much, nor taking us on vacation. And he used to beat me with a belt if I didn’t get good grades at school. He used to drill into my head that I needed to “be better than everyone else.” He wanted me to be as competitive as him, as successful as him. He wanted me to become him.

    But that wasn’t the whole reason why my parents divorced. My father cheated on my mother with five different women, thinking my mother wasn’t good enough for him anymore. Later in life I understood that it was he who felt not good enough.

    One day he got very drunk and began calling me names like “little cockroach,” because he knew I would never be as good as him. That’s when I lost it.

    At ten years old, I jumped toward my father and blindly hit him, with my tiny fists, in every part of his body that I could reach. My mother came running from the kitchen and had to separate us because my father, a mountain of a man, was easily giving me the beating of my life.

    That was the last straw for her.

    That night my mother kicked him out of the house, and I didn’t see him again for a few years.

    After that day, we were shocked, but felt a small piece of relief. Eventually, we found peace.

    The divorce helped my mother mature and become stronger and wiser. She was always there for me and my kid sister, playing the role of both loving mother and father. My raising made me think that, if I ever had children, I would never let them live the hell I lived.

    Time heals all wounds, or so they say. Eventually, I found the strength to see my father again, at a very sad family event.

    He was all by himself. None of his former mistresses were in sight. We spoke few words; I gave him my condolences and left. It had been weird to see my father again after so much time.

    One day he fell sick with kidney failure and thought he was about to die. I went to visit him at the hospital, and it was shocking to see my once strong father reduced to a thin ghost of a man wrapped in a hospital gown.

    There was no one around to help him but an aunt. No friends, no other women, no one. He was all alone.

    I spent days and night taking care of him at the hospital. We would joke around and remember the few good things we shared during my childhood. I soon realized my father was just another kid that had been hit and humiliated during his childhood.

    His parents had raised him the same way he’d raised me; therefore, he grew up with those values carved in his heart.

    That’s when I realized it made no sense to continue hating him for the horrible childhood he gave me. Life was already giving him a tough lesson. Loneliness can be worse than death itself.

    My father eventually recovered and left the hospital. I still speak to him and pay him a visit from time to time to see how he’s doing. He’s still the prideful man I knew as a kid, and he still expects me to become better than him. But now, his words don’t hurt me.

    Because of my experiences with my father, I have learned these valuable lessons.

    1. Forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting.

    Some people say “Forgive and forget.” I would say instead “Forgive, don’t forget, but don’t let the memory of what happened control you.”

    I learned this the hard way, sadly. Some days I would get very angry, and other days I would feel hopeless and unloved. This eventually pushed away the few people that really cared for me.

    I couldn’t change the past, and I didn’t like the insecure, angry woman that I had become. I had to release that pain and anger.

    One thing that helped me was to write down all the things I wanted to say to my father. I would read the letter as many times as I needed, then burn it. Watching the fire consume the letter that contained all my frustrations helped me ease the burden in my heart.

    Some days, when I felt the ugly feeling again, I would put my hand over my heart, say a prayer, and repeat the same mantra to myself over and over again:

    “I am here, I will help you. We are in this together. I will protect you.”

    These words were powerful to me. After repeating that mantra to myself, I would feel my anger melt away.

    We have to release our anger—in private, to avoid hurting the people that love us—in order to make space for love and peace. We learn from the pain, and though there’s no way we can easily push it under a rug, we don’t have to be controlled by the feelings that flood us when we remember what happened.

    Don’t let the memory of the past inflict pain in your present life.

    2. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you have to include that person back into your life.

    Forgiving someone doesn’t always mean welcoming that person back into your life like nothing happened.

    There are people who can’t be in our lives without hurting us. These kinds of people need to be loved from a distance. It may be your father, your brother, your former best friend, or your ex. Life is too short to make it harder and more painful by allowing people who constantly hurt us back into our circle of peacefulness.

    3. Forgiveness doesn’t mean condoning someone’s actions.

    Some people might view what happened to my father as karma, but it’s hard for me to see it that way. When I learned about his troubled childhood, I realized that’s where his behavior came from. I finally understood why he did what he did. Still, that didn’t make it excusable. What he did was wrong and not acceptable. No matter how bad your past was, you can’t go around inflicting pain on others, thinking it’s okay.

    I know a lot of people who had sad, painful childhoods who turned out to be wonderful parents. Pain can give us huge lessons and make us better people.

    4. Forgive to set yourself free.

    This was the most important lesson in my life. I was the target of bullying at school because, at that time, children who came from broken homes were seen as troubled kids. I hated my father every time someone made jokes about my divorced parents.

    Later in life I blamed my father for all my failed relationships. I hopelessly looked for approval from the men I dated, only to be dumped like a hot frying pan.

    I was destroying myself with hatred and pain. All this turmoil made me lonely and miserable.

    Eventually, I learned that I was the only person responsible of my life, and that blaming my father was a cowardly thing to do. If I wanted to have a happy life, I had to let go of the pain. It wasn’t easy—it took years of self-discovery and soul searching to achieve this—but when I did, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

    Trying to find something to inspire me, I came across one quote that struck a chord with me:

    “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

    I was poisoning my life, my few friendships, and myself. I’d missed a lot of the big things in life because I’d spent so much time hating my father and my problems. I learned not to repeat his mistakes, and to pay attention to my own behavior. The past can be painful but it doesn’t have to define us. We make our own present; we are our own person.

    We can’t erase the past, but we can choose to let go of the pain in order to live a happier, more fulfilling life.

    The road isn’t easy; in fact, there were days when I felt I was taking one step forward and two steps back, and some days I would just curl up and cry. But I kept moving forward because I desperately wanted to get out of that place of isolation. I focused on myself, spent time with family, eventually found good friends, and then finally felt lighter and at peace.

    In the end, I learned that forgiveness is not about the other person; it is about ourselves.

  • How to Stop Neglecting and Abusing Your Inner Child

    How to Stop Neglecting and Abusing Your Inner Child

    Inner child

    “Hold the hand of the child that lives in your soul. For this child, nothing is impossible.” ~Paulo Coelho

    You’re probably an abusive parent. Even if you don’t have children.

    In each of us lives an inner child. This child isn’t just a sub-layer of our personality; it’s arguably the real us, the deepest aspect of ourselves.

    Like many people, I’ve been aware of the inner child idea for some time. I thought of the concept mostly as another way of explaining our personal sensitivities or the childish behavior we all are capable of at times. But it’s not that; it’s much more.

    It wasn’t until I thought of my inner child in relation to my actual children that I started to appreciate just how important it is to really take responsibility for this child. I realized, too, just how so many of us mistreat our inner child. Abuse them even. And it’s changed the way I treat myself forever.

    I think of the basic needs of my children. Sleep. Nutrition. Regular praise and encouragement. Physical safety. And of course, love.

    The idea of them not receiving these things causes me a pain that feels almost physical. Sadness and even anger arise in me as their dad.

    And yet, what about my other child? My inner child—the little me?

    I, as my adult self, have just as much responsibility to him as I do my son and daughter. But I, like so many others, have outright failed in my responsibility to him as a supposedly responsible adult.

    I have so often deprived him of sleep, made him go long periods without eating, and failed to keep him adequately hydrated. I have dragged him to work with me and pushed him so hard that he has burned out. I have allowed past girlfriends to abuse him.

    And worst still, I have failed to tell him I love him. I have let him feel unloved, unwanted, and unworthy. Because I was continuing a pattern.

    Like so many people, I had experiences early in my life that communicated to my inner child that he was not enough. For some people, this manifests as a deep-seated, almost silent belief, whispered into the ear of our inner child that says, “You are not good enough,” “You are not wanted,” or “You are not important.” Ultimately, it’s a feeling of being unlovable.

    In my case, this came about from incidents of witnessing and experiencing abusive behavior at home, with my parents’ divorce when I was a five-year-old at the center of it. I later experienced a more subtle emotional neglect by my parents and had experiences with violence.

    But experiences do not have to be this extreme at all. Simply growing up in a home where no one says “I love you” or having parents who never check in with us to find out how we’re doing is more than enough for a tiny person to develop these subtle but powerful beliefs. These experiences don’t even have to be at the hands of our parents; being rejected by friends at a young age can have the same effect.

    When people give the general advice of “take care of yourself,” what they never mention is that if you don’t, you will be failing to care for a child that is dependent on you for safety, security, and love.

    Here are the three general ways I make sure I live up to my responsibility as the sole caretaker of this child…

    Provide the Basics

    Just as I would never let my children go without adequate food, water, and sleep, I now ensure that I extend the same to myself.

    Push yourself in your work and mission; live at your edge to achieve your goals. But don’t do so at the expense of your health. While it’s true that growth rarely comes from times of comfort in our lives, comfort and being cared for are still necessities.

    Ensure you are getting enough sleep. Eat regularly and healthily. Stay hydrated throughout the day. It may not sound so serious, but frame it in terms of providing these basic needs to a child, and you will see how these things equate to essential self-love.

    Give Them Gifts

    Children aren’t “shallow” for liking to receive presents at Christmas or on birthdays. Gifts, in whatever form they may come, are a valid way of giving and receiving love. Everybody loves to be pampered and buy nice things for themselves. Don’t overlook the idea of buying yourself gifts or getting a massage as valid parts of self-work.

    By gifting ourselves regularly, we train ourselves to receive. Many people struggle with accepting gifts and favors, and this often comes from an inability to receive love as a result of our deep feelings of unworthiness.

    At first, gifting ourselves can feel a little shallow. The trick is to not put the emphasis on buying ourselves stuff—the giving—but to focus on the feeling of receiving. By allowing ourselves to open up emotionally to fully accept a gift, we are telling our inner child that they are worthy.

    But at the same time, just as you can spoil a child, it’s important to not make gifting the only way of showing yourself love.

    I have witnessed, many times, people trying to overcompensate for their self-love issues through materialism. So make sure you have the basics covered too, as well as ensuring you…

    Spend Time with Your Inner Child

    We’ve all known, or possibly have been, that child that grew up with everything. They had the nice house and all the latest stuff, but weren’t really happy.

    Maybe their parents weren’t very good at communicating emotions. Or they prioritized their bickering over their children’s happiness. Or perhaps they were just straight up abusive.

    A similar dynamic can occur with our relationship to our inner child. And so it’s important to develop healthy communication with that part of yourself.

    Through visualization, spend time being present with the little you. Allow them to feel your full caring, appreciation, and protectiveness as the responsible adult you.

    In a quiet place, you can envision you, in your adult form, being present with the little you. Maybe you are holding them, sitting them on your lap, or listening to their feelings and needs so you can meet them, instead of ignoring them, as so many of us do.

    You can also spend time stepping into the shoes of your child self and take comfort in experiencing the loving presence and protective qualities of your adult self.

    Feeling as though you were your child-self, allow yourself to be held and comforted by the adult you who has vowed to protect you. Feel the safety, security, and comfort—the unconditional love—that you perhaps were deprived of as a child.

    —

    Treating yourself with this level of respect, care, and unconditional love is some of the deepest and most instantly rewarding self-work one can do. Start today and be sure to share with others this practice when they notice the positive changes in you!

  • Abuse Isn’t Always Physical, and We Never Deserve It

    Abuse Isn’t Always Physical, and We Never Deserve It

    “A bad relationship is like standing on broken glass. If you stay, you will keep hurting. If you walk away, you will hurt but you will heal.” ~Autumn Kohler

    It happens little by little, bit by bit. So very slowly that before you know it, you can’t recognize the person you lie next to at night and you hate the person you see staring back at you in the mirror.

    Who is that person?

    Where is the strong, capable, unflappable, and carefree person that you once were? When did you become someone so pathetic, so small and malleable?

    I have never been the kind of girl who accepts bad behavior, let alone anything verging on abuse.

    I believe in good manners, in kindness, in treating others as you wish to be treated. I also believe absolutely in apologizing when I get it wrong.

    I don’t let my two little people get away with being rude, cheeky, or back-chatting a grown-up. So why did I let him treat me so appallingly? Why didn’t I stand up to him? Why didn’t I get out?

    I have always left, you see. With all the significant relationships I’ve been in, I have always ended it.

    I have always made that call. I’ve always run away when I couldn’t do it anymore, or cut my losses before I could get hurt.

    I ended my engagement to my ex mere months before the “big day.” I called time on my first marriage, seven years after saying “I do,” when three straight years of trying hard to fix it had failed.

    So why didn’t I leave him?

    People think domestic violence has to involve fists, bruises, and physical pain. Well, I can now put my hand up and admit that I was abused—but he never laid a finger on me. It doesn’t make it any less painful or significant or wrong.

    I am beginning to get comfortable owning what happened to me, but its effects have lasting consequences that I am aware of almost daily.

    The more time I spend analyzing what he did, and his potential motivations, the less I feel I understand what our relationship was about, and the more blatant the abuse appears.

    He controlled, manipulated, and systematically ignored me.

    I wasn’t allowed answer the door to other men if my husband wasn’t in the house, nor was I allowed to speak to other men at the pool where we trained.

    He loved my little skirts and dresses while he was wooing me, but as soon as he had me it was always, “I hope you’ve got appropriate knickers on wearing that” or, “you will keep your legs closed if you go out wearing that.”

    When he thought I had overstepped some invisible, unfathomable, and constantly shifting line, he could look me straight in the eye and yet completely ignore me for three straight days, without skipping a beat.

    Not a word would leave his mouth. For days on end. And for a girl who can talk the hind legs off a donkey, that is pretty much the worst kind of torture imaginable. I was invisible. I was nothing.

    But it happens gradually, remember.

    In the beginning, he built me up and showered me with words of love and affection. He placed me on a pedestal and worshipped me. I had never felt so precious to anyone before.

    He made himself the very center of my universe, and made himself so large that he obliterated everyone and everything else. Little by little, increment by increment, my universe became so very small, and by degrees I became myopic, a mere shadow of the woman I once was.

    In some ways, the hardest thing for me now is coming to terms with the fact that I didn’t have the nerve to get out.

    I had irrationally made the decision to stay because I truly felt that it was the only choice I had.

    I think I justify it by saying that it was the only thing I could do—for the sake of my children. They had already been through so much; I couldn’t damage them further.

    And anyway, his behavior was only directed at me. Once he had me controlled, managed, and living in fear, it was was only ever about me; I perceived that my children were safe from any form of direct threat.

    The decision to get out, to get free and safe, wasn’t a decision I ever had to make, or got the chance to make. By some weird twist in the way the universe works, I received the ultimate “get out of jail free” card. The abusive monster of a man to whom I had given three years of my life died.

    He died suddenly and shockingly, and in doing so simultaneously set me free and inflicted his biggest, most significant controlling act.

    Now, almost exactly one year later, I still feel immense and overwhelming relief that I am out of that place; that like a caterpillar trapped, bound and confined, I have been able to break free and spread my beautiful wings.

    But I still feel some misplaced sense of shame that I didn’t get to make that call. That I didn’t put my big girl brave pants on and make that decision first, and for me.

    Being in that relationship is, without question, the biggest and worst regret of my life, one that I will carry to my grave.

    I wanted to write this for all the people who feel trapped, who feel like a watered down impression of the person they once were. For the people who don’t feel able to speak out and ask for help.

    I know how that feels.

    I know the shame and embarrassment that keeps your lips sealed, even around those who you trust and love the most.

    Just because there are no physical marks doesn’t mean it isn’t abuse.

    When you question yourself and you try to tell yourself that it’s really not that bad, that he or she loves you, really, but has just got a few issues to deal with, or worse still, that it’s your fault he or she treats you this way, trust your gut.

    If they continually put you down, shut you out in an attempt to manipulate and control you, ignore your needs, threaten you in any way, call you “crazy” or “overly sensitive” when you dare to raise your worries, and/or blames you for their reactions, that is not love. It is abuse.

    It’s easier somehow to make excuses, accept the blame (you will even start to believe it), but know that you could end up spending the rest of your days in an a broken and painful place—a relationship where you feel small, worthless, and lonely beyond words.

    Somewhere in your gut, you likely know this is true.

    Whether your inner voice is yelling at you, or just whispering to get out, you know. You know it’s not right and that you deserve so much more. You deserve to have the chance for your wings to be set free.

    And I pray that you do.

  • How to Reconnect with the Inner Light Below Your Pain

    How to Reconnect with the Inner Light Below Your Pain

    Carefree woman

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of physical abuse and may be triggering to some people.

    “What hurts you blesses you, darkness is your candle.” ~Rumi

    We are all born with it. The beautiful bright light in our soul, filled with love and happiness.

    I remember having that feeling of being so alive and free and untouched by fear or worry.

    This is who we are at the core of our being. This is our true authentic self, from before the world told us who we needed to be and negative outside circumstances started to tear down our self-worth and self-esteem.

    I can tell you exactly what age I was when the light inside of me started to fade. I was seven years old and there was physical abuse at home with belts and hangers.

    From the very first moment it happened, I remember being in my bed and hugging my Snoopy doll, questioning what love and trust really meant.

    Worst of all, I started to believe that I was not worthy of safety and security, and decided I must be a really unlovable girl.

    Having this negative belief about myself, I could no longer hear anything positive from anyone. No matter what compliment someone offered or how much someone would try to show me love, I would go back to this now instilled belief: “You are not worth it. No one will love you. You are supposed to feel pain if love is involved.”

    This false self-perception led me down many dark paths into self-destruction and self-sabotage, and my world in my mind became very small.

    I was attracting circumstances and people in my life that would reaffirm my low self-worth so that I could tell myself, each and every time I was abandoned, rejected, or broken up with, “See, what you think is true—you are not worth it.”

    This eventually turned into a huge black abyss in my soul, and there was no light in sight.

    I tried to fill it with alcohol, drugs, relationships, sleeping pills, and whatever I thought might help me escape this deep darkness that was now my everyday existence, but nothing helped.

    After many years of struggling, running, and numbing, I saw a quote by the great poet Rumi that read, “What hurts you blesses you. Darkness is your candle.” That was it!

    I realized that my pain was not a punishment, and that I could see all this pain as a candle, a guide to bring me back to who I was before I decided I wasn’t worthy or lovable.

    My journey into spirituality began, and I was able to come up with a process that allowed me to heal from each painful incident, no matter how bad it was.

    Here are the steps that I have taken to heal some of my deepest wounds:

    Identify what, exactly, is causing the pain.

    I needed to go back to the beginning, before fear took the place of love in my heart, and remember the specific events that I allowed to negatively affect me. I created a timeline and wrote down everything that had ever hurt me up until my current age.

    Take a quiet moment and sit in a place where you won’t be interrupted. Take out your journal or a piece of paper, and then sit with your eyes closed.

    Bring yourself back to your past and try to recall a time when you felt hurt, scared, or fearful. Write down what happened and how you felt. This process is not an easy one, but the only way we can heal it is to reveal it.

    Acknowledge the pain in the present.

    After allowing myself to get clear about what had hurt me and caused me great suffering, I needed to fully acknowledge how each incident was affecting me in the present.

    Once you retrieve the memory of what caused you this pain, sit with it and visualize yourself saying, “Okay, I am in fear/distress/pain/extreme sadness, and I am going to be okay.”

    You are now acknowledging your feelings in this moment because you felt very alone and helpless before. This allows you to comfort yourself, which will bring you a feeling of peace.

    Accept the pain.

    What I was resisting, numbing, and avoiding was causing my suffering. My detour away from my light happened because I refused to accept that these incidents had so much power over me. I didn’t realize then that acceptance can set you free. I didn’t have to condone or like what happened; I just needed to accept it. 

    It will be a freeing exercise for you to now write, “I fully accept this situation as being exactly how it was supposed to be. I am a stronger person because of this.”

    This will alleviate the hold the pain has on you because you’ll be shifting your belief about what you experienced. Instead of feeling victimized, and consequently hurt or ashamed, you’ll feel empowered for having gained strength and wisdom through your experience. You can do this any time you feel you are holding on to something that is upsetting you.

    Release, forgive, and let go of the pain.

    Before I acknowledged the pain and brought it to consciousness, I didn’t think I had a choice, so the pain became part of my identity. Now I can release it. If I decide to visit it again and identify with it, I know that will be choosing to suffer.

    Now is the time when you can release the situation and the hold it has had on you. In order to do this, you need to forgive yourself for carrying around the dark and heavy emotions.

    You also need to forgive anyone who hurt you. It might help to consider that they, too, were hurting, and that’s why they did what they did. Recognizing that hurt people cause others pain, you now have an even stronger motivation to do this work to heal your own.

    Envision yourself in the situation(s) you revisited with a beautiful white light surrounding you, protecting you, and allowing you to see that you are safe.

    Picture yourself telling the fearful you that it’s okay to let this go because you are not there anymore. You are free from what you hurt you in the past, and it doesn’t mean anything about you or your worth. What happened wasn’t your fault, and you don’t deserve to live a life defined by that pain and shame.

    This is where you detach from your story and choose not to identify with the painful situations.

    You can now write out, “Universe, I am now fully releasing this situation and forgiving (whoever was involved) and myself. I am free from this pain. Thank you for taking this from me.”

    The good news is that once we make the courageous decision to bring these painful memories and emotions into the open, and decide we need to confront the pain head on, we can start this healing process.

    This is not a process that you will only do one time. This is something you will do over and over again until you feel the heaviness lifted from your heart and a sense of inner peace wash over you.

    By shining light on our deepest and darkest wounds, we allow them to come to the surface so we can go through the necessary steps to turn our greatest pain into our greatest power and strength.

    If your goal is to reconnect with your inner light and realign with who you truly are, I invite you on this healing journey that has forever changed my life.

  • What’s Really Going on When Someone Seems “Too Sensitive”

    What’s Really Going on When Someone Seems “Too Sensitive”

    Crying Eyes

    “For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli

    The whole time I was growing up, I was told, incessantly, that I was “too sensitive.” These words, when I first heard them, came from the mouth of the person I vowed I would never become.

    And yet, as I grew up, these words didn’t stay within the darkness of my childhood home. They began to roll out of the mouths of kids on the playground, boyfriends, classmates, friends.

    “Wow, you’re really touchy.”

    “You’re so emotional.”

    “You’re turning really red. Are you, like, really offended right now? You should take a chill pill.”

    “You can’t take a joke.”

    Often, my reaction was to a joke—an insulting one. I’ve never liked insult humor, and yet it’s followed me throughout my life. It was (and still is) there in my Eastern European origins, and it was there every step of the way when I came to Canada as an immigrant.

    They were right. I just couldn’t take a joke.

    Each time this would happen, I would own it. Yes, I was too sensitive. It was my fault. I had to try to hide it better. I came up with all these tactics to hide my volatile emotions, but they failed.

    Even if I didn’t cry, I’d turn red. Even if I didn’t turn red, my lips would quiver and my body would tense up. Someone would never fail to point it out.

    “Wow, you get really red—like a tomato!”

    “Hey, lighten up. You take things so seriously.”

    I left the toxic environment of my childhood when I was seventeen years old, having counted down the days until I could be free. An old journal of mine from around then says, “I’m so glad I’m over the past.” I thought changing locations was the end of the story.

    I had focused so much on getting free that, when I got to that freedom, I didn’t know what to do. Slowly, I developed serious mental health issues that grew from not healing. I became more than just sensitive. I became what my ex called “crazy.”

    After my first relationship—which quickly turned into mutual emotional abuse—dissolved, something broke inside of me. I became cold, distant, intolerant. I began to make comments about other people being too sensitive when they reacted, because I no longer did.

    And you know something? It felt good. It felt so good to, for once, not be the one that felt ashamed of my emotions. I felt powerful. I felt like everything would be okay.

    I became everything I had fought so long and so hard against: loveless, distant, cynical. I became the bully I once feared. I began my journey to become the abuser I vowed to leave in my childhood memories.

    Thankfully, I had a breakdown. I say thankfully, because those weeks of unbearable pain were nothing compared to a lifetime I could have lived as yet another abuser recreating her past.

    As I allowed myself to feel again, I felt a flood of regret and guilt for the people I’d hurt. I felt terrible about shaming those emotions in others that I’d had shamed in me. I used this feeling to forgive the people who had hurt me, realizing that their actions were by-products of abuse in their pasts as well.

    I had escaped hurting myself and hurting others by healing the pain of the past, which was only possible by feeling the pain of the past. And I realize now that this was what I was trying to do all those times I would overreact—heal. I was trying to heal.

    When we get ignored or put down, it hurts. It leaves a wound. And then, when we’re in a safer situation, that wound tries to heal.

    Each time I reacted emotionally to a situation that didn’t seem appropriate, my wound was trying to heal.

    Each time I would react to a joke with pain, my wounds were trying to heal.

    Each time I’d get this rush of anger or anxiety or self-hatred, triggered by some little thing someone did that reminded me of the abuse of the past, my wounds were trying to heal.

    But what did the world say?

    When I needed someone to hold me while I cried about being insulted and pushed down after being triggered by something little and silly, people would say, “You’re too sensitive.”

    When I needed someone, anyone, to just look at what was happening in my life and listen to me, having no communication skills and able only to start drama, people would say, “You’re doing it for attention.”

    I came so close to killing myself before I had a breakdown. If I had, wouldn’t they have said, “We didn’t see it coming”?

    Abuse has been rampant in my family for generations. In my work, I see every day how rampant emotional abuse is in our society.

    Abuse makes people “sensitive.” I put this in quotation marks because there’s a difference between perceiving a person’s sensitivity as a characteristic and perceiving that person as having gaping wounds, which are sensitive because they’re healing.

    And our cultural tendency to push down the healing process in those who have been abused is the most silent killer of them all.

    As human beings, we need to connect, to love, to belong. We need to feel like we are accepted and respected for who we are. And how many of us had those needs shattered at a young age? If not by our parents, by a group of peers. If not by a group of peers, by a partner.

    As soon as we get hurt, we start to heal. This goes for paper cuts as much as it goes for emotions. We can allow that healing, or we can block it.

    Those who appear outwardly sensitive and touchy are actually doing something incredibly brave. They are choosing to stay with their emotions, which are pathways to healing, instead of shutting down and joining the abuse statistics.

    So next time you hear someone being called too sensitive, know this: there are only so many times a person’s healing process can be repressed before they can’t take it anymore. And the way a person breaks out is either through ending their life or ending their emotional life by becoming abusive themselves.

    This is happening everywhere, and we can all do our part to stop it.

    Jon Briere said, “If we could somehow end child abuse and neglect, the eight hundred pages of DSM […] would be shrunk to a pamphlet in two generations.”

    We can all do our part in this, and the way we can start is by understanding the connection between emotional release and healing, by allowing people to experience emotions in front of us without judging or backing down, and by allowing ourselves to experience those emotions, to heal, and to find people who will allow us to do so.

    Like this, we can build a better world together. But we can’t do it alone. We need you. We need all of us.

    Crying eyes image via Shutterstock

  • What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    What Creates Abusive People and How to Release Your Anger

    Peaceful Man

    “The biggest problem for humanity, not only on a global level, but even for individuals, is misunderstanding.” ~Rinpoche

    Through the course of the relationship he was dishonest, emotionally manipulative, and unkind. It was subtle at first—do we really sign up for this on the dating application? But the acts wound their way through like a slow vine that eventually kills a tree. When it ended, he handled it atrociously.

    It took me many months to process it all, facing things I had suppressed in denial. When the shock wore off, I had a desire to let him know how he traumatized me—to outline all the ways in which he made me uncomfortable and how unbelievable and disgusting his behavior was.

    I wanted to punish him.

    I wanted him to understand that his actions—secrecy, meanness, disregard—were simply not the way you treat someone you supposedly love, someone that cares for and supports you.

    I knew I had my own issues to work out around why I chose to stay in this kind of dynamic, but I somehow thought a really good apology on his part would at least validate my experience and hike me back up onto the pedestal on which I deserved to stand.

    I wanted to believe that somehow my words would enlighten him—that understanding my experience would affect and change him for the better.

    And I tried! My goal honestly wasn’t to get all prison gangster on him. I just wanted my pain recognized; to feel regarded and important.

    I wrote a few letters that I thought diplomatically captured my hurt and positioned him perfectly to validate me and apologize. That apology would never come. In fact, when he did respond, it was in the form of anger, denial, projecting or minimizing. 

    When engaging him didn’t work, I turned inward. I created little pieces of art that depicted him with a huge ego and small…other parts. (I did not send those. One mature point for me there.)

    In time I accepted that the recognition and apology were clearly not going to happen.

    But the anger kept surfacing, and it was getting annoying. I had read volumes on the notion that “the behavior of others is about them, not you.” Logically I understood this, but I remained stuck in a purgatory. I couldn’t fully connect to and let go of the hugely distracting resentment.

    Then a curious thing happened. As I began to learn the deeper roots of why a person mistreats another, the anger dissipated.

    This didn’t require an individually detailed personal history to construe. They were facts that can be generally applicable to anyone that displays habitually abusive or destructive behaviors. They came through lots of therapy and research as I sought understanding I would never receive from him.

    It is this:

    When a healthy person behaves in a way that hurts others, they take responsibility for that action and make amends.

    I was dealing with an unhealthy person.

    There are people who, because of an abusive childhood (emotionally, physically, or otherwise), navigating their way with a narcissistic or extremely controlling parent, or suffering other emotional trauma, developed protective mechanisms early on to avoid dealing with the shame and violation they experienced.

    These mechanisms can start in the form of an inflated sense of self, denial, or even a secret life. They are ways to create “emotionally safe” conditions that allow them to experience freedom, “love,” or accomplishment in a way they didn’t have access to through healthy means.

    Emotional stability was the most immediate, basic human need. But they had to learn to achieve it at a time when core values—such as respect, honesty, and empathy—may have not been fully developed.

    When this person fails to deal with their pain and anger into adulthood, they never outgrow their early emotional survival skills. As these mechanisms take on an increasingly functional role, values that the person eventually came to understand (or claim to adhere to) become secondary to protecting their emotional safety.

    These methods weld to their identity: they can live without the values but not without the relief their emotional protections provide. They develop into practices such as criticism, disconnection, projection (applying their transgressions or perceived shortcomings—whatever they don’t want to own about themselves—onto their victims), lying, and addictive behaviors.

    What a healthy person considers a normal relationship negotiation or expression of personal needs, or even when life demands the basics of responsibility of regard for others, the unhealthy person perceives a threat to their vulnerable sense of self and unleashes their behaviors to maintain the emotional “safe place.”

    Their abusive techniques essentially produce short term (false) feelings of success, confidence, or acceptance that feel uplifting and comfortable, especially when the alternative is to face a reality that is filled with perceived failure. 

    In my experience, there was often no discernable threat when my ex displayed inconsiderate, bizarre, or hurtful behaviors.

    For example, if his sense of self was feeling particularly low—despite my adoration and support—that may have meant him blatantly ignoring me in a social situation to drink and flirt with other women. He often met requests to accommodate my schedule or needs with indignation. Playing with my son started to turn antagonistic to the point where I’d have to intervene.

    Mere days after we ended our relationship, he claimed he had become “emotionally connected” to a new lover. A couple of weeks later he purposely paraded her in front of me and my children, yet completely ignored us. I couldn’t fathom what I, much less innocent children, had done to deserve that.

    Even long before this absurd “new lover parade,” trying to have open, mature dialogue about the effects of his behavior, even in the most non-threatening way, resulted in projection, disconnection, or playing the victim.

    There they were: the mechanisms to cushion himself from the emotional pain associated with having to take responsibility for his behavior (that he most likely regretted or felt ashamed of already).

    The crazy-making boomerangs hurled at me made me realize the relationship would never grow into the beauty I had envisioned for myself, and if I stayed in, I would have to live with only erratically and unreliably receiving the things that were important to me: honesty, respect, commitment, kindness, empathy.

    And that’s when a giant light bulb shone on my anger. His mechanisms for achieving emotional “stability” occurred in direct conflict with some of my deepest core values.

    Anger is not a primary emotion; it is created to avoid core hurt feelings such as being disregarded, devalued, or rejected. And I felt all of those things every time my values were trampled.

    Anger isn’t a measurement of something negative in your life; it’s a signal to reaffirm your own boundaries and values. 

    With emotionally unhealthy people, we’re not talking about mild immaturity or self-centeredness—we’re talking full-scale inability and unwillingness to recognize responsibility for their actions. And almost anyone is subject to the pie-flinging.

    The slightest thing that he could translate into a question of his principles, responsibility, or regard for others resulted in anything from stonewalling to an aggressive verbal assault. I observed it wasn’t just me: it was his siblings, parents, the mother of his children—anyone he felt was “locked in” to him enough to have to swallow his behavior.

    When I could finally understand that his motivation wasn’t to devalue me—that his destructive decision-making processes existed long before I came along—the adage “Don’t take anything personally” finally, fully came to life for me.

    I was able to dissociate from the anger and focus on the more critical issue: regaining control of my life and all the wonderfulness of me. He was stuck in his own tornado, but I had a choice to live differently.

    There are still moments where a tiny part of me wonders “Why won’t he change?” Because the fact is, he could. We are all capable of extraordinary growth. He chooses the comfort of the known; though disappointed, I can now accept that the disregard, disrespect, and uncompassionate behavior I experienced weren’t a matter of my value or importance.

    I never thought it could be possible, but the love I feel now being alone with just my kids and my friends is more fulfilling and inspiring than having a partner I couldn’t trust to live by the values of basic human kindness when life gets challenging.

    Understanding allows me to hold a prayer for peace for him in my heart, while I live my own life of opportunity from a place of strength and joy.

    Peaceful man image via Shutterstock

  • The Keys to Finding Happiness After a Traumatic Childhood

    The Keys to Finding Happiness After a Traumatic Childhood

    Sad Child

    “It is never to late to have a happy childhood.” ~Tom Robbins

    A few days ago, when my older brother and I were sorting through old family photos, we found a picture of us from when we were about five and six years old. We were smiling. Just two kids full of life with no idea of what was to come.

    This was before the start of all the rage—before all the pain and an unfortunate series of events.

    My childhood was rough. I know some people may wish to return to those young innocent years of playing outside and going about our way without a worry in the world. However, if I had a choice to return to my childhood, I would hesitate at the gate.

    At the tender age of eleven, I was snatched from my home. I didn’t know why, all I knew was that my mother had done something bad and that my siblings and I had to be removed for our safety.

    When I was old enough to understand what had happened, I learned that my mother had gone to a mental institution to receive help and counseling for her anger.

    I used to think, “Well, everyone gets angry,” but this was different.

    Her words were a bit too harsh, her actions a bit too unpredictable, her impact a bit too negative. I remember sitting in the bathroom crying and wondering why I just couldn’t live a simple, happy life like the children in movies.

    Recovering from a traumatic childhood can be extremely difficult, especially when taking into consideration how valuable our childhoods are when preparing for adulthood. As of today, although my mother is generally in a more stable mindset, I can still hear the sound of her voice shouting threats I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

    When attempting to deal with a traumatic childhood, I feel the first solution that comes to mind is to forget it. However, trying to pretend that something did not happen doesn’t fix the negativity it has already enforced.

    When I first entered college, I saw it as an opportunity to get away from home and interact with others. With this in mind, I left my family home, but brought all the effects of my childhood with me.

    Throughout my high school years, I had become agoraphobic. I barely left my house and it pained me to attend school. When I entered college the same pattern persisted.

    I was scarred and I blamed my mother.

    She was the reason I was so negative, vain, and alone. I finally came to the conclusion that I no longer wanted to dwell on the past, allowing it to devour me inside out. So I eventually had to learn to let go, which proved more difficult than I first perceived.

    The first step to recovering from a childhood of physical, emotional, or mental abuse would be to attack it at the source. I mean standing head to head with what happened and not running away. We must accept that it happened and admit that it has affected us.

    When I attempted to dispose of my issue by running off to college, I forgot that it was still the reason behind my negative attitude. I would try so hard to disguise the fact that something was wrong and that I was unhappy.

    I thought it made me look weak and defeated. However, accepting that something is wrong takes even more strength than trying to pretend that everything is all right.

    It also allows you to take control of your life and put yourself on the path to healing.

    After determining that I was indeed affected by my mother’s explosive fits of rage, which led to other events throughout my childhood, I needed clarification as to why all of these things had occurred.

    I wanted to get to the bottom and dig up the roots of this issue in order to seek closure. So I sat and spoke with my mother, something I had never done. She explained to me that anger disorders had always been prominent in her family.

    She informed me of the time my grandmother killed a puppy trapped under her barn because the noise kept her up at night.

    She also told me how my grandfather went into explosive fits of rage after coming home from a night of drinking. At one point he even attempted to hit her with an axe. I then realized that my mother’s behavior did not come from her genuinely despising me, but was a direct reflection of what she’d experienced during her childhood.

    With this, I knew that I had to change because I did not want to continue to spread this lineage of anger.

    When we ask questions and gain clarification, we begin to achieve a sense of peace or relief that we finally have the answers and can learn to move on. When we choose to run away from our problems, we never get the clarification we need to move forward.

    Another important step on the journey to recovery is learning to define our happiness by ourselves. Quite often, we tend to dwell on the challenges of our childhood and blame them on one particular person, or blame them for our current unhappiness.

    Not to say that our traumatic childhoods had no effect of our adult lives, but rather the reason we are still unhappy is because we’ve chosen not to recognize these effects and properly address them so that we may move forward.

    If you choose to remain in a state of unhappiness due to the challenges faced during childhood, you will never be able to find peace.

    During my high school years, I would always blame my mother for my childhood experiences, and I concluded that my childhood experiences were the reason I could not be successful or accomplish the things I wanted to accomplish.

    I felt my childhood had made me a victim, and thought that was the reason behind my unhappiness and overall instability.

    What I came to understand was that I was still unhappy because of the fact that I viewed myself as a victim. I was still unhappy because I held on to my childhood. To me, it was a valid explanation for all the things I felt I could not do.

    I became a happier person when I began taking responsibility for my own happiness. I stopped blaming my mother for every horrible thing that had ever happened to me and I stopped blaming my childhood for my failure.

    One of the most common mistakes we make when referencing our traumatic childhoods is comparing them to others with “normal” childhood experiences. When we compare ourselves, we are taking away from the essence of who we are. Our childhoods, traumatic or not, are a part of who we are and what makes us, us.

    Take a look around and think of where you are now. You may have a beautiful family and the career you’ve always wanted. As for me, had I not had such a traumatic childhood I wouldn’t be able to write this post and help someone else by sharing my story.

    Think of all the good things that have come from your experience and you might just begin to be thankful you had it.

    One of the major lessons I’ve learned throughout my entire journey is that sometimes you just have to let go and trust that everything will turn out okay. Moving on from the past is stressful, especially when we feel as if we have an obligation to fix something that can no longer be fixed.

    We also tend to look to the past for answers to current situations. By doing this we are unintentionally taking away from present moment. Holding on to my traumatic childhood prevented me from moving forward with the rest of my life.

    It wasn’t my childhood preventing me from accomplishing things; it was my negative perception of myself. When I finally decided enough was enough, I began to look at things from a different angle.

    Maybe it wasn’t my fault or anyone’s fault for that matter—it doesn’t matter. What does matter is finding happiness once again and being content with what happened in my past without allowing it to become a burden.

    We sometimes get this clouded illusion of how life is supposed to be, but truth be told, you have to fight through some bad days, to earn the best days of your life.

    Sad child image via Shutterstock

  • How to Leave a Toxic Relationship When You’re Still in Love

    How to Leave a Toxic Relationship When You’re Still in Love

    “Sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” ~Marilyn Monroe

    Why does it have to hurt so badly?

    You’re so in love, but your relationship has become toxic. It simply can’t continue.

    Night after sleepless night, you lie awake replaying the fights in your head.

    You can’t understand why your partner won’t change or how they can simply ignore how you feel. You wonder if they ever truly loved you.

    You’ve tried everything to save your relationship, but nothing’s worked. You know it’s time to end it, yet the thought of being alone petrifies you.

    But still, the pain has become too unbearable. If you don’t end things now, you might completely lose yourself.

    Learning to Let Go

    Letting go of someone you care about is definitely a difficult thing to do.

    I was forced to accept that my relationship with my ex wasn’t meant to be.

    The lies and the cheating became too much to handle. And to make matters worse, he was also physically abusive to me.

    The blows were so unexpected. I never knew if the next argument would put me in the hospital, or maybe worse, be my last.

    I wanted him to stop hurting me. I wanted him to understand that his behavior tore me apart inside.

    I wanted him to change.

    It didn’t matter how much I loved him. It didn’t matter if I was the best woman or friend in the universe; nothing would have worked.

    Was he really worth all of this?

    No, he wasn’t. And I knew I needed to get him out of my life.

    If you’re stuck in a toxic relationship, know that you can find the strength to get yourself out of it and move on.

    Realize That You Deserve Better

    Sometimes, loving someone just isn’t enough if you aren’t receiving the same love in return.

    It’s like putting work into an old, broken-down car. No matter how much sweat and tears you put into it, it will never be the same again.

    The time you waste on the wrong person prevents the right person from coming your way.

    How can they come into your life if you already have that space filled?

    It took me a long time to realize this.

    If you had told me back then that I would have found a man who truly loved and respected me for who I was, I would have never believed you.

    I had to let go.

    Shortly after as I let go of my abusive relationship, I met my husband. He is the reason I believe in true love today.

    I am living proof that you can experience true love if you just believe that something much better is out there for you.

    You may not know who they are, or when they will come, but they are waiting on you to let go so that they can come into your life.

    Stop Waiting for Your Partner to Change

    This is the biggest mistake a person can make when deciding to stay in a relationship in which you’re being mistreated.

    You have to accept that the only person you control in this world is yourself.

    Unless the other person owns up to their mistakes, and shows the desire to get help, they probably won’t change.

    They may promise to change and turn things around for the better.

    They may even be genuine about their intentions at that moment.

    But more than likely, things will stay the same, especially if they made promises in the past that they didn’t fulfill.

    Change has to come from within; it can’t be forced. Only then do things have a chance of working themselves out.

    I thought my ex would change for me. I thought that if I tried hard enough to convince him how much he hurt me, he would have no choice but to change. But I was wrong.

    Sometimes our judgment is clouded. Sometimes we simply want to see the best in someone. Sometimes we’re just so afraid of being alone.

    Regardless of what we tell ourselves, some relationships are just irreparable.

    Accept That It Will Hurt

    There is no easy way of getting around it.

    It’s going to hurt. And it’s going to hurt a lot!

    You’re worried about missing the feeling of being desired and wanted, the intimate and close moments you shared.

    Instead of being just a part of your life, they have become your entire life. You have forgotten how to live for yourself.

    Getting over the initial discomfort of being alone is the hardest part. But once you get past that stage, life becomes a whole lot easier.

    The lessons you learn along the way will allow you to grow and become a better person.

    The pain will not last forever. Time is your best friend.

    When I ended my relationship with my ex, I tried everything I could to distract myself. I figured that if I didn’t think about it, the pain would eventually disappear.

    When that didn’t work, I tried to think of ways to mend our relationship rather than end it. I figured that accepting the disappointment in him was easier to handle than being lonely.

    That was another failed attempt at avoiding heartache.

    At some point, I knew I had to accept that it would never work out, and any route I took to end it wouldn’t be an easy one.

    If you work through the pain, instead of trying to avoid it, you limit the chances of your feelings coming back to haunt you later on.

    Use Crying As a Cure

    The best thing you can do for yourself is to release the pain. Don’t hold it in.

    Sometimes, we are expected to be strong when we’re dealing with tough situations.

    I’ve found that to be ineffective.

    The more I tried to hold in my pain and be strong, the worse I felt, and I eventually stressed myself out.

    So what did I do?

    I cried.

    I cried over and over again, and then I cried some more.

    Yup, you heard me right.

    I cried like a baby!

    I stopped pretending everything was okay. I allowed the tears to keep falling until I felt they couldn’t fall any longer. It lasted a few weeks, but I felt like a new person when it was over.

    The tight feeling in my chest was no longer there. I began to think clearer and notice that things weren’t truly as bad as I thought they were.

    I started smiling again. I started noticing the sun shining and the beautiful clouds in the sky. I was no longer in that dark place. I felt brand new.

    Instead of trying to be strong, crying can help with the healing process.

    Take Some Time Off

    Sometimes, it seems like the end of the world, even though it’s not.

    Your mind attempts to play tricks on you, making you believe that happiness isn’t possible any longer.

    But that isn’t true.

    Often, the best cure for pain is time.

    By resting your heart, mind and soul, you give yourself a chance to heal. This is also the best time to get to know you.

    Maybe there’s a hobby that you love or an activity you enjoy doing.

    For me, it was baking. Even though it didn’t completely take my mind off of things, it allowed me to spend time alone doing something I really enjoyed.

    And I appreciated that.

    Eventually, I began focusing more on myself, and less on my situation.

    It didn’t work immediately, but over time, it helped a lot.

    If you allow it, each day will become a little easier. Time heals.

    And even though my relationship didn’t work out as planned, I realized I could still enjoy my life.

    Happiness is Within Your Control

    Your life isn’t over. Taking back control begins with you.

    Everyone needs help at one time or another. You don’t have to go through this alone.

    If you’re in a toxic relationship, there are people that can help you. Seeking help from your loved ones, a professional or even a clergy member, can help you get back on your feet.

    I am living proof that you can get through this. You can overcome your situation.

    Just imagine finally being happy again and enjoying the things that you used to love. No more worrying about the future. You are finally content with the present.

    The load has been lifted off of your chest. The tears no longer fall.

    You finally realize you deserve better. It may seem unimaginable right now, but it’s definitely possible.

    If you make the choice today, you are one step closer to a happier tomorrow.

    You can do it. I believe in you. Now it’s time for you to believe in yourself.

    Make a declaration that today starts the healing process. From now on, you will work toward living the amazing life you deserve.

    **If you believe you are in a dangerous situation, please seek help. Don’t wait. Contact The National Domestic Violence Hotline for help. You can find additional free resources here.

    Clinging woman image via Shutterstock

  • Breaking the Pattern of Painful, Unhealthy Relationships

    Breaking the Pattern of Painful, Unhealthy Relationships

    Torn Paper

    “Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.” ~Byron Katie

    As I was listening to other women talking in my support group for battered women, I had a life changing moment.

    I caught a glimpse of myself and where I was at in life. It was a defining moment that turned around how I felt about myself and changed the cycle of my relationship with men.

    “I played a role in my abusive marriage; my ex-husband was treating me how I was treating myself.”

    His anger and how he showed it belonged to him; we are never responsible for someone else’s behavior and how they treat us, ever. However, we are responsible for how we treat ourselves and how we allow others to treat us. At the time, I didn’t really love myself.

    My confidence was non-existent. And I thought I deserved to be treated this way. I had a belief that life was meant to be suffered. I know, nuts!

    So, as I was sitting there in the support group, I realized how I had given my power away to someone else and that I had to take responsibility for neglecting myself.

    I didn’t put blame on myself to feel guilty. I owned up to my part in this whole situation. I looked in the mirror and got real honest so I could change this crazy pattern.

    If I had stayed in the victim role, I would have continually attracted the same kind of guy, who in reality would just be reflecting back what I felt about myself.

    Not at all what I wanted anymore, that was clear.

    It was time to break the pattern, and break the pattern I did.

    I started to really take care of my needs.

    I gave myself the love that I was looking for, the attention I was craving, and permission to feel happy and have an awesome life.

    It didn’t happen overnight, and it’s been quite the journey, but it amazes me that since I’ve raised the bar, the people that show up in my life are on a much higher level.

    It’s a situation no one should be in. The first step is getting out and getting help. And know the cycle can be broken.

    Breaking The Pattern of Unhealthy Relationships

    1. Practice self-love.

    I can’t say this enough. At the time the concept of self-love was foreign to me. Louise Hay’s book You Can Heal Your Life awakened me.

    I was looking for love in outside places, wanting others to validate that yes, I could be loved. When I started giving myself what I was craving, I gained more confidence, got clearer on what I wanted, and started treating myself with respect.

    Pay attention to your internal dialogue about yourself. Look at yourself in the mirror every day and say “I love you.” Believe it. Really embody how you want to feel right now.

    2. Change your mindset.

    There’s no going around it, what you think will become your reality.

    We all picked up beliefs from well-intentioned people around us while growing up, and they form most of our internal dialogue. Some of these beliefs might serve us, but some might be quite detrimental.

    Take an inventory of the top negative beliefs that you have on repeat in your mind. Then re-write these beliefs in a positive way and create a plan to act on them.

    This is about more than just saying affirmations; it’s about being consistent, setting your intention, and taking action.

    Example: Old belief: I’m not good enough, and I can’t be happy.

    New belief: I am good enough, and happiness is my birthright.

    After flipping your negative belief, say the new belief with emotion, and write it down and display it in places where you’ll see it regularly.

    Next, visualize what being good enough means to you. How does it make you feel? Have a clear image.

    Lastly, take action. How does a person who is good enough act? Act as that person now, and aim to do this consistently.

    3. Look for the lesson in everything so that you can heal and move on.

    We’ve all had experiences where the same thing keeps happening over and over with different people and situations. That’s a message that something needs to be done on our part.

    Once the lesson is learned we can break the pattern.

    4. Know what you want.

    In a nutshell, don’t settle—period! What is it you want? What qualities are you looking for? How do you want to be treated? Want to know what the trick is to actually get it? Be all of those things. Others are mirrors to us.

    5. Own it.

    The best way to make any change is to take responsibility for where your life is right now, owning it so you can improve it on your terms. When we do this, we go from waiting for change to happen to starting with ourselves, because that’s where any real change can ever take place.

    We’re back in the driver’s seat, creating our life, versus reacting to life situations.

    6. Receive.

    I did attract lots of nice guys too, but I would break up with them or find them too boring. Now I see I wasn’t comfortable with someone treating me kindly and with respect. I wasn’t in the right state of mind to receive this kind of love because I couldn’t give it to myself.

    Once you start giving it to yourself, you too will be able to receive it.

    The most important relationship we’ll ever have is the one with ourselves. Making this a priority doesn’t take anything away but just adds more happiness and confidence to our lives.

    Torn paper image via Shutterstock

  • We Are Victors, Not Victims

    We Are Victors, Not Victims

    Victor

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of assault and may be triggering to some people. 

    “You are not a victim. No matter what you have been through, you’re still here. You may have been challenged, hurt, betrayed, beaten, and discouraged, but nothing has defeated you. You are still here! You have been delayed but not denied. You are not a victim, you are a victor. You have a history of victory.” ~Steve Maraboli

    I was about twenty years old. It was a beautiful summer day, and I decided to walk to my parents’ house.

    I usually called them first to let them know I’d be coming, but that day I wanted it to be a surprise. It was a twenty-minute walk there, and I had two bridges to cross, then a small trail close to the woods to walk through and I’d be there.

    I started feeling followed crossing the second bridge, but hey, anyone can take a walk on such a beautiful day, right? So, I continued on and entered the path close to the woods. I was almost there!

    When trees were hiding us from all the passing cars on the road, I felt that the boy following me was getting closer and closer.

    Suddenly, as a cat hunting a mouse, he jumped on me from behind and tackled me to the ground. He started kissing and groping me, and I tried to fight him and fidget my way out to no avail. He was much stronger than I was, even if he looked a bit younger than me.

    I didn’t scream at all; I was subdued! I started to talk to him, plead with him to stop doing this to me. I lied and told him that my parents were waiting for me and would be worried if I didn’t show up soon, and they’d come find me. No reaction.

    He kept abusing me and trying to take my clothes off while pinning me down. He didn’t speak a word. He never looked me in the eye.

    Then, I thought I could talk him out of it by using the psychology I’d learned in college. I started telling him that he must be a good person inside, and that he would feel ashamed if he continued like this.

    I told him that there was no reason to do this since he could certainly have the “real” thing with a consenting woman, and it would be so much more pleasurable than this ugly one-sided aggression.

    Well, I’m not sure what worked. Was it the psychology stunt I pulled or did he just get bored of this stupid young woman who just wouldn’t shut up? He just got up, left me lying there dazed and confused, and ran off never to be seen again.

    I picked myself up, tried to get the dirt off me as much as possible, and walked shakily to my parents’ house.

    Google defines a victim as a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action. Obviously, the casualties are the only victims that do not have to learn to live with the aftermath of the traumatic event. The others, however, are marked either physically or psychologically by what happened to them.

    The six o’clock news is filled with stories of tragedies, big and small. These can take on so many different forms, but the end result is always the same: victims. They can be victims of Mother Nature’s wrath, victims of a horrific crime or injustice, or victims of some kind of accident.

    So many people feel stuck in their lives after having lived through a traumatic experience. They are paralyzed for months, years, and even decades by the shock, hurt, and fear associated with what they’ve endured.

    Some people have to live with physical reminders of this tragic event, and others have psychological repercussions that limit their ability to live a normal life.

    After my aggression, I felt soiled, tainted. I remember taking shower after shower trying to get my aggressor’s smell off of me. But even when I was sure I was clean of any traces of him, my brain was stuck in the event.

    How can one evolve from being a victim to being a survivor? Doesn’t the term “survivor” give more hope in tomorrow than “victim”? Seems to me that “victim” suggests ongoing pain and suffering, whereas “survivor” is someone who was able to leave the pain and suffering behind him and start living again.

    “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.” ~Carl Jung

    So the first step is to acknowledge that yes, you were a victim, but who you are and what happened to you are two very different things. You have to learn to establish a separation between the two if you ever wish to distance yourself from the victim you once were.

    I was able to graduate from victim to survivor when I acknowledged that I had been violated—that I had been a victim. I had to work through the guilt of thinking I must have done something to deserve this. I kept re-living the scene over and over again in my mind, wondering where I went wrong and how I could have reacted differently.

    I also felt guilty about the way I had resolved the situation. Why hadn’t I screamed, hit him, hurt him? The very questions that the policemen asked me when I reported the aggression.

    Now I realize that the way I handled the situation (although it didn’t please the policemen) was my way of resolving this. I shouldn’t feel guilty since, in the end, it worked. When policemen are placed in difficult situations, they get to choose how they react. I had to do the same.

    The next step is forgiveness—forgiving the person who hurt you or accepting the fact that nature acts up sometimes and people get stuck in the middle of it. In some instances, people just have to accept that accidents happen; there isn’t always someone to blame or lash out at.

    “Forgiving someone doesn’t mean condoning their behavior. It doesn’t mean forgetting how they hurt you or giving that person room to hurt you again. Forgiving someone means making peace with what happened. It means acknowledging your wound, giving yourself permission to feel the pain, and recognizing why that pain no longer serves you. It means letting go of the hurt and resentment so that you can heal and move on.” ~Daniell Koepke

    Obviously, this is easier said than done.

    In my case, forgiving my aggressor was easier than letting go of my feelings of guilt. Even during the aggression, I felt that this boy was not well. It was clear to me that he was acting this way because he felt alone and unloved.

    He decided that he was going to fill his need for contact and love even if it was in an inappropriate way; his need was just too strong. I’m not saying he was right to do what he did; I’m just saying that I understand and can forgive him.

    But forgiving doesn’t mean forgetting. I believe that surviving a traumatic event changes you forever. You will not react to life the same way that you would have reacted before having lived through this.

    I am more careful now of where I walk when I’m alone, and much less relaxed when being followed by someone.

    Sometimes a situation can trigger me and transport me right back to that very moment to relive the whole thing yet again. Usually this happens when someone playfully restrains me with his hands to tickle me, touch me, or kiss me.

    I will never be the naive and carefree girl that I was before my attack. I have my scars. They are not physical but psychological, yet they are very real.

    However, I have learned not to let this event define me. I have decided that this is but one event among so many others (good and bad) that have helped shape me into the woman that I am today. I am now a “victor.” I have won!

    I can live, I can smile, I can laugh. I can walk, I can run, I can soar. I am stronger than whatever happens to me. And so are you.

    Free woman silhouette via Shutterstock

  • Forgiving Abusive Parents and Setting Ourselves Free

    Forgiving Abusive Parents and Setting Ourselves Free

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of physical abuse and may be triggering to some people. 

    “Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.” ~Marianne Williamson

    Growing up in the seventies and eighties with Italian immigrant parents definitely had its challenges. In a family of four girls, I was number three. That in itself was tough enough. Never as good as the first-born and not as loved and protected as the baby. Yes, it was challenging.

    On the outside, one would think that we were a picture perfect family. Our lives were as normal as normal could be.

    Both parents worked. We had a beautiful house in a nice, quiet neighborhood. We all went to good Catholic schools. Had fun family vacations in the summer. Our parents entertained a lot, so there was always a bustling of activity at the house. Picture perfect, indeed.

    Unfortunately, Mom and Dad lacked parenting skills. Sure, they provided food, shelter, and the necessities of life. Compassion, encouragement, and love? Not so much.

    Behind Closed Doors

    My mom was cold and mean to Dad, and often to us. My dad was cold and mean only to daughter number two and me. I never liked my dad. He didn’t get us. He was always angry with us. I’m pretty sure he didn’t even like me.

    And so began the misery.

    The beatings started when I was ten and continued until I finally fled at eighteen years old.

    I ran away several times throughout that period, always returning simply because, as bad as the beatings were, I had a nice roof over my head, food in the fridge and great meals, a nice bedroom, nice clothes, and all kinds of other luxuries.

    So in exchange for all these lovely things, I took the abuse.

    I never knew when I was going to get beaten either, which was the worst part for me. It wasn’t always like I knew I did something wrong, though I’ll admit, I wasn’t an angel.

    More often than not though, it was more like, if sister number two did something wrong and she wasn’t around to get beaten, they took it out on me. I was always on my toes. I never knew.

    There were many nights I would be in bed sleeping. Dad would come home late from work, bust through my bedroom door, tear off the blankets, and whip me til he thought I had learned my lesson. The problem was, I rarely knew which lesson I was supposed to have learned.

    I can recall one incident when my parents had company over for dinner, a lovely elderly couple, a minister and his wife. I loved them so much. They were the sweetest people you could ever meet.

    I came home from a friend’s house, Mom and Dad and John and Sally (not their real names) were sitting in the living room having coffee. I came running in, so very happy to see them, and Dad had that look on his face.

    I froze. Omg, you’re kidding me, right? He’s seriously not going to do this right here, right now, in front of these people, is he? Yup. He sure is. And he whipped me right there. He had an audience and no one stopped him. They just sat and watched. And once again, I had no idea what I had done.

    I hated my father and lived in fear of him throughout my teen years.  Constant fear of never knowing when the next beating was going to be.

    Forgive and Forget?

    As I grew older, I tried to have more of an appreciation for him, but failed.

    I tried to gain his respect and love as I grew into a beautiful, somewhat successful woman. That didn’t work much either. I gave him a grandson that carried the family name. That seemed to work a little. He respected me a little more then and actually even supported me more. Finally something.

    I spent most of my adult years trying to forgive him, like him, maybe even love him a little. The forgiving finally came. Liking and loving, not so much.

    It was clear in my thirties, forties, and into my fifties that I simply did not like my father. Not one bit. Because of that, I lived daily with this monkey on my back. This thorn in my side. Guilt in my soul.

    It ate away at me constantly. Why can’t I just let this go? Who knew that forgetting wasn’t going to be as easy as forgiving? I always thought that once you forgave something, you just naturally forgot about it. Nope. It was clear to me it just didn’t work like that. Not for me anyway.

    Step Up to The Plate

    Years later, Alzheimer’s had struck Mom and it was time to place her in a nursing home. Dad was eighty-four and home alone. This meant only one thing to me. It was my turn to look after dad.

    Daughter number one and I had a schedule worked out. She was retired; I worked full time, so my *duty days* with dad were limited to two to three days a week. That’s not so bad, right? Wrong! It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, and I cringed every single time I pulled into the driveway.

    My job was to sit and have dinner with him and keep him company for an hour or two. I had nothing to say to him, ever. I could barely even look at him. I had no patience for him, and the only thing I felt was pity.

    He was a pitiful old man, sitting alone in a house waiting for people to come visit him, and all I could think was, “Good for you! You deserve this, you miserable old man.”

    I know, shame on me.

    Two years later, we finally placed him in a nursing home. My visits were few and far between. I was overcome with guilt. I should be visiting him more often, right? He’s coming into his last years now and all he wants is love and company.

    I just couldn’t do it. There was nothing left in me.

    I went about once a month, maybe every two months. Still cringing. My only thought was “Geezus, when is this old man going to die?”

    Pretty sad, eh? Here was the man that gave me shelter, food, clothes, money when I was broke, took me on nice family vacations every summer, and all I wanted was for him to get out of my life.

    Fake It Till You Make It

    I struggled with these emotions for a long time. How is it that I, Iva, the sunshine happy girl that sprinkles pixie love dust everywhere, could possibly be having and thinking these horrible thoughts?

    It took some time but I finally learned to rewire my brain. Think new thoughts. “Fake it til you make it if you have to” I kept telling myself.

    I realized it wasn’t going to kill me to show him some love. Some compassion. Show him something for goodness sake, Iva! So I did.

    I hugged him when I went to visit him and said, “I love you daddy” when I left. Maybe it was a lie, but he didn’t know that. That’s all he needed to hear. Someone to tell him they loved him. In his last lonely moments of his life, dad just needed love. And I gave it to him.

    I dug deep down as far as I could and gave him the love he longed for all his life. It meant little to me but everything to him. That’s all that mattered.

    Understand and Set Yourself Free

    When Dad died at eighty-eight years old, I cried tears of relief and closure. But it wasn’t his death that set me free—it was the choice to forgive and treat him with more kindness than he offered me. I knew then the pain hadn’t scarred me for life; I had taken that pain and turned it into strength and wisdom.

    I forgave him because I could finally see he raised me the only way he knew how. That’s all he knew—it was how he was raised—and I felt sad for him.

    Did it make it okay? No. Understanding doesn’t mean we condone it when someone hurts us. It means we understand. And understanding and compassion are the keys to forgiveness.

  • How to Heal from Buried Pain: You Must Go Through It

    How to Heal from Buried Pain: You Must Go Through It

    “Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” ~Robert Frost

    When I was a child my friends and I often played a game called “Going on a Bear Hunt.” Each of the verses told of a different challenge, but offered the same advice—that you must go through it. One of the verses went like this:

    “We’re goin’ on a bear hunt. We’re going to catch a big one. I’m not scared. What a beautiful day! Uh-uh! A cave! A narrow gloomy cave. We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. We’ve got to go through it!”

    I had forgotten the concept of this game that we played as kids until much later in life, when I developed stress, anxiety, and depression due to Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD).

    My C-PTSD resulted from a youth of constant bullying—which is now seen as a form of child abuse—and this song came back to me in my lessons to recover.

    By the time my anxiety and depression took full hold of me, I had spent five years trying to help others suffering with the long-term effects of bullying, but I had not yet confronted my own demons.

    It was much like the concept of “physician, heal thyself”—I was helping others without helping myself first.

    I found myself in a constant state of anxiety, and then depression set in. I could no longer sleep, focus, or even find a moment of enjoyment in life. For me, it might have been over.

    But I made an important decision that so many don’t make: While I felt completely alone and lost, thinking I was crazy, I contacted trusted mentors. They led me to mental health specialists who knew how to put me on the path to recovery.

    It was not quick, as it would take two years to feel “back to normal,” or at least was the new normal for me.

    In my sessions with mental health specialists and in the many books I read about the issues I was having, there was one common theme: In order to get better, you have to face and go through your problems, not avoid them, as many people who have suffered from child abuse do.

    We all believe that we can bury or forget these things that happened to us as children, but in truth they are always with us. We must find a way to accept that which we cannot change and move forward without the past haunting us forever.

    I found that to begin the healing process, you have to first let go of the pain of the past. You cannot heal without this crucial first step. Here’s what helped me “go through it” so I could let go and heal.

    Remember and face what you’d prefer to avoid.

    You can’t go over your problem, you can’t go around your problem; you will need to go through it. This means that you will have to face and in many cases relive the issues that you have suppressed for so long.

    For me, it was having to deal with the low self-esteem I had developed from my C-PTSD and relive all of these events again. Yes, it was painful, but far less painful than a lifetime of burying my feelings would be.

    Talk to someone you trust.

    I went the professional route, and I found “talk therapy” to be the most helpful part of my healing process. At first it hurt terribly to dredge up these stories, and I would cry as I relived the hurt. But after a while of telling it, it became just a story.

    You might also find it helpful to see a psychologist or therapist, or it might be sufficient to lean on a friend or relevant. The important thing is that you share all the details you’ve buried inside so you’re no longer hiding them in shame.

    Focus on the good in the bad.

    I learned that, while people can be cruel, others can be loving and supportive—like my family and true friends. As I’ve opened up to them, they’ve shown me sympathy and empathy. I wouldn’t have chosen to be bullied, but I appreciate that the difficult times in life allow us to see how much others care.

    It is easy to forget the good parts of your life when you are going through a difficult time. Remember that there is both good and bad in your story, and you too may feel differently about the pain you’ve endured.

    Find a lesson in your pain.

    It helped me to find a lesson in this painful period in my life—something that I could use to help myself and others going forward.

    I learned that many people hurt others when they’re hurting. They’re dealing with their own pain and they take it out on others through displaced aggression.

    Understanding this can help me be compassionate to others, so I can be there for the people who are hurting as my loved ones have been there for me.

    Remember that life is not one journey, but many journeys.

    Previously, I saw my life as one big journey with a beginning (birth), middle (mid-life), and end (death). But then I changed my thinking to see my life as many little journeys.

    By doing this and allowing this one period of time to be just one journey that had a conclusion, I was able to let it go and put it behind me.

    I found as I wrote out each of my mini-journeys that I had so many good ones, but each had an ending. It’s like the saying “this too shall pass.” You’ll note that it neither says that what will pass is good or bad, just that it will pass.

    —

    So this was the beginning of my hunt for me again. With the above in mind, I was able to take the next steps in recovery, to truly work toward self-acceptance.

    I know many people that don’t confront their past and continue to try to go around or over their problems. They cannot, and they end up frustrated with the world and those around them. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

    My wife gave me a quote in a frame to keep at my desk at work. It shares a simple thought:

    “Yesterday is history. Tomorrow a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why they call it the present.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

    I go to bed now thankful for the day I had and wake up thankful for the day ahead. Each day I go on a bear hunt and each daily challenge I deal with, I go through it, grateful for the opportunity to try another day.

  • Healing from Abuse and Feeling Happy and Whole Again

    Healing from Abuse and Feeling Happy and Whole Again

    Woman Standing in the Sun

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

    “Scars tell us where we’ve been. They don’t have to dictate where we’re going.” ~David Rossi, Criminal Minds

    When I was in my mid-fifties, I ordered cable television for the first time in my life.

    My husband and I had raised our two sons mostly without TV, but now they were grown and on their own. My husband and I were divorced, and I had moved to a secluded place on the high desert to pursue a writing career.

    My Internet service offered a cable option, so I figured what the hell.

    Reviving the Past Through Television

    One evening, while clicking through the dizzying number of channels, I landed on the series Criminal Minds. Before I knew it, I was hooked.

    For several months, I became consumed with this fictional team of FBI profilers as they tracked down murderers and rapists, probing the very darkest corners of the human mind.

    Sometimes I broke down sobbing. Other times I felt consumed with rage. Usually, these episodes included a young boy or girl who had been raped, molested, or brutalized at the hands of someone, often someone they knew and trusted.

    These weren’t exactly buried memories coming to the surface. My paternal grandfather raped and molested me from an age so young I can’t remember not being abused.

    I was one of the lucky ones though. My grandfather dropped dead of a heart attack when I was seven years old.

    What I didn’t realize even after years of therapy and journaling is how profoundly that early experience affected my life.

    I had taken writing workshops for women survivors of sexual abuse and had been in and out of therapy. For the most part, though, I pushed it to the back of my mind and didn’t talk about it, determined to not let my past define who I became.

    At times I even became scornful of adult survivors of childhood abuse. When do you just become an adult and not a victim? I would respond. When do you move on?

    Like I had.

    And, yet, I kept people at a distance. I had severe night terrors. Some years they were more frequent than others.

    My husband and I had loud, angry arguments. Once I hurled a jar of salsa at his pickup truck. I was barely able to suppress a rage that seemed to simmer just below the surface.

    But I was also practically incapable of standing up for myself and frequently felt overwhelmed and stressed out by life. This wasn’t the way I wanted to live. I was on a quest to find happiness and joy, but at the time it seemed like some highly unattainable goal.

    Taking Steps Through Conscious Choices

    However, I did consciously work on my issues. Then, when I was forty-five, I moved to China to teach English, and in a small Taoist temple next to the Nandu River on Hainan Island I began to meditate.

    Slowly, my inner self began to change. And in response, so did my outer world.

    My husband and I parted ways, and I built a successful freelance writing career. I met a widower and decided to give love another chance. One day I realized I was truly enjoying the journey and was no longer grasping at some elusive sense of happiness. I was happy.

    Then I ordered cable.

    Healing Through Memory

    Every day as I watched rerun after rerun of Criminal Minds, clear, vivid images began to surface. Strange as it sounds, I believe meditation prepared me to take a lesson from that TV show.

    I could no longer diminish what had happened. Sometimes the fragments were so clear I could see the shoes and socks I was wearing as I followed my grandfather, like a sheep to the slaughter, out to the shed behind the farmhouse in Ohio.

    I saw my grandmother watching from the kitchen window and realized she knew exactly what was going on, yet did nothing to protect me.

    And I remembered inside the shed. The horseshoe—for good luck—nailed over the door. The windows looked so high, but I loved the way the light poured in through the glass and how the dust motes floated in the air. I felt like I was one of them, light and free, high above my body, circling in the clear, clean sunlight.

    At times it felt like scenes that had happened fifty years ago had taken place yesterday.

    But I also felt a sense of peace in owning it. I had always remembered my abuse like I was watching a movie. Distant and far away.

    Now I felt it in my body. My cells remembered the fear and revulsion.

    Criminal Minds also helped me put words besides “grandpa” and “maybe not that bad” to what had happened. Now I could finally name it for what it really was.

    Grandpa became rapist. Pedophile. He became a man who should have been locked up for what he did to me and no doubt to many other girls during his lifetime. I may have been his last victim, but I’m sure I wasn’t his first.

    And Criminal Minds finally brought home to me what my own parents had never been able to give me: as a girl child, I should have been worth protecting.

    If I had been a boy I should have been worth protecting as well because both boys and girls can be victims of molest, and both men and women can be perpetrators.

    Gender, class, race, religion, or economics mean nothing when it comes to the levels of cruelty humans are able to inflict on one another.

    Fortunately, the same can also be said for kindness.

    The Path to Wholeness

    You too were worth protecting, and you too have the power to heal. It’s a lifetime journey, but it’s worth it.

    These are some of the things that have helped me over the years. May they help you too.

    Learn to trust appropriately.

    If you’ve been abused or molested, and particularly if it happened at a young age, trust will not come naturally to you. Chances are you have poor boundaries and may open up to the wrong people while pushing away those who can help.

    There’s no pat answer on how to develop trust, but do look for help among those who have experience with abuse.

    My healing began on the floor of a living room in Santa Cruz, California with ten other women pouring our experiences into journals and then reading them aloud to each other.

    Most important of all, trust yourself, your intuition, and your memories.

    Take care of your body.

    For most victims of assault, our bodies have become our enemies. Desires that should be normal and beautiful have been twisted into something sick and ugly, and often we blame ourselves.

    Many victims of rape and molestation develop eating disorders. Maybe you use weight as a barrier against the world, or maybe you’re anorexic as a way to feel some control over your life.

    If you practice good nutrition and exercise even if you don’t really believe you deserve it, you’ll become stronger and eventually your mind will catch up and accept that you are very much worth taking care of.

    Honor your many “I’s.”

    Disassociation is a common defense mechanism for children who are being abused. We go somewhere else.

    I became a dust fairy dancing in the sunlight. Maybe you retreated into fantasy or simply blanked out.

    If your memories of the event are sketchy, this may be why. The downside of disassociation is we feel fragmented, but the truth is, it may have saved your life. With help you can bring those disassociated selves together into one stunningly creative individual.

    Be proud of the courage and imagination it took you to survive.

    The journey toward wholeness is an exciting and gratifying path to follow. Finding a calm center to move out from will keep you safe as you travel through your past traumas.

    Woman standing in the sun image via Shutterstock