Basking in the Triumphs and Frustrations of a Disability
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Poetry for Finding Meaning in the Madness
I am still searching for my own identity. I was never touched sexually by either parent, just left to fend for myself. With predictable results, which I am slowly fixing, survival needs first, and now the more delicate thing -with no family of origin, who am I? How do I figure that out?
Any suggestions most welcome, Ma’am.
In Solidarity with All Kind People,
Peace via Cooperation and Non-Cooperation,
ShiraDest
26 November,
12015 HE
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It kind of feels like you do have a family of origin, which you and they somehow reject. Believe me, even if you have a family of origin, they cannot provide your identity. You are a separate entity like the rest of us. And it looks like you have come a long way in creating a loving identity for yourself. What is that saying about being a child of the Universe?
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Apologies for my blog ignorance. I missed your reply 4 years ago, and it’s taken that long to discover where things go. I was fortunate in having connections with great therapists via graduate school connections, but I’ve done a lot of nitty gritty work on myself via journaling. I get to know myself by tapping my unconscious via metaphors, dreams, fantasies, journal Gestalts, collages, poetry, reflecting on how I affect others, unsent letters, trying to acknowledge my Shadow part, and working on forgiving myself. I admire others who spend much of their time working in food lines for the poor and homeless, and I know in a way that “working on myself” is selfish, but I am simply in a different place and working on myself is where I’m at. Most unfortunately my mind often focusses on things I’ve done or not done that negatiively impacted others, and I often still say to myself “I’m sorry.” I’m not recommending this part, just revealing that I don’t yet “have it together.”
Most of my transgressions as an adult are aided by a small bit of dissociation, so I let myself be unaware of what I’m doing or not doing until it comes into my awareness MUCH later. and then I cannot undo it. I can get along with very difficult people without becoming upset. One of my weaknesses is not forgiving people who have insulted me, and I am even loathe to work on that! There are not many of those, happily. I also have a continuing life-long problem with non-assertiveness. I can’t bear to hurt anyone’s feelings. I know you didn’t ask for all of this, but just focus on the first part of suggestions. I hope this can still connect to you.
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related post on therapists and session limits (managed health care) today…
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Hi Nan. I remember my father’s memorial service very clearly, five years ago. How I cared for him how I hated him. A duality one learns to live with, without it tearing one apart.
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At the very very end of my FALLOUT book I wrote something that surprised me: “Here I am, waiting for the final proof of my book to be completed and my process hasn’t stopped but continues. This is going to sound crazier to the reader than anything to date, but is bringing me a sense of peace. I realized that I can’t just leave my father all alone and unhappy in his small shabby room while I blithely publish my first book without the dedication I promised him. And yet it can’t be the dedication he had envisioned. In my mind’s eye I had to do something to definitively deal with him, so to go on with my life I am putting him in a homey room with his mother, his tennis loving cup, his bridge-playing partners from long ago, a tuned piano, a good cup of coffee and even his Camel cigarettes. He no longerf has sinus troub le or Tourette’s, and he is not drinking alcohol or lusting. He is as content as it is possible for him to be. In my mind’s eye he is crackiung a joke and feeling relaxed and valued. And his untapped writing talent has been unleashed. His old typewriter has many finishedf pages beside it, and he is in touch with the good man inside him which had been buried under childhood hurts. And now, knowing he is in a good place (although imaginary) , in the sacred unfolding of , I can truly let him be. I have backtgracked and dedicate this book to him, in good faith and love. Nothing in the book proper foretells this, so I have written from a different, concomitant truth. (See dedication, below).
DEDICATION
“This book is dedicated to my father Alton Ellison B. (On page 434)
Yes, ambivalence may always be there.
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Wow.
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On the basis of limited information, and given the evidence that your intellectual genes are superior, there must be more to your story of abandonment than anyone knows.
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Even that I know or am willing to acknowledge. I’ve been having a horrendous few weeks.
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I’ve been thinking about this ever since. I think this sense of abandonment is really old although I grew up in a large family, I’ve never felt part of it as such. When I got older I did everything to leave them and never managed! Even today am still attached, albeit at some distance.
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So sorry you’ve been having a painful time. It sounds like your family was/is toxic and maybe if you process them that way you can escape. Always escape from guilt-tripping.! Do you have a support team of friends? Groups are so therapeutic for me. I’ve formed several “consciousness raising groups” in my lifetime, but they were really just support groups. For other reasons my son “disowned” me via e-mail and that’s always a possibility. When as adultsa we are around older family members it’s very common for the relationship to “slip back” to earlier patterns. You have a support group on the blog, but a face to face group can be even more rewarding.
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A face to face group at present is out of the question. I live remote and don’t get on with people easily. I tried connecting with a psycho therapist close by whom I got to know through voluntary work at an orphanage. There was a major incident and I raised hell and she was instrumental in sorting it out in the long run but she’s now obviously unwilling to take me on as a client. It’s true about slipping into set patterns and it is difficult to break. I’ll see what I can do.
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To read this is so painful. So much is wasted in life. So many lives.. it seems like an endless decease that goes through humanity. To hear that you deal with sex offenders is to me the best of things… if just it could end and not be passed through sons and daughters.
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Amen.
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Hello!!!, many of them are good reads, cool!!, A fellow blogger
Chingz123.wordpress.com
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Hi, thanks for the visit, good words and encouragement.
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I appreciate your encouragement. I can use it just now!
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My father only attempted to sexually molest me, when I was 13 years old. He reached down inside the front of my dress and groped my bare breast, and I fought him off. And yet that, alone, was enough to destroy me.
I was once asked by another incest survivor, how did I know that I had the right to say NO to my own father? Because most children do not know they have that right. And 13 is still very much a child.
Here is the difference between me and most 13 year olds: when I was 12 years old, my dad was arrested for trying to murder my mother. From jail, he was taken to a hospital when his type 1 diabetes got severely out of control. After the doctor stabilized his blood sugar, my dad was moved to the psychiatric ward. He spent several months on the psych ward.
So — by the time my dad tried to molest me when I was 13, he had already lost all of his standing as a father in my eyes, and I knew that I did not have to blindly obey him. If he had never been in a psych ward, if he had never been arrested, and if he hadn’t come so close to actually murdering my mother that I had believed, that horrible night, that my mother was dead — and if my dad were still the pastor of the church my family attended from the time I was 6 until I was 12 — then my father would have still seemed like God in my eyes, and I am sure that I would have done whatever he wanted me to do.
But… even though my dad was thoroughly and permanently discredited in my eyes when I was 12 years old, and even though I fought him off when he tried to sexually abuse me — what my father tried to do to me, was painful enough that it destroyed much of my life.
Today, I am glad that he is dead. My dad died 30 years ago. I never allowed myself to think this before, let alone write it. But it is true. On this Father’s Day, I am glad my father is dead.
After his failed attempt to molest me, he sexually abused my younger sister, many times, after she and her twin went to live with our dad and stepmother, when they were adolescents. But I did not know this until much later.
Yes, I am glad he is dead.
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I’m going o try and reblog this on my Incest page. I’m not too familiar about working with pages, but we’ll see. Thanks.
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Thanks so much for your honest sharing. How damaging incest is!
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