Healing.

A lot of my posts here have had a theme of healing. So I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise to me that someone just reached out to ask if I have a health issue, which underscores how I’ve been somewhat criptic in my writing. While I’m not going to go into all the details, I do want to talk a little about what has lead me to this point in my life where my focus truly is on healing and growth.

If I look back at all the years of my life one element that has been there from virtually the beginning is abuse, first from a trusted member of the family. When you are a little girl (or boy) and this happens it changes your life forever. Let me say this about child abuse, it is one of the most insidious acts – and I believe evil – a person can inflict upon another human being. A child has limited perspective and life experience, little ability to gauge improper behavior and treatment from those they’ve been conditioned to trust in a way that would allow them to defend themselves and access help. This voice has not yet been developed. The person inflicting the abuse is fully aware of this, using the child’s innocence to manipulate the situation to their advantage.

I remember the evening after my first episode of abuse, I was at a table with my cousins and brother, celebrating his birthday at my grandparents house. I was physically there but completely isolated, removed from those around me I loved, absent having retreated into my own world. Stuck in my head and hurting heart, terrified, I looked out with the deepest longing for something – but I didn’t know what. The what I couldn’t access was the ability to speak truth, because I didn’t know what it was. The idea that I could reach out to my beloved grandmother – who was the center of my world – to share what had happened to receive love, comfort and protection was a concept completely missing from my wheelhouse of knowledge. She and her support might as well have been a million miles away, that is how impossible it would have been for me to tell her what had happenedto be able access her help. I didn’t even really know I needed help. I didn’t know the rights and wrongs of what had happened earlier. Yet there I sat in deep shame, sadness and isolation.

The thing with abuse early on, it changes you. Period. How you see yourself, what you believe you are worth and what you deserve. And everything follows from there, most often leading to abuse after abuse as we don’t know how to make choices for ourselves that will lead us away from the very type of person who will not value and respect us in the way we deserve and deeply need.

That has been my path, and it’s left a long list of wounds that I’ve finally begun to address over the last two years. If you can relate to any of the above, if you have experienced any abuse in your life, please hear from me that you didn’t deserve any of it. And it’s left its mark. You deserve help and healing. And a better today and tomorrow. Find your voice, now as an adult, and get all the help you need to heal.

You deserve it. We all deserve healing. ❤️