Life after Court

I was wondering if any of you have had to charge you father with incest, and what life was like for you after court? I charged my father along with 3 other victims and life for me has never been the same. I believed my family loved me even though I was adopted, but after charging my father, everything changed.  I was no longer welcome or invited to family functions .I miss them, and at times it is so very difficult to be alone, without family or even the memories I thought I had.

I have built a family of people I love and who love me back. Today my passion in life is to assist others who are going through situations like ours. If I can short circuit the destruction phase of of young people through sharing my life, then my journey to wholeness will have been a great success.  My greatest desire as a young teen was that someone, just one person from my church would of been there for me as a confidante or friend. Maybe I would not of spent 25+ years as a drug addicted alcoholic. I believe it was my duty to speak out and although at times the pain of rejection attacks me I know today that I have done the right thing. Today I am able to be that hand and friend I so badly needed for others. God is good to me.

I have found some peace around it through my relationship with God. I understand now that it is not about me, it is not what I have done that alienates my family but what or father did. Some people just are not ready to face the truth, and my family are some of them. I miss them and the memories of the family I thought I had very very much, and if I think about it it hurts very much. Today I think about myself a lot more than them...praise God. Today I am ok without them and I no longer believe that I am nothing without them. Today I value myself and there opinion of me matters very little. Today I am able to feel empathy for them and understand instead of hatred and anger. Today I can pray for them to be set free and I wish them the best always.

I have found peace in my soul without my family, and the best thing I can do for myself and my children is to build a strong and loving and supportive family for the ones who need it most.  My little ones and not so little ones, who will benefit from my willingness to share and grow.  Go with God!

THEN and NOW

As an adult I am responsible for my behavior, and actions.  I also have the power to control my thoughts.  Wow, I have power.  When I look at my early adult years, there were a lot of things I believed that left me feeling powerless and helpless.  I also didn't think I had any responsibility in the matter at hand.  How could I have created a situation where I was being abused?  I was the victim wasn't I?  If I only knew then what I know now I could of saved myself from years of abuse.
We do create our lives.  I play apart in where I want to go with my life and I get to trust God to do what is best for me.  I try to understand how I could of been so morally bankrupt and have such low self -esteem that I would allow people to treat me the way I did..  I see how my up bringing and the false beliefs I was given created in me behaviors and patterns that would take years to turn around.
I believed because I was abused at such a young age, sexual, emotionally and physically that somehow that was what life was all about.  That somehow everyone was living like this.  I believed that my parents were doing the right thing in beating me, because they would quote the Bible as they did it.  I believed that this was my lot in life and I could do nothing to change it.  I was wrong!!!  I got so caught up in just trying to stay alive all the while doing things that would of killed most people.
i spent years trying to understand my behavior and my lack of self care and love.  I made slow progress and would at times give up totally and sink into depression so great I would try to die anyway I could.  i would have great periods of sobriety and be doing great, then along would come another batch of repressed memories and off the deep end I would jump.  This was my healing process for years and years.  So what changed this time?
This time I am totally clean and sober from all street drugs and alcohol.  This time I changed everything.  I had to change people, places and things.  I had to change the toys I played with, the people I hung with and the places I went.  I had to change what I believed in and who I believed in.  I had to change what I thought about myself and others.  I had to be willing to believe in something greater than myself, a God of my understanding.  This didn't happen over night, and I am a work in progress, but today I am smiling and my heart and soul are content and free.  I am enjoying the process and look forward to the rest of my life for the first time ever.  I am not running marathons or where I want to be yet, but I am headed in the right direction.  for the first time in my life , my life is manageable and there is hope for a brighter tomorrow and a fulfilling future.  Today I like me, and what I am doing.  Today i don't look over my shoulder in fear.  today i give God the glory for the great thing He has done with me and for me.
Go with God, and remember it is progress not perfection.

Just for Today

Just for today I will trust that I am right where I should be.  God is guiding me on  a path I have never been on before.  It is strange and exciting and mysterious.  I have taken so many wrong turns trying to find my way back to myself, that I thought it might be time to let someone who already loves me take the wheel this time.

I grew up believing in God, loving God and knowing that I could trust in Him always.  I taught sabbath school to the little ones, I was in the church choir and helped with Vacation bible School every year. I went to church school for almost ten years.  Until I was caught with drugs on me at school and expelled.  I remember my mothers response to this situation, she took me on her lap and told me she loved me. This was such a strange response from the woman who so freely whipped us for minor indiscretions.  I was extremely confused.  I started sneaking out o the house to spend time with boys and one day, at fifteen, I walked away from it all .  I walked away from my family and my church and God.  I kept walking until I got so lost I didn't recognize anyone or anything familiar.  I got so lost I couldn't even recognize myself.  Who was that girl looking back at herself in the rear view mirror?  Who was this stranger that answered to my name?

She drank and smoked pot and always was on the arm of some guy or another.  She never stayed in one place to long as if someone she was being chased by some unseen predator.  She had nightmares that caused her to wake screaming and begging for her life from unseen demons.  At seventeen she was full blown alcoholic, who found herself on the streets of Vernon turning tricks for money to drink and a place to sleep.  She walked through life in a haze always under the influence of something or other.  She was a rough tough cream puff.  Her mantra to life at this time was that "she was fat and ugly and mean as could be".  She was always welcome at the bar and spent much of her time trying to stay one step ahead the devil.  Her self worth came through being wanted and admired for her overt sexuality and her money was made as a private dancer.  She sought protection from the streets where ever she could and at nineteen she met Prince charming in a nightclub.

He was so tall and blond and ever so handsome.  He was a baseball player and didn't drink.  This was to good to be true.  She just happened to not be drinking that night not because she didn't want to but because she was to sick from the night before's adventures to drink a drop with out getting seriously ill.  Instead of telling him this however she lied and said she didn't drink either.  They started dating and her desire to belong to him was enough to keep her sober.  Two months later she took him home to meet her parents who she had not had much contact with since leaving.  She was thrilled that they liked him even though he was very much older than her and with the blessing of her family the wedding took place five months after they met.  She was finally going to be happy and loved and cherished forever.  Her dreams were coming true and she was sober.  They were going on their honeymoon, and their life together was going to be perfect.

She woke up the next morning on the floor of the hotel room.  She was sporting a huge black eye and some serious bruises to her ribs and legs.  She was confused and heart broken and afraid to ask what she had done.  Last thing she remembered was standing in front of the television in hopes of getting her new husbands attention.  It was their wedding night after all.  How was she to know she could not compete with  the football game that was on at that time.  Stupid girl would never try that again.  She stumbled into the shower and found herself lost in memories she didn't think belonged to her.  memories of someone touching her as a child. She got violently ill. what was happening to her?  Who could she trust now?  Something was wrong, something way more wrong than anything her husband could ever do to her.  Shaking violently and unable to stop she faced him.  He had gone to the gift shop and purchased a sun hat and glasses.  He held her and kissed the madness away.  The nightmares were unreal and the pills she took did nothing to help. She shared with him the memories as best she could and by the end of the honeymoon he was ready to get the marriage annulled if she didn't get some professional help.  They stopped at the psychologist on the way back from the honeymoon and when he was unable to convince the Dr. to lock her up and throw away the key, he got the next best thing,  more medication.   One thing became very clear not only was she is wife but she belonged to him.

She found herself living in the Queen Charlotte Islands hundreds of miles from anything familiar, and six hours out in the ocean.  No escaping him now so better make the best of it.  She went to work as the town bartender, while he worked as the town drug dealer, bootlegger and only taxi driver.  Here she came in contact with Indians.  She was not fond of this as she had been raised to believe that Indians were undesirables.  She was so glad she was an Eskimo, at least she wasn't like them, but they were good to her as her husband was the chosen son of the Chief.  Spousal abuse was the norm up there.  She watched her friends get beaten and she took her share as long as she could. He became more and more violent and after seven months and three attempts to leave she finally got away . Broken and crushed she ran to her family, and showed her mother the massive bruises all over her.  She was told to not divorce or she would be taken out of the family will,  she had made her bed she better lay in it.  To lay in it meant a slow and painful death.  Something in her would not accept that.  Three attempts and many many miles later she found herself back in Vernon, alone and still running against the wind.

How could this be what God had planned for her?  how many years must she live like this?   This was just the beginning but most definitely not the end.  God had started a work in her and He was by no means done.   Was it possible that she was right where she was supposed to be?  How could that be?  Looking back now I can say it was, but in that ,moment in time, it was hell.

Today I am grateful that God always finishes what He starts.  Today I sing a new song and I am finding myself again.  Today I know that Gos was with me through all the dark hours of my life.  Today I trust Him like no other.  Today I am right where i am supposed to be.

When you don't see it as Abuse!!

I have been thinking about this for a while now.  My life has changed so much over the last 5 years.  I look back and am shocked at the abuse I took on a daily basis.  At that time in my life I had been through so much severe abuse that I was happy to being in a relationship that was less abusive.  By less, I mean I was not getting beaten every day, just once in a while.  I was still taking abuse and I still lived as if I deserved it.  What has changed?  What makes me think that I had no idea what abuse was?  I am now in a totally abusive free place for the first time in my life.  I am free from abuse from anyone in my life and from myself as well.  For so long if I was not with someone who abused me I would find ways to abuse myself, be it physically, mentally or emotionally, and at times even sexually. 

So what changed?  I began to value myself.  I began a relationship with God.  I struggled to understand a love so deep that one would give their only son to die for it.  I began daily conversations with Him and acting as if he was right there with me.  I struggled to clean up my addictions, and to deal with the feelings and the questions as they arose.  Feelings of shame and guilt and remorse.  Fear, sadness and loss.  I stood on His promises to be there for me. 

Questions like, there has got to be more to life than being clean and sober? I started hanging out with other people going the same way.  Not everyone was as serious as me but at least they were not in active addiction.  I started practicing what I was learning.  I started doing for others.  I found wonderful ways to get out of myself and give to others through volunteering and helping where ever I could.  I spent three years, dealing with physical feelings from memories and past abuse, in pain to the point of immobility, knowing and believing that this to would pass.  At times, I knew that without doing for others I would never be able to do this for myself.  At times the only reason I stayed clean and moving ahead was because of my commitment to my volunteer work and the responsibility I had committed to.  After a while doing this I could see a difference.  I was moving ahead. the time of self pity and neglect had passed.  I no long hung around people who were grossly abusive but I still didn't see some of the abuse as it is subtle.  I still let my X come and stay at my home, living off of me and the kids, because of the guilt I felt about leaving.  I still paid for his drugs to keep the peace.  I still let my older children talk disrespectfully to me and of me, because of the quilt I felt for not being a very good mother for them.  I still abused myself, by over loading my plate with responsibility as if I had to make up for lost time.  I still beat myself up mentally for being Bi-Polar.  I still dated men who used me as an object and never cared for me as a person. 

So now what?  I was finding a voice, to be able to share some of the progress.  I started attending a church.  God was becoming more and more a stable point in my life.  I was growing faith.  The ability to believe that He would complete that which He had started. God was consistently putting people in my life to assist me, people on the internet who encouraged and supported me and valued me.  People in my church who showed me what true Christian love can be like.  Without the guilt and expectations I had experienced as a child in church.  I was beginning to understand LOVE.  For all to long love was such a negative thing.  Love was pain and sorrow and dirty.  Love was sexual.  love was for the lucky.  Love was an oxymoron.   Love was bitter sweet, but mostly bitter.  Today through the grace of God I know real love.  Not he convoluted love of my pedophile father and abusive battering mother, but the love of children of God.  The ones who love just to love.  They loved me until I could love myself.  For the first time in my life it is okay to tell someone you love them.  I don't have to do things i don't want to do to be loved.  Imagine that.  I also am not as afraid that saying I love you means I will be stocked or abused in some way.  I now understand God's mercy and love is infinite.

I am now in a place I have never been before, ever, a place without abuse.  I am so looking forward to sharing and growing and discovering what God has in store.  I so want this for each of you.  I wish you all the faith of a mustard seed, as it can move mountains.:)  Go with God.