Unlocking The Diary, Letting the Light Pour In

I am about to invite you into my life in a way I have never done before. I am unlocking my diary and posting excerpts every few days in succession. Warning: This post is direct as it came from my actual diary…. it is even often extremely challenging for me to re-read. I share it because my daughter, son and I, are now living our dream life. We are now safe and loved forever and that is my greatest wish for you. There is no coming to consciousness without pain. - CARL GUSTAV JUNGrn Have you ever felt raw, vulnerable, unprotected, lonely, frightened and full of rage? Have you ever had to endure a reality so horrible that just getting out of bed seemed too large of a task? A few years ago, like most single, working parents, it was challenging enough just to get through the day, and place a hot dinner on the table at the end of it. Then, at 4:20 pm on September 21, 2005, my firstborn child, my beautiful 12-year-old Brenna, released herself from the shackles of her hidden pain and told me her story of sexual abuse at the hands of my stepfather. The truth of the assault upon my daughter cracked me open. My guts, along with my past, spilled out all over the floor right in front of me. In that moment of gutting, I awakened to the deeply repressed truth of my own sexual abuse at the hands of the same man. Within that horrid black moment, a small stream of truth and light began to filter in. Brenna, my son Carter, and I… began walking our individual paths to self-empowerment, side by side…. by side. This story, our story, is a true story about finding heaven in the deepest and darkest of places. It is a story about demanding your power back. It is a story of awareness shared to honor the dreams of our children and the child within all of us. It is birthed to celebrate the dreams of my daughter in a world that has no choice but to change. Up until that fateful day in 2005, my mother and stepfather had been a huge source of support for us in every way. I was blessed with their generosity of time, shared dinners and even with their financial gifts, which as a single mother, I was beyond grateful for. Now, I could no longer hide from my own dark truth by simply focusing on saving my daughter. I needed to look at the past that came hurling out of my insides...in order to save myself as well. No longer could I color my past happy, or numb it away in order to survive. In reality, my repressed memory opened the door for my daughter to be harmed. I was gutted and I questioned if I could survive. Everything I had made up and believed to be true, the me that I had been presenting to the world, turned out to be fake. I am sharing our story because today, less than four years later, my children and I are thriving because we faced the truth and stench of what was laid out before us. We didn’t hide from our dark secret, as my mother would soon urge us to do. We found the courage to face family members that blamed us for protecting the integrity of our souls and then abandoned us because it was easier to do that than face the truth that we had a pedophile in our family. Instead of a hug, we were pushed away in disgrace. Life became much harder for quite a while because of that abandonment. But it never got as bad as my fears led me to believe it would. EVER. rnWe all have our “stories“ that are chock full of human pain. We also have the power to overcome these stories and be better because of them. This is not a journey for the faint-hearted, but I promise you that it is worth every step. Join me? Next post: Night, Night, Sleep tight Join me for a free national sexual abuse tele-seminar at www.spiritoflivingwell.com