A Survivor's Thoughts on Life

It’s Mothers’ Day…

onesurvivor — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:16:24 +0000

and my heart hurts.

What can I say?

onesurvivor — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:46:35 +0000

I have so many emotions that run through me. I am angry at what my son, flesh of my flesh, has done…all the people hurt…lives turned upside down. I want to write here, but I lose my words. I start to put down some semblance of thoughts, but then I just stare at it and wonder why I should even bother to try to write or post what I have written.

My heart is breaking and some days I find myself fighting tears most of the day. I keep doing life, but it is not the same. My only real comfort is my Creator. I know who I am in Him. I know His unconditional love. Someday, all evil will be gone. And I wonder…who will really be left standing in the end? Who will have chosen good, forsaking evil and turning to the Creator?

I am fighting to move back to some semblance of “normal”…at least my “normal”. I get triggered more easily now. I gotta go finish my Shabbat bread, but I am going to go ahead and post this. If it makes no sense to anyone, oh well. If it does make sense, I hope I hear from someone. Please give me a reason to not keep all my thoughts in my private journal. Please give me a reason to write here. Anyone?

Mental Illness: Helping the Church Help the Hurting

onesurvivor — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:59:44 +0000

Reblogged from Sandscribblings:

In the last decades of my father-in-law's life, he slipped into a fog of mental illness from which he never returned. We did our best to help him--to find a diagnosis and effective medications. The years he lived with us were a constant battle of second-guessing, as we debated whether or not we were doing the right thing, doing enough, seeking out the "right" mental health professionals for his condition.

So, what’s new?

onesurvivor — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 02:15:21 +0000

I am determined to lose the weight I have gained. How’s that for a goal? I think I am finally in the right mindset to do it. As I watch what is going on in my country and in the world in light of the scriptures, I am thinking I really need to get more fit.

Here is another goal. Continuing to write my jailed son. Yep…jailed. He has not been to trial, but is most likely facing life. Just writing the words stirs up all kinds of emotions. I am so tired emotionally right now. Our only form of communication is hard copy letters. It is difficult to really assess where he is inside. Is he telling me what he himself really wants to believe? Is he telling me he wants me to believe? What is real? Only time will tell. Each letter to him takes days to write…days of praying and thinking. Then it suddenly comes together and I write…and rewrite…and edit some more.

I cannot let my life go on hold because of what he has done. Neither can I just ignore it. His family is affected by all this…horribly. We are not physically close, nor are we especially close in any other way. I have given my son and his wife lots of space. The last thing I want is to be the “mother-in-law” that everyone dreads. Now, I need to draw closer, at least to my grandchildren. My daughter-in-law (whom I do love) is just living day-to-day and hour to hour. The challenges she has are huge and I am not there to be able help.

I am still adjusting to honoring Shabbat. Bit by bit, I get it more and more. It is becoming a time I look forward to setting aside during my week.

I ran across a post about dealing with Mental Illness in the “church”. I am going to reblog it because I feel it is a very important subject…one that really needs to be looked at.

That is it…for now. My brain is mush, but I wanted to get something in writing out here. I know how concerned I get when I don’t hear from someone in a while and I don’t want others to get concerned about me.

What Is Healing?

onesurvivor — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:39:04 +0000

When I first started out on this last leg of my healing journey…the awareness of DID and the realization of some of what had happened to me (which was an “aha-now I understand” time)…I had an idea in mind of what healing looked like. For me, it meant that my hard work (with G-d’s help) was somehow going to reverse all that had been done to me and there would be a complete merging which I called “integration”. I looked at it like a broken bone or a sickness. I wanted to be restored to the condition prior to the break of illness…or to be made even better. After all, they say a broken bone that heals is stronger in the area of the break and will never break exactly there again. I wanted to be like pre-DID and trauma.

Looking back, I would have to say that I was pretty naive, but not in a bad way. I believed what I needed to believe in order to start the journey and do what needed to be done. There were things I did not yet understand about DID and how abuse affects the brain. There were also implications in my view of healing that I did not fully think through…implications that would later change my view of healing…and again…not in a bad way.

Initially, my goal was simply to work on whatever needed to be worked. If I needed to face a memory…so be it. If I needed to reach out to an insider…so be it. Whether it was writing, listening, sharing, art…I did it. I believed that if I just kept doing what I was doing that integration/merging would occur naturally. It would not have to be forced. And it pretty much did happen that way. As I focused on healing, integration and merging seemed to happen almost seamlessly and without any real effort. Some of it happened in huge chunks during several days I spent with a counselor at her home. I stayed with her twice and through days of prayer and working with insiders massive amounts of integration/merging happened.

Over time, I came to realize that not all of healing is as simple as that. Now, I believe that a huge part of healing is to simply live my life…enjoying it as best I can…and seeing the beauty around me in addition to seeing what is evil in the world. I walk in the Spirit of the Creator, trusting Him to show me whatever I need to see and to help me with whatever I need help with. He has always been my greatest Healer…my best therapist. And He has helped me see that my idea of what healing looks like was very faulty.

I know the Creator can do anything and I believe He could even make it like nothing had happened…but that is not real. Like so many others, I had to come to terms with a childhood I simply never had. It was not just a matter of putting the brain back to how it was originally created. All my childhood experiences shaped and affected my brain. Removing the effects of the negative experiences does not replace them with the positive effects of the good things that never happened!

I also realized that all those things that did happen a part of what make who I am today. And even with all my foibles and what I perceive as “weakness” and “brokenness”, I am a pretty awesome person. I am a walking miracle and I am doing pretty darn good considering all I have been through. So, part of healing is also accepting imperfect functionality.

So…maybe…healing is not about restoration (like a broken leg). Maybe it is more about learning to live as I am and celebrating the me I have become and the me I am becoming. Maybe it is more about giving myself the freedom to enjoy life now…without guilt and with less and less impact coming from the past. It is about accepting imperfect functionality. (What is “perfect”, anyway?) It is about learning not to compare myself to others…not my abilities, my weaknesses or my strengths. Every one of us has abilities of some kind; we just don’t all have the same ones. We all have weaknesses and we all have strengths, regardless of how healed or broken we are. It is about not comparing my healing journey to another’s. We all walk on different paths.

I know I still have more to learn, but I carry one thing with me on my learning/healing journey…one very important thing. I know the Creator of all things and I know who I am in my Creator. I know I can trust Him to continue to lead me. Whatever is ahead, He will help me to face it.

Coping techniques…

onesurvivor — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 05:37:24 +0000

Compartmentalization helps. Or “putting it on the shelf”. Or “locking it in a trunk”. Or “putting in a drawer or filing cabinet”. These are things that help me deal with what has happened in our family. I suppose being a bit dissociative hasn’t hurt, either.

Yes…it does…

onesurvivor — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 04:22:52 +0000

America Has an Incest Problem

Learning to breathe through the tears…

onesurvivor — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 04:14:00 +0000

The tears come and the tears come. Ha…you thought I would say “come” and “go”, didn’t you? Well, that would be partially true, I guess. But the times when the tears are not literally there, they are still there in my heart. So, yeah, the tears come (outside) and the tears come (inside). They never really seem to go completely away. They are ever ready on the inside to spring to the outer world.

I feel as if I am fighting the darkness and I am walking through mud. I push to get up. I push to get through my day. I think of my son, of my daughter-in-love, of my granddaughter, of my other grandchildren, of my other children, of all who are suffering. Every family member is in shock. No one expected this.

There are a lot of things that you can believe might happen in your family…but not this. Somehow, you just don’t think it will ever happen to YOUR family.

I know that we will “adapt”, but the idea of joyful thriving seems very far away right now…very far away.

Some things…

onesurvivor — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:34:46 +0000

you just wrap your mind and heart around. We are still reeling as a family. This will take years to deal with and it will never really be over. With one in prison and others deeply wounded and it is all in the family. How does one recover from something like this? Are there support places for the families? I will have to search and find out.

Still reeling…

onesurvivor — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 02:53:05 +0000

All of us are still reeling…those in the family here and those in the family in other places. Moving from numbness, to anger, to tears. There are times I want to just double over and times I wish I could scream and yell at him. You never think it will happen in your family…that your son will do this. It just shakes me to the core.