When I was a Young Girl, I Dreamed of Castles and Knights with Shining Armor

I grew up on a small farm with two sisters and a brother. Our father worked very hard at his business and it was our mother's task to care for us. When we were babies, I think she enjoyed that task but, as we grew older, she lost interest. We played in the fields, on farm equipment, in the woods, and rode horses and ponies without supervision. With an indifferent mother and a father who worked all the time, it was a perfect situation for a predator: we were sitting ducks!

Just Be Quiet!

I do not remember when the abuse actually started but, going back in my memory, I believe that it occurred during the period that I was five through eight years of age. Somehow, a "friend of the family" who was retired took me under his wing and had me go fishing with him, go to his farm to play, and to generally keep him company. While this "big brother" situation took place, I had to pay an awful price: at age five, I was forced to learn how to manually satisfy this man sexually! I knew this was wrong. I got that "uh-oh" feeling in my stomach. Each time I told my mother that I did not want to go with this man, she would say, "Janie! He has done a lot for us! How dare you be mean to him! Go with him!" She would hear nothing bad said about this "sainted" man. The matter-of-fact way my mother used to push me into the clutches of this unspeakable creature led my child's mind to believe that my mother must know what he was doing! She must have given her consent! A five year old 35 years ago had no words to say, "Uncle Charles (as we were told to call him) is sexually abusing me!" All I knew was that it was yucky and I must be the worst little girl on the planet to be somehow encouraging this friend of my parents to do these horrible things! I felt to blame! I felt ashamed! I felt that I was worthless and should not even exist! And I felt this way until my twenties and into my thirties! I vowed at an early age that I would never tell my family about the abuse until after the abuser died. For some reason, I wanted to protect them. He lived until his eighties. Finally, Life seemed to take vengeance on him: he lost his eyesight, his hearing went, and he developed a cancer which took him slowly and painfully to his death. I got the impression that Life was slowly chewing him up! His death did not give me the liberation I had waited for. When my mother told me of his death, I felt nothing. The pain was still there along with the shame, the blame, and the self-hatred. In my late teens, I took my first steps into therapy. Still, this was the 1970's and people did not speak of child sexual abuse. The therapist I went to at college was worthless. She had no idea how to approach this topic. I stopped going to her and tried to push the festering secret deep down inside once more. Throughout my life, my stomach ached. I believe that it was that festering secret trying to eat its way out of me from my very bowels!

When I was twenty years old, I was going to spend a year in France to study at the University of Bordeaux. I had been involved in a foreign exchange when I was sixteen and made friends with a dear girl named Madeleine. She and I became best friends. Her family invited me to stay at their home while we both went to university. I saw my castles and the armor that can easily be found throughout the beautiful French countryside. It was a wonderful month as the fall classes approached. One day, October 13, 1977, Madeleine and I were going to have a picnic in the country. Madeleine was driving and I was in the passenger seat. It was a cool, autumn day. We left Angouleme, the walled city where her family lived. It was just after noon. That is all I know. My next bits of memory are of looking up through the shattered windshield at the worried eyes of rescuers who told me not to move. I felt glass in my mouth and spat out blood. Later, I recall hearing Madeleine screaming and seeing her father, a physician, wild with grief, running back and forth between where I lay in a dark room and where the screams of Madeleine seemed to be coming from. I never saw Madeleine, my dearest friend, again.

Click on the Fantasy Lady

Apparently, the police said, we had had a tire blow out, Madeleine lost control of the car and we ran off the road, first striking trees on my side of the car and then crashing into, and coming to a stop among, trees on Madeleine's side of the car. The police said they had to cut us out of the car and it took them three quarters of an hour to do so. Madeleine and I were given three days as the crucial time. If we survived this time, we had a good chance of surviving the many traumata we each suffered. I survived but Madeleine, my dear, dear friend, did not. Somehow, the consulate got in touch with my family. My mother became the anguished parent and she and my older sister came to France to be with me. My mother promised God that, if He let me live, she would never drink alcohol again! I was in a shock-trauma unit called the Reanimation Unit. I suffered numerous surgeries, a coma-like state, and hellish hallucinations. When I gained my senses, I always asked for Madeleine and I was always told that she was at another hospital and very ill. The decision not to tell me of her death was my mother's. In fact, she never told me of Madeleine's death. Months later, when we were back in Maryland, I figured it out for myself and confronted my mother. She said, when I was so ill, she thought it best not to tell me. The doctors wanted to tell me but she would not let them! She just let me figure it out on my own! I am not sure I will ever "get over" that! People have a right to know the truth about their friends! People have a right to grieve! My mother denied me that right even after I confronted her. I was allowed to cry a little and then expected to put it behind me and just get on with life! I really do not think that my mother thinks anyone but she has ever had any feelings! Madeleine was dead and buried for many months and I was well out of danger before I knew that truth!

Blossoms weep silently

I think that I must have lost touch with reality simply to survive life in that house. I learned that my mother had been an alcoholic all through our childhood. This would explain why we were so often left to our own devices as kids and why my father made himself scarce by attending many civic group meetings. I was also to learn that he beat my mother at times during her bouts of drunkeness! Believe me, without going into more miserable details, my family was "dysfunctional," to say it kindly. Secrets on top of secrets on top of secrets: chaos! We kids had no one to turn to and did not even feel close enough to one another to be able to tell each other the truth. We took out our frustrations in sadistic ways on each other.

I have found that "secrets" are the most destructive things. Trying to keep unhappy, sad, or tragic parts of our lives secret takes too much energy and too much of our lives. Keeping parts of our lives secret gives those parts too much power. When shown the light of day, the "terrible" secret really isn't so terrible after all. I used to fear that my family would find out that I had been sexually abused as a little girl. For 30 years, I kept that information a secret from them!

Click on the Wise Angel

It was the most shameful thing in my life!!! But, as I spoke about it to others, I learned that I was not alone and that "It Was Not My Fault" so the power of the secret got less and less. Finally, in talking with my sister, I found out that she had been abused, too! We also suspect our other sister was abused by the same man. All this time, we might have been helping each other if only one of us had been brave enough to disclose that "secret!" Once my mother finally heard the truth, she did not believe us! (This is what I feared all my life.) So I became enraged at her: how dare she say we were making this up! Who in the world would make up such a terrible thing about "a friend" of the family? The rest of the family decided to try to put the information back in the dark and chose to side with my mother as if our family were at war. I decided to divorce myself from them and Heal. If they chose not to believe, that was their sickness--not mine. They cannot say that the car accident did not happen because the scars on my body are proof. The emotional scars of the sexual abuse exist--they just can't be seen so I guess it is easier to deny them or their importance. In neither situation was I at fault. I did not choose to be abused and I did not choose to be in a car wreck. Why should I feel blame? Why should I be ashamed? As for family, I now choose my family from among my friends! They love me--scars and all!

Click on the birds

No one is perfect. It is the imperfections in people that make them so lovable! Every time I listen to a person's history, what took place in their life, and how they managed to live through it, I develop a great admiration and love for that person. It is a pity that my silly family cannot see that capacity for love--and strength--in their own daughter. I think my mother feels guilt because She could have prevented the abuse if she had paid attention to the signs. A mother of any other species would fight to the death for her babies! Mine just left us to our own devices and got drunk. After years of trying to live with my family, I finally realized that I wasn't doing myself any favors. It was after leaving them that I began to blossom and flower in my own Light. So, this is why I say that keeping secrets only hurts the victim a second time. In the light of day, the weed can be pulled so that the flower, the young rose, can get the sun it needs and deserves as it grows and blooms. As I prepare this page, I keep hearing the kind and sincere words of a new doctor I have started to see. After examining me for the very first time, he very gently said, "You went through a lot as a young lady." What a precious affirmation! I will make a copy of this page for him.

Some people were never meant to have children. This I learned painfully. Only those who truly desire and take responsibility for parenthood should think about having children. I have learned that secrets are terrible things that eat away at people's lives in corrosive, hideous ways. Little kids need to be able to trust, to love, and to be heard! It is only recently that I have found my voice and I realize that I can speak and sing loudly and well and that people pay attention to what I have to say. I have learned that, after surviving the abuse, the car accident, the time in hospital, a divorce, and many other challenges, I can be of great help to other people in pain. Serving others is what I have chosen as a Life's mission. In addition, I fill myself with joy, happiness, laughter, and peace. I acknowledge my strength and continue the process of healing.

A Beautiful Bouquet

I have read many poems but I feel a bit too shy to try to create a poem myself. Instead, I will tell you that I am an aficionada of poetry. I attempt to conduct my life as if it were a poem. That is to say, I try to live artfully. What that means exactly, I am not sure but it has to do with being Aware, with Seeing, and with Reflecting on the meaning of what takes place in my life.
I picked up the pieces of my spirit which has been shattered many times and I have taken the shards to master potters who have carefully and intently helped me to reassemble them. Both physically and emotionally, the pieces have been put back together--not with clay or glue but with golden filigree!
That which I was, I can never be again. That which I am now, shines with the power of the sun! After each breaking and each restoration, I become that much stronger and that much more precious. Unlike others who may never have been fractured in any way, I know what it is like to have been in pieces...
and also what it is like to be whole once more!

On June 15, 2000, I was given the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia after months of all-over body pain. There is a lot of restoration to be done and this time, I think, it will be on-going. The challenge here is to learn to live and love Life while being in constant, diffuse pain.

Learn About Fibromyalgia. Click on the picture

It would have been so nice to end this page with the metaphor of the golden filigree but sometimes Life does not seem to allow such happy endings. The Healing path has called once more. I must take up my walking stick and resume the journey. This journey is not a solitary one! I see hundreds of thousands of pilgrims before me! May God Guide Us All!