This blog shares excerpts of my draft memoir — working title: “I Thrive.” While not graphic, it will discuss aspects of the sexual, physical, and emotional abuse I endured and my journey back to healing…and thriving.These entries start in June, 2025 and continue into the present. Prior entries cover other topics
Photo by author, circa 1959-1960
To be the illustration
Memoir expert and author Marion Roach Smith described the genre of memoir this way:
“Memoir is not about you. It’s about something and you are its illustration.”
Another author, Trish Lockard, added that this genre is not just a recounting of things that happened to you because, after all — “Stuff happens to everybody.” Instead, memoir captures one’s reflections about an event when enough time has passed for a change, a transformation, to take place. Those insights gained over time through effort are the gift to the reader—the takeaway.
To only write a list of everything done to you in life without the reflections is like dumping a pile of ingredients on the counter and calling it a cake. It is only a cake when that pile of ingredients has gone through the crucible of a hot oven and been transformed into the real takeaway — dessert. Only then does it have “purpose and meaning.”
I loved how one author, whose name I cannot find, summed it up:
“Don’t just confess. Digest.”
Digestion is change and makes something useful…nutritious. It gives back. And digestion is the unfinished business of my life.
After seven decades of silence, it is time for me to look back, digest the raw material of my life, and obtain the nutrition— the insights that give it meaning. It is not: “Look at what was done to me” so much as the answers to the questions: “Because of what was done, what am I doing with it? What does it mean?” So, my life will be the illustration of that “something” that might have meaning and nutrition for all.
28 years of abuse…and building a “beautiful mosaic”
I noted yesterday that en route to my ritual bath session, tons of thoughts were flooding my brain. Lofty, cerebral things like discernment, reflection, love, and the power of the “Divine feminine,” all things suitable for the impending spiritual moments with God. And others – the scars I have never been able to shake, like fear, anxiety, grief, and rage. And of those, lately, mostly primal rage.
In my search for the “existential meaning” of my life, as well as just plain understanding why the hell I’ve been feeling this way, I’ve been reading a lot of spiritual and mythology books. So their images, themes, and characters are blended in with all of the above thoughts.
Themes of darkness — places like walking through the underworld, sitting in caves of transformation, living in the Dark Night of the Soul — felt like home to me. These were all connected to a search for purpose and rebirth, a withdrawal from the regular world where one could take stock in peace. And of late, that’s just where I wanted to be, in a dark cave peering out at the world, but left alone.
My friends, the crones
I have felt just like the main characters of those stories and have preferred their company. Old crones, the ones who might eat you, slice you with their sword, or save you, depending on their mood and your attitude.
I am truly fond of the Cailleach, a Celtic goddess who ruled in the dark months of the year. Her specialty was to deal out the furied destructiveness of winter’s storms and the geologic explosions when creating mountains. Another hag, Baba Yaga, has also been appealing to me, partly because we share a Slavic heritage. She will eat you or help you depending on your answer to her questions, including, “Have you come to do deeds, or run from them?” That question is my favorite, and I can literally feel her fierce impatience with some weak or whining response. No doubt she would just level anyone like that for bothering to disturb her solitude. And I don’t blame her.
But it’s also irritated me that I’ve felt this way so much lately. Of course, there is a good reason. There is the rage I feel for having been robbed of so much in life. Innocence. Trust. Time. Developmental and life experiences. Even the possibilities for what I could have been in my life. He took so much, and in return, graced me with permanent scars I will discuss later.
Most of all, he escaped being accountable and instead dumped that one on me. He made me the “black sheep” and the “scapegoat” in the family system. I was handed the “blame” for something I didn’t do, and for years, those roles were “assigned to me.” And I accepted and carried them. Until now. Again, I will talk more about that later.
The broken connection
But there has also been something more, something deeper and really primal gnawing at me, probably my whole life, but certainly since my Mother’s death — the disrupted feminine. It has been the broken connection of my life…my relationship not just with my mother, but with myself…my own power…and the loss of a connection for so long with the power of the “feminine” side in a broader sense.
On some level, as I’ve grown in my own power, there is a rage at having had that taken from me for so long. I think with trauma there is a long fallow period of quiet where you just capitulate to survive. Then, as you start to recover and reclaim your power, at least for a while, there is also a tidal wave of rage because you realize fully what you were denied. And you are white-hot livid at that.
But it is not the rage of revenge…but something else. Revenge is not something I was ever interested in.
I couldn’t fully articulate it until I was reading a book by Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, called: Goddesses in Older Women: Archetypes in Women Over Fifty. The book appealed to me because I am old, in my seventies now, so it was exactly what I was looking for. I am HUNGRY for the wisdom of those female elders and sages.
There were a lot of nuances highlighted in the book, from aging, coming into wisdom, rebirth, and humor. There was even a section on my old spiritual Mother, Mary, here expressed as the “Black Madonna.” Unlike the usual portrayal of Mary as docile and meek, the Black Madonna is the Divine feminine portrayed as a rebellious, powerful, protective mother of the earth.
Transformative wrath
So, in general, I was reveling in the wisdom this book offered up. But it was one particular chapter that nailed it: “Goddesses of Transformative Wrath: Her Name is Outrage.”
Outrage. Yes, that was it precisely: OUTRAGE! It wasn’t “blind rage,” which implies unreasonable, crazy, out of control. But outrage, which is something much more focused and reasonable.
To me, outrage is indignation, a justifiable force felt when harm has been done, when power has been wielded unfairly. When things have just been plain WRONG. OUTRAGE is the righteous force that wells up inside and wants to make things RIGHT.
From that chapter:
“The goddesses of transformative wrath…come to the fore when it is time to take action to change an unacceptable situation, when ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. These are goddesses who were called forth when male gods or men were not able to defeat evil, and only a powerful goddess was equal to the task.” (Bolen, 82)
Or, I would add, when the harm was caused BY a male, and only a goddess was powerful enough to confront it.
The chapter mentions that it is in the later years — the crone archetypes — that this behavior appears. “Gloria Steinem has frequently observed that women become more radical as they get older…crones…become outraged at the tolerance of evil or the indifference to suffering.”
That FORMIDABLE crone
This expressed perfectly what I have been feeling these days. OUTRAGE at what was done. Outrage that it still happens and causes harm. Outrage when people are indifferent to the fact that those of us who have been abused are often treated like the problem, silenced, and pay a lifelong cost for what we endured, while our abusers get off scot-free.
Now, while I side with the likes of Cailleach and Baba Yaga, and fantasize about their methods, I realize this fury has to be reined in. It needs to be recognized, embraced, and expressed, yes. But it has to be guided and integrated in a safe and healthy way. I don’t want revenge…I want JUSTICE.
“These archetypes of transformative wrath are most effective when balanced by wisdom. Without wisdom, they can be destructive….With wisdom, the goddesses of transformative wrath are not unleashed in outbursts of rage, nor acted upon impulsively…anger is channeled into a commitment to bring about change, and a determination to find the best way.” (Bolen, 83)
I particularly LOVE the final summation:
“…when wise strategy and outrage come together, an older woman is transformed into a formidable crone.”
THAT is what I am feeling lately. OUTRAGE, and the wish to assume the mantle and responsibility of that FORMIDABLE CRONE.
The “father’s daughter”
Now, this didn’t start right when Mom died, or even in the few years before her death, as I was working earnestly with my therapist. But I realized in reading these things that after a lifetime of therapy aimed at teaching me life skills and catching me up to others, these last eight years of therapy have been different. They have all been about healing that feminine wound. Reclaiming that side of me that I rejected and disparaged for a lifetime.
Maureen Murdock wrote a book called The Heroine’s Journey: A Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. In it, she described what happened to me in life:
I was “…a father’s daughter — a woman who has identified primarily with the father, often rejecting the mother, and who has sought attention and approval from the father and masculine values..This beginning stage…often includes a rejection of the feminine as defined as passive, manipulative…weak, inferior, and dependent…Our heroine puts on her armor, picks up her sword, chooses her swiftest steed, and goes into battle….In her desire to dispel the negative associations with the feminine, our heroine has created an imbalance within herself which has left her scarred and broken…The heroine must become a spiritual warrior…learn the delicate art of balance and have the patience for the slow, subtle integration of the feminine and masculine aspects of herself.”
Being “reborn”
Some of my biggest wounds, the source of mistakes and neediness, were rooted in that mother-daughter-feminine split I had to make right from childhood. Every time my father told me not to grow up to be a “stupid woman,” he was telling me to both not be my mother and not be a woman. Given that my mother was at his mercy, and was not there for me and did not protect me, I saw her as weak and useless. Hence my own lifelong mantra: “Don’t grow up to be my mother.”
It is finally only now, at this later stage of life, that I can see how much this rift has cost me. And that the source of my true power going forward IS in that feminine, so I must heal that rift.
As part of Murdock’s description of this work, she defines stages of the Heroine’s Journey that apply here: Descent to the underworld, reconnection with the feminine, healing the split, and integrating both sides.
“During this part of the journey, the woman begins her descent. It may involve a seemingly endless period of wandering, grief, rage…of looking for the lost pieces of herself and meeting the dark feminine…it may involve a time of voluntary isolation — a period of darkness and silence and of learning the art of deeply listening once again to self….”
So, the rage…or rather, outrage that I have been feeling, the need to reconnect with the feminine aspects of myself and my life, and the need to be a FORMIDABLE CRONE to effect useful change…all of that explains why I have felt drawn to walk alone in the quiet darkness of the last several months. As Murdock so aptly put it: “In the darkness we are reborn.” (Murdock 100)
Painting by author
I will note I am far from “alone.” But I have pulled back from many things. I have been in a quiet time. And I will stay here as long as I need to integrate, reflect, and unite the broken parts. I am strong enough.
It didn’t start with power
But was I feeling this strong or outraged when I first started this deeper therapy work in 2018?
No way. In fact, it didn’t start with anger. Instead, I was saturated in fear and, to some extent, despair. But especially fear. So that is where this part of the book starts — FEAR.
I went to the Mikveh today, my recommitting to this writing project before beginning this last phase. So many things floated through my head as I drove there. Topics to cover. Trigger words. Questions. Intense emotions, especially lately, anger.
But I put all that aside for this afternoon and just went, knowing “something” would come clear. An answer of some kind would present itself.
Whether anyone else understands this kind of thing doesn’t matter. I am a person of ritual, and for me, just the act of “honoring and centering” somehow resets my psyche and my heart. For another, it might be incense and candles, music, whatever. Today, for me, it was the Mikveh pool.
Photo by author
As I sank below the water’s surface, I spoke the one-word prayer I carried there: Hineini...Here I am, Lord. I was opening myself up to the power of something beyond me, even as that is a scary thing. It’s that whole “Be-careful-what-you-ask-for” thing, because you just might get it. If you give God an invitation for an inch, would He or She want a mile?
Yesterday’s post compared this part of the work to performing an autopsy and writing the final report. But while it “can work,” it didn’t feel quite right. While it is a logical metaphor given my science background, it is too “left-brained, cerebral. What is really needed is a much more emotional and soulful one.
Instead, I keep coming back to this part of the book being the Midrash. The “extra part” that adds the soulful pieces that the story couldn’t tell.
It’s funny, but as I was sensing these things, my husband came to me and questioned the autopsy metaphor, too. He correctly pointed out that I am not dead, not by a long shot, nor is my story done. “You are a survivor,” he said, like a person who was in a symbolic “plane crash.” “And out of the rubble, smoke, debris, and bodies, somehow you walked out of that carnage toward the helpers and are still embracing life.”
At the beginning of this memoir, I wrote about the nature of my “journey” and the tools I would need. That first part – The Old Country, the story of my life experiences – was one of exploration…going back. Observing. I needed things from that past, as well as my paintings and journals. I described the process as a lab experiment, which included gathering the supplies, then running the experiment. That part was my revisiting the past to see what was there.
The Undiscovered Country is that part of the experimental process that generates the final lab report and gets at “What did I learn” and possibly, “What have I missed?” It involves assessing, analyzing, and questioning. It often requires some extra research to help with drawing my conclusions.
So, the bed full of folders, books, paintings, journals, and research, and the binders holding the entries for the story of my life, is my overwhelming pile of experimental data. Now, somehow, I have to bring order to it, make sense of it all, and see what it tells me.
I think of this part of the Undiscovered Country as a journey through the Underworld. I have to go where I have not yet been and be willing to stay in the discomfort of not knowing what I will find.
The autopsy
In a way, it is an autopsy. All of the data are the “body to be examined.”
Photo by author
To do an autopsy, first you need a logical, ordered, step-by-step procedure. Here, my procedure is mapped on a chart – my mind map. It lists all those topics laid out on the bed that I need to address, the order in which I will tackle each, and extra notes and reminders for the important points along the way.
Photo by author
Another requirement is autopsy tools. My “scalpels and probes” will include:
Questions
Action Verbs
Extra Research materials: Paintings, journals, books, movies, songs, quotes, whatever it takes to expand on each topic
And the last step requires time: To reflect, to decide, and to write up the results.
The things I write will be that “midrash” – the parts missing from the story itself that add clarity and reveal things not seen before.
Before starting this new phase of writing, I did what I did before I started writing this book – I sought God. Some may think it’s strange. That’s okay. It is my way of preparing for and honoring a serious work.
Rituals have power for me. They are a way to clarify my mind. Ask for help. And cement my commitment. Especially for a task I feel inadequate for, and am intimidated by.
For me, a particularly meaningful ritual is to visit the nearby synagogue’s mikveh. It is a pool of natural water that you immerse in while saying prayers, or just talking with God. I do this in moments of significant events or transitions, moments of grief or healing, or, in this case, new challenges.
As I enter the water and sink below the surface, I hold one prayer in my mind — just a one-word prayer in Hebrew: Hineini. In English, it means “Here I am, God.”
Painting by author
I cannot think of a more powerful prayer than to say – I am here, and I will do what you wish. It is total submission to the Universe…to the will of a Higher Power. It is surrendering this work for whatever God wants it to be. And it is my acknowledgement that I cannot do this alone. I am simply the tool. So, God, speak, and I will write.
There is freedom that comes as I float in that pool. Stress eases. And as I step out, I feel like that old self is shed, and I am ready to go forward.
So as I begin this new section…Hineini.
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and return home for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
“…there is no security in not knowing things, in avoiding the ugliest truths because they can’t be faced. There is only an oppressive, creeping dread that the thing no one has told you is too terrible to imagine, and that it will haunt the rest of your life when you find out.”
Looking at that quote, I totally agree with the first sentence.
As to the rest, the only thing that will haunt me is NOT knowing. THAT is too terrible to imagine. Instead, whatever I learn will set me free.
That Undiscovered Country
Finally – the book arrives at its destination: The Undiscovered Country…the “bottom line.” I could call it a journey through the underworld, a soul journey, whatever, but the bottom line is that it is a whole new place that I have not yet explored, and my heart has made it clear — it is time.
Shakespeare referred to the Undiscovered Country in his play, “Hamlet.” Books carry that title. Even Star Trek used it for a movie.
Where Shakespeare’s Hamlet spoke of it in terms of what comes after death, and some books use it to refer to past civilizations, in Star Trek, they were toasting the future.
For me, it is the past brought forward into the present to change my future…and maybe someone else’s.
With such a weighty mission, the entries for this last section will be slower in coming. I need to think, dream, chew on things. This last part of the book will be wrestling with file folders full of questions scribbled on strips of paper from thoughts catalyzed during the writing process. So, I need to sit with each one and “listen” to what it is telling or asking me.
It’s been said you die as you lived, and maybe that’s true, up to a point. I think it was for him. But sometimes, maybe, as you die, you finally reclaim your power…
She had been waiting to die since Dad had passed away. Yet she made her way longer…almost 9 years long. And over those years, she evolved. And became her own person even as she slowly declined.
She did surprise me with how she created her own life and routines when he wasn’t there to push her around anymore. And she didn’t fold. Maybe she just finally picked up where she had left off before she married him.
While there had been painful years of that frozen detente between us, those last 2 years as she grew closer to death were the best we’d ever had. And it was in her death process that maybe we reached some connection. At the very least, for me, being there with her through her death was a gift.
There is a sadness, though, too, an ache for me that has always been there, and will now remain forever – her “absence.” Time has run out now to ever know that mother’s unconditional love. And trapped within her battered psyche were the answers to questions I was never allowed to ask, and that she would never answer.
Here is the post that I started the memoir with, for those who did not see it. Mom’s death was not easy…for any of us. But to me, it was a gift and an honor to be there with her. So I share that post here.
Virginia became a time that appears to have given Mom fun in life. Closer to family, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, it was a time she was still healthy and active enough to do things.
Sometimes, especially when she first moved from Pennsylvania, she was kind of grumpy and refused to participate in things, even things she loved. I suspect that was payback for moving her. And…I can appreciate that after Dad died, she was living on her terms in Pennsylvania. While it was life, age, and health that forced this change, I can understand if she just folded her arms and refused to be happy about things. And no doubt being closer to one of us probably cramped her style…which also no doubt worked both ways.
But gradually, she did begin to make her peace with things and found her new normal. She LOVED IHOP and their crepes. Right to the end, we could always get her to eat crepes, even as she wasn’t interested in other things anymore. Frozen yogurt was another favorite, and she was never without a crossword puzzle book. The day she died, she was still trying to work a puzzle even as she just stared at the page. There were hours working jigsaw puzzles until her eyes started to fail her, and her back hurt too much.
She ferociously rooted for her New England Patriots – and we knew never to call her if they lost. And we even got her out to Colonial Williamsburg for old times’ sake. She even climbed up into the carriage to ride around the grounds. I could see her joy as she just watched various things go by, and periodically she would remember something about a family trip from the past.
I look at my mother’s early photos, and always, I see joy. Maybe there were other things beneath that smile, which led her to him. Whatever it was, that sealed her fate.
Once he was in her life, she lived in his shadow. Yielded to his will. Was belittled by his words and terrorized by his fists.
Photo by author
In all the years I knew her, there had always been a “him” between us. Never just HER. Now that he was gone, what would our relationship be like? And who would she be now?
Soul Mosaic 