What this book is…and is NOT about…
So let’s get something straight right now – because I am a direct person, all my friends know that, and I prefer to be clear. This is not a book about a person’s journey from harm to forgiveness. If you are looking for a tome on the blessings of forgiving your abuser or how to achieve it, I recommend you look elsewhere.
My journey is about healing…restoring my soul from a lifetime of trauma and pain that was inflicted on me, and that I have carried way too long. And just to be clear, to me, forgiveness and healing are not the same things. They may both come about, or not, but they are not the same thing, and for me, both are not required. So first and foremost, I write to heal.
If I am to be totally honest, I don’t give a shit about forgiveness anymore…about whether it comes or not. In fact, the next person who tells me that I must forgive because it is the only way to happiness, or repeats that all-too-often quoted trope, that withholding forgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, I will tell you to just keep on walking. Unless I am in a bad mood, in which case I may say it slightly differently.
Simply, I’ve had enough of others telling me that all I need to do is forgive, move on, leave it in the past, or get over it, as if it is possible to just “excise” the “abused parts.” Trauma is woven into my fibers and nervous system like threads of an embroidery. They are part of who I am, even as they are not all of who I am.
In theory, forgiveness can be a wonderful thing. If it is the right thing for you, absolutely do so. Each person must follow where their heart leads. But so often, “forgiveness advice” is handed out like candy, or sometimes almost demanded by others. The implication is that if you don’t forgive, there is something wrong with you, and you are now the one at fault. Like so many easy-to-dispense bits of simplistic advice, those quotes gloss over and dismiss the layers of emotional nuances and depths involved. They are at best a flat-out insult, or at worst, re-traumatizing.
In my case, my feeling is that unless you have walked through 28 years of chronic, intense, and frequent mental, verbal, emotional, and physical abuses, and experienced thousands of sexual assaults, don’t tell me how to heal. You have no right to judge me. And even if you have walked through that, still don’t tell me. Each person must find their own path to healing. I have had and still have very good trauma therapists. I have a caring heart. I have worked hard for many years to heal, and I will continue to do so until I die because growth and learning never end.
If there is any forgiveness I will give, and it is long overdue, it is for myself, for what I thought was my failing all those years. And I also owe an apology to all those earlier parts of me that I so hated. I judged myself so horribly, which is the ultimate trauma, to take the harm done by another and turn it on yourself. It has taken me almost seven decades to realize that the very parts of me I despised and locked away were the very parts that saved me. Those parts of me who had no skills and no idea of how to save me, somehow did it anyway. With total courage and sheer grit, they faced pain, fear, confusion, and terrible odds. They got me out…and then somehow, kept me alive as I tried to figure out how, or even if to reach for a better life.
So, this book is the story of a journey from destruction to survival…survival even in the midst of that destruction. It is the path from escape and despair to growth and rebuilding. It is mistakes, and shame, and finally it is coming to the place now where I can wrestle with things like meaning, love, kindness, and compassion, both for myself, and even for my abuser. And for what it’s worth, even without forgiveness, I showed him compassion when he was weak and old.
The book seeks answers to questions like: “How did that abuse happen? How did you survive it? Why did you stay so long? How have you reached the place you are in now? And, lastly, even if forgiveness isn’t required or possible, can there be a place of peaceful indifference? Those answers I need as much for myself as for anyone else.
I started my career as a bacteriologist. What I learned from that is that you don’t heal an abscess by covering it with a bandage, sealing it off, and refusing to look at it. That is the way to a slow, festering, rotting-away-from-within death. To heal an abscess, you have to open all the diseased tissue, give it the light of day and fresh air, and allow all the pus to drain. You have to see what is there – good and bad – clean it out, preserve the healthy parts, and nurse the rest back to health with the proper medicine. If well-cared for, it will bind together, heal, and even though scarred, grow new tissue.
Souls deserve no less. They deserve to be opened and emptied of the pus of psychic mangling, lies, gaslighting, and manipulation. They deserve to empty the pain, terror, and harm, and reveal what is underneath that is still beautiful, good, and worth saving. With the medicine of self-love, determination, and skilled therapy, the long-abandoned pieces of ourselves, all the unfelt emotions, and our truths, can be welcomed back into wholeness, embraced in our self-love.
This book is my journey to reclaim the wholeness of my soul, the good, the pain, the lies, and the truths. I think it is finally time for that.
If this is the kind of book you are looking for, I welcome you on my path.
Tags: abscess, compassion, faith, forgiveness, healing, love, mental-health, personal-growth, self-love, trauma
Soul Mosaic 
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