The vortex

I was hanging on just one day to the next. Change. Questions. Despair. Capitulation. Then try again.

A friend saw my struggle. She was compassionate. Very caring. We had given each other support. She was struggling in her marriage and had her own issues in life. I was struggling to stay alive, and life was my issue.

But I am eternally grateful for her endless support at that time. She fed me. Checked on me. Included me in her activities. Didn’t judge me, even the night I drank a bottle and a half of wine as I mourned the mess I’d been left to fix, then had a huge hangover the next day. In the midst of a spinning vortex, and no solid ground under me, she was a lifeline.

It was as if I had a kind of “family” connection again. “Family” had been the whole focus of my life and self-worth up until that point, and I was desperate. Lonely. Afraid. Mine had “lysed.” In biology, cell lysis is the death of a cell. It blows open, spews its guts everywhere, and there is nothing left. With my whole family world blown apart, I was reeling, and so I grabbed on to her support for dear life.

The 10000-piece impossible jigsaw puzzle

There were so many things I didn’t understand, and I barely knew where to start. It was like I had a huge jigsaw puzzle to solve — 10000 pieces of one — and all I could do was to dump it out on the table, spread out the pieces, and one by one, start sorting them out – Which ones were right? Which ones should I throw away? How did they fit together? The puzzle pieces were the questions of my life, and I needed to find answers for each one.

About my life, the questions were things like: How had these things happened? Where had my mother been in all of this? Did she know?

And me…HOW could I have been so STUPID?! I was angry at myself for what I perceived as my cluelessness and gullibility. Looking back from now, I know that was an unfair judgment. But at that point, I hated me.

And if I hated me, what did that mean for my future? How could I ever trust ME again? If I had been so manipulated and “used” and not know it, how could I ever trust me to see through people in the future? To make the right choices?

And about those “right” choices…the philosophical side of life. What even WERE “right choices?” All those years, I did what I thought was right. Loving. I tried never to hurt anyone. I was loyal to my family.

Looking at it all now, did ANY of the rules even apply anymore? I didn’t think so. In fact. At that moment in time, I decided I’d had it with rules. I chucked out ALL the rules.

And that included the biggest set of rules – the elephant in the room – God. Religion. Right at that moment, I HATED GOD. I was so crushed. Angry. Betrayed.

All those years, I believed in God. Believed in prayer. Believed in “Ask and you shall receive.” And what did it get me? As far as I could tell, God had failed me completely…if there even was a God. And if there was, WHAT KIND OF GOD LET THIS GO ON, AND MY PRAYERS GO UNANSWERED?!

No. Religion, God, all of that went out the window, too.

As far as I was concerned, I’d been a FOOL. And IF I made it through this, I was NEVER going to be a fool again.

But…what things were actually TRUE? I wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. Where do you even begin to tease out truth and fact from lies?

The return of that science geek kid

There was one thing I did know how to be — a scientist. As a kid, I’d always dreamed of being the scientist. As I dissected frogs, looked at bits of things under the microscope, and experimented with my chemistry sets, I knew that these were the ways to figure out how things worked. And in my lab job at that time, I knew that testing, results, and research articles were the keys to unearthing facts.

If you could do it for a frog, or a blood test, or a bacteria, maybe I could do it for my life. My first target would be to understand things like how did incest even exist. What caused it to happen? What could have been done to prevent it? Stop it? WHO WAS TO BLAME? Where did I fit into it as a victim, and what could I do to heal?

Yes, I would start with facts. Knowledge. And there was one place in my past that could serve me perfectly for this quest — the UCONN Health Center. That same old UCONN Health Center that I’d failed at in my career. Maybe I wasn’t meant to work there those years ago. But they had a massive research library and stacks of research journals covering all topics. Maybe it could yet save me.

So I spent hours there. Days. Months. Whenever I wasn’t working or struggling to stay alive, I drove there and dug through every psychology journal and research study I could find. Surely that massive collection of knowledge had to contain some hint or clue about sexual abuse and the questions I was asking.

Disappointing

The truth was, there was a reason that the movie “Something About Amelia” was so revolutionary in being the first to talk about incest on network television. It was because no one was saying or doing very much about it anywhere at that time. The studies I could find on the subject were old. Based on outdated and biased knowledge. And in thinking about it now, it’s no wonder the conclusions in the Amelia movie were so out in left field. The research at that time was also out in left field, or non-existent.

I will say this has changed considerably. These days, there are volumes of research articles, studies, and even books for general audiences that talk about sexual abuse. And domestic abuse. Physical violence. Gaslighting. Trauma bonding. War. Today, we know so much more about these subjects. And about incest. And NO, it’s not the wife’s fault for not giving enough sex! And NO, it’s not the fault of the pre-teen girl to stop the adult man!

Today, there is so much more awareness of, and such a large amount of research taking place on the subject of what incest and abuse, and trauma do to you. Research into topics like PTSD — Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Brain scans to show what happens in the brain and nervous system during abuse and trauma. There are studies about the biochemistry of stress in the body, and ACE score testing to determine how children growing up in traumatic environments are affected by those things. And more research is ongoing into treatments ranging from therapy, antidepressants, mushrooms, and cannabis, to Yoga, meditation, and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Even DNA research is showing just how prevalent this abuse has been. So, even as there is still a lot more to be done to stop abuse, there is more knowledge and awareness than in 1984.

So back then, I dug up whatever I could. And then kept working with my therapist, and taking in the kindness of my friend. That was all I could do.

The Naugatuck River, Revisited

Why did I stay alive? I wanted to die.

But sometimes even ugly things can save you…sometimes, even a “dead river “ can keep you hanging onto life.

Every day I’d go to work, come home, and then walk with the dog. Miles. Miles and miles of walking. I felt like as long as I was outside walking, out there in the land of the living, wandering past homes and people working in yards and garages, I was still in the land of the living. I might still make it.

I pondered suicide…every minute of every day. Why should I stay alive? Who would ever love me? How could I ever tell anyone what had been done to me and expect them to understand? I could see no future, no use for me. No hope.

But in those moments, I kept remembering those car rides home from Bridgeport when I was a kid. How, in spite of what a polluted river the Naugatuck was during the day, it was so beautiful at night as we drove by it on our way home. I remembered thinking I didn’t want to fall asleep because I might miss something to see. The lights sparkling on the surface of the water. The houses along the river. People moving beyond window frames. It was all so interesting to me, and I DIDN’T WANT TO MISS ANYTHING. So I would fight to stay awake and keep watching…to not miss anything.

It was the Naugatuck River and those memories that kept me alive in those moments. For almost six months, I was suicidal. For almost six months, I walked and walked, and listened to the words in my head as I remembered those drives home:

Don’t do it today…you can always kill yourself tomorrow.

You might miss something. You can always kill yourself tomorrow.

3:00 a.m…

My bedroom was on the third level of my condo. But I couldn’t go near it. Nights were terrifying. You never feel an illness, your problems, or your despair more intensely than in the middle of the dark nights. I couldn’t take being upstairs. Alone. Surrounded by the din of silence.

I was already so alone in my life. The days I could crawl through. I would get up. Dress. Thank God I wore uniforms to the lab, so I didn’t have to figure out what to wear. Then I’d go to work. And even as I didn’t want to talk to anyone, at least there was the busyness of work, people, and routines to keep me going.

But the nights….oh…the nights

For months, I slept on the flower-patterned sofa in my living room, my dog stretched out on the floor next to me. Thank God for the dog.

The room didn’t have a lot of furniture, but it had enough to feel like a secure cocoon. The sofas. A microwave and table set. The clock. And the TV cabinet.

The TV. I would leave the TV on all night. Unlike when I grew up, and TV stations went off at midnight, now, with cable, there was always something to watch. It’s not that I even wanted to watch anything in particular. I just needed the sounds of human voices. The sense that I wasn’t as alone at that moment as I truly felt in my life.

I would put on HBO so that no matter how many times during the night I woke up, there was the comfort of hearing a human voice. I will admit there were some really strange things on at 3:00 in the morning, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t about content. It was just to have “someone” in that room with the dog and me.

It was just so I might make it through another night.

The catastrophic break…

People talk about their world turned upside down, or the ground disappearing beneath their feet. But how to describe what that actually feels like? I tried to express it through my writing and painting.

Initially, there was the relief and almost joy at having a therapist who was so supportive. His clarity during those early sessions, that my father had terribly violated me and I had every right to break things off, anchored me and gave me strength. After all, if my doctor, a man, said it was so, then it must be. It all seemed so clear and straightforward during the sessions.

But outside of them, I was still alone, defying the full power of that system’s rules, guilt, and manipulation. It is one thing to have someone tell you that you have worth and deserve to stand up for yourself. It is a whole other thing to actually internalize that and …believe it….and…do it. Twenty-eight years of programming that said I was hurting my father, that I had no right to do that, that it was family first, my needs second, all of that was almost too much to fight on my own.

And worse, I was still reeling from the shock of learning that everything I believed about my father, about my life, was totally wrong. You don’t just get over that. You don’t just “delete” the file in your brain that says “Family Systems 1.0” and replace it with a new file, “Family Systems 2.0,” and go on as if nothing happened. The reality of what my life truly had been, I was still trying to wrap my head around. And it started with the searing pain of having my heart torn open with the realization of how badly I’d been used, abused, and lied to.

The truth is, if everything you believed in your whole life turns out to be a lie, then what DO you believe in? What can you trust? Can you even trust yourself anymore if you got it so badly wrong all those years?

The psychic earthquake that kind of discovery sets off, blows away any confidence, and rends your heart apart. The damage is catastrophic, and all you are left with are questions: What, if ANYTHING, in your life is true? Is living worth it?

The Free-fall

Once the confrontation with my father was done, all the “strength” I had mustered to do that rushed out of me like a deflating balloon. And once my parents left town and things settled into a routine of digging through the mess to see how bad the damage was, I wasn’t sure I could do it.

The only way I can describe it is if I’d had a problem that required major surgery to fix. Then, at first, before the pain relievers wear off, you have the joy and relief of that problem being addressed. Life seems okay. Possible. But then the painkillers wear off. The full ache of those wounds hits you. And you are faced with the huge work of repair and recovery. I’d gone through the “surgery” of getting out of the house, confronting my father, and having the support of a therapist. But gradually, after the relief of all of that, there was still a long, long road to recovery. If ever.

The truth was that my life was now split into two halves – the “before the TV movie moment,” when I’d had a family, supposedly love, and a “normal” life. And then the second half: the dive off the cliff I took when I heard the truth. At that moment, I was alone, confused, and afraid. I was in a free-fall, and hadn’t yet hit bottom. In fact, I couldn’t see the bottom. I wasn’t even sure there was a bottom. Or if there was, would the landing kill me? I was being consumed by the intense betrayal, pain, and loneliness my “surgery” had left me in. Did I even WANT to keep going?

The long agony

Of course, I kept working with the doctor regularly. And he was a gift for sure because I wouldn’t have made it at all without him. As strange as it sounds, the healer I needed at that point in life had to be a man. The “man’s word” was the only thing that mattered all those years in my life. I was taught to believe the male and despise anything feminine as weak and useless.

So to stand any chance of reversing the damage Dad had done, I would only believe in another man. It would be many years before I would be ready for the most important healing in my life – the gaping hole in my relationship with anything feminine. That would have to come from working with a woman therapist. But at that moment, though, I didn’t know that. I didn’t even know if I would survive this part.

All I knew was that no matter where I looked in my life, everything felt bleak and hopeless. I was immersed in a world of agony. And there didn’t seem to be any way out of it.

If you ever…

It was dark when I got to my parents’ house. I was scared but determined. The therapist and I agreed that this had to be done, and I saw no point in delaying the inevitable. But for safety, I had told a friend exactly where I was going to be so that if she didn’t hear from me in a couple of hours, she would know something had happened.

I don’t remember any of the preliminaries, and I don’t remember leaving. But I do remember sitting at that table and, for the first time in my life, drawing a firm line in the sand:

“I’m in therapy.”

My father sighed. My mother said nothing.

“I came here to tell you that you won’t ever lay a finger on me again.”

His eyes widened. A look of surprise on his face.

“I want you to know that from now on, if you ever touch me again, I will call the police and charge you with assault.”

I expected an explosion. What I saw was shock. And fear. He grimaced, put his hand to his forehead, and looked away. I think he groaned something like “Oh no.”

My mother sat there stone-faced. No words. No expression.

That was it. That is all I remember of that moment in that house. If more was said, I can’t recall it. But my delivery of those lines, and his cringing across the table, those are seared in my brain.

I know I didn’t stay long. It wasn’t a social visit. I had gone to do what my therapist and I decided was needed — set me free from them, stand up for me, and set up my zone of protection. And I had done that. Strongly, calmly, fiercely. Now I could go on with my healing, undisturbed.

The only other thing I remember from that night was heading straight to my friend’s house to decompress from exhaustion and relief.

The aftermath

It’s funny. Looking back, when I said those words, I still wasn’t even thinking about the sexual abuse. I had never told my mother, or anyone except my friend and my therapist, about that. At that moment, I was determined to lay down the law about his violence. I wasn’t ever going to be threatened by him again. But I expect, when he heard my warning, he took it to mean both the violence and the sexual assaults because he never tried anything with me again.

The aftermath is a bit fuzzy. I know somewhere in there I asked them to join me in therapy. He refused. There were questions about why I was doing this and how long this would take. In spite of putting on a brave face to my father and standing up to his family system, it was very fragile for me. I had waves of guilt. I felt like I was betraying my family and questioned myself constantly about “Was it REALLY that bad?”

And I felt totally alone, and vulnerable. He had built a family system of rules all those years and I was breaking all of them. It was shaking his rules to the core. He was angry. Then the martyr and victim. When a person makes major shifts in how the family rules operate, don’t expect that system to be happy at what you are doing. Any threat to the carefully constructed walls and denials and that system will blame and attack you, not the abuser. And the terror is so strong. I felt like there was no place deep enough, dark enough, and walled off enough to be safe.

Painting by author

Then my mother ended up in the hospital ICU with chest pains that turned out to be an anxiety attack. And I remember standing outside the ICU with him, looking him in the eye and asking him when he was going to change the way he lived his life. The violence toward my mother. Me. Wasn’t it time to stop?

Within a few months, he took a field representative position for his company. He and my mother moved to Texas and sold the house. Even though they would return to Connecticut in a few years, they would never again live in Torrington.

My therapist offered to provide them with referrals for therapists in Texas, so my father could get help. Again, Dad refused.

It begins

As for me, it was a relief to be free from his interference. With the physical distance of them being across the country, I no longer had to worry about him just “showing up somewhere” unexpectedly.

Now…I had work to do. A lot of it. With him out of the way, that was about to begin in earnest. I didn’t know it then, but things were about to get a lot worse before they would get better…

Countdown….

The waiting room was hot, but I just couldn’t get warm.

My hands shook.

I wanted to throw up.

I should just leave.

Why am I here? I shouldn’t be here…I shouldn’t be doing this…

I was about to break the HUGEST rule of my entire life…the thing that had been most strongly and constantly drilled into me — keep SILENT…protect the family from outsiders.

Was this what it felt like for someone in the Mafia to break the rule of Omerta and speak? That was a betrayal of that ‘family!’ Well, I was betraying my family. Would this spin out of control and hurt them? I should just leave.

The clock showed 10 more minutes until my appointment.

I’ll just keep it just between me and the therapist…

Maybe this won’t take too long to fix. If I work really hard, I can fix everything in me quickly and just go on with my life.

My family doesn’t need to know.

The minute hand on the wall clock pounded out the seconds. Just a few more minutes. If I was going to leave, it had to be now.

I couldn’t move.

I hope this doesn’t hurt them. Do I have a right to risk that?

I’m too sensitive.

I don’t want to hurt them…But I just can’t carry this any longer.

Two minutes more…

Dad will be furious…and hurt…

I will just have to do this fast…

The moment of no turning back…

The receptionist called my name and ushered me into an office. The doctor was waiting for me. A man. Curly hair. Mustached. Jacket and tie.

My throat closed up. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I was so ashamed. Afraid. Shaking. No words came out.

He spoke softly. Reassured me I was safe. Told me to take my time.

I tried again, a couple of times.

Finally, the word I had just learned from the movie tumbled out of me. Just a shaky whisper. The therapist leaned closer to hear me.

“Incest…my father….I…sexually abuse….”

The MAN’S reaction…

It took all I had to say it. I was afraid of this man. What would his reaction be? After all, he was a man. Would he side with Dad? Would he judge me?

Those thoughts were cut short rapidly.

He asked me questions about how long it had gone on. He was absolutely enraged when I told him. But not at me. He was ANGRY at DAD and spoke in VERY certain terms of how horrible my father had been for doing these things to me. Spoke firmly that I had not deserved this, and IT DEFINITELY WASN’T MY FAULT. Spoke defiantly about how my father was totally wrong and….

I was in shock… surprised. Reassured. After all. This was coming from another MAN. I figured if I told a woman therapist, she would, of course, tell me he was wrong. But this was coming from another man! He wasn’t defending my father, a fellow male of the species. He was absolutely destroying any illusion that my father acted out of love. And very plainly laid out how much this was abuse. And how I had been harmed and DESERVED better. It was mind-blowing.

I stopped shaking…then started again. I wasn’t afraid of the therapist any longer. But now, given how strongly the therapist reacted about my father, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to “contain the fallout” from my choice to speak.

Can I contain the fallout?

I wondered how I could keep this a secret between the therapist and me…how to hide this from my family. Not hurt them. I knew Dad would blow a gasket.

The therapist, though, was all about protecting me and standing up to Dad. Stopping this in its tracks and letting Dad know in no uncertain terms that he was on thin ice and from now on I had a right to…in fact, I MUST draw a boundary for myself.

I was shocked.

The therapist said we could get him in there with me. Confront him together.

I was TERRIFIED AND REFUSED. In looking back I still remember the gut-level fright about that. I wasn’t sure I could stand up to him, so intense was my fear of his seeming power. Apparently I was not alone in reacting that way. Jen Cross, in her book, Writing Ourselves Whole, said:

“My stepfather had tried to occupy every fragment, every nook and cranny, every inch of my psyche — he believed, and trained me to believe, that he had a right to every thought in my head, every emotion, every instinct.It took almost a year after that terrifying conversation with my stepfather before I could let myself believe that I would not be physically harmed if I told my story to a therapist…”

Anyway, the therapist then assured me that we could do this as slowly and in whatever way I needed.

He would work with me over future visits to help me calm. Reinforce I was absolutely NOT to blame. That I wasn’t dirty, or the cause. That I had been abused and was treated horribly. And then figure out what to do next to help me heal.

Leaving his office that day, I was reeling. When you live for 28 years thinking your life is “normal” even if unpleasant, then see how powerfully appalled someone else it by your story, it just takes time to absorb that reality.

But at the same time, I was comforted. Amazed. Scared….so many things all at once. Then…concerned. I suddenly realized this was not going to be such a quick fix. How much was this going to cost me? COULD I afford the help I needed? Money was really tight with my mortgage

Money and time…

I stopped in at the cashier’s office. I knew I needed this. That if there was any hope for a future for me, I had to do this. Maybe I could work out a payment plan?

The advisor was a blessing. Gentle. Reassuring. The first thing she told me was not to worry. That because I was an employee and my services were being done through the hospital, they would cover any costs that my insurance didn’t.

I was in shock. And grateful. What a gift. For sure, that is not how places operate today. But my God, what a stroke of luck then. That sealed my fate that day. With money off the table and a kind, strong, affirming therapist, there might be hope. No matter what, I was going to see this through.

And of course, I would work really hard so I could “fix me” fast.

Yes, well….

“Just because you survived doesn’t mean you came out whole.”

Daria Burke – Of My Own Making

“Disaster Date” then the quiet before the storm…

I don’t recall much about the holidays that year. I assume I got together with family, and things went uneventfully.

The only thing I do remember from that period was a date that nearly got both of us frozen to death. We foolishly drove an hour or so away to go to dinner that night when the temperatures were literally 20 degrees below zero. We should have stayed closer to home.

On the way back from the restaurant, we ended up stranded on the side of the road because the hoses in his car burst and the car lost all its antifreeze. He didn’t even realize what was happening or how much danger we were in. With no heat in the car, we couldn’t even talk without shaking, and his stopping and starting the car to let it cool off almost killed the battery. Even as I explained that we needed to find help fast, he kept stubbornly ignoring me and denying there was a problem.

Thankfully, we finally ended up at a local volunteer firehouse. I had told him if he didn’t stop, then to let me out, and I would walk to a stranger’s house for help. My lifelong thanks to the wonderful young fireman who had just returned from a call, allowed us to take refuge there, and brought us hot chocolate to warm us up.

Even then, my date cluelessly tried to put us at risk by wanting to head back out and drive an hour home from there. Realizing he was an idiot, I refused to leave the fire station. While he sat there unable to figure out what else to do, I got a tour of the firehouse as well as a compliment from that young gentleman who said he would have asked me out except that he was already in a relationship. I totally respected that.

My date finally called AAA, who arrived a few hours later and said they couldn’t help us. The serviceman told my date the same thing I did — that we were stranded and he shouldn’t drive his car. So, we ended up staying put at the firehouse all night.

Finally, his father drove down from Torrington and rescued us at 6 a.m. the next morning. At that point, I told my date off, then went home and sat in a hot bath to warm up. Needless to say, that finished it with us.

With the holidays and the “disaster date” behind me, January began with a quiet start. I went to work, came home, and savored quiet nights enjoying the luxury of “Cable TV.” That was something brand new in 1984, especially in our area. All my life, we’d only had 3 channels via an antenna on the house roof. Instead, at my condo, I had CNN, HBO, and almost 100 other channels to choose from. Between that and the peace of living in my own place with just my dog, it was glorious.

January 9, 1984 – The “explosion”

I was home from work that evening and had settled in around 9:00 p.m. to relax with a movie on ABC. It was one of those “made-for-TV movies” called “Something About Amelia.” My life was about to be blown apart.

The movie opened with Ted Danson’s “father character” glaring at his 13-year-old daughter across the yard. In that moment, I SAW that “LOOK” on Danson’s face. And my heart started pounding. It was the same look of anger and jealousy I often saw on my father’s face when he looked at me.

The shot immediately shifted to the daughter — who was scared, uncomfortable, and seemed ready to cry. I viscerally felt her fear, entrapment, and despair.

She had been asked out by a boy. The father didn’t want her to go. She was too young, he said. She was…whatever. He acted more like a jealous lover or husband than a father.

I started shaking. Not just a tightened stomach. My entire body. I recoiled into the blanket on the couch and curled up in a ball. But I kept watching. I couldn’t stop watching.

Things continued to worsen. His secret arguments with her. His stealthy interactions of anger were hidden, so that no one else saw him except his daughter. The stress and fear on her face. Suddenly, I recognized my life on that TV screen. She was living exactly what I had been living with my father. The shock was almost too much, but I kept watching.

The girl started doing poorly in school and became withdrawn. Confronted by her guidance counselor, she broke down and shared that her father was doing sexual things to her.

Now, I will say that while that helped move the plot along, and no doubt could happen, I was amazed that she opened up. Shame, fear, and self-hate, not to mention threats and brainwashing, usually keep victims silenced. Sometimes for a lifetime. At least it did for me. So it might have seemed a bit unusual to me for her to open up so easily. But not so much that I considered it impossible.

Instead, I was riveted, anxious to see the guidance counselor’s reaction. I was amazed to see her immediately understand what the girl was talking about. And she then took action ON THAT GIRL’S BEHALF. She comforted the girl. Reassured her she was not at fault, and was not alone. She was protective and immediately set up a meeting with the mother.

The mother, however, reacted angrily and accused her daughter of lying. The younger sister was angry because this meant she would lose the “special attention” her dad was starting to show her. The counselor got the victim out of the house and to a safe place, then contacted the police. All of this was so incredible to me on so many levels. But especially that the counselor knew about this kind of thing and was actually protecting the girl.

The father, when confronted, denied everything and demanded to see his daughter. However, the police refused.

“Off the rails”

Here is where the movie, great up to this point, started to go off the rails. Yes, the father was arrested…until he wasn’t.

It was determined that he could go back home, and the family should just have therapy. And especially the mother. Because, of course, the cause of this kind of act by the father was the *wife’s* fault. She wasn’t giving him enough sex and attention!

He never served jail time; in fact, he was never charged. The police officer told him that if he did this to a child outside of the family, he would have been in handcuffs. But the movie implied that because it was just his own daughter, they viewed it differently, and that therapy would make it all okay. The movie ended with the family in the therapist’s office and the girl forgiving her father because of the fond memories she had of him when she was little.

Where the movie started on a groundbreaking and brave note, it devolved into a totally abhorrent and incorrect ending. No question. There was the misguided blaming of the wife. And the movie therapist saying that everyone had incestuous thoughts, but if the husband had felt loved enough by the wife, this wouldn’t have happened. This alone was wrong on so many counts, and there were several other things so far out in left field. I should have been enraged by those statements, but I was so totally blown away just by the fact that they were talking about my life that those nuances were lost on me then.

Looking back from now, I have read scathing reviews that tore the ending of that movie apart, and rightly so. They had portrayed the father almost as a victim at one point and blamed his choices on his wife. Then they went further to indicate it was just fine to put him back in the house, as if some therapy sessions were going to cure this and keep both daughters safe. Add in the mother blaming her daughter, and demanding to know why SHE, the pre-teen, didn’t stop the father, and yes, the errors are simply galling.

The New York Times published an article about the movie at the same time it was aired. It discussed how the producers tried to handle the topic carefully to avoid triggering viewers. They didn’t show any scenes of the father entering the girl’s bedroom or of them in bed, and even had counselors on standby after the airing of the movie in case viewers were upset and needed help. All of those things were fine. But they went off the rails in so many other ways, including that the father should have been charged and prosecuted, not made blameless and a victim.

Eternal gratitude

Despite all of the clueless and wrong conclusions, I am going to say this one thing about the movie: From where I was at that night, I will be eternally grateful to ABC television, Ted Danson, Glenn Close, and Roxana Zal for just making a movie about incest. And for even just saying the word out loud. For me, it did what it needed, which was to literally blow my reality wide open with a new awareness of what my life had really been.

It changed my life that night because it shattered me and got me into therapy, fast. I might never have found out…ever…or at least not for many more years, what had been done to me. I might never have gotten into therapy. I might never have recovered. For sure, my life would have taken a whole different road, and not a good one. So I will always be grateful. That movie was a turning point in my life. It saved me.

I will also give credit to the fact that, for 1984, that movie was revolutionary simply because they risked making a movie about incest and airing it on a major TV network. At that time, no one ever spoke of it. There was no social media, no online anything to search or share, no teaching kids about sexual abuse. It was essentially an unknown topic for most people.

And I suspect it was unknown for most victims in the sense that many, like me, may have thought they were the only ones it happened to. And while I can’t answer for anyone else, that kind of reality left me feeling ashamed, guilty, like a freak, and an aberration of nature. So, by simply putting the topic out in the public media for the first time, it opened my eyes to a whole new reality and made a whole different future possible for me. But that would be down the road. There was, first, the immediate fallout to deal with.

The “free-fall” into the abyss…

For the first time in 28 years, I heard that I WAS NOT ALONE. That everything happening to that girl on TV, and more, was what happened to me. That WAS my life in that movie…on that TV screen. Those behaviors portrayed by Ted Danson were exactly the things my father had done to me. And most totally revolutionary to me was that there was AN ACTUAL NAME for what had been done to me — incest.

However, it’s also true that in that moment not only was my emotional stability shattered, but so was my whole world…and everything I believed. The ground under my feet absolutely disappeared, and I started a deep free-fall into an abyss.

I was literally shaking as I sat there on the couch, freezing cold in spite of my blanket, because of all the anxiety and terror raging through me. Everything I had thought about my life, my family, love, truth — ALL OF IT was WRONG. A LIE. And it left me in the place of: “What the hell do I do now?!”

An approaching avalanche

Until that night, I assumed that getting out of my house was enough. That being free of living with my parents, I could just move on and live a normal life. The truth is, I could not live in gaslighting, brainwashing, abuse, and incest from birth through 28 years old, and come out psychically whole and ready for healthy relationships. There were going to be some major challenges to confront.

Sensing that I was rapidly unraveling emotionally, I had the presence of mind to call a friend who I knew was in marital therapy with her husband. While everything in my brainwashing said, “Don’t be dramatic, therapists are just for others,” I recognized there was an avalanche of emotions coming, and that I wouldn’t be able to handle this alone.

The next morning, I called the office and took the doctor’s first available appointment. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold things together, and there was no time to waste.

Here is a poem that was popular in the 1960s. Maybe it was overused then and became trite. But I always loved it. It was written in 1927 by Max Ehrmann, so it is 99 years old. Yet I still think it applies today, and I still derive much peace from its words. I think the world could do well to follow its wisdom.

So, to start 2026, here is the poem Desiderata. Happy New Year….

And tomorrow, my writing journey resumes…

Desiderata – Words for Life

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

— Max Ehrmann, 1927