The person in the journal pages
To write about the emotional therapy of the years from 2017 on, I want and need to be mindful. I have a wall chart full of the issues that were surfacing, and a list of themes I kept revisiting. I don’t just want to throw them all out haphazardly, but rather, reflect on them so I can tell a coherent story for all of us, myself included.
As I think back over these last few years and try to remember the specifics to share, my memory simply says: “It’s been painful, long, deeply emotional, and worth it.” Duh.
So I realized I needed to take some time and go back through my journals for these years. And hands down…that person in the journal pages tells a much richer tale of where I was at, what I was thinking about, and in much sharper detail than my memory.
While the early one in 2017 was more sparse than the later ones because I was still, in a lot of ways, emotionally unaware, it still contained enough information to get this journey started. So I’ll start that with a journal “warm-up,” a preview or “sampler buffet” of things to come….
The binder buffet
When I look at that journal now, I see it was often more abbreviated than I would have wished for. Comments were less elaborate and more cryptic in nature. But nevertheless, there were clues of what I was starting to feel.
Those journal pages were like charts from a volcanic seismograph — blips and peaks of new activity cropping up within me. They pointed to the fact that my “long-dormant volcano within” was coming alive. But the signs were still subtle enough for me to miss them. It would take a couple more years of therapy work, and my mother’s death, before gases would belch forth, and lava would finally shoot out. Reading the pages now, though, I can see the cryptic warnings seeping out in the words.
“Empower and heal…not revenge…Still, I get angry at that young man (my father in his prime), and I would like to face off in an EVEN fight with him….but it is not possible…and it’s not the answer.”
My rage was bubbling up, but I was still stuffing it down, using my intellect to tell my emotions that feeling my anger wasn’t the answer.
“I can ‘accommodate’ to whatever – I am ‘elastic.’”
Reading that one now, I wish I had written more. Did I think elastic accommodation was a good thing? And what was I accommodating? That unrecognized rage to have a knock-down, drag-out fight with the 30-year-old version of my father? I was living from my head and what made logical “adult” sense, not recognizing, or maybe more accurately, not allowing the roiling heat of my emotions to surface.
There was a passing note about that ever-unresolved question of friendships with women: “What I actually wanted in a friendship” …the implication being that I was still trying to fully understand why my friendships seemed ineffective, needy, and frustrating.
There was a reflection on not being able to escape the pain and issues in this work:
“There are no ‘jumping ahead breaks’ in this emotional work. Can’t turn the pages ahead like in a book, jumping over the hard or boring parts, like I do when I read Nancy Drew mysteries as a kid. I don’t get to look ahead here, to see how it turns out. I have to live through all the pages without skipping any.”
And another mystery: “Topic: Never looking ahead — good and bad.” Again, my current self asks, “What did I mean and what was good or bad…if either…if you don’t look ahead?”I have since learned to avoid those brief cryptic messages in my journals.
But there were two that even now ring out with clarity and need no further explanation:
“It came calling…I did not seek it out — it sought me out.”
If ever a statement made it clear that the past had finally come calling for me, FULLY, this was it. All my old selves, all my old emotions, they would no longer remain silent, and they wanted my attention.
“Mansplain: Explain as good, something that was monstrous!”
That was again, rage seeping out. My anger at my family for always minimizing what I lived through and trying to say, “It wasn’t that bad.”
And then, there was Mom
If most of the above ones were brief, the same was not true of the MANY entries about Mom. Among the journal notes was an email to a friend about my desire to write a letter to Mom, try to reach her, and get her to speak with me about all those years of abuse and pain we both suffered. To say all those things we’d never spoken about, so we could maybe repair our relationship. She was declining, and I so wanted to try one last time to connect with her fully:
“…my mother has always been the Queen of Denial, and can wall off a lifetime of issues. I have remained watchful, waiting for my gut to indicate that something needed to be said, and when…All of that has triggered questions in me of what her life and her existence have meant to me. I love her. No matter what, she is my mother…While I wondered if I would feel much at her passing, I discovered some deep emotions there…What I most feel is a well of sorrow…and concern for her…It suddenly occurred to me that maybe what may yet need to be said before she goes is what SHE might need to say, more than what I need to ask…or even hear. Maybe my role in this is to be midwife to that?”
Yet when I did send the letter soon after that email, Mom’s only acknowledgment was that it was a “Long letter.” I called her and tried to get her to talk. “Our time together is growing short,” I told her. “I want you to know what’s in my heart.”
But she sidestepped that effort:
“The only thing she responded to positively was the plastic gorilla I sent to put on her Empire State building 3-D puzzle. When that package showed up in her mailbox, she said, ‘NOW what?!’ But when she opened it and saw the gorilla, she was happy about that….She really had nothing else to say. No response of any kind to any of what I wrote. I put my heart on paper, and she didn’t respond. But I send a fucking plastic gorilla, and she loves it. Speaks volumes.”
My emotions on the page ran the gamut:
“My immediate reaction to her avoidance? Initially muted…Not surprised at all and acknowledged that Ed was right, that I would get nothing from her. Then, I was hurt. Disappointed. Angry. Freed. I felt like, ‘Fine. That’s what she feels, why am I caring about her or feeling bad for what she may go through? For that matter, why am I even going to see her …in February? Why bother?’”
Yet, I ended with: “But I will go to see her. It is the right thing to do. I wrote the letter. I will visit, as much or more for myself as anything. I won’t feel any regrets. I tried.”
And even more surprising to me as I look back — yet…in another way, maybe not so, because that is the measure of my heart and my love for her –there was a note written a couple weeks later, even in the midst of that hurt:
“…what I most feel is compassion for the pain and fear she may experience in trying to make herself ready to go(die). And that what she may most need is someone who can walk that path with her, give her courage, and help her face the end. I confess, I am surprised at that realization, and the depth of the emotion I feel for her….It occurred to me that as her end comes closer, maybe her needs will be bigger than mine?”
It is strange to come across that entry just now. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Because when I woke up this morning, two questions burned in my head before I even opened my eyes:
“Why can pain help us to feel so much softness and concern for others? Why can our hearts feel totally open and tender with caring, instead of being bitter?”
I have thoughts on these questions, as well as on my relationship with my mother, that have kept evolving since then. So I will be writing more on this soon.
I decided to write this book in 2017?
I continued on, reading through that year’s journal and found an email where the decision to write this book tumbled out on the page:
“I have found this whole process, insights, and emotions showing up, unbidden, to be unexpected. But they did because the time was right. The impetus to write the book came out of the blue. I had given up on the idea. So…I am no longer in the driver’s seat. I just remain open to what is coming.“
In fact, not only did that declaration land on the page, but also so many ideas of what form or forms the book, or books, should take:
“Re that book, perhaps I should say, books? There might be more than one…First, I will get the story written in its entirety – my ‘bible or data bank.’ Then I can use that as source material for books written from different perspectives? A main one of what that life was, the abuse and relationship with my father, how I survived, got out, and the journey back. Maybe a spiritual one – how that journey intersects with my relationship with God, or at times, the lack of, over my life…my 40 years wandering in my own desert. And maybe one about “two motherless daughters” – my mother and me – and the journey that has been for us over our lifetimes….”
I have many thoughts, too, about the need and decision to write this book, as well as the many topics that could be addressed. Again, I will be writing more on this soon.
The list of news article titles
In addition to cryptic comments or passages about Mom, I saw that I had saved a lot of news articles in the binder. I wrote nothing about them, just kept the articles. Again, I wished I had SAID something about them in those pages. But that is a sign of where I was at in 2017 — emotions under the surface, just occasionally peeking out; and no words…I couldn’t see them or speak them. But I WAS “reacting,” given the fact that I felt strongly enough about the articles to keep them. And the titles speak volumes about where I was at emotionally. They were screaming neon signs of what I was starting to feel:
- Just Like My Mother: How We Inherit Our Parents’ Traits and Tragedies
- Nicole Kidman on “Big Little Lies’ Abuse scene: I just felt completely humiliated and devastated”
- People With Anxiety Disorders are Hiding These 5 Superpowers
- Sexual Abusers Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Run the Clock
- A newspaper obituary of a close family friend from when I was growing up
- The One Thing No One Ever Says About Grieving
- How Trauma Is Carried Across Generations
- Forgiving My Mother
- Evil Sits at the Dinner Table: Women Who Stay Married to Pedophiles: Victims or Abusers Themselves
- Weinstein Accuser: What Silence Does to Your Soul
- I’m a sexual assault survivor: #MeToo is incredibly isolating
- Trauma is not Empowerment
- Diana Nyad: My Life After Sexual Assault
And there were SEVERAL articles interpreting Madonna’s song, “Live to Tell,” along with printouts of the lyrics. That song was pivotal in how I dealt with my father on so many occasions, so I can never thank Madonna enough for it. And those articles and lyrics would continue to show up many times in future journals.
The one I still ponder
Near the end of the 2017 binder, there was a note typed in large letters that I then pencilled in some questions. I am still pondering what I think the answers to this one are. I can see it both ways:
The returning…
So much unfinished business and mystery was scattered in those pages. And fortunately, the journals to follow would be much more complete, detailing the many questions, EMDR sessions, pain, issues, revelations, and growth.
But before I move on to those, there was one last large chunk of the 2017 binder that I’ll talk about in the next post. My entrance to that Underworld, and the Nigredo work: that 2017 Connecticut trip and its “Teshuvah time”: — the “turning and returning….”
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.
Soul Mosaic 
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