Soul Mosaic

To close out this Albedo section, a “Moment of Respite” before diving into the intensity of the next section – Citrinitas. Moments of Respite are my precious “restorative” technique I’ve used throughout life to sustain me.

To sustain them

While I was still working at the museum, I did a class I called “Science Conversations.” It was a free-form, walk-in kind of program. Kids visiting the museum could walk in, and I would have some kind of science demo. But the real goal, what I really wanted, was to get the kids talking about themselves.

What were their dreams?
What did they love?
What lurked in their imaginations that they hadn’t even considered?
And I didn’t even care if they hated science.

I’d engage them with oddball questions that caught them by surprise and got them laughing and talking.
“If you could build a flying car or a time machine, which would you choose, and why?
And if it was a time machine, where would you go…and why?”

I made it clear there were no wrong answers, that everyone must respect each person’s responses, and that always, there had to be a “why.” Because WHY was the core of them.

They would be timid at first. Just one or two brave souls. But the more they saw I loved and really engaged with their answers, and that I truly wanted to hear from them, their inner floodgates opened, and dreams poured out.

I asked one time, “Doesn’t anyone ask you what you think?” And sadly, they said, “No.” So I passionately told them they must think and question, because they would be our future leaders.

To which they replied, “We will?” Sigh.

So I would respond with fire, looking each of them in the eye, and affirming that they indeed would, and most importantly, that the world NEEDED them. I told them it was vital for them to do that because my generation screwed it all up, and we need fresh minds and ideas and hearts.

After that, they couldn’t answer fast enough.

One of the other questions I asked was, “If you could be dropped anywhere in the world…or outer space…where would you go, and why?”

I reveled in their answers – a true window into so many souls who, despite the possible ugliness in their lives, still had dreams and wishes.

I hope my “conversations” helped to give them a moment’s respite from whatever they lived with, and the ability to escape, even briefly, into a place of hope for their future. To feed them and sustain them through “whatever.”

I knew only too well that it was Moments of Respite like this that kept me alive. So, where were the places I would have liked to be? Or still do?

The question

Sometimes, when I can’t quite figure something out and can’t even form the question, I paint. The movement of my hands across the canvas, while smelling the paint and seeing the image, seems to forge a connection to my logic-based brain. Then, finally, the chaos clears, and the words spill out.

A while back, I did a triptych set of paintings that captured my feelings about going from catastrophe or trauma, through disoriented darkness, to a gradual scarring over, restoring, and healing. And while that wounded heart is never the same as before the trauma, still, it mends, and I go on.

Looking at those heart images, which were a metaphor for me and the brokenness I felt, this question finally became clear in my mind:

If this is trapped in my body….

So, no question, the incest survivor pays a heavy toll in personal and financial costs for life. But…are there other people harmed and costs to society as well?

Society’s loss – was my financial estimate “exaggerated?”

Just to go back, for a moment, to the financial and lost productivity costs I guessed at for myself in the last post, they weren’t far off the mark.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2017) published the study, “Lifetime Economic Burden of Rape Among U.S. Adults,” that concluded that $122,461 is the estimated lifetime cost of rape per victim. For child sexual abuse, the average lifetime cost for survivors is $282,734 per female victim (CDC, 2018). These alarming statistics highlight that the impact of sexual violence extends far beyond immediate trauma, creating long-term financial consequences for survivors. Economic burdens faced by survivors include medical costs, loss of productivity and income, legal expenses, educational disruptions, and mental health costs. In the U.S., the total population economic burden of rape is estimated at $3.1 trillion. This includes about $1.2 trillion in medical care, $1.6 trillion in lost work and productivity among victims and perpetrators, $234 billion in criminal justice costs, and $36 billion in other costs (CDC, 2017).
Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault, “Survivor Safety: The Cost of Recovery – The Economic Impact of Sexual Violence on Survivors,” December 9, 2025

So to be clear, all my costs were pretty accurate, and if anything, underestimated. But even setting me aside, the cost to society is astronomical.

Consider what our society loses every year due to sexual abuse and sexual assaults if you multiply what I suffered by the millions more victims out there. And IMAGINE what could instead be done with that money if sexual assaults did not exist???

About that can of worms

So I have three questions:

• How did I survive that house?
• What has that past cost me…healthwise, lifewise, financially?
• And last – What in God’s name happened in our home that such abuse could take place?

For the remainder of this Albedo section, I will deal with those first two questions.

On that last one, I can see other people out there – including, and especially other women – shaking their heads at women like my mother, or like me, who endured that abuse. I can hear them defiantly pronounce: “THAT would never happen to me. I would have never stayed.”

I have a response for them:
“Yes. Yes, it could happen to you. More than you think….And yes, given the right circumstances, you, too, would have stayed.”

When people are so sure of how they would act in a hypothetical situation, especially a bad one, I think they are often just trying to separate themselves from that reality so they can feel better…or safer:

“Finding something wrong with battered women makes it possible for the rest of us to distance ourselves from them: ‘If I am different from battered women, I will not be battered. If she is different from other women, I do not have to do anything to help her.’”
From Alyce D. LaViolette’s and Ola W. Barnett’s book: It Could Happen to Anyone – Why Battered Women Stay.

That third question – WHY could it happen to anyone? – is a particular can of worms that I will deal with in the next book section – Citrinitas. That “yellow stage of greater insights” is the next stage in healing. It is the “returning.” The learning. The finally coming to see it for what it truly was, and understand it all.

For now, let me wrap up Albedo.

“So, is it anger or is it anxiety may be a misleading question! It would be more accurate to say it is the threat system activation gone haywire…”
Shlomo Radcliffe, RP, DCP, CAMS-II, Radcliffe Blog and Resources, “Anger and Anxiety: Is It Anger or Is It Anxiety?“

The Albedo discovery

Previously, in the “Nigredo/Dark Night” posts for this book’s “Undiscovered Country” section, I wrote at length about the emotion of rage. There was a July 2026 assessment of my rage in that moment. There were posts on the nature and the why of rage. And lastly, there was an entry about the choice and gift it offered. So, not a small amount of time has been spent on this topic.

Yet there was one aspect of rage I hadn’t ever considered, something I just recently discovered. The article was entitled: “Why Anger is Nothing More Than Repressed Anxiety,“ by Leon F. Seltzer, PhD, and its subtitle read: Anger is best perceived paradoxically as an “offensive defense” against anxiety.

Given that anxiety was the last emotion that I associated with rage, I knew I needed to investigate this more.

“Scared animals return home, regardless of whether home is safe or frightening.”
Bessel van der Kolk, MD, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Why couldn’t I leave?

“…we are hardwired to seek out and trust the familiar, even when the familiar isn’t safe or good for us….we are hardwired for hope”
Daria Burke, Of My Own Making 71

“Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom.”
Herman 110

I know I did. I thought that somehow, once I grew up, the abuse would just magically end…somehow it would all be over with. Then, like a “responsibility fulfilled,” some “debt paid,” I could then be free to go on and live out my dreams. And of course, there would be no “aftereffects.” I would just magically be fine.

“But the personality formed in an environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the tasks of early adulthood — establishing independence and intimacy — burdened by major impairments in self-care, cognition and memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.”
Herman, 110

That totally sums it up. I was so damaged by the abuse that I “couldn’t” make that break. Because I wasn’t a “whole” person, I was totally unable to envision even having the right to my own life.

It was like all the studies said — I had not been allowed my own identity, and I couldn’t develop one later because I’d missed all the developmental stages. I couldn’t break from my family of origin; I was afraid to go out into the world, and I feared any deep relationships.

Add to it that it was constantly communicated that for me to want something for myself was wrong. That my claiming my own life would hurt my parents’ feelings.

Then there was inertia and learned helplessness. The longer that something goes on, the harder it is to change it. Because you’ve already invested so much time in the status quo, you feel like a fool. Because you feel ashamed of all you had to do to survive. Because you feel so weighed down and exhausted by it all that even getting up and showering, going to work, anything, takes all you’ve got, and there’s nothing left for dreaming, moving forward, creating a new life. Because…what’s the point – you’re dirty and worthless anyway.

In a previous post, I said that what you think is what you feel is what you do. In this post I would expand that motto:

What you think is what you feel is what you do….or don’t do. And the longer it goes on, the longer it goes on…

Mother hunger and my house

“For girls without mothers or maternal figures suffer an injury that author and licensed professional counselor Kelly McDaniels calls mother hunger, the feeling of terminal brokenness, of primal fear of abandonment, or disordered boundaries, a wound that resides deep within the right brain as a result of not receiving adequate nurturance, protection, and guidance in the early years of maternal attachment.”
Daria Burke, Of My Own Making

Author Daria Burke followed her above quote with an assessment of her own pain:
“In my case, my self-image had been all but shattered…The emotional neglect I suffered left me feeling insecure, unworthy, and with a persistent sense of needing validation of my place in the world. Please, perfecting, and performing at the highest levels became cornerstones of my identity…survival tools…

There’s a huge abyss of pain within me that’s been there my whole life and is centered around my mother. Yes, she was always there…physically. We had clothes, food, and supervision. But… there was emotional abandonment, disinterest, lack of protection from Dad, and the feeling I was sacrificed for family security.

There were things I think she knew. But she didn’t fight him. And so often she didn’t look at me. When he was at me emotionally all weekend for “payback” because I’d avoided his ‘advances,’ I didn’t have her protection or care either. So many times, it was a “turned back.”

Whether that was her payback to me because she sensed his over-interest in me, or her way to survive an impossible situation for both of us, I don’t know. One therapist suggested “pathological denial.” If you don’t turn around, you don’t see, and if you don’t see, it doesn’t exist. She might not be able to deny his violent temper and abuse, but other things I think she tried to rationalize. Yet, still, she KNEW something was off.

What you think is what you feel is what you do.

I wrote this motto for myself a long time ago after a session with one of my therapists. It is one thing I use to calm me and remind me to take a moment to “pause” before acting. But it’s also been my way to understand my many behaviors and reactions in life.

Trauma altered my sense of safety, body integrity, physiology, and the way I think and feel. And it follows that all of that then generates what I do…or want to do. They are the root cause of the many different reactions that take place before I even have time to think…unless, like now, I teach myself to pause for a moment, breathe, and remember that these things are not my true self, but trauma reactions: