Soul Mosaic

Soup

As my father told it, one day, as a young boy, he was at his grandmother’s house. He and a few of his uncles were sitting at the table eating soup. In response to what they were saying to him, and despite his young age, he snarled back at them and told them to “Shaddup!”

My father’s nasty delivery of that word left no question in my mind that he was totally proud of his bravado back then, and that he felt he had every right to talk to them that way. The unspoken message to us was that we, too, should be that tough in life.

Even as a kid myself, hearing that story, I wondered about his nasty retort to the grownups at the table. I knew what would have happened to me if I talked to him, or my grandparents, or any other family adults like that. But then, my grandparents and relatives were nice.

Were his uncles really being nasty to him, or were they just joking around and he was being the nasty one? And what did they think of the way he answered them? Were they angry? Surprised? Or, given that side of the family, proud that he already showed such “backbone” at a young age? Maybe they were trying to toughen him up.

As with all of Dad’s stories and lectures, I took it in and kept my counsel in reserve. By nature, I wasn’t inclined to be that way, and I think I decided that if I was ever in such a situation, I’d wait to see how the adults acted. If they were nice, I would be nice. If they weren’t…well, Dad was giving me permission to be disrespectful…expected me to be, in fact… and I figured he would back me up if I was. He was always good about us fighting “outsiders.” Just not fighting him.

Mindset…and personal choice

Mindset, motivations, and decisions – the individual choices we make with a given set of circumstances – and how we make those choices are all topics of deep interest to me. They were the things my conscience has obsessively explored when looking back at my actions.

Maybe it was the Catholic streak imbued in me over years of going to Confession – that whole directive to “make a complete and full examination of your conscience” that the Church dogma drilled into us. You were supposed to analyze what you did. Ask yourself why you did it…REALLY ask. And ruthlessly ask yourself whether you tried your best or just took the easy way out. And most of all – did you KNOW in that moment you were compromising yourself and taking the easy way out? KNOWING and still choosing was the key moment at the core of any decision.

I was always rigorous in that self-examination – maybe too hard. But I preferred to be too hard on me than later realize God disagreed with my conclusions. Even now, I apply the same strong self-interrogation about how I handled something, striving hard not to give myself the benefit of the doubt, and still sometimes being too hard on myself. So it’s no surprise that the whole concept of a person’s mindset, beliefs, and the choices they make in life has fascinated me.

Character motivation

To that end, I’ve read books on the subject ranging from spiritual tomes to psychology texts to books on how to write, especially the subject of character motivations. And it was the author of one of those – K.M. Weiland – who gave me some clues about my father.

“You lucky you got Richie!”

It was one of those contentious family social media dialogues after the 2016 election. One of my aunts on my father’s side of the family was reveling in the election outcome and spewing nastiness about people who didn’t share her political opinions or candidate choice. I responded with respect because she was my elder, but made it clear I didn’t agree with her way of communicating…or her candidate. She flung some comments back at me, then ended it with:

“Your father would’ve straightened you out!”

I still remember sitting there as my eyes shot wide open and my blood pressure felt like it blew through the top of my skull.

The question

I saw this on Facebook recently, and it gave me pause:

“You meet your 21-year-old self. You are allowed three words. What do you say?”

Wow. First, I was speechless, then I was flooded with all the things I wanted to say, in three words or thirty, all the things I would want her to hear, take in, believe:

• I love you.
• You’re my hero.
• You did it!
• You saved us!
• You are amazing!
• I was wrong.

These were immediately followed by a swell of guilt and shame with questions like:

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.