I have been sharing many deep and painful things. And it is helpful for me to speak openly and feel “worthy.” But I also do this process while staying grounded in the present and celebrating life’s current gifts.
A current gift is that this month is my 70th birthday. I will be taking the coming week off to share time with my family and savor the joys of each other’s company. AND celebrate that I have my wonderful family.
As important as this writing process is, it needs to be paced well for my health, and it needs to be connected to the joy of my present life, filled with love.
My “gift posts”
While I am away from my desk, I will leave “daily gift posts” for all.
The gift post will include this post’s text (for context to anyone new). But at the top of each new day’s post will also be a quote — one of the many I keep handy to feed my soul as I write. That will be my gift to all while I am celebrating.
The painting is also part of the gift posts. While I worked at the museum, there was a small puffer fish in one of the aquariums. When I needed a moment’s break from things, I would stand by the tank. The puffer fish would always come right up to the window and hover there. I don’t know what it was thinking, but I hope it was happy. He seemed to linger longest whenever there was a group of happy children waving at him. So one day I took his picture and painted him. So, as part of this gift, I leave you with the puffer fish.
When I return, I will resume my memoir posts.
Painting by author
In the meantime, a reminder of the purpose of this blog:
This blog is my way of honoring what I lived through and had to do to reach “today” in as healthy a way as possible.
Before I continue with the rest of the story, I take a moment to note where I’m at in it. The preceding entries showed all the various influences on me from birth. And the rules I lived by that I took as normal life.
At this point, I was 14 years into that abuse. And I had no idea I was only halfway to an escape.
For all intents and purposes, I was controlled and didn’t realize it. I was manipulated and unaware. I was aware of my stress level whenever I crossed Dad. Aware of my relief and gratitude when he was kind and loving. And I was most aware that if he got upset, I blamed me.
I took it all in as any child would, and believed him. Why wouldn’t I? I had no idea that this was wrong. I had no role modeling that this was, in fact, truly aberrant behavior for a family. True, it felt wrong at times, but I assumed that was my mistaken judgment.
Painting by author
The trapped fly
If you’ve ever watched a spider wrapping a fly caught in its web, you might think of the spider as a vicious killer. But the spider isn’t breaking any laws. Nothing is calculated or premeditated. It’s just following the biology of its life cycle. Like all of us, the spider has to eat. And it responds to the thrashing of a fly trapped in its web out of instinct only. At least so far, science research hasn’t shown that the spider is finding pleasure in its actions.
In fact, given the process it uses, a spider could even be considered “humane.” It reacts quickly and efficiently. And with one exception, most spider species administer a venom into the trapped fly that not only immediately paralyzes it, but leaves it unaware of what is being done to it. It will then either digest the fly and eat it right then, or set it aside for a later meal. But the fly is mercifully unaware of anything. It doesn’t experience pain at that point, nor does it feel any apprehension of what might be in store for it.
The spider is just living by its life rules, and so is the fly. And to that end, there is no guile or treachery.
3. operating or proceeding in an inconspicuous or seemingly harmless way but actually with grave effect.
Insidious. Just the sound of the word makes my skin crawl. When I say it and feel the tactile sensations of the syllables as my mouth muscles form them and they roll off my tongue, I feel afraid. Listening to the word as I slowly enunciate each letter, it conjures sensations of evil. And that’s because it is.
It is something deliberate. Calculated. And executed before you even know what is being done to you. It is done so subtly and slowly that by the time you realize it, you’re in too deep. It’s too late. And all you can do is wonder if you were to blame because you didn’t see something coming, and feel stupid.
If ever there was a word that captured how he wove his web of control over me, “insidious” is it. He started on me from infancy. I will talk later about how I know that. But I was groomed, manipulated, and played like a puppet for years using the strings of his power, intermittent reinforcement of love, abuse, and brainwashing.
Like the fly, I was rendered helpless, and it all happened before I even knew what was being done to me. But unlike the fly, which was put out of its misery quickly and whose misery was just part of a natural cycle, I was NOT unaware of the sensations of apprehension, fear, and pain. It was definitely NOT part of a NATURAL cycle. And unlike the spider who was just following the rules of its species in a straightforward way, my father was most definitely choosing to break his in a calculating and stealthy manner. Nature…the spider… is actually merciful. My father was not.
Before I continue, it is time for a periodic update for the sake of new readers as well as current ones.
I want to take a moment to “recap” why I am writing this blog, and why I would like to publish it in some form as a memoir. I have been writing to discover what I didn’t see before, and to build that “crummy first draft.” Then I will revise, and revise, and revise, because my goal is to find an agent and seek publication. So for right now, I am writing, discovering, and sharing.
So often…every morning when I sit down to write…I feel weary. And I feel the heaviness of the pain from the past. Why, then, someone might wonder, am I doing this…re-living past abuse to put it on paper? And what will it give the reader?
In trying to answer the question of how I survived that household, I need to explore who that young girl was — me — in the times when Dad was not around, in the times I could just be “me.” In a lot of respects, so much of who I became, and still am, how I navigated life both then and now, came out of her spirit.
Even in my seventh decade, I am a 9 or 10-year-old at heart. I am still all of the qualities listed below that she had. Those things got pummeled and almost beaten out of me. But somehow, the spark stayed alive within, and slowly, ever so slowly over my lifetime, I’ve fanned those flames back alive. And I would say it is now, in my seventh decade, that I have fully returned to the spirit of that kid. And no, it’s not “second childhood.”
About the only problem, though, is that while I have reclaimed my inner 10-year-old and she continues to drive all of these things in my heart, my body begs to differ with me on some days. So I am learning now to “moderate” that 10-year-old to match the 70-year-old body!
But to come back to that question of how I survived, if I had to give a short answer, aside from key people along the way, and God, it would be: “Her spirit.”
Who was she? Here is a list of those qualities she embodied, and I’ll expand on them over the next few pieces.
I’ve spent a bit of time in my posts talking about who I am, why I’m writing, how to do this book, why now, and what kind of tools I need.
Why have I “wasted” so much time on those things?
Maybe this post can answer that question. It will be the first entry in the book and sets the stage for the first chapter — Packing for the Journey, which will include the information I mentioned above.
Cathartic maybe. Healing, insightful, yes. But easy? Never – And sometimes it takes you down unexpected roads…
Author photo of her mother – 1948Author photo of her mother – circa 2017
It has been a difficult time. I have been writing …well, I WAS writing the next pieces about my childhood, working to move the book forward. But I got sidetracked by Mom.
The festering splinter
I had done a side piece about Mom..her death, her life…her, as part of the prologue. A matching bookend to the prologue entry about my father’s death. Yet every time I tried to edit it I ended up rewriting it instead. First from one angle, then another, struggling to capture that “something” inside me that needed to speak. That “something” that was driving me to write about her, and it was unrelenting. While I felt like I got closer to “it” with each round of writing, still, I was missing the essence.
Whatever it was I was trying to excavate, it was buried deep in my soul. The effort felt like when you have to plunge into your flesh with a needle to remove a deeply embedded festering splinter only to have it keep slipping out of your grasp and sink deeper. I felt like I was failing because that “Mom piece” was taking too long, and I needed to get back on track and return to that piece from my childhood. I was determined to stick to the outline.
This continued until late yesterday afternoon when, in a flash of insight…then despair, I realized I WASN’T off-track at all…and that there was actually something much bigger emerging in all of this. In fact, I suddenly understood that the “Mom” piece wasn’t the “sidetrack” but THE track. I kept getting pulled back to her…her death…her life because there were so many questions that needed answers. Questions like why did it matter so much to me that we took care of her to the end…why was I so proud of how she navigated her death process? Why did I care so much after she had abandoned me for a lifetime?
Painting by author – Author as an infant on hood of her father’s car
Driven to paint
Before I share below a sampling of the visual elements I am using in my book, I thought I would share the “WHY” I not only used them, but HAD to use them.
Rebuilding my life
The book incorporates the story not only of the abuse I endured, but also of my journey from my parents’ house—the depression and despair—to my rebuilding, and my creating of a meaningful life.
Even after the initial crises of my escape and recovery with the help of good therapists and friends, I would return for rounds of therapy off and on throughout adulthood. Given all of the life lessons I had missed out on during my early phases of life, I looked at it as “preventive maintenance.” Why “wing something” when I wasn’t sure how to handle it and risk messing it up, then have to fix it? Better to learn as I went along.
The traumas of life
This approach worked well, and I thought I had finally put the past to rest…until midlife. Menopause hit. My husband almost died. The dog did die. My son left for college. All at once. But even worse, those new traumas blasted open a well of trapped emotions I never realized were even there. Like opening Pandora’s box, it unleashed a flood of unresolved depression, anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares…severe PTSD. At the time, I had no idea what was going on. Desperate and having major anxiety, I began working with a skilled trauma specialist who was and remains a godsend in my life.
This was fortunate because, in addition to everything that I was dealing with, I also began navigating the last chapters of my parents’ lives and their deaths. It was then that I realized just how much work I still had to do.
The past comes calling to claim its due
Those first decades of adulthood had been about building a life. Now, it was about returning to the past to address the well of unfinished business and unresolved pain that had come forward to claim its due. It had patiently waited a lifetime…my son came first all those years. But now, it was time for me…and that long-suffering child.
However, I had no tools to reach the pain, to know how much was there, or to express it. I only knew its presence through the agony of body memories and nightmares. That was when I made the discovery that art heals.
As promised, here is the second half of my rules for this memoir. These will be right at the front of the book so the reader is also clear about what I have in mind.
Caveats, cautions, and purpose
Before departing on this journey, here are 7 key points:
A moment before continuing the story, to state the “rules of the road” for this book
Before continuing with posts about my life, I want to share what I think is a vital part of any memoir – stating the rules, goals, and cautions for the book. So this is the first of a 2-part set of posts that will form the introduction to my memoir. That introduction will give all readers clear information about the how and why of my approach.
The “hows and whys” of my writing
Since there are so many good books on how to write a memoir, mine does not and will not be a textbook on all the nuances, methods, and rules.
But the following things jumped out at me as I studied all the different books on the subject. So I wrote myself some clear guidelines:
I recently wondered how a caterpillar — this slug-like crawling thing, emerges from a cocoon as a multi-colored, fragile-winged, flying beauty.
Being a retired science geek I of course hunted the answer down. While I sensed it was a sort of “magical” process, the specific details surprised me. Attached is a Scientific American article for those of you who would like to know the nitty-gritty process.
The short version is that all of the tissues of that caterpillar are literally digested and become mush! All its various structures are gone…with one exception: Imaginal discs.
Imaginal disc magic
When caterpillars are forming in their original eggs, they contain not only the structures needed to be a caterpillar but also an imaginal disc — an organized group of very specific cells — for each of the adult body parts they will have.
Once in the cocoon with the caterpillar reduced to mush, the imaginal discs take over and start reconstructing that soup into the adult butterfly. When the transformation is complete, the butterfly will emerge, mate, lay new eggs that will form new caterpillars carrying imaginal cells, and so on.
So…what do imaginal discs have to do with choosing not to write a memoir?
The very personal cocoon of transformation
Writing a memoir is a very personal decision and requires a careful assessment of risks to you and benefits to you. It is also a matter of personal timing in life as well as so many other factors. There is no right or wrong decision. It’s taken me seven decades to get to this point, even as I tried several times at different ages. It’s just that I was still mush in a cocoon and wasn’t ready.
Now, I choose to write. But after a lifetime of healing and transformation, I could have chosen the opposite instead. And I wouldn’t have been wrong. It’s not about the decision to write a memoir or not. It’s about growing, healing, and finding peace.
The Middle Path
The Buddhists say there is a Middle Path — not one or the other, but some road in between that fits you and lets you do what YOU need to do to heal. It doesn’t only have to be “write a memoir” or “don’t write.” Another way to heal could be to work with a therapist, paint, write only for yourself, or pursue some spiritual exercises that give you peace. The real point is to grow, heal, transform, and find peace.
“Spiritual” imaginal discs
To that end, I guess I relate to the caterpillar and butterfly story because I think we all have our own special “spiritual imaginal discs” — an inner part of us that came with us at birth and which holds the seeds of who we are meant to be in life. At the end of the day, it isn’t about a particular path to realizing our potential and our life mission. It is about finding out the mission itself. So find your own imaginal discs within you and follow your best path.
Take the time to consider things
Now, if you feel drawn to writing but aren’t sure , check out my previous two posts on “Is Writing a Memoir Worth it?” — the first on Risks of writing,
These two provide a number of points to consider before you decide. Maybe consider the lists, honestly answer the questions, and make your own decision. No one should ever tell you what to do, or that you are wrong.
Soul Mosaic 