Clean up duty

I love a good fight...
but the question is
are you fighting to punish
or to make a change?
Gandhi

I heard this question tonight...It is a very pertinent question.

a "grown up" punishes
an "Adult" makes a change

I desired to not be like them...my offenders.
With all my heart I want that.

Asked a question the other day
"just when will I know that I have given myself a life"
that being my mantra in the days of youth...

I see a bit more clearly my next phase...
My offenders were Grown ups...as defined

• Grown up (little person in a big body )

betrayal
Scary
mean
secretive
Out of control
powerful
liars
unhappy
Manipulators
absent
nasty
hateful
self-consumed
wicked
angry
Pretend

So I asked myself what is it I am fighting for?
And found a disturbing answer.

I want to punish because I am angry, out of control unhappy about being secretive about how I feel when my reality is dismissed.
I pretend that I am not hurt and that makes me a liar.
It keeps me absent , self consumed.
I then become a scary manipulator,
threatening absence

I read this on a class paper of years ago

We defend our dishonesty on the premise that it might hurt others.
I have rationalized my phoniness into nobility.
So I settled for a non intimate relationship with her.


I wanted to punish my sister for all those long ago unacknowledged hurts.
I am being mean.
My God how much I must of hurt her over all these years as well.
How betrayed must she feel?
very I am sure
I can justify myself till I am blue in the face
two wrongs do not make a right!
I have actually been nasty and hateful by wanting to punish.
It is time to scrub these hands clean!

In my "grown up" way all I could see was how bad I was hurt.
I have rationalized my phoniness into nobility.
So I settled for a non intimate relationship with her.

Wow that is pretty Wicked!
That is what is tearing me up!
I am acting like them!
I just can't stand that in my heart!

Clean hands and a pure heart demand me to challenge myself here.

Dang!
I'm pulling up the big boots here!

song lyric...
Out on the outskirts of my freedoms
I was looking for fences that would keep me in
and I found there were none.
Where did my heart go?
Where have I been ?
He opened my eyes to the heart ache and lies
and I closed them again.
And I want to go home to my Father .
I want to be part of where
my heart says I belong.
I want to wash my weary feet in living water.
I been away way too long
I want to go home.

• Adult (Integrity, asking the precious child, protective, caring, committed, unconditional love, loyal)

Steadfast
safe
kind, gentle
open,honest
self-assured
powerful
truthful,consistent
content, Happy
Negotiators
reliable
chaste, good
loving
giving
Pure,good
Angry, respectful
Reality.

I know that in many ways I am an adult.
It is time I start learning more though about acting like one.

So Sis if your reading this well...
I am sorry for such a poor show of love.
I am sorry for how terribly I hurt you.
We both have to become more adult to each other.
I own that.
I am not going to pull away from you to punish
it is not my job to punish anyone.
I do so hope though to continue to fight for change,
in myself and in our relationship.

Now... to grow up and say this to your face .
I am so tired of letting that scary powerful mean
"grown up"
intimidate me from becoming your friend.
Every time I feel betrayed.
You must feel that way too.

Why here?
why public?
because this is my blog

This is my way of giving back
I do so hope that this journey can make your path
have fewer stones to stumble on.

As always your prayers made a difference in my life today
Thank you with all my washed hands and heart.

Empowering the Adult

• Grown up (little person in a big body )

betrayal
Scary
mean
secretive
Out of control
powerful
liars
unhappy
Manipulators
absent
nasty
hateful
self-consumed
wicked
angry
Pretend

• Adult (Integrity, asking the precious child, protective, caring, committed, unconditional love, loyal)

Steadfast
safe
kind, gentle
open,honest
self-assured
powerful
truthful,consistent
content, Happy
Negotiators
reliable
chaste, good
loving
giving
Pure,good
Angry, respectful
Reality.


Hint when and where your behaviors catch you being a "grown up" look to the Adult behavior that is opposing and do it. Apologize. own it! and go on. Look at those adult attributes some education is in order. HOW? for example do you negotiate?

so transparency?

I could use your prayers today.
I have been storming around here so angry!
Every where I look it is a mess everything I do is undone and the heat is killing my garden and all that hard work I did out there.
I feel more like a "grown up" than an "adult" today.

I stood up and spoke up and out and now am so angry that I am needing to do so.
How much easier it seams to be plastic and pretend and put up with injustice and coy and subtle meanness than it seams to be to just ignore and pretend and overlook tolerate. I try to understand to feel life in the shoe that is on their foot.

I really can understand why we may not stand up for ourselves. People we love do not see but from their own perspective. We might stand up only to leave them baffled oh it is so crazy making and yet somewhere in me I know that truth is know even if it is pretended not to be.

I heard a philosophy program speak of the three fundamental things that some thought we as humans need

our needs met/security
affiliation/ friendship
freedom

(there is also mission and competency)

it is strange but I believe it a true thing... that to hold these three in balance we must loose them... at least let go of some of them ...to gain a higher quality of others.

Freedom for example to a survivor means to have truth and have friendships based in being able to be FREE to be real. No more prisons of never telling at fear of retribution. That was the very core power they used over us to keep us silent.

to be REAL however risks that very freedom!

Freedom from the pretense is something I let go of to have the affiliation and give that affiliation...now, to be real risks that very affiliation but gains me a freedom...

To every thing there is a price and the price of my freedom to be real is fellowship with those that denied me the very truth of what happened in my childhood. I do not want to pay that price nor can I change any other than my own self. Perhaps there are other options that I am blind of?
I learned that I have only left one who I have never forwardly stood up too...I have always feared this persons control, victim/offender/rescuer switch slick and seamless. I have loved them most for they were the one who was taught to be an offender by the leaders and those over us.
Thinking the best of them and only wanting the best for them. Loving them so much as to keep their secretes. Knowing things alone in the silence of my mind is maddening. Forgiving those things left secrete has been hard but having to pretend within the company of said soul is killing me!
I am so angry about all of this and the choices I am faced with how I am too cowardly to stand up face to face and lay it out. Yet never really wanting to risk harming them...codependent? Forbearing? Angry about tolerating a presence yes. I hate pretense! Yet I hate more the thought of causing hardship to one whom I love.

Now I know as one who has walked this road I am not alone in this termoil of soul of free choice. So to all of you to all of us who try to walk this fine line of kindness and self preservation I appalaud you in your attemps of not letting them make you like them.

Every event of my childhood that was the mantra that kept me alive and from becoming an offender too. If it were not for us this world would be all savage.
I can understand what happened to Sodom and Gammora it is amazing that lot got out!

It is my MISSION to get out! to not look back for every time I do I just freeze up like lots wife and turn to stone to terrified of loss to walk away not looking back to those I love. It kills me the thought of all those souls gowing up in a blaze of utter frutility.

I fall short over and over in the compitency of this for I so long to reach out to those who are set to fry. This in leaving me so inraged and angry and removed from so many whom I love. Not just one but many if there be fall out over my fight to be free of this pretence that my childhood never happened! To many know the truth even if they are mute to tell it.

My soul is refreshed

Hi
I just got done watching Extreme home make over" is was the Filch episode where a couple adopted 8 children adding to there own.
The team sent over plain loads of toys, bedding and food to Haiti I balled my eyes out.

Remembering that Christmas in Russia so many years ago.
Steve and I had a little extra money that we did not spend...
We had the orphanage worker take us to the medical supply, to a kiosk for a Christmas tree...the orphanage did not have one...
We were able to get some toys to hang above cribs and some toys to manipulate and equipment for bottles...
Those little children around my feet with cleft lips and downs who will never be adopted...
Dash who may well have never been adopted had it not been for the offer of a boy child and an open heart to receive any child...

I have lived all of my life ...and in a greater view it is/has been a beautiful gift.

I will be starting to work on the manuscript again after years of being silenced.
It will take a lot to do.
It will call up a lot out of me.
But God has a plan...His ways are high.

When I think though of the difference we all have a chance to make in the world around us
I can no longer of choice withhold the way God restored my life out of the fear of lies and rejection.
I had given my strength to it and became once again enslaved.

Those survivors sitting on the floor weeping left helpless without emotional support or medical means..
It is the full circle.
There are others some of you here and some on the other blog who need to know that your life will get better that all the hard work is worth it.

Forgive my self engrossed focus and know that all of you matter to me.
All of those babies matter...
Every life we touch can be made better different if we are willing to make it be so.

My heart faltered...my courage faltered...

There is a passage that speaks about speaking on the things that we have seen in Him and heard in Him and witnessed in Him.

Today I was reminded and am going to chose to be reminded of the things He has brought me through.
I have kept silent in regards to my recovery far too long
I am again compelled to do the work to finish what he began in me.
To share with those who never have had or will have the privileges I have had.
I just wanted it all to go away.
That was, even in my attempts to protect others ...selfish of me.
It is not my job to protect others it is my job to speak the truth and give my voice to freedom.
So in the lyric of this blogs' name sake ...


don't worry mother, it'll be alright
and don't worry sister, say your prayers and sleep tight
it'll be fine lover of mine
it'll be just fine

lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
no longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
fill your lives with love and bravery
and you shall lead a life uncommon

I've heard your anguish,
I've heard your hearts cry out
we are tired, we are weary, but we aren't worn out
set down your chains, until only faith remains
set down your chains

and lend your voices only to sounds of freedom
no longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from
fill your lives with love and bravery
and we shall lead a life uncommon

there are plenty of people who pray for peace
but if praying were enough it would have come to be
let your words enslave no one and the heavens will hush themselves
to hear our voices ring out clear
with sounds of freedom
sounds of freedom

come on you unbelievers, move out of the way
there is a new army coming and we are armed with faith
to live, we must give
to live

and lend our voices only to sounds of freedom
no longer lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from
fill your lives with love and bravery
and we shall lead...

lend our voices only to sounds of freedom
no longer lend our strength to that which we wish to be free from
fill your lives with love and bravery

I wish to be free of the fear of telling the truth and sharing the freedom fight that so many wonder if it could really ever be won...well...now lets see...lets hear it...
"tell it...like my mother said tell...tell all donetta"

EMDR a timeline

This morning I will begin the EMDR to help the PTSD symptoms. How in so many ways I wish the lies spoken over me were so...I mean that I would give anything if my youth was not mine. The denial and outright silencing of the truth by others is too much for me. If it were not for an elder sister it would be unbearable at times. Yet I stand convicted in neglecting her just to stop from thinking about what we both know is the truth.

I do not want to open myself up again to the fellowship of keeping others secretes while I am judged based on lies and the denial of the truth. It forces me away and it is tearing me up inside.

Last night an assignment that I have neglected was addressed. I was trying to find a list I thought I had and in so doing was reintroduced to some difficult documents. To begin the EMDR a time line needs to be developed. My appointment is today. I have yet to be able to bring myself to do it. It has been two weeks. I just want it to all go away. Leave it all behind.

There is a saying...
"well how's that working for ya?"
Truth is that to do the work will hopefully stop the stress form debilitating me with PTSD effects that seam so incongruous to my present moments.

There is a song by Cat Stevens...

" seagulls sing your hearts away cause while the sinners sin the children pray...Oh Lord how they pray and pray for that happy day...for that happy day."

I made a promise that if I do not let them make me like them. If I don't let them make me go crazy... that I would give myself a life someday...when will I know I have kept that promise . When can I stop? When will this stress disorder stop?

I told my husband that I do not think I can do this...For many many years after remembering and trying to deal with Carolyn's murder I just shut down to it all.
Telling about the murder seamed to of hindered those professionals, I felt it hurt them to know it to hear it. God I do not want to hurt anyone by telling them and then knowing that their mind has those images in it because of me.
At least with the EMDR I do not have to speak them out loud.She just does the thing? while I am recalling the event. I do so hope I only remember and not regress. I feel panicked. Alone and isolated in the knowledge of the wicked truth of what I have experienced and all the while a sibling acting as if non of it ever happened...their own survival denial that dear God I do not want to shatter for the very same reason.

My Mother told me before she died to tell...tell all...One elder sister and two brothers all confirm so many of the things surrounding the places and events of my youth they confirmed the perps and assured me that all I have told is true...but this one sister is convinced I think that if she can just make it all go away it never happened...if it is to all go away that would then take my very life breadth to do so. That is what it is like being near her. I have to stop being me and walk on the ground tip toed watching out for her cleverly placed land minds that set me up to her covert mind games that demine and reduce me to shut me up. How do I have relationship with that. Loving me seemingly and I think she does...but keeping the truth in her check to keep it far from her.

Folks these are the harder things often in recovery. Walking softly as not to break a denial that might cost an others sanity if she truly faced the past events. Whats the point...to prove that I am right? Well history , documents, testimony from many other people have already done that. Absence seems my only recourse. Yet I so love her and long to be able to call her a trusted friend.

Now I am being asked to remember it while the EMDR technique re programs my brains response. I am so scared to feel it all over again. The neurologist and several others speak so highly of this therapy. They say it is the governments main technique for helping the VETS deal with PTSD after coming home. We never forget but our brains store it differently and then the chemicals in the brain react totally neutral in recall or triggering moments. It is said to remove the trigger so the memory can be stored properly. Trauma stops the transport of data into storage verses fight/flight response.

I went through the art work and saw the images I rendered of the stone table and it sickens me. What a risk to see if this will help.

The Great Escape

post

original date

January 11,2008

The Great Escape

Reality pens me to the mat. I am urged to pen it back. To do so was an exercise in choice.
This is my story of my wrestling with choice.

In the early 1980's escape began for me. As freedom called. After marriage in 1982 I was for the first time in my life, safe. Safety offered me the opportunity to find a sense of self. I was connected to a loving circle that had my best interest at heart. Affiliation gave me a connectedness I had never known. Four years later that safety began to secure me into the mission that great restoration that would compel me to finish the promises made during many years of torture and abuse. Those years of my childhood were stored as if a master records keeper had taught me the skill. Compartmentalized into a persona for every major excruciating event. That was how the promise was kept.
Some day if they don't make me crazy, or if I don't let them make me like them...I will give me a life. This was a solemn promise a vow of "In your face" to every thing they made me endure.
I was safe enough that those file drawers would snap the spring that held them shut with such force that as it began I would "awaken" hiding in my closet not knowing how I got there. As the time went on those files were as a movie clip flooding my wakening moments with visions of those horrid events lived and filed away so many many years before. Remembered in a survivors capsule of secured truth that would be exposed just as I had vowed.

The "Great Escape" took me most of my life time to achieve, but there was a pivotal point that is what I long to speak of ...

During a long stay and under a strict supervision I opened drawers that were much to dramatic to open alone. I had become hospitalized. My sweet mind is a gift. God used that intelligence that He gave me to keep record. Records of thing so unspeakable that it took professional help, medication and 24 hour supervision to secure my physical safety. For I was on death watch for several weeks. Those things that I pulled up from those files had to be reviewed. I listed them chronologically. I had to make sense out of the evil that had befallen my youth.
It was at a desk in my hospital room that I was penning events that had been reveled at prier hospital stays and during outpatient psychiatric therapy, that I had a major breakthrough. This is my experience of that "Great Escape" that breaking through of choice.
Sitting at that desk my list looked like this...gang rape in 6th grade, multiple rapes during childhood and adolescence, torture, physical,sexual emotional, educational,spiritual and mental abuse so sever that I had had to have re- constructive surgery and years of intervention,Sexual exploitation begining at age 4, a mentally ill mother,a violently mentally ill step dad, being the last of 8 siblings and the only one who did not run away, moving 22 times in my first 18 years of life, starvation, malnutrition, Several deaths of loved ones, deaths to animals, witnessing a murder and the loss of my own infant at 16 years of age through a forced abortion. The list on that paper before me was so painful that it was just crushing me as I listed out that chronological horror story that was my life. I was so hurt that God let me live at one point I yelled and screamed at him...and He understood.

It was He who then gave me a choice a chance to choose the course of my "Great Escape".

Sitting there at that desk, looking at that list that was the culmination of several (5-6) at that point years of hard recovery work. Sitting there I just collapsed and cried. Understand this, I did not cry, I never learned how. I had had the ability to cry literally beaten out of me. I began to really sob. I could not breath and it really hurt my sinus and head severely and I collapsed to my knees. The attending nurse, who I will all ways treasure as an angel on this earth in the form of a woman, came to me quickly. I had to be laid on my back to relieve the internal sinus pressure for my face swelling I was gasping. She gently told me what it is to cry that I was having the moisture come out of my tear ducts at such a rate that it was causing severe pressure. She told me lovingly that it was a normal physical response. She then sat on the floor beside me. She was so gentle and kind . She stroked my hair and she helped me to pace my breath in. They gave me an injection to help relieve the sinus pressure, and I wept. I wept myself to sleep there on the floor I think an intern came and they lifted me into a bed. Where when I awoke I was just in shook and speechless for what seems like days. During those days I was given a presentation by God. It was the sacred options that lay before me.

The option of choice.

For it was God who taught me the options before me. I had a major choice before me. There was no condemnation or criticism from Him what ever I chose HE would respect.
This is what I had before me...
I could chose to go off into pure spirit and live in an institution the rest of my life. He would be with me. I would have fellowship with him. My body would no longer be my own and I would be deemed in this world as insane. I would no longer have to fight through the process of restoration. I would be free from the pain of knowledge. There would be no more images and no more remembrance of what had happened. It came with great costs however and that was presented to me as well. This was purely between God and I . No one else gave me the clarity of the choice before me. If I chose this however it would irrevocably effect my Beloved for the rest of his life. I would have nor earthly future and would most likely suffer indignities to vast to measure.
Or
I could choose to continue the battle full face to the wind and beat the snot out of the darkness that had so tried for my entire existence to extinguish me. That would mean that I would have to face my offenders, remember and walk though the events that had not been unwrapped. I would have to tell about Carolyn's murder and call the authorities. I would have to continue with the surgeries and indignities of the remnants of sexual abuse and the ravage that had been done to my mind,spirit and body. I would have to continue to have the stigma of being weird and a misfit in this world. I would have to continue to raise myself and grow up in this world developmentally. I would have to continue to face the Post Traumatic Disorder that kept me a bizarre person with odd traits and tender responses. It meant that I would have to integrate all of those broken pieces called me. All those severed parts that were mercifully dissociated just short of multiple personality disorder. It meant embracing those parts of me that were loathsome and angry. It also meant so much more than that. Like "trusting the process" just learning how to even trust. How to stop surviving and learn how to live. It meant getting of the triangle of victim/rescuer/offender with my family of origin and facing all those other dysfunctional relationships. It was letting go of unhealthy relationships. Getting boundaries of where I began and ended so as to be able also to know where others began and ended.
The choice I ultimately made was not an easy one. Neither, would have ultimately been a choice of ease however. I had endured things that few humans do ever live through. My life had been kept from even my own hand (suicide). I had/have a purpose. A responsibility in my survival, to pass the torch and light the way behind and before me with the knowledge, experience and strength that I have fought for and attained.
I escaped. I made it out and into the life, the life I live. This life uncommon. This life Restored.
~Donetta




Write Away Contest
If you'd like to participate here are the rules:

1. Write a post or find one in your archives on the topic, "The Great Escape" and email your post's permalink to me at: scribbit at gmail.com any time through Sunday January 20th. If you fail to meet the January 20th deadline I will still happily publish the link to your post and include it in the list of entries but it will not be judged. I reserve the right to reject submissions if they fail to meet the topic or if they contain objectionable content.

2. Publish a link to the contest page here at Scribbit in either your entry post or in a separate post.

3. Check back here on Tuesday January 22nd when I will post a complete list of the entries along with the Write-Away Winner and any honorable mentions our judge sees fit to award.

Our guest judge this month is Robin from Around the Island, a wonderful mother, writer and blogger living in Tel Aviv with her husband, son and daughter.

But besides this the winner and all runners-up or honorable mentions (I leave that up to the judge to award them) will also get to take home this attractive Write-Away Winner button which he or she may display in their sidebar if they wish.

EMDR therapy

EMDR

My Neurologist suggested that he wants to see me use this therapy to resolve the physical damage that the PTDS is doing to me. Living with PTSD over all of these years has caused damage to my body. The Hormones, adrenaline and cortisol and such that are so ever vigilent and toxic over time needs to have some futrhter attention. I had never heard of this before. So I am in search of a therapist.