First Step Toward Healing

As soon as my “little secret” was discovered: that I was pregnant, I was committed to keeping it forever. Even from siblings and closest friends. No one had to tell me that I couldn’t tell. The wreath of shame that I wore, was a shackle of silence. My mother cried. My father was sad that his baby girl had been violated, and mortified that his son was the perpetrator.

The fear of the secret coming out, was palpable. If people found out, my father’s business could suffer. And then how could he support his family? What would people think if they knew that my parents not only had a pregnant young teenage daughter, but also a son who was a molester? That basically, as parents, they had failed? Remember, this was back in the late 70’s, when it was very shameful to be pregnant and unwed. And being young, unwed, and pregnant, was the worst shame you could bring upon your family… even if you were raped.

The only people who got to learn that I was pregnant were the people at the home for unwed mothers, where I lived for about 3 months. And even they never knew about the true identity of the father. I was told to concoct another lie about that.

After giving birth, recovering physically enough to go home, I spent a week at home before returning to high school. I was able to get caught up on the 3 weeks I missed, and resume life as if nothing had ever happened. But it had. And I wore the physical scars as wide stretch marks on either side of my abdomen. No need to get skinny now. I can never wear a bikini again. What I didn’t fully realize, was how I wore the emotional scars on my heart. I was full of anger, shame, fear, and resentment.

Once life settled into a routine, my parents saw to it that I saw a psychiatrist. All I remember of meeting with this woman, was my rambling on and on about stuff for about 45 minutes at a whack. I don’t remember her asking many questions or helping me make any sense of the whole situation. Frankly, other than having someone outside of my family to spill my guts to, I think she was basically worthless in terms of making real healing progress.

After that, I didn’t even consider doing any sort of therapy around all of this, until I was in my late 30’s. By this time, I had grown up, moved around a bit, had a few jobs and a career, got married, and was trying to have a family. I found a social worker who was a therapist, and began seeing her. What I appreciated about her, was that she didn’t just sit there and have me talk at her. She made observations, asked me questions, and helped me see how dysfunctional my entire family had been. I had been raped. Instead of being treated as a victim of a horrible tragedy, I wore a chunk of the blame when it was demanded of me that I had to keep the secret.

She began the process of my liberation by showing me the umbrella of shame that my entire family had become wrapped in. And that the situation was handled badly. The shift in perception brought about new realizations that were very healing.

I was able to look back at events with different eyes. Not only was the actual pregnancy situation handled badly, but during the early days of my being molested, my mother began to really ramp up in mania. This was before she was medicated for her bipolar condition. Her psychiatrist, at the time, thought he could cure her with talk therapy. (He was later sued in a class action lawsuit). My father couldn’t handle her and they separated. He left me with a mother who was crazy (and who was committed to a mental hospital about 2 years later), and a brother who was routinely raping me. THAT was messed up.

Finally being able to see how absolutely dysfunctional things were in the household, I truly began to understand that it really wasn’t my fault. They say that victims of rape and molestation often carry blame, and that they shouldn’t because it wasn’t their fault. I finally began to let go of some of that blame and shame. For the first time in years, I wasn’t totally pissed off at my brother. It felt good to let go of the burden of a big chunk of that anger.

Anatomy of Being a Victim

This is my experience of being a victim. It may look familiar to you, or not. Everyone’s experience is different. However, some things do ring true for many people.

I came into this life a victim. It was part of my life’s plan. One of the lessons I chose to experience in this lifetime, was to experience pain and a host of other unpleasant things, with the goal of learning compassion and forgiveness. How did I discover this? With the help of some amazing alternative healing modalities and people. I have used hypnosis to uncover information that is deep in my unconscious mind. And psychics have assisted in my being able to see both my past and the dynamics that were going on between me and various family members. At this point you might think I’m nuts, and if I read this 5 years ago, I would think I was nuts. But today, I know better.

So, my childhood, from the outside, looked like any other upper middle class experience. I went to a good school and did well academically. I had opportunities to learn musical instruments, play sports, go to summer camp, and spend vacations at a small family cottage near water and go boating. People equate money and means with a good life.

But what they didn’t see was a painfully shy little girl, for whom new experiences were very nerve-wracking. I had exactly one best friend. My older brother routinely put me to the test, seeing what things he could make me do that I didn’t want to do. He knew that I would keep any and all secrets he asked of me. And my mother would swing from being unavailable, as a mother, when she was depressed; to verbally assaulting me when she would swing up to being manic. It wasn’t until I was 16 that she was diagnosed as bipolar. Dad worked Monday through Friday and would come home to belt down two stiff martinis, no doubt to make living with my mother more palatable.

If you live with the threat of being verbally attacked when you least expect it, whenever you exert your opinion or any shred of self-advocacy, you learn to stuff everything down inside. You learn to read the moods of your attacker so incredibly keenly that you know just from the energy waves in the air if you need to run, duck and cover, or if it’s safe to exist in the same space as her. Most people who experience this type of childhood are extremely empathic, having honed their gift from years of living on the edge.

When you live with an adult who is often at the edge of sanity, and they tell you you’re wrong about things, as a child you learn to not trust yourself, or that little voice in the back of your head. You don’t trust your intuition, and you give away all your power. You have no boundaries. You become a doormat. Because of feeling powerless, everything that is wrong in your life is because of everything outside of you. They did that to me. He did that to me. She did that to me. It’s all their fault. I’m just the victim here. There is nothing I can do about anything, because yada, yada, yada (still giving all my power away). You get my drift.

My childhood was perfectly set up to mold me into a victim. To strip away any self-esteem. To fill me with shame. To make sure that any time I tried to have any power, I’d be sliced and diced with a Ginsu knife tongue, so I wouldn’t try that again. At least not until I grew up a bit. This is how I became the victim.

Bittersweet Mother’s Day

I was raped over and over and over again. It started before I was old enough to have my period. So I was 11 or 12. I got my period when I was 13. Got pregnant at 14. Delivered a beautiful, healthy, perfect, baby girl 6 days after my 15th birthday. And signed away my rights to her six weeks later so she could be adopted. I spent four days with her: the time I was in the hospital.

At the time, I was hidden away in a home for unwed mothers. Becoming pregnant was a huge shame in the family. Because I was molested by my brother, the shame was ten-fold. I kept the secret as long as I could, but my body betrayed me. My nipples began to leak at five months along. I denied being pregnant to myself and to the world as long as I could.

When it was found out, there was only about a month left of school until summer break. I hid it well. As soon as school let out, I “went away for the summer to camp.” When school started up in the fall, I “had gotten sick and was in a hospital in a neighboring state. And no one could visit me.” I was only three weeks late returning back to school in the fall. I was a mother and I could tell no one. Not even my best friend. To this day I have siblings that still don’t know.

I have been a mother for over thirty years now. But I’ve only been able to celebrate it openly since I had a child that I had in a socially acceptable way. A child that I have been able to celebrate being pregnant with, celebrate the birth of, and celebrate being a mother to. So, even though most of the world thinks I celebrate Mother’s Day as a mother of one beautiful child, I will always know that I have two children in my heart.

The Anatomy of a Child Molester

This piece is written about one child molester in particular, and he doesn’t represent every molester out there. He may represent others, but this is just the one who molested me. In recognizing just what happened to me as I grew up, I learned a lot about the dynamics of my life, from working with people who clearly connect to the realm of being that most of us can neither see, nor hear, touch, taste, or smell. They are intuitives, or psychics.

This realm is where our spirit exists when we are not in a physical body: before we are born, and after we die. In this realm are things like the Akashic Records: a place that doesn’t exist in the physical, but is like a huge library that holds every bit of information of everyone’s lifetimes, since the beginning of time, until forever. If you have the correct training, or if you are naturally psychic, you can access this information to learn about your life. No you won’t be able to see your future, but with permission, you can learn about things like agreements you made with others before you came into this lifetime.

Have I always believed in or known about this spiritual sort of woo woo stuff? Hell no! But in the past several years, it has helped me heal more than anything else out there. On another day, I’ll write about how I went from not really believing in much, to having a strong sense of knowing in spirituality. About having a spiritual awakening.

So, back to agreements. With the help of a wonderful local psychic, I was able to learn about an agreement that I created with the soul who is now my older brother. The agreement was basically for him to rape me, as an opportunity for me to learn forgiveness and compassion. I know that you are probably thinking I’m nuts right about now. But this is how it really works. You work out an agreement with a soul in order to learn an important lesson in life, and you work out the parameters of how it will be set up. Of course, free will is involved, so how it all works out in life is never a guarantee. I may or may not learn the lesson.

In fact, when my psychic looked back at another lifetime I had with my brother’s soul, in that lifetime, he was an owner of a harem. I was kidnapped from my loving family when I was about 12 (the age when my brother started having sex with me in this lifetime). New to the harem, I was a fascination for this man, and he had a lot of very rough sex with me. Because of damage to my insides, I was never able to have children. And that’s just as well, because the babies that were born to the other women in the harem were taken from them. By the time I was about 16, I wasn’t the new kid on the block anymore, and the man lost interest in me. At around 17 or 18 years old, I was so depressed and despondent, that I killed myself.

When you commit suicide and don’t get a chance to learn the lessons you set up for yourself, after you die and spend time convalescing on the other side for a while, you change the parameters of the lesson a bit, and try again. Having my violator be my brother in this lifetime, the thought was, would give me a better chance at learning this lesson.

Oh, and another thing I’ve learned is, when people choose a lot of difficult lessons to learn, they are one strong-ass Mo Fo of a soul!! So, if you see someone who has chosen to come into life in a body that has big-time issues, or who has some sort of accident that leaves them physically or emotionally scarred, or if they are a little child who has had horrible atrocities rain down on them, these are some very brave and tough souls. The first time this was put to me: that I chose to be surrounded by a mentally ill mother and a brother who wouldn’t be my protector, but rather my violator, I was told how brave and strong of a soul I am. That shift in perception was huge. It opened my eyes. I had worn the label of “used goods” for years (and let myself be treated as such). Yes, my subconscious is still riddled with low self-confidence here and there, because of the little girl in me still needing healing. But that is a large part of what I am working on.

So, this time around in life, it was set up that my older brother would become my tormentor. When I was just a baby, his needing to control me was already there. I have seen (looking back in hypnosis) him toying with me when I was only months old, wondering if he does this to me, what will happen. He is just two years older than me. I have also seen (again, with the aid of hypnosis) when I was about a year and a half old, that he would do things like thwack me just enough that it would hurt and it would make me cry – just to get a reaction out of me. His first instances of learning how to control me.

As we grew up, from time to time, he would do things to me, to see what he could get me to do. I don’t have a lot of childhood memories, but I do remember being around 8-10 years old, playing truth or dare with my brother and one or two of his friends. Like a lot of little sisters, I wanted to hang around with my older brother, so I would do pretty much whatever he asked of me, even if I was not comfortable with it. So, this day, I was dared to strip naked and stand on a bed with my legs spread apart and my arms wide open. Even though I was very scared, I wanted to be accepted, so I did it. The guys looked me over like a side of beef they were thinking about buying. That was it. You might ask, where was my mother with all of this going on? Well, who knows. At that age, she didn’t have to monitor our playing all the time, like you need to do with toddlers; so she could have been doing anything or been anywhere. Or she might have been in a depression, lying in her bed. My brother had confirmation once again, that he could control me: make me do things I didn’t want to do, and I wouldn’t tell on him.

I also remember another time, when we had a neighbor girl over to play (she was about a year older than my brother), and somehow, my brother convinced her to lie down on a bed, with her pants and underwear off (possibly playing doctor or something), and he had a small play set of vinyl tools. I remember him taking the plastic, flexible screwdriver and putting up her anus. She was in tears, but submitted to him. I was watching, but I don’t remember what I was feeling. I was probably glad it was her and not me. I don’t know how old I was, but I’d guess somewhere around 7-9 yrs. old. She never told, because nothing became of it.

By the time I was about 12, my brother had had years of making me do things I didn’t want to do, and he knew he had control over me. One night, and I don’t remember exactly if I was 12, but I think I was, he snuck into my bedroom and forced himself sexually on me. All I remember is wanting him to go away. And truthfully, I can’t remember if he penetrated me that first time or just felt me up. And for some reason, I took on blame, afraid to tell, for fear of getting in trouble. I did tell him to stop and to go away, but he didn’t stop, and he didn’t go away. In fact, he didn’t stop until it was discovered that I was about 5 months pregnant, a few years later.

I was hidden away in a home for unwed mothers until I gave birth to a perfect, beautiful baby girl; six days after my fifteenth birthday. When I left the hospital, she entered foster care and was soon adopted.