Finding healing one day at a time
Back around nine months ago I created a playlist to help me out when I was feeling uninspired. Some of these songs remind me of my parents or myself during childhood. Other songs are more thematic and stir up memories and feelings about childhood events. I finally feel like I’m ready to share this playlist here.
I hope you enjoy this little peek into my childhood and process.
Part 3
Both of my parents were checked out much of the time. I was raised by television. Many of us who grew up in the ’70s had this experience. I lived my day according to what show was on next. The people on television were my friends and they kept me company while my mother was away. I would build tents out of the dining room chairs and blankets from my bed.. My dog Muffy and I would hunker down inside and eat snacks while watching Gilligan’s Island. I loved building those tents. Once inside it felt like I was in a different world. Under my blankets with my furry companion felt safe and warm. I can still feel the softness of Muffy’s fur and the way she smelled. Muffy was my only company when my mother was away. She was a beautiful white Samoyed dog with happy brown eyes. She was very easy going and always willing to play tea party with me or even dress up. To this day I love dogs and I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to Muffy for taking care of me. For the first ten years of my life, she was there. There were times when she was the only being around to comfort me and she was often the only really dependable thing in my life. She was like a second mother to me and many of the good memories I have from the first 10 years feature her.
In the morning my alarm clock would go off and I would hear Bugs Bunny say “Eh What’s Up Dock?” I loved my Bugs clock! Alone I would get up, eat, and get myself ready for school. I knew when “Leave It To Beaver” came on it was time to go. At the end of the day when I returned home, I would watch “Bugs Bunny” and “Gilligan’s Island”. Most of the time the television was just on as background noise to keep me from feeling alone. I would bring art projects out into the living room and work on them in front of the television. When there was nothing on tv I wanted to watch I would go play in my room or I would play outside. Sometimes I would play with friends but I felt guilty about leaving Muffy alone if she had been alone all day. I wonder if she saw my being out of the house as a break, much like a young mother might relish nap time. For a little bit she would not have to be my Dressy Bessie.
In the evenings my mother and I would watch “Sonny and Cher”, “The Love Boat”, “Fantasy Island”, and “Charlie’s Angels”. I enjoyed all of these shows. When my mother was home we would often sit on the floor, in the dark, and she would bring out a big bag of nuts from the kitchen. It was like being in a movie theater. She would crack the nuts open for me and we would have them as a treat. Sometimes we would have a generic soda too. My mother loved orange, grape, and root beer flavors so that is what we had to choose from. When I think of these times with my mother it warms my heart. It calls to mind the physical closeness I so needed and that could be hard to come by. I lived for these moments. The person I loved best in the world was finally there beside me and she wasn’t crying or screaming, she was laughing. In the dark it did not matter that we had no sofa to cuddle on or that the devil might be hiding in the closet, all that mattered was that we were together.
I really loved Cher! She was one of the only people on television who looked like me. Certainly, she was the only woman I was aware of. She had long black hair and olive skin just like mine. I loved seeing all of her glamorous Bob Maki dresses. She was both beautiful and talented. She gave me the impression that she ran her own life and maybe Sonny’s too. She was confident and I wanted to be like her. Another woman I admired from television was Lucille Ball. I thought she was beautiful as well and so funny. Lastly, there was Carol Burnett. I did not see her as a great beauty but as the funniest woman ever! I loved her show and couldn’t wait for it every week. When it went into syndication, I could watch it in the afternoon. I never missed a show. These women helped me to develop my sense of humor. Cher was sharp and kind of dry, Carol and Lucy perfected physical comedy. When my mother would go into one of her depressive moods I would act out scenes from these shows to try to make her laugh. If that didn’t work I would dig into my candy stash to find something to make her smile. My mother loved candy so the combination of my best Carol Burnett impersonation and a Snickers bar could go a long long way.
On the action side, I could not get enough of “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Bionic Woman”, and “Wonder Woman”! These women inspired me to be strong and athletic. I would run through the woods pretending to be Wonder Woman! I love those memories. I had a fort in the trees and I would perch on a branch and pretend to be in my invisible plane. I saw myself in these characters. They were tough, confident, and dependable, all things I hoped to be. I tried and tried to make my hair do the 70’s flip or feather, no matter what I did it never worked.
To this day I love female comedians, especially if they embrace physical comedy. I enjoy female cop shows and superhero characters. When I get lost and I can’t find my way they help me to get back to myself. They remind me of who I was at the beginning, who I am at my core. They remind me of my mother, which can be both good and bad. They remind me of how far I’ve traveled to get to where I am now. They continue to provide comfort and inspiration!
Television offered me predictability and comfort. Shows were almost always on when you thought they would be. I could see this extended family whenever I wanted and they would always be the same. The sounds of their voices coming down the hall from the living room made our apartment feel like it was full and not so empty. I feel the shows helped me to become more socially confident. My mother and father were socially awkward and so they did not provide good examples of how to fit in. I have always felt odd in the world but it could have been much worse. I watched these shows and learned how to interact with people and it showed me how adults should be with kids. Television helped me see the inappropriateness of my parent’s behavior. Television also helped to keep the things I was afraid of at bay.
When I wasn’t watching television I played outside. We had a small wooded area next to our apartment along with a large hill and field. On the other side of the field was my elementary school and playground. When the weather was nice I would play in my “fort”. Wonder Woman was my favorite scenario. Those woods had the potential to be so much. They could be my invisible plane when I climbed the tree and sat on a branch that overlooked our street and the low brush was my fort or secret lair. The large rocks made great chairs and an easy to move low hanging tree branch served as a secret invisible door. In the summer it wasn’t
unusual for me to waste the afternoon running through the tall grass having spectacular adventures. Even in these happy times fear followed me around lurking behind every tree and waiting for me at home. When I think of that fear now I can feel it in my chest. I can imagine it is not unlike what a rabbit feels when it senses danger. You become still and hope you can’t be seen.
My dog Muffy liked to be outside when it wasn’t too hot. She made a pretty good playmate. Even though she was a big dog I managed her fine. She never ran away even when I dropped her leash. Even though I don’t think she enjoyed it much, she would climb in the sled with me and go down the hill. Well, truth be told she only made it half way down the hill before jumping out of the sled and running to the bottom to meet me. Once at the bottom of the hill she would chase after me to get to the top and do it all over again. When the weather was warmer she would play kickball with me. Which meant I would kick my small red rubber ball and she would chase after me as I pretended to run the bases. When we grew tired we would plop down in the grassy field and I would make dandelion jewelry and crowns. I was very allergic to both the grass and the dandelions so it didn’t take long for us to be driven back into the apartment to cool off. Once inside I would grab a popsicle and arrange my dandelion creations so that I could show my mother when she returned home. Often by the time my mother arrived they were very wilted. It made me sad that I could not figure out how to keep them pretty for her.
On other days I would slip through a small trail in the treeline behind our apartment that opened onto some railroad tracks. I would follow those tracks all the way to the beach. When I think about it now it seems so dangerous. I would bring a towel, some beach toys, and whatever change I could gather so that I could buy some ice cream once I got there. I would play in the sand and water all day without any adult supervision. To this day I am not the strongest swimmer and I recognize how lucky I am that I never got hurt. Even though it was dangerous I can’t help but think of these days warmly. My childhood was not safe by any stretch of the imagination but it was filled with childish adventure. I had so much unstructured time to explore the world around me and these days at the beach are the best example of this. All I need is to hear the sound of the waves hitting the shore and I’m instantly taken back to those days sitting on the beach eating a popsicle with my toes buried in the wet sand. By the end of the summer, my skin would be a deep brick-brown making me stick out like a sore thumb. Adults and children alike seemed confused and interested in my appearance. They would often ask me about my ethnicity and when I was young I thought it was kind of a game. Later it would make me feel bad about being different.
When I wasn’t outside I loved to create little art projects. My mother saw early on that I was a blooming artist and so she made sure I always had paint, markers, and clay to play with. My mother was an accomplished artist. Part of my desire to create was driven by wanting to be as skilled as my mother. She liked to draw nature scenes and especially animals. My mother grew up around horses. I could tell by the stories that she told me about her childhood that she loved her horses. I would ask her over and over to tell me about Dolly and the others. She would tell me each horse’s name and then describe what they look like. She would include details like which horse liked to get into mischief and which ones liked apples. I would try my best to draw them as my mother had described. I also drew my dream horse over and over again. He had a black tail and mane and was a deep chocolate color. I could never match my mother’s sketching talent and this distressed me. She bought me this large oversized book about how to draw horses and I spent many hours trying my best to follow the instructions. I became pretty good at it! But sadly never as good as my mother. It really bothered me. It took me until well into adulthood to be able to create art for art’s sake and to not be still comparing myself to my mother in my head.
After my horse drawing stage I moved onto my fancy lady stage. I was fascinated with dresses from the 1800s and I would draw what I called “fancy ladies”. Some would have parasols and others would have very elaborate hats. I dreamed of being like them. This led me to be obsessed with the “Gibson Girl”. I loved to draw elaborate updos from that trend and I would practice them over and over. I think this phase was more enjoyable to me compared with the horse phase. My mother did not draw these “fancy ladies” and so I was not constantly comparing myself with her. I could just draw for the love of drawing. For a long time Snoopy was a subject I would sketch over and over. I always looked forward to the Charlie Brown specials mostly for the scenes that featured Snoopy.
I tried many other crafts and it was easy because my mother had a closet full of half-finished projects. I spent hours playing with my spin art toy. It was one of those toys where you put the paper in the tray and then drop bits of paint onto it while it spins. I also learned to finger crochet and latch hook. I was not a big fan of finger crocheting but I loved to latch hook. I would sit side by side with my mother and we would make latch hook projects together. She also taught me to make little potholders with a plastic loom. When she was creating she was smiling. Right from the start, it was clear to me that she became bored much faster than I did. She would start a project and then get bored, it would go to live in her bedroom closet and maybe one day I would pick it up and finish it. This is one way in which my mother and I are very different. I hate having unfinished projects laying around. This goes for books too. I will finish the most boring books just because I can’t seem to allow myself to just not like something and then put it down. I really have no idea where this comes from.
I possessed a big imagination and it showed through in my playtime and art. I believe that my imagination is what got me through all of those long hours of being alone. When I think of this time it brings a smile to my face. I was a vibrant child so full of promise. When I think about it a little longer my smile turns to sadness for all of the hours I spent alone. It wasn’t safe and I never felt safe.
Hi everyone! I have been in a writing slump for a long time. I am back on the horse for the time being and I intend to share some of my pages here. I’m open to feedback either in the comments or better yet at my email survivingchurchandchildhood@gmail.com Please be kind, memoir is really hard.
This morning I find myself sitting with my coffee at my lonely laptop. I am banging away at the keys trying to pound my story out onto the page. This feels like just another new start. It is filled with hope, maybe this time will be the time when everything gels together. Fall always feels like the right time to write. There is something about the cool mornings that drives me to try again. I have been away from this work for a long time and then suddenly there it is in my face beckoning me back to this lonely task. On days like this the words burn through my fingertips, they cannot escape my brain fast enough. Being a Gemini part of my brain just wants to put words to page and part of my brain wants to craft the perfect memoir. These two parts are always at odds and through this struggle, I push this work into existence.
I have been seeking to make sense of my childhood for as long as I can remember. Even though I recognize that there are some things I will never understand I feel compelled to keep searching for truth. Truth is wobbly when you are talking about others’ motivations and when they are no longer around to ask your questions to. I am a quintessential gen-Xer born in 1970. I was a latch-key kid with my house keys always around my neck. I grew up in Madison Wisconsin and I’m still in the area. I wonder how many others are out there like me. Wounded souls trying to make sense of their childhoods through writing memoirs. Looking back all I see is trauma, fear, and sadness. When I look a little harder I can see moments of creativity, freedom, and joy. Those moments are much harder to reach for. I can guarantee that there will be times when my story overwhelms you, just know as you continue on with me that I am okay now, I’m a survivor.
Throughout my childhood fear was my constant companion. It hung in the air like a thick cloud around me and its friend sadness clung to me like an old thread worn sweater. Fear was brewed first at home followed by my church and school. My mother was a very fearful woman and she passed her fear onto me the same way she gave me my freckles and my smile. She was tough but at the same time, it seemed like she was always scanning the landscape looking for danger. On the other side of the coin, my father insisted that I be strong and fearless. He has zero tolerance for weakness unless he was the one being weak. He and my mother were like the sun and the moon. How they ever got together is beyond me. At this moment I cannot think of one way in which they were alike other than their tendency towards being fixed on themselves. My mother suffered from severe depression and her childhood was pretty dysfunctional. My grandmother was a severe parent and my mother always felt like an outsider within her family. My father has always been a mystery to me. His accounts of his origin story seemed to vary and there were many topics he had no interest in talking about. My parents never seemed happy although they did seem to really love each other. They certainly were ill-suited for the long haul and could barely take care of themselves let alone each other. Looking back on it now, I think they loved each other more than they loved me.
My mother was pretty in a tomboy sort of way. She was dark-haired and covered from head to toe in freckles. Her green eyes were the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen. She was not the most domestic woman in the world. She viewed housekeeping as a chore and not something to be enjoyed. She wasn’t much of a cook and had no interest in learning to be better at it. She was all about comfort food and she did that well. She felt the most at ease in nature and preferred the company of dogs and horses to being around people. When my mother was around people she could be very charming and those who knew her liked her more than she could ever acknowledge to herself. She was an artist and could draw almost anything. Her family valued music and so she learned multiple instruments and she was a gifted singer. Marla, my mother, loved to laugh and her playfulness created some of the only happy memories of my childhood. When I was in elementary school we did not have much furniture in our living room but it did not matter. She and I would snuggle on the floor, backs against the wall, and enjoy one of our favorite shows. No TV night would be complete without a bowl of hazelnuts, a nutcracker, and generic grape soda. Those nights were my favorite. In those moments we laughed together and I could breathe a sigh of relief.
My father was short and his skin a chocolate brown color. He always seemed to have something to prove. He was a boxer and fairly ambitious. Armando, my father had a boyish smile and an impish sense of humor. He was a whistler and sang along to the radio even if he often got the lyrics wrong. People liked him and he liked them back. Depression could come knocking at his door if he spent too much time alone. My athleticism and tenaciousness come from him. He was a wanderer and philanderer and often these tendencies took him away from me. I chased his affection long after it became clear to me that he only wanted mine when he could not get it other places. I was a consolation prize, a toaster when what he really wanted was a boat.
I loved my parents fiercely! My love for them was strong but this does not mean they were good parents. They were flawed as all of us are and they were tortured by personal demons. My mother came from a strict religious home and her upbringing informed much of her parenting style. Growing up outside of her family’s love and acceptance made it so she never felt accepted or loved. I believe this crippled her and made it hard for her to give love and acceptance. She was deeply lonely even when friends tried to be there for her. It was never enough or she just couldn’t believe that they “really” liked her. She had a dark deep hole inside and it seemed it could never be filled. Her sadness and fear permeated every part of our lives. Even the material objects within our home seemed to take on her personality. Heavy and oppressive miasma clung to everything. She could go from being jovial and childlike one minute to screaming and violent the next. I learned very early on to be careful what I said to her. If something was going to get me into trouble it would most likely be my mouth. Often her anger came from unexpected places. She always seemed to believe I understood why she was raging even when I often did not. When in a loving mood she would pour out affection on me and when in an angry mood she could be petty and mean. She would spank me but also pinch me, pull my hair, and twist my wrists. It was as if all of these little acts of violence lanced some painful wound within her. People who cut themselves sometimes say that when you do it it releases some of your pain, I think her hurting me did the same thing. It’s like it kept her from doing something worse.
My father often spoke of being emotionally and physically abused as a child. He was generally mellow in personality but at times his anger would flare. Both my parents spanked me with a belt but my father was the one most likely to take it too far. If I did not meet his high expectations he could be cruel with his words. Weakness seemed to send him into anger faster than anything else. My mother played by God’s rules as she understood them and my father played by no one’s rules but his own. He was very unconventional and independent. At times I miss them and my inner child longs for my mother. At other times the flames of anger burn within me so brightly I could set the world ablaze. It is all very complicated and I have had to come to terms with many truths about my childhood. If this book were about my parents it might be written from a place of more understanding and questioning what led them to be who they were, but this story is not their story it is mine. There was a time when I went through my life seeking to make excuses for their choices but I can no longer do that. I have to put myself first in a way that neither of them ever could. I find myself shouting to them from across the years, “Can’t you see how your choices are affecting me? Please get some help for yourself and for me!”
The last month has been a struggle. It started with me struggling to live with fibromyalgia followed by a pretty bad fall down my basement stairs. In the midst of this, I started EMDR which has brought up some emotional stuff. In case you do not know what EMDR is here is a link https://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr/ When I went to my first session I really wasn’t sure what to think. I wasn’t able to access much emotion even when talking about the hardest subjects. I tend to dissociate when I talk about my childhood. It is a skill I learned long ago and as dysfunctional as it is I am grateful for it. It has enabled me to survive. The therapist warned me that I might have dreams, even nightmares, and I did for about five days.
All of my dreams were different but the same. In each dream, I was faced with having made a mistake. Someone was angry with me and I was frantically trying to fix it. I was left feeling inadequate, unlovable, and unworthy. These dreams led me to think about my childhood and where all of these feelings come from.
“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Psalms 51:5
From a very young age, I was taught about heaven and hell. I believed that I was disgusting to God because of my sin and that he was only willing to accept me because of Jesus. My religious family saw childhood infractions not as normal childish behavior but as sin. My mother would often remind me that God is always watching and hell would be waiting for me when I didn’t want to clean my room. After all, it was right there in the ten commandments. Honor your father and your mother. By not cleaning my room I was not honoring her and therefore sinning. All sin led to one place.
One thing I am being treated for using EMDR is my insomnia. I have had it my whole life and no amount of sleeping pills seems to fix it. My doctor suggested trying to get to the root causes through EMDR. The echos of my childhood come to me at night when I close my eyes and try to rest. I’m hypervigilant meaning I can’t relax enough to fall asleep and once asleep I awaken easily. I have long since given up my fear of hell and the rapture but because my formative years were spent in fear of these things my hind/lizard brain still thinks there is a threat. This is part of why I have PTSD and all these years later I am held captive by the demons of my childhood.
“For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.” 1 Thessalonians 5:2-3
I was a fearful child. I was afraid of dying and having some unrepented sin, I was scared of God. I was afraid of missing the rapture and being left to fend for myself. I was afraid of my parents. Both of them spanked me with a belt and my mother was emotionally and mentally abusive. I was afraid of my pastor and other adults in the church.
I took the fact that I could not pray us out of poverty and I couldn’t seem to fix my parent’s marriage or my mother’s depression through prayer as rejection. I believed that if I prayed God would hear and answer, I was taught that God was the one person I could count on to meet all my needs. When all I heard was silence I wondered why? I processed it to mean that I was an exception. God would meet people’s needs, I really believed that, just not mine. Was I so broken and bad that God couldn’t hear me? I became obsessive about repenting to be sure I had no sin hanging around when it came time to pray. Maybe it was the amount of time praying that counted? Maybe I just had not prayed enough? One thing was for sure within my calculations a truth emerged, whatever the problem was it was my fault.
My parents used me as a weapon in their war against each other. I tried to love them both equally and I prayed for them both regularly. My mother believed that divorce was a sin but she got one anyway so I worried about her and her relationship with God. I witnessed her wrestle with God for money, money for rent and food, and I listened at the door when she prayed. She would cry and speak in tongues for hours. I felt shut out from her when she retreated to her room and I felt bad for her when I heard her cries from behind the door. She was trying to reach God and apparently it wasn’t working because she kept going back and each night her tears would flow, they were not tears of joy.
Over all of those years I learned to be tough. I learned to shelf my needs in order to care for both of my parents. Neither of them were all that mentally stable and so I managed their sadness and feelings of rejection while feeling rejected myself. I kept my sadness to myself. My parents were not equipped for empathy. Everything was about them and what was going on in their lives, I was merely there, like furniture and furniture doesn’t have needs.
The church did not care about my needs. They cared about keeping me in line and filling me with fear so I would never leave or think for myself. I never found acceptance there, I only found judgement. It seemed to me that I was too poor, too brown and too me to ever be ok in their eyes. The fact that I was sexually assaulted by Steve Dahl only made me more broken and defective in their eyes. I felt beyond repair, at times I still do.
Over time I let go of the beliefs of the church and my family. It was all about survival. Most of the time I am ok, at least on the surface. I am proud of what I have made of my life. If I scratch beneath the surface, which is what EMDR has done, I can see the still open wounds of my childhood. This makes me kind of angry. I have worked so hard to move past all of this and it makes me so angry to be confronted with how it all still hurts and haunts me. My reality is that I still feel unloveable. No matter how much love I receive from family and friends I still feel unloveable. I can never trust that love is real or that it will stick around. I am still very guarded even after all of the work I have done. I still struggle with feeling inadequate no matter how many successes I have. No amount of praise will allow me to feel my work or art is good enough and no amount of success takes away the sting of feeling not good enough. All of this leads to the unshakable feelings of unworthiness that cover me like a gray cloud. No amount of working on my self esteem seems to heal the wounds of being told I was bad from birth, born from a sinful woman, and only saveable through the grace of a God I could not trust.
This brings me to now. This morning I have been thinking about all of this and trying to process before my next therapy session. In the midst of all this, I need to remember to celebrate my life now as it is. I have to remember to love myself and to celebrate all of my successes even if they are not perfect. In many ways I am proud of my life and what I have overcome. I believe I am a good person and worthy of love and acceptance, even if my hindbrain hasn’t gotten the memo. I’m proud of the family I have raised and I have to try to remember to allow myself to be warmed by their love. For now, my struggle continues and for today I’m choosing to celebrate life even with the ghosts lingering in the shadows.
I have been spending a lot of time thinking and not writing. There comes a point when you have expressed all of the surface junk and everything underneath seems so much harder to put into words. I am at a point in my life, 49 years old when things are not moving as fast for me as they were when my kids were little. I have a bit more time to breathe and time to reflect on things that I want to unravel. One of these things is stress.
I cannot remember a time in my life when I wasn’t stressed. Stressed about my parent’s marriage, school, money, food, church, and god. Some might say that stress is a normal part of life and I agree with that to a point. Being stressed shouldn’t be your set point and for all of my life, it has been my normal. My first teacher about stress was my mother. She was always stressed and for good reason. Money was tight, her jobs were stress-inducing, her marriage was a disaster, and she was always afraid of missing the rapture. Along with that came other things like untreated Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. She and my dad were always overly concerned about being late and so they created a child who is always early and never not stressed about time. Before we could leave the house my mother would have to check all of the nobs on the stove to be sure they were turned off and then check the door multiple times to be sure it was locked. Sometimes she would have to tour the rooms of the house to be sure all of the lights were off. She taught me to always check the backseat of the car for a masher even if all of the doors had been locked while we were away because…you never know. You never know became a big part of my life.
My experiences with the church and the UPC specifically only added to my stress response. I never felt good enough and always worried about my salvation and along with that came all of the end-time theology. The church was well acquainted with “You never know” and so they reinforced that message. You never know the day or the hour when Jesus might return. You never know you might have some unrepented sin hiding in there. You never know what book, movie or music might be a doorway for Satan to get into your heart. All of this made me one stressed-out kid and that in turn led me to be a stressed-out adult.
As you probably know we lay down these patterns as kids. Our brains and nervous systems are being formed and habits are laid down before we can even comprehend what is happening to us. So even after becoming an adult and being in a place of being able to make my own choices about what I believe my default is to be stressed. It’s funny how and when things hit us, it just hit me today that I’ve always been this way to the point of having ulcers when I was in grade school. I have always had what my grandmother would call a “nervous temperament.” So some of it is a natural disposition and a lot of it is learned. The whole time I was growing up and surrounded by religious adults I never felt the peace of god or grace. I felt like my mother, teachers, youth leaders, and others were always wagging their fingers at me saying be careful. Starting really young, “Oh be careful little eyes what you see, for the father up above is looking down with love.” Hmmm kind of a weird song, be careful because he is watching but “with love.” I learned the hard way after my interactions with Steve Dahl that I couldn’t trust myself or my body. My body could really get me into trouble simply by existing. This caused enormous stress and made me wish I could disappear. I started to feel like all men could be dangerous, also stress-inducing because well half the population were men. Along with checking the backseat, my mother would check closets and under the bed when we returned home from being out. She was checking for those dangerous men.
So what do you do when you realize your default is stress? One thing that brings me some relief is moving my body. I like to hike, go for dog walks, get to the gym, and do yoga. I enjoy dancing when I get the chance! I try to remind myself to breathe and I enjoy a hot bath from time to time. These are all coping mechanisms, what I am seeking to do is move my set point and that is not an easy task. There was a time when this would have been an impossible task. Before I started to give voice to my trauma and really deal with it I couldn’t have even approached this work but now I feel like maybe I can start. I am going to begin the process by just trying to move the needle a little bit. Rome wasn’t built in a day and so I’m going to try not to stress myself about stress. One simple thing I’ve been doing is trying to change my self-talk. When I get up in the morning instead of thinking, “I have to do all of this stuff today”, I try to say “I get to do all of this stuff today.” I remind myself that so much of my stress is self-generated and that I can cut myself some slack. I will probably post about this more after I have been working on it longer.
Does my experience sound like yours?
D
Today I want to tell you that you are worthy. If you were sexually abused as a child you are worthy. You did not draw that older man into sin. He made his choices and he was an adult. You were a child and children cannot consent. I am so sorry if the church did not protect you, love you, and help you to heal. You deserve love, support, and an apology. I am still stunned at Calvary Gospel’s silence. I am experiencing them as no more loving now than they were when I was a child.
You are worthy even if your family did not dress right, or if you are brown or black, and even if your family did not tithe enough. A child shouldn’t have to pay for their parent’s choices. None of us can control the color of our skin or the family we are born into. We certainly could not have controlled our parent’s actions.
You are worthy even if you made mistakes, snuck into the movies, or listened to top 40 radio when your parents were out. These things are not sins, they are a normal part of growing up. No one perfectly listens to the adults in their life. Normal human development dictates that teens challenge adults, it is how we grow and become independent.
You are worthy if you wore a slit in your skirt, asked too many questions, or got bored in church. If you kissed a boy behind the church camp auditorium when you were supposed to be inside, if you faked being sick to stay home from church, and even if you faked speaking in tongues because you were afraid to disappoint your parents.
I see you trying to pretend that you are ok, trying to heal, trying to deal with the coldness coming from the people who raised us. I see you dealing with trauma, being the family outcast, never being 100% sure if you made the right decision when you left the church. I see you wondering if you should have kept your mouth shut about it all.
I understand not being educated properly and how that stays with you all your life. I understand playing small, staying invisible, always waiting for something bad to happen. I understand feeling weird in the world like you can never quite fit in. I understand the world not understanding where we come from and how exhausting it can be to try to explain.
For the men out there I see you too. Struggling to come to terms with what has happened to the women you grew up with, ministered to, your sisters and friends. I see you having many of the same struggles as I have only different at the same time. I know that there are survivors among you and when you are ready to tell your story we will be there for you as you have been there for us.
Consider this my love letter to all the survivors out there no matter what your damage is. You are worthy. Please don’t let those who refuse to ask for forgiveness, who refuse to take responsibility, and who choose to stand in judgment rather than lend aid define you. I see you as strong, brave, and overcomers. We have overcome the lack of love, support, grace, and normal human kindness we should have received as kids. We have found each other and created a life raft for one another and any new survivors who choose to join us. You are good even if you are not perfect. You are worthy.
Yesterday I finally finished Ronna Russell’s memoir! I posted a review on Goodreads.
“This book was not an easy read. I grew up in a UPC church as well and at times it all hits too close to home. The author is so brave in her telling of her story! This is a wonderful read for anyone who is interested in learning more about the Christian denominations that exist on the fringe. The author’s vulnerability allows us into a world that many people never see filled with rapture anxiety, purity culture, and the pressure to be good enough. Beyond the church and the damage, it caused is a story of hope, self-acceptance, and self-love. She touches on religion, family, love, lost love, and finding and accepting oneself. I’m grateful she shared her happy ending because it gives hope to all of us raised in that atmosphere. I can’t wait to read what she writes next!”
I love memoir’s and this one is even more special because I can relate to it so strongly. It is not often that I have the opportunity to read about another woman’s experience within the UPC. When I talk with other survivors their stories always share common threads. For many, the fear of the rapture and hell is very real and then there is the sense of never measuring up. Normal sexual milestones tend to be suppressed and twisted leaving women feeling wrong and dirty. Secrets are everywhere and there is a knowing that comes with that. They are only secrets because they are not openly expressed but that is not the same as no one knowing or suspecting.
Ronna’s story isn’t just about the bad times it is also about hope, determination, and self-discovery. I owe her a special thanks because she has been an encouragement to me with my own writing. Women supporting women!
D
My parents had a rocky relationship. I can’t remember them being happy. My mother came from a small town and moved to Madison after high school. She married the first guy she dated and it did not turn out the way she expected it to. My mother went into the relationship with expectations that my father did not share. She assumed he would follow the rules of the church and those rules were very important to her. My father was a serial cheater, drinker, and poker player. My mother dealt with most of that but the cheating was a deal breaker. They did not immediately divorce because my mother believed that divorce was a sin. So she hung on and they were on and off for much of my young childhood.
I know very little about my dad’s past. I know he was born in Mexico and that he became a citizen of the U.S. I do not know where in Mexico he is from and I know next to nothing about his family. He never shared things like that. It was very rare for him to talk about his past and sometimes his stories did not add up. It is a sad part of my story because not knowing his family or anything about that part of my ancestry has left a hole in my heart. I often wonder who they are and I wish I could ask them my questions. Maybe then I would understand my dad better, maybe if I spoke with them I would know why he seemed so broken.
My father was unreliable. He did not pay child support and that kept my mother and me in poverty. He had a habit of disappearing. He often would not show up for visitation. I would wait for him to drive up and many times he just never showed. After hours of waiting my mother would coax me into bed. As I grew older my resentment started to increase. By middle school, I became aware that he only came around when he was between women. I started to feel like a consolation prize. Our relationship became strained. When I was little I was a daddy’s girl. I loved him fiercely and forgave him for every terrible thing he did. As I was approaching my teen years I could see who he really was and it was pretty ugly.
My dad had high expectations. If I got sick or struggled with anything he would blame it on my mother’s bad genes. I was a reflection of him and therefore I had to be perfect. He was emotionally unavailable. I could get affection but I could not talk anything through with him because everything was always about him. I have come to believe that he had some sociopathic tendencies. Perfection was not about how you treated people it was about what you looked like and how successful you were.
In middle school, my dad started flirting with my friends. By high school, many of my friends did not want to be around if he was around. The church already treated me badly because of Steve Dahl, then on top of that my dad was a creep. In high school, I became aware that he was dating girls my age. At one point when I was around 16, I told him about Steve Dahl. Then the unthinkable happened, he told me that he knew it was happening the whole time. He figured Steve was tired of his wife and would eventually marry me. This crushed me and it changed the way I saw my father forever. I did not cut him off but it was the beginning of the end. My dad never saw an issue with a man having a much younger wife or even multiple wives. I have no idea where this thinking came from. It seemed to grow stronger over time.
When I was in my twenties he was sent to prison. He was convicted of molesting my little step sister. After prison they deported him. He never forgave me for not supporting him in court and I only spoke with him twice after they released him. He has disappeared from my life.
I have daddy issues. I am sure that my father’s bad parenting is partly why I was so vulnerable when Steve Dahl came into my life. Knowing that my dad knew what was going on and did nothing to help me has given me self-worth issues. Men, in general, failed me during my childhood. Whether it was the babysitter’s husband who touched me when I was in elementary school, my pastor who did not report the abuse that happened at his church, my abuser, or countless others. My only real positive male relationship during childhood was with my grandfather. This brings me to God, Yahweh, Jesus, whatever you choose to call him. He really did not show up for me either. He was silent. I felt rejected by him as well.
This story is tragic and so I’m going to try to end it on a happy note. I did get some good things from my dad. I am very tough and strong-minded, I hold myself to high standards and I’m a hard worker. I have some charm and charisma which I’m pretty sure comes from him. I’m also in a much better place spiritually. I have stopped chasing after god. I have embraced a spiritual path that feeds me and where I feel accepted and respected. At times my daddy issues bubble up and then I have to work through some new layers. There is so much more I could share about my dad and maybe I will in a later post. Sometimes writing all of this down drives home how sad it all is and it becomes too much for me to handle all at once. I’m grateful I survived my childhood and I’m grateful I am in a better place now.
Once when I was in therapy the therapist asked me to envision my child self. My mind went to a field we had near my childhood home. I would run around that field playing Wonder Woman. I went sledding with my dog down the hill beside the field and I would make crowns from the dandelions I found in the grass. When envisioning my child self my mind immediately took me to that place and sitting in the grass making crowns and placing dandelions in my hair. That little girl was still pretty carefree but that wouldn’t last for long. By that time I had been exposed to rapture theology and my parents were struggling within their marriage and we were poor. Even with all of that to worry about I was still an adventurous, imaginative, happy-go-lucky little girl.
We started attending Calvary Gospel on and off in 1978. By 1980 I was becoming pretty entrenched. You might think that Steve Dahl was the first thing to interrupt my girlhood but I don’t think that is true. What came first was fear. Calvary Gospel was awash in it at that point. Sermons like the one that lead to my salvation were not the exception they were common. My world kept getting smaller and smaller. It seemed like everything was a sin and the devil was everywhere just waiting to deceive and maybe gobble up a little girl like me. The seeds to all of my anxiety were planted, watered, and tended there. How can you be a little girl when all you can think about is hell, the rapture, and what sin you might have committed while just going about your day? It didn’t take long before innocent things like watching cartoons on tv or listening to the radio could be enough to damn me for eternity. This is where I learned to make myself small and it has impacted my life in a very negative way. I became super fearful and so I stopped taking chances/risks and instead tried to stay safe. Safety is good but it can go too far. I believe all success requires being willing to take some risks.
Soon I learned that women were supposed to be quiet in church. Women’s role in family life was to be submissive to the husband and to raise the children. I was never asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I think it was assumed I would be a quiet submissive wife. When I was a little girl I wanted to be a minster. I would line up all my dolls on the sofa along with my stuffed animals and Barbies. We would have church and I would lead the worship and preach the message. At about age 10 I stopped dreaming about what I wanted to be when I grew up. Soon my goals shifted to being an evangelists wife and going to a UPC supported music school. I knew that a good ministers wife needed to know how to sing and play an instrument in order to support her husbands work. I went from being the leading lady to being a support player. Wonder Woman was long out of my reach.
A.C.E. did not help. I attended the church school and those old PACES did not show women doing much other than working with kids. We did not have many great electives to take and the work itself was not inspiring. Most of the time I was bored out of my mind. I went in a bright straight A student and left hating school and just wanting it to be over. No one ever talked to me about college or offered to help me with picking a career. The staff seemed just as miserable as the students. It was not an environment that fostered curiosity, questions, or deep thinking. It was learning by memorization, no real thinking required. Things that could not be taught that way, like algebra turned into a nightmare for me. I am a kinesthetic learner and I love a good discussion. There was no place for any of that within my Christian education. In my late high school years, I toyed with the idea of becoming a teacher but nothing ever came of that dream. The idea of college just became too much to try to figure out in the midst of all of the other things going on in my life. Even being a teacher was a downgrade from another childhood dream of being a doctor. Public school in the 70’s taught me I could be anything, the church and Christian school undid all of that.
Steve Dahl took what little bit of self-esteem I had and crushed it. That experience made me feel dirty and sinful. I had a pretty good body image before he came into my life but that all changed. I started to see my body as a sinful trap that kept ensnaring this godly man. I felt betrayed by my body because at times I enjoyed the attention he gave me. I started to see my body as something that needed to be hidden, controlled and prayed for. I certainly did not feel fearfully and wonderfully made. I did not feel created in god’s image. All of the things that made me a woman seemed evil and wrong. Eve was my mother and well we all know how things went for her.
Catching a husband seemed important. I worried about being attractive but not too attractive or attractive in the wrong way. I was half Mexican and so that added an extra level of difficulty. I could not get a straight answer about who it was ok for me to marry. At that time interracial marriage was considered wrong and there were no other Mexicans in our congregation. I felt that my being half Mexican meant I needed to find a Mexican husband, and that seemed like a tall order. I dated Caucasians boys but I always felt the undertone of racism that existed there. I would not be anybody’s first choice. I was tainted by my molestation and the color of my skin. I felt lesser. My parents were not part of the in crowd and that also lead to me feeling like a second-class citizen. It made me feel even smaller.
Yesterday I was talking with some other survivors about who we could have been had we not grown up in the UPC environment. We all feel like girls interrupted. Our childhood interrupted and corrupted by Calvary Gospel church. Our innocence was stolen. We were not allowed to be kids. The adults always seemed to have their minds in the gutter and so every innocent thing became an opportunity for sin and especially sex to invade our lives, and yet no protection was offered to keep us safe from the real dangers. Predators were protected and supported while victims were scorned and not to be trusted. We received a substandard education and the church seemed to care more about whether or not our skirts had slits than whether or not be could go to college. The adults in my life didn’t seem to care about the lack of food in my home or about the devastation that my abuse caused in my life. If they had done that one thing, protected me from my abuser my life could have been so different. If they had offered loving support and reassurance my life could have been so much better. They took beautiful, bright, and hopeful young girls and turned them into anxious, fearful, and damaged women.
Now as we try to raise awareness about what happened to us all the church can do is scorn us. They can’t seem to understand or they don’t care to see what they have done to us. These things are not things you just move on from it takes hard work, support, and a lifetime of striving to overcome. There isn’t a single one of us who hasn’t been striving to be better no matter what our damage is. We don’t desire to be bitter we desire justice and we hope to save other children from the fate we have suffered. We were girls interrupted but now we are women seeking to bring about change.
Last year my word for the year was restoration. I wanted to go back to the time before I was so afraid. I wanted to see my body as a miracle and a blessing and I wanted to say goodbye to shame once and for all. I worked to remember who I was before my worth was called into question. Last year was a big year. My life has totally changed. I feel like my life has been restored. I’m taking chances again and I’m daring to go after what I want. I’ve stepped out of the shadows and I’ve become more engaged in my community and politics. I’ve been reunited with old friends and found many new friends and supporters. I’ve learned I’m not alone thanks to #metoo/#churchtoo. I am not the person the church might like you to think I am. I’m not bitter, I’m strong. I’m not trying to engage them in spiritual warfare, I’m trying to seek justice for my child self. I’m trying to tell the truth and speak for all of those who cannot speak for themselves. Wonder Woman doesn’t seem so out of reach now.
D
Debbie McNulty 