Tag Archives: sexual abuse

Let your messy light shine.

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Woman holding light: Our cracks and broken places are where our light shines into the dark.

Last week I wrote an intensely personal note to you which included two pieces of information I rarely share: my dad’s skiing death and my stepfather’s abuse.  I put them out there for all the world to see. Why?

Mostly, it’s because I’m tired of keeping these secrets. I’m seeing more and more clearly that I’ve been making both events mean that I’m bad, broken, and unlovable. If you know them about me, you won’t like me. Or you’ll feel sorry for me. I don’t want to believe that anymore. That belief has caused me to lead a diminished life, and I’m tired of it.

Here’s what’s truly true: bad things happen to everyone. As do good things. It’s all part of the human experience. What hurts us is the story we tell ourselves about the bad things. And the good things, too. What hurts us is our thoughts about ourselves, others, and the nature of the universe. What hurts us is thinking we deserve these events, bad or good.

The brilliant Kara Loewentheil’s Unf*ck Your Brain podcast on December 17th was about vulnerability. Kara dropped this bombshell that exploded in my brain: “The only person we’re vulnerable to as adults is ourselves.” Kara elaborated that when we’re afraid of someone else’s negative judgment when we tell them something personal, it’s because we secretly believe they’re right. If we’re okay with the information, we’re okay with their reaction, positive or negative. So I dug into why I resist telling people about my dad’s deadly accident and my stepfather’s sexual abuse. I thought it was because hearing about these events makes others uncomfortable, so I was just being considerate. And they do make others uncomfortable, but that’s only part of the story. Mostly they make me uncomfortable.

It turns out I’ve spent fifty years believing bad things happen to bad people, and I thought I needed to keep my badness a secret. But of course the truth is I didn’t cause either event. My dad hit a tree so hard he died. My mom’s need to have this man take care of her was stronger than her desire to protect me. That’s all. I didn’t cause my parents’ divorce, my family’s disintegration, or my dad’s alcoholism and three remarriages, either. I was a just child trying to make sense of bad situations created by the adults in my life who were dealing with their own shit as well as they could. Sometimes they dealt very badly. And gravity happens, even to the best of skiers.

I’m learning to think of the decade that undid me as a testament to my strength and resilience, and the mysterious power of grace. As I’ve come to see myself differently – as a tender, strong woman who deserves joy – I’ve also come to see my parents differently. This is forgiveness. As I open myself to deeper and deeper healing, I’m letting my parents off the hook. I’m forgiving my dad for dying young and my mom for inviting someone into our lives who hurt me. I’m pretty sure, as I continue to heal, I’ll find that I’ve forgiven my stepfather, too.

Those events broke me, and it’s okay. I’m okay. I think Leonard Cohen was right: the broken places are where the light gets in.  

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

And light doesn’t only come into us. Light goes out, too. Our cracks and broken places are where our light shines through most brightly in the dark. Our imperfections can be channels of grace and healing for our world. We can flow with this light.

Sharing my broken places with you, dear reader, has been healing for me. Thank you for allowing space for them.  

An invitation: If the time is right, gently and with immense kindness, ask yourself what about yourself you keep sequestered from other people. What secrets do you carry? Why are you choosing to carry them? What are these secrets costing you in energy and intimacy?

Answering these questions will help you discover if you, like me, believe untruths that are causing you to suffer. Contact me here if you’d like to investigate together.

Photo by Josh Boot on Unsplash

“Put Down the Duckie”

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See the cage for what it is, and unlock it.

“The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let the dead things go.” That’s a quote from Maya Elious, and how poignant it is. We had snow last Saturday here in Bend, and now the trees are letting go with a vengeance, dropping leaves and fruit all over the place.

Do you remember the song Sesame Street’s Hoots the Owl sings to his friend Ernie, who desperately wants to both play his saxophone and keep ahold of his beloved rubber duckie? Hoots sings, “Put down the duckie. Ernie, put down the duckie. You gotta put down the duckie if you wanna play the saxophone.” (Watch it here.)

I grew up in a family with alcoholism and physical violence. My parents eventually divorced. When I was in high school, my mom married a man, a family friend of many years, who touched my body and said things to me that no stepfather should say to a stepdaughter. When I protested, he told me I was wrong. My mom did not protect me.

What do falling leaves, Hoots the Owl’s song to Ernie, and growing up have to do with each other?

As a daughter in my family, a student in the public schools of the 60s and 70s, a girl in a persistently patriarchal church and misogynist culture, I picked up a few beliefs. They might sound familiar to you.

  • Be small, hidden, camouflaged.
  • Be silent. Stay quiet.
  • Do as you’re told.
  • Keep your wants, opinions, thoughts, and feelings to yourself, because they don’t matter.
  • Whip yourself into shape.
  • Be who we want you to be.
  • Look to others for direction, validation, affirmation, approval.
  • Put others’ needs ahead of your own.

Be nice, sweet, cute, pleasing, funny, smart but not too smart, helpful, compliant.

In short, be a good girl and don’t bother us.

It was safer, when I was a child, to just go along with this. I wasn’t big or brave or powerful enough to go it alone. And after a while I forgot who I was. It was easier to forget than to keep feeling the pain of remembering.

I’m remembering now. I’m learning to truly see the ways my visibility, clarity, voice, value, integrity, intrinsic motivation, self-compassion, self-regard, and self-trust were taken offline, uninstalled by my family, my culture, and my church.

Now that I see, I’ve gained the ability to choose what to do. I can choose the discomfort of reinstalling those original blessings and rewiring (unf*cking) my brain, or I can continue to stay small quiet nice cute sweet reactive other-focused because that’s more familiar and feels safer. I can hang on to last year’s leaves, or I can choose to let the dead things go.

Wholeness, healing, and new life lie in the direction of putting the damn duckie down. Relearning is uncomfortable and scary. But staying locked up in this cage of smallness, silence, and compliance is no longer an option for me.

Now that I see the cage for what it is, and I know I hold the key to my freedom in my own two hands, how can I choose to remain a prisoner?

If you’d like some Bible alongside Sesame Street, here’s Paul writing to the church in Corinth: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” (I Corinthians 13:11)

Holiness wants us to grow up. Holiness wants us clear and articulate and powerful.

We gotta put down our childish duckies if we wanna play our grown-up saxophones.

You may not want to play the saxophone, but I know you have dreams. Goals. Desires that just won’t let go. And if you haven’t achieved them or let them go, there’s something stopping you. There’s an obstacle in the way, almost certainly a belief or a cluster of beliefs that no longer serve you, if they ever did.

I can help you see where your childish beliefs are holding you back so you can change them and be the grown-up woman you want to be. Contact me for a free consultation.

Photo by Peter Conlan on Unsplash, edited on Canva