AskMe,

I was just getting ready to post to you when I read your post.

First, thank you for your time and for sharing your story. Your family has been through quite a lot.

The book my daughter recommended is:

The Courage to Heal - A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

There is also a workbook that is a companion to it.

She also recommends Allies In Healing: When the Person You Love was Sexually Abused as a Child

Does your daughter still see her grandfather? That would be a difficult situation to deal with.

I think it was helpful that my daughter never saw her abuser again. The moment she told me I kicked into shock mode and before I even asked her too many questions, I told her to go upstairs and pack a bag for school the next day and to tell her brother to do the same and I took them both to my parents house before I confronted him. He, of course, lied.

I called the police the next morning, but that was a big disappointment. It is a difficult thing to prove, made even more difficult by the fact that children have a hard time remembering things sequentially. They are often reluctant to tell the entire store all at once because they are ashamed and because their abusers have trained them to keep secrets, so it winds up looking like they are constantly changing their story, thus lacking credibility.



Yes, I can relate. I have a phrase I say, too. It's "I need to stop talking right now."

I can't think of a single time Patriot has honored that request. It's hard for him because he wants to fix it and gain resolution.

Hey, I just thought of something! How come the phone never rings during THOSE times - saved by the bell? It only seems to ring incessantly when we are having a productive conversation.

I wish we could put life on hold for just a little bit so we could reconnect.


No, thank YOU.

Froz,
We don't have the Allies In Healing: When the Person You Love was Sexually Abused as a Child book, but we did have the other one. So I'll look into getting that one.

To answer you question about whether she sees her grandfather, she does and it's her choice to do so. If it had been my choice.....well I would have probably done what my wife was probably thinking when she found about my affairs multiplied by 10. Like I said, my daughter loved her grandfather and enjoyed doing things with him, she just hated the dark side of what he was doing.

We went through a lot of counseling dealing with the father-in-law issues. It's a shame he didn't get as much counseling as I did. Although it was reported, and the police notified, nothing happened; different states, different laws. My daughter didn't want my father-in-law to go to jail and she didn't want to testify against him. My wife also didn't want him to go to jail. So everything was dropped. The counselor who saw him said as far as he could tell this was an isolated case and he was not at risk for it to reoccur as long as the immediate family was aware, which they are. So I had to accept that I needed to either live with anger or forgive so my family could move on. The forgiveness part was tough. I had to let go of a lot of anger, not to mention that anger was haunting me in my SA issues. I finally let go and I made peace with my inlaws, although I still occasionally regress back to anger over the issues around my father-in-law. It's hard to completely forget what happened.

Our daughter usually wants to visit with my father-in-law, unless she is dealing with some emotional issue, then it's usually my mother-in-law that she doesn't want to be around. Somehow my mother-in-law triggers more of her emotions about my father-in-law. I guess it's a reminder that she was suppose to be safe and she wasn't.

I feel for you Froz, if you have had to deal with the same type of issues, and also the issues of an affair you have been through a lot. Its the same emotional distress my wife has been through. My wife says I don't understand her pain and she is probably right. But I know the pain of bretrayal by a father-in-law who I considered to be as close as a dad, and he took something more precious than gold or silver to me and damaged it.

How can you tell the difference between a Marriage Builder introvert and a Marriage Builder extrovert? When the extrovert is talking to you they look at your shoes, when an introvert is talking to you they look at their shoes.

Now, don't go feeding my sense of victimization. I'm trying to cut back.

Ok, don't want to feed the parts that don't need feeding. It's like I tell my daughter, you were a victim up until the point you didn't know or were helpless. After that you own full responsibility for your actions. The hurt and pain may be there, but you own your actions.

Have you thought about your defense mechanisms? You obviously showed one the other morning. My wife has one where she never lets her guard down when it comes to anything related to affairs. I mentioned someone who was put out of their house by their wife because of their affair, and immediately my wife says they deserved it, "whatever they did". She is reenforcing to me that affairs are not acceptable.

And I hope Pat noticed he isn't too bad after all stacked up to the things I have done. I give a testimony at our church from time to time. I just want people to know there is hope for change.

I was reading this morning about relationships, regarding doing your part and not the other person's part. Sometimes I do both mine and Patriot's part. Sometimes I just do his part. His looks like easier work.

Either way, not only can I not do his part for him...if I try, I am preventing him from the opportunity to do his part. Sometimes I even get mad at him because I CHOSE to do his part!

The control freak in me, driven by fear, is still right now whispering in my ear, telling me that reminding him isn't doing his part and that's okay. It isn't okay, and it's stopping me from doing my part.

I am so insanely, desperately sad right now and I am so tired of feeling this way. I honestly wish I would just die, but that isn't up to me. It can't be up to me because I have children. Sometimes I think God gave me my children to keep me alive.

So, just for me, regardless of whether anyone is listening right now...I'm going to work on some of my part. I might as well start at the beginning.

Something I was reading...

If there were a real death of a mother shortly after birth, at some point, the child’s father would tell the child that mommy died and it is so sad that this happened to you and you must hurt, let me comfort you and ease your pain and I know you must be angry, let me help you... and there would be pictures and stories and a grave to visit, and grieving, and eventually the child would find out that mommy didn’t die on purpose. This child would be given respect.

[color:"blue"]There is no one to blame that I did not receive this. My adoptive parents did not know what I needed, so how could they instictively know how to give it. They were only 22 years old when they adopted me. They were young and human and I know they did the very best they could.

I was reading in another book about how people expect that adoption doesn't affect the baby much because the baby doesn't remember.

It stated that people's personalities develop in the first three years of their lives, yet they don't remember that. So, how could one think that just because adopted babies don't have the actual memory of being taken from their mother, they aren't seriously affected by this.

It also goes on to say something about how it is better for the baby to be immediately handed over to the adoptive parents so the baby can try to bond with them. If this is not done immediately, the baby feels abandoned (because it has been). The fact that the baby has no memory of it does not lessen the feelings of abandonment.

There were 16 days between the time I was taken from my mother and the time I was handed to my adoptive parents. I wonder what I, as a baby, must have been thinking. I wonder how I felt. I probably felt just like I do now...abandoned.

There are 16 days of my life that are unaccounted for. There are no pictures of this time. I don't really know what I was doing.

All I know about those 16 days is what my adoptive parents told me - that the nuns took care of me. I wonder which nuns? I wonder how they took care of me? Did I miss them when I was taken away from them? I wonder if they liked me or if I was just left in some crib and had only my physical needs taken care of? I'm sure I'll never know, but I do wonder. I never wondered before. [/color]

Instead for the child whose mother surrenders her to adoption, the child suffers the psychological death of her mother. But she is told that she is special and chosen and lucky. She is supposed to forget that there was another mother. Make believe this is your only family, make believe that all is well. “As if” it is your own. The message is that it is a good thing your mother is not there for you, is dead for you. You are not allowed to be sad about it, acknowledge the pain, anger or sadness, perhaps even to yourself. You are not allowed to mourn the loss of your own mother.

[color:"blue"]I did not know I was grieving, much less that I not feel like I was allowed to grieve. I don't feel like I was. It makes my family very uncomfortable for me to talk about being adopted, and especially about my birth family.

I have always had questions about things. Even just this past summer, in July I think, I asked my Dad some questions about how they came to adopt me. He answered them, but it was very obvious that he was uncomfortable. My sisters were both in the room and they were looking away, like they were trying to avoid participating in the conversation. I felt weird. [/color]

The grief gets stuck in your body and keeping in pain is destructive. (So is keeping in anger and sadness). The child has to go into a kind of shock and go numb. You can’t really live that way, but you can pretend. We adoptees are great pretenders. This child gets no respect.

[color:"blue"]Destructive? No kidding. [/color]

What would happen if your mother died today and you were told you couldn’t cry, you couldn’t go to the funeral and you had to make believe she never existed. What would happen to you? Take a moment and think about it.

[color:"blue"]Ohhhh! Ohhhhh! Pick me! (raising hand) I know this one...The grief gets stuck in your body and it's confusing and painful and destructive.[/color]

Isn’t that what happened to most people in adoption in some way?

[color:"blue"]I would say yes. [/color]

It occurs to me that if we really had respect for the mother and the child we would do all we could to preserve the sanctity of that relationship and not separate them at all. If the mother and child could not possibly stay together, then giving her respect when she lost her child, the mother’s family and friends would have gathered around and said to her, “I am so sorry you couldn’t keep your baby. You must be sad, let me comfort you. I know you hurt, let me ease your pain. I know you must be angry, let me help you.” Then there would be grieving and acknowledgment of what really happened.

[color:"blue"]I don't know what it was like for her, but I suspect that she did not feel allowed to grieve either. [/color]

If the mother and child could not possibly stay together, then giving the adoptee respect when she lost her mother, the new family would say, “You must be sad you lost your first family, it’s okay to cry about it. I’m sad too, you must hurt. Let me comfort you, you must be angry, let me help you, be with you and hold you.”

[color:"blue"]That would have been nice. [/color]

If adoptive parents got respect, they would have gotten complete information on their adopted child and the truth about the effects on their child of losing the first family. The adoption agency and others would have acknowledged the sadness of infertility or inability to have a child on one’s own. Their pain and anger would have been acknowledged and they would have been encouraged to grieve the child they couldn’t have on their own.

[color:"blue"]My parents didn't have to grieve for long. They found out they were pregnant with my sister when I was about 4 months old. [/color]

Ignoring the realities of adoption increases the pain and hurt. How can anyone function well if they’re told that what is true isn’t and what isn’t true is?

[color:"blue"]It is painful. No wonder I'm so confused. [/color]

For example, what if I lose my leg in an accident right after birth? And they tell me I didn’t lose my leg right after I was born, I was mistaken. But it hurts, mommy, and yet it still feels like something is missing. And I keep stumbling around as if I had only one leg (they wouldn’t lie about that would they?) and I don’t know why I’m having trouble managing as a two-legged person...

[color:"blue"]I identify strongly with this analogy. I told my parents that it hurt and that I thought my leg was gone. They told me I was crazy. I was also teased, mocked, shamed, unaccepted and eventually further abandoned because I had trouble managing as a two-legged person. That hurt pretty bad. [/color]

Our society doesn’t want to acknowledge what has happened to all of us, to give us respect. Truth be told, I lost more than a leg, I lost my mother. Wait, I got a prosthesis, a new mother, a substitute. Why doesn’t it work just as well? Why does it still hurt? Of course our first mothers lost a baby... but they got no replacement, no substitute.

Respect is truth, no secrets, absolute honesty. We can all deal with the truth.

Have we in adoption had our eyes wide shut? Isn’t it time they were wide open?

Well, how can we give ourselves the respect we never got? By learning to experience our feelings. By learning to make “I” statements about our experience.

By learning to say I feel sad because______, I feel angry because_______, I hurt because_______ (fill in the blank). When we say these things out loud for the first time and get validated for the first time, our feelings become real in a way they can never be if unexpressed. Once our feelings become real, we can start to understand why we feel what we feel and once we understand why we feel what we feel, we can start to change the way our experience affects us today.

[color:"blue"]I feel sad because I lost my mother. I am angry because she gave me away. I hurt because I miss her. [/color]

We can respect ourselves by expressing our anger at what happened to us. Having anger about something that happened to us and expressing it does not make us angry people. We need to express it. If we don’t talk our anger out, we will surely act it out or act it in, in either case, it is destructive. It is poison and will poison our lives and relationships unless we release it.

[color:"blue"]I feel even more angry because she rejected me as an adult. [/color]

We can respect ourselves by expressing our sadness. Feeling sad about something sad that happened does not make us cry babies or wimps. We need to express it. Keeping our pain in is destructive. It is poison and it will poison our lives and our relationships unless we release it.

[color:"blue"]I feel sad because I don't know if she loves me. [/color]

The only way that I know of to be truly happy is to give ourselves the respect of feeling all of our feelings. If we don’t feel the bad ones, we cannot feel the good ones.

Those around us often try to minimize our losses, our experience. We must not buy into that. We can respect ourselves by acknowledging the true extent of the effects on us of the events at the beginning. If we don’t acknowledge the full extent of our wounds, we cannot heal. Only by acknowledging the truth can we begin to heal from our wounds. If I am in an accident and go to the ER and they don’t examine my wounds, don’t clean the depths of my wounds and get the dirt or poison out, I will get an infection, the wound may heal superficially, but the infection is there nevertheless and I will pay a price. Only when I respect myself and take the risk of opening that wound again and clean it out will I be able to truly heal.

[color:"blue"]I have many, many infected wounds. I thought they had healed when I met Patriot, but it was superficial. They were still very much infected and when Patriot wounded me, I felt (feel) the pain of all of those other infected wounds and I am VERY angry with him for doing that.

Superficial healing felt MUCH better than the pain of the infections I felt before he came along. Superficial healing felt MUCH better than opening those wounds now.

I realize that people are trying to help me open those wounds and clean them out. I'm only screaming and fighting because it hurts so bad.[/color]

Healing involves a lot of pain, but the alternative... I guess we have all lived it. We need to give ourselves the respect to climb the mountain of pain that leads to healing. The mountain is steep, but climbable. There are many crevices on the way up, but each crevice still puts you closer to the top. We are all here in this adoptive family to help each other, nurture each other, support each other, share with each other and learn from each other on this road to respect and healing.

[color:"blue"]I'm not convinced I can climb it. I hate the crevices and I think they suck. I know this sounds crazy, and probably has something to do with the victimization feelings, but I do think it...

I think that Patriot should have to carry me up the mountain...crevices and all. Sure, he's not to blame for the other wounds, but I was content with superficial healing until he had to go and reopen all of those. I didn't ask for any of those other wounds. I didn't want them. I didn't want this one.

I am obviously very, very mad at him for taking away the first bit of superficial healing I had ever had. It really did feel so much better than before and better than now.[/color]

Frozen:

Are you or have you been in psychotherapy?

Psychotherapy certainly helped me with healing my EARLY CHILDHOOD WOUNDS.....

I'm not sure what you mean by 'psychotherapy'.

My parents did take me to counselors and psychologists and psychiatrists as a child. They thought I had some kind of problem because I thought my leg was missing. Ha ha.

The ISTJ in me has to go sit and think about that commentary on life.

Hey, my mom put me in some type of psychological study where I was interviewed by college grads for their PHD work in psychology. I was only a kid and had to respond to questions and take tests. I was in rooms with 2 way mirrors. Mom says she doesn't remember it, but I think she did it for the money. Mom was single and didn't have much back then and they probably paid her for the study. I was scared most of the time I was there.

The INFP needs to think about it too.

Here is something scary...that's only the beginning!

I feel horrible today - and very lonely. I don't even want to go to work. I have two appointments today, but not for another hour and a half or so.

I mean a counselor or therapist for your depression TODAY. I don't mean in your childhood.

Oh! When you said 'have you been' I thought you mean EVER! Sorry.

No. Patriot and I saw some MC's for awhile, but we couldn't seem to find the right one.

Believe it or not, I have a difficult time feeling understood. (that was a joke)

Did you read my devotion I wrote in the prayer section today? It was about being alone.

I think it would be helpful for you to see an experienced individual counselor or therapist to help you sort all of these personal issues out...

Then you can openly talk about these issues to someone and learn ways to fight your depression..

You won't feel so alone...

Is Patriot in the military?

Yes, Mimi. He is being all he can be. (that was another joke - you're a tough audience)

Okay. I will take that advice, Mimi.


Can someone hold me accountable for that, please? I have said that I would do this in the past and I have not done it.

I have no excuse. It's free in the military.

I will have an appointment by day's end.

AskMe,

I just read your devotional. It was exactly how I feel. I said a prayer for my own peace and relief from my fear.

Is it rude to pray for yourself???

Call Tricare for a list of reputable psychotherapists....

Froz,
You can pray for yourself any time you need to. He listens as a "perfect" father listening to a child. David in the Bible was constantly praying to God for his emotional needs. And God was always there to meet David's needs.