Who Am I Without My Story?
My early life was marked by many kinds of egregious abuse, some of it so dreadful that, despite numerous truly disturbing dreams, I unconsciously repressed it until it spontaneously showed itself to me one afternoon in my forties. My early attempts to ‘get help’ with my state of mind which, by the time I reached college was teetering on the edge of self-destruction, were thwarted by my mother — a physician — whose two ‘contacts’ in the field of psychotherapy both agreed that my complaints were “very common among young girls.” I now know that what they said was probably absolutely true, but the way they meant it was, “You’re making this shit up.” My mother, who had been well aware of much of what was going on, chose to agree with them. Thus ended any and all attempts on my part to seek professional help at that time.
I “grew up” into a young adulthood that was marked by rampant promiscuity. Just out of college, I married the first man who asked me. We were about two hours into our first date and I was hanging, barely dressed, off his kitchen counter when he asked. I accepted on the spot. My thinking was that being married would force me to behave myself. I was incorrect.
I was ashamed, disgusted that I could not stop screwing around. Perhaps, I thought, having a baby would keep me out of trouble as, a) I would be pregnant, and b) I would have to stay home and care for child. Little did I know that a woman could be wildly randy despite having a belly so big that she could barely stand. Furthermore, there are men who really go for that look. Oops.
My husband and I moved into a very rural and sparsely populated area after the birth of my first child but even there, opportunities abounded. I needed insurance; I also needed someone to play with an exceedingly active little boy. So, in the same manner as I had instituted the first pregnancy, I stopped taking birth control pills, unbeknownst to my husband, and got pregnant again.
Once the kids were old enough and were off to school, I shifted into high gear and didn’t look back. I needed to stop myself, so once again I stopped the pills. When my husband found out that I was pregnant again, he went nuts on me, telling me that the two children we had already — whom I loved like crazy — had ruined our marriage, that if he had known that it would be like that, he would have insisted on abortions. He also insisted — emphatically — that I get an abortion ASAP and, like the dutiful wife I was trying so hard to be, and just like the little girl who’d always done what she was told to do, I did.
It broke my heart and for years afterwards I burst into tears every time I saw a pregnant woman. Caring for my children when they were very young had kept me safe, allowed me some peace. That time had clearly come to an end.
I can imagine another woman reading this story, wondering how I could ever do what I had done… how could I just go and get an abortion when I was “told to.” Well, I had spent a childhood doing what I was told to do and I was told to shut up about it. I had seen firsthand what happens, what adults can do, if they want to. So I did what I was told… and I shut up about it.
My children were in the early years of elementary school when I met a man who seemed to appreciate more than just my sexuality. He admired my intelligence and my metaphysical ‘gifts’ as well. I had created a monthly series of erotic stories for the magazine he was editing, mostly to try and keep my libido in check, but my plan wasn’t working very well. I knew who he was; I knew where he was. I knew that he was cheating on his wife because her sexuality wasn’t up to his standards; I knew that he was lying to her, but I also knew that he seemed to respect me. When he told me that he wanted to leave her and be with me, it looked to my desperate eyes like a chance to start a new life. His wife was in her seventh month of pregnancy and I didn’t think twice about that or about her… Just me. I told my husband that I wanted to leave him, take my children, and go with this man. My husband told me that if I took the children from him — the children he claimed had ruined our marriage — he would tell them “who I was and what I was like” and he would make them hate me. And because already I hated myself, I believed that was both possible and likely so I let him take the children. I went with the other man and my heart broke all over again.
Determined to make my second marriage work, I took to dressing like a street urchin because the only way I knew how to not attract attention was to make myself as unattractive as possible. I knew by then that I simply didn’t have whatever it took to say no. My husband became very confused by my sudden, dramatic wardrobe change; this was not the woman he had married… I became very confused, having thought that it was “me” that he wanted, though I did not love him nor had I, in fact, ever loved anyone except for my children.
Within four years I contracted a disease that was proclaimed to be both incurable and fatal. Because it was so remarkably painful I was happy about that. I wanted to die. The disease disfigured me and crippled me, but also connected me to something deep inside myself that I had never known was there. That something saved my life. That something changed my life. Changed me. Highly unlikely things began to happen. The disease went away; my body returned to almost normal and — urged by many of the alternative healers that I had worked with — I went on to become certified as an energy healer myself in many different modalities. I became a hands-on shamanic healer, and received ordination as a metaphysical minister.
My first husband had stolen my children from me. As I would come to find out late last year, my second husband, now deceased, stole for me as well, pocketing my income for the 16 years that I worked as a healer. He used the money to play the stock market, bankrupted us twice, and cheated me out of a good portion of my Social Security.
That, in a nutshell, is my past history. My present history — except for my third husband occasionally flirting with death by falling off of things — is like heaven on earth. I have even learned how to love another adult human being. I had many gifts that had been heretofore untapped, gifts that were the result of my having left my body when I was being abused as a child. I could feel energy moving inside of people; I could pick up information, secrets that their bodies were holding inside. And during that time I was gifted in dream with a technique that people could use to heal themselves… a technique that I realized I could use to heal myself from the slings and arrows of an unfortunate and outrageous past… and I did.
If you are a person with a “spiritual” kind of mindset, then you know that everything that happens, happens, as they say, for reason; that everything that occurs in your life is “grist for the mill” if you will let it be. Who I am now is the direct result of every dreadful thing I have gone through in conjunction with innate tendencies that draw me to be “useful.” With time and healing, I have allowed my story to fuel me, to open me up in order to be of use to others.
I have become bored with my story but it is a useful thing to have available and I bring it — or parts of it — out when needed, to support someone else’s story or experience, to validate other people’s stories, to encourage others to share their own stories, because perpetrators have long perpetuated the shaming of victims. They have attempted to turn the tables on those who would undo them by shaming them in order to keep them silent so that they — the villains — may continue their hideous ways undeterred.
Occasionally, people who are aware that I have written books, say to me, “you should write a book about your story.” But no. There’s nothing left for me there. I have drained it dry. That story — the perfunctory version of it that you just read — existed so that I could become the person I am now and it is so very much a part of me that writing it out, in detail, would be about as unpleasant an experience as digging out a deeply entrenched splinter in a toe.
Without my story I would clearly not be who I am — whoever that may be — but who I am is not my story. My story has become, rather like my luggage, something that I drag out when it’s needed.
I firmly believe that the type of healing that will allow a person to release the negative effects of whatever trauma they have been through at a level that is as physical as the trauma they endured can also, if the person so desires it, open them up more fully to live life as the unique person they came here to be. If a person can use their story as a tool for their own healing, they can then allow their experiences to fuel the fire that spreads the words that create an atmosphere where others can heal as well.
