Chapter 1

Why is childhood so important? Many will say just let it go, don't go back! I really didn't think there was a need to. While many may not think the lives of five children that lived many years ago is so important. Why write a story that psychologist and psychiatrist believed was made up, who would believe it? Why write about it in the first place? I thought the best thing was the old adage" let sleeping dogs lie." But here is why it is so important when you are a child, those early years lay the foundation to who you are as an adult. It doesn't mean that it rules your life, but truthfully when you need to turn to something you have what you have been given in the tool chest of survival.

It would seem that this is not a story of secrets,for as many people who deny that children could have lived through such a life, it was well documented. Why didn't the community help? Where was the extended family? There are pages upon pages documented. The police had been summoned to our home more often than not. I hated the sounds of the sirens and the craziness that was called childhood. How far back does the mind drift. Articles in the newspaper documented many of the stories. Upon my fathers death, the articles surfaced and the story goes on. So it is not some big secret, the newspaper people were aware, the radio people were aware, the police were called in so many times surely they knew children lived there. What was it written off as ? attempted suicide, assault, domestic abuse, mental health. I am not sure what outsiders saw when looking in. It was that we didn't have the usual signs of child abuse. We were educated, dressed clean, the house was scrubbed. Yet other people knew school teachers knew, school psychologist knew. One even reached out to help the youngest sister, but golly gee they needed the signature of the abusers to give a child help. Now that makes little sense, you ask approval to help a child who is not flourishing in a abusive home.

Why do children protect their abuser? One is they are taught well to hide the truth. But this wasn't the case most of the truth was documented in the media. On the other hand " silence is golden" and fear strikes a dagger that pierces the heart and soul. The best way to end up beaten and bruised was to speak about it.

I could only go back as far as the years I was placed here on earth, so I turned to my eldest sister to fill in some of the early years. She had extraordinary responsibilities placed on her. She filled the position of cook and mom , big sister. There is a strange connection because though we all lived it, we didn't speak about it even among ourselves. What was there to say? We all saw, experienced and felt it. As children we escaped the best way we could by pretending that we came from a semi normal family.

I looked back at the houses we lived in and I couldn't get past the doors to the homes. Virgin way has now been replaced by a new highway and all I can really remember is the yard. It was fenced in and Morning Glories grew along the fence. It was here where things escalated, my father lost his job, the house was taken for back taxes and until all was said and done, we would have little food, no gas or electricity and everything we had would be left behind.

I was honestly to young to remember the first time my mother attempted suicide. I am not even sure it was the first time, it was the most memorable occasion as it did hit the nightly news and the papers. Life was spiraling quickly out of control My father refused to return to work as he said he couldn't deal with the embarrassment of his wife jumping off the 16 th street bridge. But did it ever occurr to him what his own children were going through at school. They had to face the name calling and the awful way children can be to one another. I think that is why Lex became the fighter. Little in stature, she threw a mean punch. She fought to protect any dignity as she protected us anyway she could. Her Childhood was being stripped from her, more so then the rest of us, as she was the oldest. Domestic and child abuse is unlike any other situation in that it is repeated so often that it becomes ingrained within, like a blue print to your soul. There wasn't a day that we didn't look into our mothers eyes to see what we were in for that day. I have lost track of how many times she attempted to murder my father. She shot at him, she stabbed in with a butcher knife in the back and again in the stomach, she went after him with a hatchet, she broke his head open with I am not sure with what. Fear it was our first platform in which to launch into life. Had she succeeded in killing him or herself, the story would have been over before it had a chance to start. But it wasn't over, it happened over and over again from childhood on. The more aggressive my mother was with my father the more aggressive he was with the children.

I can't remember inside the houses we lived. I don't know why. Even when I close my eyes I can only get as far as the doors. We were moving every year a new house. I can't see beyond the doors, can't see the walls or the rooms. It is as if I can't open the doors to the houses. Like I cut those years out of my memories. It was almost as if this was the norm and we learned how to survive each day. I am not sure the physical wounds are serious as the emotional wounds. Barriers and walls were being built, ones that would limit and control our destiny. Though my sister would tell the stories of theft for food, going hungry and sewing clothes out of rags. Those responsibilities did not fall on me. I think it is rather odd that we learn to balance both the insanity in which we lived with our need to fit into the real world. As I try to understand the position of each sibling, I find myself drifting back to my own view of this hell that had been built here on earth. I try desperately to remember what went on in those houses, but it is as if those ten years of my life had been cut from my memory. Everything that is that behind those doors. There are situations as a young person I do remember, but they all seem to occur in the streets or in the school, where we found our greatest escape. I was seven years old and I walked half way home from school with another classmate. She was always so nice and obviously smart. She asked me one day, " why do you shake so bad? " I shrugged my shoulders, as I really didn't know why I shook so badly. Bad enough that it was drawn to the attention of my teachers. I do remember being sent to the principals office, it was a woman, older a little on the heavy side. She turned to the woman at the desk get her parents on the phone. We had no telephone and so she pinned a note to my dress. I remember the dress it was a cotton with a pattern of squares in colors of dark purple, gold and with a white peter pan collar. My shoes were always the same, black and white oxfords. I can remember details of what I had on that day and I can remember walking home , but I can't for the life of me see open the doors and see inside the house. I wanted to fill in the void, the missing parts of my life and to this day I cannot. It is almost as if my life began at ten years of age. Not be cause life was better at that point, maybe it was that I learned to live in the dysfunction or that it was the first time I was in a house for more than one year. I keep going over and over the places in my mind and I find it disturbing that all I can see existed how side of the houses where we lived. I can see the river, I spent allot of time down there. Playing outside, going to the park, school, church, I can remember everything to a point. It was always cold and I remember throwing the blanket over my head, listening to screaming and crying and the destruction. I don't see it but I can hear it. I am afraid to move and even more afraid to look. I think it is a frightening time, my brother is gone he joined the military and my older sisters ran away. It only leaves me and my baby sister. I sit here and as I type the words I literally try to open the doors with my mind. To enter a place where I have not been for ever fifty years. I felt I needed to do this as my life now parallels with the past. In order to understand where I am now, I must remember where I have been. My eldest sister said that I was magnificent at blocking out what was going on around me. Did I block it out or did I see and hear more than any child should? Lex tells her version of being so bruised that in the summer she had to wear heavy winter tights so that when she put on her blue gym suit no one would see the bruising. Lex being the oldest knows more about me than anyone . She said I was very sickly as a baby and that she was so afraid I was going to die. I had most childhood diseases, whooping cough, chicken pox and measles well before I was a year old. My father who was the disciplinarian as well as the caretaker was also the abuser. I think that sends mixed signals. The man who cares for you, feeds you is the same one who strikes fear. Lex said that father walked the floors all night with me, because I could not breathe nor stop from choking. She said he was sure I would die. How does one hurt the person or people they deem to love? I am confused by this. As I think back to as far as I can remember, I knew that it wasn't right. I think I learned to day dream early in life, it was away of escaping. You can go anywhere your mind will let you. With my eyes closed, I went to the birds and the flowers and the trees, that is where I was free from fear. There was nothing that could be found to hurt you there. nothing. I don't know who I am or why I am here. I do know that I love the sound of the train humming. I wish it could last forever, because the noise brings silence to the fighting, the breaking of glass and to the pain.

Lex is not here to care for me, she is not here to take me away. I am sent to live with my aunt. I don't know how long I am there. I remember that she had a nice bed, clean and pretty with big fluffy pillows. I know not to touch anything to look but not touch. This is a lonely time for me , my family is not around me, my baby sister is not here. I feel lost, empty and frightened in another way, not for my life. I feel like I will never see them again. I know it is winter close to the holiday, but I don't think there was a Santa Claus or a Christmas tree.

I feel agitated, why am I here and why do people now want to know about an abusive family? I believe I can't change the present until I accept the past. I thought to myself how can this make me stronger? What good can come from this. I want and don't to unlock the doors of the past, for they are walls of blood. I am troubled as the woman who I call mother, was and is capable of murder. I was reading the newspaper at an insane person who opened fire and killed innocent people, what makes her different. She destroyed so many lives and she refuses to take responsibility. She must know how she altered lives. I don't feel so forgiving, I know she was ill but I still cannot find total forgiveness. This was our destiny and she rerouted the path in which we traveled. She lined it with fear and I have learned fear so very well. I want to love her and I hate her. In church we are taught to forgive but I am afraid forgiveness will take down the shield and reveal the vulnerability and she will take advantage of that.

I choose Love

I don't know which is worse the silence or the

evil that is spewed from his mouth.
~

I understand the imprisonment that is chain free.


I am aware that one evil seed can grow and spawn itself upon the world.

There are only two choices, you either chose to live in love or with hate. I don't believe you can have it both ways.

The Silent Treatment

I thought there wasn't any other form of abuse left to experience. I had been physically abused, verbally abused and sexually abused. But there was another form of abuse that I did not realize I was having inflicted upon me. It has been six weeks and I have been in the mist of the silent treatment. If I try to speak he close his eyes or rolls them in his head so only the whites show.He refused to speak to me as though I don't exist. The holidays were much the same he spoke to everyone but me. I didn't know what was happening, I tried to have a discussion to more of the same. I was making myself sick because I was caught up in the unknown, would he hurt me again, himself. I hate guns is it better he doesn't talk to me than pull a gun on me. So many questions and I did not have the answers. I don't sleep so well and I didn't know what to do. I searched the silent treatment online omg it is another form of abuse, it is another way for him to have control. I was shocked and relieved, that what I was feeling and experiencing was real.

I am experiencing all kinds of emotions both physical and emotional. I want to at this moment throw up as I thought I have come so far there can't be anything else he can do to me. My symptoms are real, what I am experiencing is real. I am being punished because I stepped outside of isolation and spoke to someone. He accused me of doing things sexual and otherwise. I was desperate for contact with another human being. I didn't realize the full extent of this abuse, until believe it or not I opened a face book account and realized that 35 years ago when he came into my life he made everyone exit. I have spent my life without a friend and without family.
I thought to myself ok this is real how do I handle it?

Unitelligble Mayhem

The misunderstood infliction of one soul upon another.

The Poster Child for Abuse

I really didn't know where to start with this post. Each dysfunctional family has a blue print unique to that individual situation. There are still many similarities between the various abusive families, sometimes the connection is drug abuse, alcohol abuse, financial situations, illness and health issues and can also be ignorance, lack of education and others times its simply being caught up in the cycle of abuse. There is no trauma to the heart, soul and mind that is less or worse than another. To the children involved each is very, very serious. A slap across the face, a beating till a child can't walk, sexual abuse, verbal, fear, hatred are all ugliness in the weak threads of life.

Many of us don't look like the average poster child for abuse. But that does not make the crime against humanity any less painful. Even when we don't realize it, we are in a cycle which will provide the next generation of child abuse. Can we stop it? Will we stop it? Some will and some won't. I believe with all my heart that children are born pure. I had at one time believed that a child who grows up to an evil adult was born of a bad seed. But the more stories I hear of child abuse, I find that they each lack various ingredients necessary for a stable and healthy atmosphere. How do we give love, peace, respect, to children who have never experienced those various emotions. To a child who has been stripped of their individuality and ingrained with fear from early on in life.

Fear is what and abusive child is taught early on. It can make a child hide within them self, become hateful, angry, lonely and lost. I think in this era we are blessed with technology which allows us to educate, understand and share in our own personal stories. The more we open up and the more we talk about it, the more we reveal what power the abuser has on a child way after they have grown up.

I wish there were easy answers and I could save the world and all the children in it. A child is born to be loved and with love I believe we can change the outcome if only one child at a time. The poster child for abuse is not one but many, of every color, ethnicity, income brackets and place in the world. There are the children that are obvious who live on the streets who have no restrictions placed upon them and they are easier to recognize.There are many more who don't fit the look of the obvious poster child and yet the cries are just as loud and their pain and their needs. I am not sure why such ugliness exist in the world, but it does. I cry for the many children who will never get a chance to break the cycle of abuse and for my sister who's smile was removed way to soon from this world. The only way we will ever slow down the cycle of abuse is to intervene earlier in the lives of children and parents alike. Yes there are classes now for young parents and youth groups and yet this is still not enough to stop the violence. What will it take? We have enough money and resources on this earth that no one should starve, go without shoes, or lack quality education. Each child that is born gives us an opportunity to make the world better. Guidance and education are part of the intervention process. They say that people get what they earn and that the wealthiest people at the top of the chain deserve what they have and that the share no responsibility to those who they feel are leeches on society. I am talking in dreams of a Utopia , it all seems so easy, just replace hate and greed with love. Just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love.just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love. Just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love.just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love. Just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love.just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love. Just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love.just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love. Just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love.just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love. Just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love.just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love, just replace hate and greed with love,just replace hate and greed with love.

I was hoping if I said it enough times I could make it a reality... but unfortunately hate and greed exist and will prevail as it prevents us from curing the world of the viscous seeds of abuse.

May you be blessed with the holiday spirit everyday of the year

I think of each day as a holiday, a celebration of life. I always keep a turkey in the freezer for when my own children come home so that we will be able to enjoy each others company and celebrate and eat. When you are sharing a moment or a day with friends and family it is a true thanksgiving despite the holiday calendar.

I have not always made the right decisions when it came to my own intermediate family. I tried so hard not to pass on my own childhood dysfunction. I guess you would say that I struggle with the past even to this day. Not necessarily with the stories or the facts of the individual violent episodes branded to my soul but with my ability to deal with, understand and in someways know what is right and wrong.

As an adult I made every attempt to hide the negativity and to treat each situation differently as not to repeat the errors of my parents ways. Yet in some bizarre way I found myself in a situation that was eerily familiar. How I react and I struggled to surface above it was much different than my mother and yet it was as if we dealt with the same situations in our unique way.

I do believe when you have a supportive cast you are much more able to comprehend and rise above circumstances, such as financial, control, heartache loneliness as well illness, accidents and yes dysfunction. I find that like many I nearly drowned in the pressure and stress that became an everyday occurrence. I feel that it is important to be taught survival skills and I find it ironic that what is normal behavior to some is not to others. I have at many times waited till I couldn't take anymore to stand up for myself, like a rat backed into a corner fights back.

I think we shouldn't take children for granted. I spent a lifetime trying to hide abuse from my own children. Did I think because they didn't see the actual physical hit, twisting of arms, control and verbal abuse that they didn't know it was happening? What did they see, hear or understand? I know that I am not the same person I was earlier on in my marriage. I have learned that it takes a combination of factors to create the victim and perpetrator scenario. I do to this day battle both spiritually and physically to be stronger, smarter and more capable of preventing a negative situation from reoccurring.

Sometimes I find that I am so afraid of standing still that I may fall back into old habits and learned behavior of the norm for a dysfunctional family. I indulge in work so that I don't become weak and comfortable. Maybe it is the dreams that we are taught early on for a world that doesn't exist. In a dialogue with a friend of the family he said " I am not a stranger to tragedy" None of us are we all will at sometime meet face to face with death, sickness, finances and our own personal struggles. We are of course all human and will bare the trials of our human weakness. What separates us is the knowledge and our own survival skills as well as our own abilities to prevent stress and anxiety from taking hold and leading us down the wrong path.

As many of you prepare to celebrate the holidays be reminded of those who are alone, lost and struggling to find their survival suitcase. Sometimes it is a smile, a wave hello or goodbye, little things can become major things in the life of a person who is lost spiritually.

Suicides are typically up during the holidays. Many times it is because we see it as a big family get together. Many have no families, some are estranged and others have not realized that gifts and over indulgence in food does not make a holiday. Laughter, happiness, sharing and bonding creates memories that will carry a person through life.

Happy Thanksgiving! Share a kind word, a smile, a hug...

The Adult Child

I was watching a movie of a true story about a woman who was on death row. Throughout the story they tried to convince not only the jury but the viewer that it was because of the womans childhood or lack of upbringing that made her a candidate for murder. I can't remember exactly when I had a conscious understanding of right and wrong but I knew from very early on what didn't feel right or seem right. In many instances we do have roll models that reflect right and wrong. We look to adults in youth groups, neighbors, relatives and yes even other children and their families, etc. Even before we are introduced to the world beyond our own we have an internal understanding of what is expected or what is society's normal. I tried to think about my emotions and my thoughts in what I believed was a world of turmoil.

I can remember being ten years old very clearly. There was a merge of personality still part child and another part of me entering the world of adults. I always thought that any stability that I had came at this particular time but I also had a deep and profound understanding of the dysfunction in which we as children were raised. I thought it was pretty amazing how much you know and understand as a child without even discussing it with anyone. Repeatedly watching attempted murder is like watching a murder being carried out over and over again. The irony was that it was like the Bill Murray movie " Ground Hog Day" it was the same violent and disruptive life style over and over again. I don't believe we became numb to the violence but on the contrary we learned to recognize the signs and expect the worst. My mother was an obvious key, as it was her actions that prepped us both early in the morning and through out the day. I can remember laying across the bed and thinking about all the negativity with in my own life. I don't really recall wondering what my brother and sister thought, in many ways we each were looking for our own out. I believe early on that it was about own survival. The 60's came with their own set of problems, it was a time of rebellion and change in society's structure, especially closer to the 70's. People were talking more and less was being hidden in the closet. Because we really knew it wasn't right, it forced each of us to leave home at an early age, to find an escape. My brother was the eldest he joined the military, my eldest sister fought and earned her right at 16 in the courts when she won her right with minor emancipation. The third born was pregnant as a teen and ended up marrying the baby's father and of course dying way before her time. I went to live with my brother after his release from the military and my youngest sister left in her teens on a road of most would expect from a troubled teen. Choices we were at the age where we could decide to get away and we did. But no matter where we run the memories come with us. Almost all of my life I had this internal drive to run, run as far and as fast I could,but no matter where I went I had to deal with all that happen. I couldn't run fast enough nor far enough and I couldn't hide. The beginning of writing was the first step in standing up and accepting the past as a chapter that happened. Turning the pages and looking ahead to the future without the need to run was not easy but necessary. I understood at this time the importance of facing our ghost and acknowledging that in many ways our tools to achieve were limited to what we were taught as a child. Do I believe my parents loved me, strangely enough I do believe my father did, I thought my mother regretted having children. She always said she didn't want girls and she had four of them. She hated domestics cooking, baking and I can guess really what I learned about all the necessary skills of homemaking came from my eldest sister Lex. I can't ever remember her lovingly combing my hair an when I try to think of the time that was positive with mother in those early years I find it almost impossible. Except for one day when I was really small and I had to have an operation on my feet, I remember crying as they took me from her, " I want my mommie, I want my mommie" In most situations that is what a child wants is to be loved and I guess that is why even though it's wrong we love our abuser. Love is a need no different than food and water and a essential part of our internal human being. Whether our love comes from a dysfunctional parent or an abusive spouse, we seek and need to be loved. I am not sure why that is so, doesn't seem to happen to everyone that way, but as much as I love my parents, I hate them for what they did to five innocent children. I am not proud of that anger that has remained inside of me for so many years and letting it go is in itself therapeutic. I spent the better part of my life trying to understand why my parents were like this and the obvious always surfaces, they were two people who were never meant to come together and have five children. The love between them was weak and they didn't have what it takes to rise above the negative chapters of life. I shall not carry their guilt and yet when push comes to shove I have done all I can to continue to walk without ruffling feathers. Why? Because I am so aware of what people are capable of and I have learned that fear is the ultimate motivator in a dysfunctional family. Once that trigger of fear is pulled the gears are in motion and a life is altered.