This topic may be off the beaten path of what I usually write about, however, when I need to solve a problem, writing usually does it. And I wonder too, if other survivors out there have this issue: Why is it that everyone I meet, from friend to foe, feels this need to give me advice?
Let me give you an example. Last Friday, I went to get my hair cut. I walk with a cane, so when the hairdresser saw me she asked: “What happened to your leg?” I shook my head and said: “Not my leg. I have a sore back.” This erupted into a half hour of listening to how I should go back to the doctor and tell her I need hypnosis. She continued telling me that it works for people but because of the stigma attached to it, doctors don’t advertise their expertise in this therapy and I should leave right after my cut and have it done. This is the lady who the last time I had my hair cut, which was the first time with her, told me she had been cutting hair for forty years and knew gray hair. She told me that I have ‘unnatural gray hair.’ It was completely due to stress and I needed to go on Folic Acid with B Complex. First of all, I take enough medications. Secondly, unnatural or not, I love my new gray hair coming in. I was not supposed to live past thirty so I love each and every one of them and feel I have earned them. Thirdly, I’m on disability and don’t have money to throw around on vitamins that will get rid of gray hair.
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How Denial plays a part in your healing journey, to be followed by honesty.
As I continue my campaign against Ritual abuse and childhood sexual assault from a survivor’s perspective, my research has led me through previous, almost forgotten old sets of journals. I have come across entries that scream ‘honesty,’ only to be followed with ‘that couldn’t have happened.’ How could anyone possibly make up the secrets hidden in those diaries or more importantly, why would I want to?
Who hasn’t heard a parent tell their child: ‘Don’t lie? Don’t tell a fib?’ At age five, I was taught to lie. As my father incestuously assaulted Julie, one of my child alters, he was relentless in stopping her from exposing his hideous playtime of what was really happening in that cold basement on the hard concrete floor. ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘do I have to not tell?’ His answer: ‘Mommy wouldn’t believe you and if she did I would go to jail, you would never see me, and the family would be torn apart.’ Naturally, a five-year-old would lie to keep her daddy out of jail.
Twenty-five years later, during a face to face confrontation, I asked my dad: ‘What happened between us when I was a kid?’ His reply: ‘It was only touching. It was no big deal.’ But it was a big deal, and I carry that with me, every time I touch on a new memory, an old feeling, or when my whole existence seems like no big deal.
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