So many lingering questions and uncertainties.
So much we wish we'd said, yet wish we'd never heard. Memories turned nightmares, leaving us afraid to fall asleep. So much pain, regret, and mostly overwhelming anger. This haunting hell we have come to know and live.

We wonder how to move on while tending the tattered threads, akin to balancing an albatross hanging from our hurting hearts. They tease and torment us, and yet we still try to hide them. Like our abusers, WE WISH THEM GONE.

But they are still there. Even industrial wire cutters will not sever them from our souls.

I finally realized the game rules were non-negotiable; either my abuser OR me-- not both-- would win. I vividly recall making the decision I had to finally part ways with these cruel collaborators armed with an insatiable appetite to deconstruct and demonize everything I was. Mostly my mother, but also her cohorts, my father, sister, and some relatives worked as a team making valiant attempts to suck me back in. One minute they would invite me to dinner, the next, they shamed and undermined my personhood to anyone within earshot. It became abundantly clear my only choice was removing myself from them completely. All the relatives we shared were no longer mutual. In the end, my mother used them to retaliate for my escaping her wrath and mistreatment by threatening them that if they spoke to me, she would never talk to them ever again.

My therapist at that time warned me I would never be successful in a permanent parting from them. In my mind, I knew that the only way for me to escape with my life was never to go back. Returning to the darkened crawl space of their heinous, hollow hearts was a slow but sure death sentence. As you can read in my memoir Room in the Heart; Surviving a Childhood Undone, Fulfilling a Pact to Love, I did, in fact, go back numerous times after that. I simply was not strong enough to relinquish a life absent their acceptance. Sadly, their "acceptance" was in name only. They were unequivocally incapable of unconditional love. To them I could never be a daughter or sister; I was the drywall they kicked and crumbled when life was inconvenient, or in most cases when I was thriving despite their attempts to make me disappear.

I could neither go away nor stay. Throughout my childhood, then into my adulthood, even in front of our children, their inappropriate behavior was mind-blowing. I was deeply conflicted by their attempts to engage me in a blatant lack of boundaries; their embarrassing, inappropriate jokes and judgmental cruelty left me at war within myself. This repulsive behavior was paramount to belonging in their foul flock. For me, it was confusing and a complete disloyalty to my soul. Finally, I wrote the "last letters" to them, and left; left no return address, no goodbyes, and no "maybe someday's."

Then came years of therapy, three suicide attempts and a short stay in a day unit at a mental institution. Still, although I finally found a way to break the bonds, I could fulfill the externally imposed absolute prerequisite to healing: forgiving my abusers. No matter how hard I tried- and "tenacity" is my middle name- I could not embrace any part of making their heinous harm acceptable. I believe that the moment our abuser decides FOR US that their right to abuse us supersedes OUR RIGHTS to be honored and respected, the contract to honor or forgive them becomes null and void. Forgiving them is paramount to saying it wasn't "that bad," we "didn't truly suffer then or now," and they "didn't REALLY mean to abuse us." Haven't we all been encouraged to invalidate and undermine the significance of what DID happen?

Recently I did an about-face. I realized the extreme importance of forgiveness after all. Forgiveness has NOTHING whatsoever to do with our abusers; their job is over once we evict them from living in our heads rent-free. Forgiveness has EVERYTHING to do with US! We are the ones who look back and cannot reconcile that WE failed to stop or prevent our abuse. From our adult perspective, we expect the innocent child we were to have had the capacity to escape unscathed. We forget that while that sweet, unsuspecting child at that time knew about strangers and kidnapping, they failed to have the wherewithal to discern the difference between appropriate conduct and abusive actions. So we accept that the abuse DID HAPPEN and WAS NOT OKAY, yet we refuse to forgive ourselves.

How very abusive of us.

My, how tightly we grasped that last morsel of our past with such tightly clenched fists. Unfortunately, emotional/physical pain from our past abuse brought us a strange yet superficial comfort. But now we can abandon the crawl and learn to walk ... away. Forgiving and healing are the most exquisitely precious gifts we can offer our healing souls. Haven't we been through enough?

Let the healing begin! Buy flowers to commemorate the release of responsibility for our past and gain in forgiveness for the present. We are the brilliant wreckage that will shine brightly with tomorrow's sunrise. And when the sun sets, it will not be our loss. It will be our celebration of another joyous day lived well, and the impending birth of yet another new day...