Sometimes in the middle of a lazy Sunday, a message appears on the clapboard wall of an old house. There it was. I was so intrigued by its curious innocence. This odd sight captured me. Clearly, there was a message here.

This century-old colonial house proudly sits on Main Street in our small town. On its west side, next to an old, badly weathered door, are hunter green shutters framing what might have once been a window. Why is it absent? Did the occupants not want to peer out, or did they not want others looking in?

How many of us want or need to shutter away from the outside world? How many around us have crossed our boundaries, crushed our souls, or curtailed our evolution from who we were meant to be? These thieves of our personhood are always hungry for more. We hurt—but for us, it has become the unfortunate norm. We cannot fathom our lives without the daily demeaning and destruction of all we used to be. We represent the brilliant wreckage of what could be and should be so much more. We are afraid of the outside world looking in—and seeing [what has become of our] lives. Craving compassion and kindness, bruised by physical or emotional abuse, living with a lack of passion or purpose, we cannot find a way to add one more challenge to our already burdened being. Our emotions and our world stay safely hidden behind the shutters.

Alternatively, some wish to avoid viewing the outside world. We cannot bear to see anything that revisits our past. We have wandered that perilous path and peered into the face of pure evil; it devoured all we were and left us empty, exhausted, weak, and withered. We close our shutters. We have no choice; what sacred freedom we regained [seems fragile/insecure?]. We fear the unknown; what we've already endured was heinous enough. We survived by remaining blind to the injustice we braved, believing we were bound for this destiny. We barely exist, having no appetite for [adventure or change]. Sadly, all we hunger for—unconditional love, trust, loyalty, and worthiness—is shut out as well.

I've been there. As mother, I faced the fact that the only way to keep my family safe was to hide from the talons of my mother, my abuser. She knew she could set the wheels of our scenario in motion, and I had no brakes. I was weak—That's how abusers need their victims to be. So I tried to stay away, yet she always crept back in.

No matter how desperately I craved my parents' affection and acceptance, the need for distance was about my children, not me. They were vulnerable and innocent; I had to learn to be their advocate. Still unable to tell my parents, “no,”, I decided I would stop answering my mother's phone calls. I was left shaking when she'd leave messages threatening to appoint a lawyer to secure grandparents' visitation rights. I desperately feared my parents would show up and look into my windows, and I would not have the strength to deny them entry to my own home. I drew every blind in our house. I wanted to shut them out and my family in.

Over the years, this cycle continued. When I retreated in pain, they circled like hungry vultures. I still craved my parents' love; but rejection, invalidation, and criticism were all they had to offer. I desperately needed and wanted so much more. How could I love my children when my mother couldn't love me? How do you find and then give what you never found nor had?

Years later, I look back at that mother I was when my children were young. I only knew what my mother taught me: everything NOT to be. I had to trust that love must be somewhere beneath the scar tissue resulting from years of abuse. How amazing, like a callus that forms from repeated resistance, my scar tissue gave me strength to make the right choice. I chose our children.

An interesting thing happens when we make a choice to heal from our abuse. We find an inner peace that comes with balance and wisdom. We come to realize that we do matter, and our worth comes not from looking into or out from anything other than our soul. We come to realize we do matter, and it has nothing to do with others’ views of us or our impressions of the outside world. Our souls are within us always, and we have infinite value, just as we are. It's a quite a spectacular view, no matter what side of the shutters you are on.