Tag: healing

our ribbons, our shoes

Today is Mothering Sunday here in the UK, so I dedicate this post to my mother, another survivor of sexual abuse perpetrated by her father.

Last week I was in Newcastle (UK), where I helped do a LOUDfence on the railings of St Mary’s Cathedral. As ever, the act of tying ribbons — colourful, fluttering — releases something purposeful in me and I think in others. The tags which are attached by the ribbons recount grief, and loss, and sorrow, and in some — betrayal. They also speak of support, validation, and the determination to make a difference in every walk of life. To say loudly: we hear you, we believe you, we are so sorry. And we want this never to happen again.

A new and powerful symbol in LOUDfence is the introduction of empty shoes: children’s, priests’, religious sisters’, laity’s. They all represent people who aren’t there, who can’t be, and people whose shoes we need to walk in, to be with, and hold close. Abuse is a destructive force. It rips us from those we might love, and from the roads we might have walked.

LOUDfence is making a difference. It’s reaching beyond countries, and beyond regions. Beyond silence and silencing. Victim survivors from every walk of life can see themselves — can feel themselves held. Know that they are seen too, in some cases by the very people who did them harm.

Change comes through a gathering which reaches critical mass, a tipping over into the clear sense that we MUST enact cultural change. On all fronts.

I’m so proud to be part of this movement. Next stop: West Virginia USA in April.

***

Antonia Sobocki (founder of LOUDfence UK) asked me to write a poem for the Newcastle LOUDfence. Here it is. I am not usually one for writing to commission – I tend to freeze up! – but this time I had the gift of a pair of baby shoes I had found in my mother’s belongings after her death. Here are the shoes, and here is the poem.

(apologies for the poor quality reproduction here — the clumsiness of WordPress!)

blindsided

I have been feeling silenced.

It’s taken me 10 weeks to come here and say this. That’s how silenced I have felt.

What silences sexual abuse victim/survivors? What silences ME?

To somewhat answer this, I’d like to highlight this article. Absolutely none of it will be news to survivors who struggle with their families, particularly if the sexual abuse they suffered was perpetrated by a member of the family.

https://www.brainzmagazine.com/post/understanding-family-scapegoating-and-its-interplay-with-survivors-of-childhood-sexual-abuse

None of this is news, but none of this can be solved either.

I cannot say much more. I have written and erased this post several times. This is how silenced I feel, and how much I am checking myself, worrying about my words.

For weeks my husband, children, other family, and close friends have been my scaffolding. Alongside me and checking in every day. Thanks to them, and to the years of excellent therapy, the ‘top up’ therapy I’m doing now — I know I’m okay, and always will be.

I love my life. I won’t be dragged back into tangles of secrets and blame. There’s no reconciliation in that. In the words of glorious Fleetwood Mac: never going back again.

This is one of the recurring dreams I had during the abuse, and afterward during my initial therapy. I have felt very much like this over the last few weeks. Nothing to stand on, falling, exposed.

But I’m back on my feet now. For good.

from my memoir, Leaving Locust Avenue:

***

I have versions of the same dream.

         This time I am freezing. I am freezing because I hardly have anything on, and the wind blowing through the walls, the walls that aren’t there, is cold. Still I have to decorate, I have to stand on the chair and hang plants, think about colours, make things just so. I begin to shiver, and the leaves of the plant I am holding shake with my shivering. I try to stop, but the more I try to stop the worse it becomes, until my whole body is shaking.

         I manage to hang the plant, putting the chain over the hook. I manage to smile into the darkness, push my hair back as if in front of a mirror. Then I take a step off the chair, and my foot keeps going down, down further than I thought the floor was, and when it touches, I fall after it into a ditch.

         I know I have broken some bones, because they are too cold and brittle. My arms are pinned to my side in the ditch, my face pushed into the mud. In the fall I lose my nightgown, and my bottom is exposed. But I can’t move. I am useless, and leave myself there for dead.

making a lot of quiet noise

A couple of weekends ago, I went to Cardiff for my first LOUDfence. Founder and Director of LOUDfence UK Antonia Sobocki had invited me to help launch Wales’ LOUDfence movement.

As victim-survivors, we have come to expect emotional turmoil around Child Sexual Abuse: being misunderstood, not being heard, not being ‘seen’, not being believed. We have come to expect physical turmoil too: not feeling able to go someplace (church, for instance), or revisit any childhood location without fear, or even wear certain clothes, smell certain smells, hear certain sounds — without triggers which drive us far away from our lives.

In Cardiff, I was prepared to feel a lot of this turmoil. I was prepared to feel on the outside looking in. To feel at arm’s length from the huge ‘authority’ figure called the Church. I did not expect to be moved.

I am generally not a church-goer. However, my husband’s family are Catholic, we were married in a Catholic church, etc — and I feel comfortable with a Catholic mass insofar as hymns and actions and words go. At the last minute in Cardiff I was drafted in to do the first reading, from Ezekiel. This too was absolutely fine; I am used to finding a calm place in myself from which to read, in any environment really.

Archbishop Mark O’Toole took the mass. Antonia and I were in the front pew. And as he spoke, something started to let go in me. He was soft-spoken, sad — and offered a profound apology. He took responsibility for the failings in his beloved Church. He directly addressed survivors, many of whom (it turns out) were in the congregation. He made room for their – my – suffering. For their – my – trauma. He spoke about the betrayal all of us — whether abused in association with the Church or not — had undergone, perpetrated by the very people meant to take care of us. He acknowledged his own guilt too, by proxy, in perhaps not responding as he should have, not taking note of everything he needed to, and of not making it his responsibility to understand and enact change. He showed his own pain in the face of all of this.

I began to feel he was speaking to me. Directly to me. He was saying he was sorry. He was saying that he ‘saw’ me, saw all of us survivors. And I found myself crying almost uncontrollably. It was the first time in my life — my whole 45 years of living with the debris and breakages from five years of sexual abuse when I was a child — that anyone with any authority, part of any institution AT ALL, had apologised. Sorry. Had opened their hands palms upward in a gesture of responsibility, of grief, and reparation. We are sorry.

Through his humility and gentleness, Archbishop Mark brought the part of me which feels undeserving — the broken part, the abused part — back into the centre of the Church’s responsibilities and concerns. How many times have I felt I was writing/shouting/crying into a wind which blew it all right back into my face? How many times have I felt ignored? Hundreds of times, as have all survivors. The trauma of sexual abuse haunts us, and for some of us, it haunts us most particularly in the place where witnessing faith might help: the Church. And yet: this time our words and feelings were held there. Believed. Grieved for.

It is not in my nature to be loud about my experiences of abuse. Although I consider myself an activist, I am a fairly quiet one. My activism is through my writing, through the research and arts projects I participate in, and through being open and frank about my own experiences. Over time, my transparency in every aspect of my life has encouraged numerous people to disclose their own experiences of abuse to me. Part of what I hope to do is make room for conversations in contexts which have nothing to do with abuse. What matters is that people who confide in me know that they are safe. That I won’t shout about their abuse. That they can trust me. That we are in this together.

And for the first time in my life, two weeks ago I was welcomed into the centre of someone else’s openness and transparency. For the first time, I felt that our experiences as survivors were at the centre of things, not around the edges fighting hard to be heard. I felt respected and believed.

At the end of the mass, Archbishop Mark invited Antonia and I to process out of the church ahead of him and the rest of the clergy. I reached for Antonia’s hand. We walked out together.

It was one service, yes. One priest. One church. There is still so much to do in challenging and changing our cultures both from inside and outside our faith institutions. But for me — Cardiff was an enormously powerful beam of hope. Maybe change right through to our oldest and most revered institutions is actually possible. Some of us move more quietly than others — but we are all, each of us, centring survivors, sharing our stories, trying to protect children, and, step by step, one foot after the other, shifting cultures. We are all loud now.

Archbishop Mark’s homily begins at about 26 minutes in.

claustrophobia

My dear friend came to visit recently. After many years of knowing each other and being close as writers — we discovered only a few years ago that we are both CSA (Child Sexual Abuse) survivors. This was a shock to us both: keeping secrets, keeping abuse ‘over there’ is hard-wired in both of us. But we have come to know that much connects us, and that in a way this is cause for celebration. Despite our pasts, we have compassion, we have empathy. We have humour, and love.

This time we ended up alighting upon something I didn’t know she had as well: a violent reaction to feeling enclosed.

I’m curious: do most or all survivors experience this? I cannot bear the sensation of feeling enclosed, or struggling to swallow, or reaching for air. This means that last year when I had tonsillitis I was in a terrible, panicked state. Max sat with me, holding my hand, distracting me by watching sitcoms. I was barely with it. Tears of desperation squeezed out of my eyes with every breath.

Every time a duvet climbs above my shoulders I am panicky and shove it away. I almost always sleep with my arms out of the covers. I also find elevators (lifts) very difficult, especially small ones. I struggle with spiral staircases, and have had more than one serious panic attack while climbing them. I am physically disoriented very easily, and launch into a full blown panic attack when this happens. Whether in IKEA, or once in an observatory when the ceiling rotated — when I don’t know or remember how to ‘escape’ from someplace, I melt down.

My friend is the same. Almost exactly the same. We figured there must be something about being overpowered. About a large person hovering and smothering. About not being able to fight.

One of the first realisations I had in my early therapy was the fact that I wanted to push my father away. My arms ached with that realisation. But I never did. I was frozen, frightened, dissociated.

These triggers — phobias, fears, whatever you call them — are all collateral damage. Ripples from abuse. All of the above responses are valid, as are many more. They are normal trauma responses. Yet both of us have at times been made to feel deficient: buck up, be brave, there’s nothing wrong!

There’s a lot wrong when you are in fear for your life. When you think the breath will be squeezed out of you. When things are forced into your mouth and you can’t breathe. When you are a child and can’t bear the weight, the intrusion. These are the facts. They never go away.

We must respect trauma responses. We need to be trauma-informed. It is often NOT possible to ‘overcome’ these responses, and it’s a myth to believe everyone can. We all have to work with what we carry around the best we can. For survivors, these tangled and deeply embedded responses are unavoidable at times.

For me this means I almost always avoid lifts. For me this means I ask the dentist to raise the head of the chair closer to sitting, and have to ‘go someplace else’ when x-ray plates are in my mouth. For me this means I am always verging on panic when in a crowd.

My family know these things and accept them. They know where these responses come from. With time and recognition of these triggers, I am less compromised by them than I used to be. For me, speaking my ‘truth’ — admitting that I’m frightened, admitting that I’m disoriented and having to control my breathing — eases my panic, and often prevents it from escalating to the point where I can’t be reached. These issues don’t go away — but they have less sway over me.

This won’t work for everyone, clearly. Sometimes we are surrounded by people who refuse to understand, or whom we don’t trust, or with whom we don’t feel safe enough to show we are feeling vulnerable. I know I am very lucky. Without even realising it consciously, I landed on my feet when it comes to close family and friends.

Regardless of how memories manifest with you or with your loved ones, acceptance goes a long way. Lack of judgment goes a long way. Saying ‘it’s alright’ to feel this way, to react, goes a long way. Because next time the panic might not be quite as overwhelming. Regardless of the trigger: being seen and believed and supported can help dismantle these suffocating walls.

blood and water

In some ways, this is a simple post. Because love — unconditional love, offered freely — is in some ways a simple thing.

I think of this today in particular because last week we hugged and waved goodbye to my teenage nieces. My actual nieces. My [half] brother’s children, who came with their mother and stepfather. Where to start with the girls? Authentic, open, loving, kind. Fun and funny. And completely accepting of me.

To those of you who haven’t had family torn apart — by trauma, abuse, narcissism (take your pick!) — being accepted as a blood relative may be so automatic as to not be questioned. Brother’s children = nieces. Equals blood relation. Equals thicker than water.

And yet. As many of you will know, I left my father’s house at age 17, leaving behind my brother and sister. I was not allowed to explain why, although my stepmother ‘knew’. I had lived there since my brother was a baby, and my sister was two years old. Leaving them remains the most painful separation I have ever undergone, or had to bear. I cried in private for years.

Meanwhile, the damage unfurled. For me and for them. Eventually I realised that it was my father who should have left the house. He had committed the crimes. But my first therapist did not report him, as was Virginian law then. She broke the law. And consequently broke two of the most cherished ties of my life. Just like that. Before we’d had time to consider what might be happening, it was just too late. We had lost each other, through no fault of our own. Stuck with the painful consequences.

I hoped against hope that I could be ‘real aunt’ for my nieces, before they came to visit. I hoped, but had learned after years of tangled dynamics not to count on anything. If you don’t count on something, it doesn’t hurt as much when it doesn’t materialise.

I am blessed to have 20+ close relatives by marriage, three generations of them now. They have been in my life unconditionally for 35 years. I am thankful every day for them.

And yet. My nieces — my beautiful nieces — arrive, and they are blood. They call me ‘Auntie’. Their faces are open, loving. We laugh, we celebrate a birthday, we punt down the River Cam, we go line dancing (yes we do!). The pure joy I feel when I say to my dance teacher, flinging my arms out: ‘these are my nieces!’…. It’s hard to express how extraordinarily precious this is. How lucky I feel. How grateful. I slide hair clips into their hair.

What can I say? I had given up on ever being a blood aunt, and here I am, one of theirs. They accept me. They don’t blame me for anything. They don’t deal in loyalties or suspicion. There is nothing to (fruitlessly) unpick here. We start where we are. And all this is so much more, so unexpected, and I was so unprepared. I was not prepared to be free of the past, to land in this tender place. But I am with them. And they are with me.

It is possible to be surprised by happiness it seems, always, despite what can feel like intractable pain.

hope is a powerful thing

[photo by: my brother]

My husband and I married 35 years ago today: 25 June, 1988. His mother, who died within the year, took it upon herself to arrange everything — here, in the UK. It was what I wanted, and I don’t regret it for a moment. There were people in my family who were not happy to have everything elsewhere, across the ocean etc… But I knew it was right. From the beginning, I was welcomed into R’s large family as one of them. This has remained the case for over 35 years now.

I knew about ten people at my wedding. There were 120 in attendance. It took place in St John’s Cathedral, Norwich, and honestly — it was like a dream. A fantastic dream. There are photos of me being fed soup in my dress. Photos of us, R and I, sailing back down the aisle so fast, so happy, that I remember the bridesmaids literally clattering after us. Astounding day. First day of the rest of my life.

We have been through troubles — who hasn’t? — but throughout, we have been together. We have made the commitment, again and again, to be together. My models — surprise surprise — were my grandparents, married for 72 years. R comes from a family where all of the marriages — all of them — are long-lived. We figured out how to do this, through trial and error, through commitment, and through a deep and abiding love. We are lucky; we are soulmates. This was clear from the start.

I wouldn’t have made it through the difficulties in my life without R. I’m not sure I would have survived. Because of him, and our children, I emerge hopeful over and over. This has been a constant. Nothing — and no one — can destroy us. Not even the memory, and the surging triggers, of my father’s abuse.

Here is an excerpt from my memoir Learning to Survive, set in Oberlin, Ohio, where we went to the College and the music Conservatory. The children cringe whenever I mention this. But every word is true. This is really what happened. This is how R and I got together. There was no question, no questioning, at all. We both knew, in the same moment, that this was it.

***

2.

Around this time I am sleeping with a pianist I’ll call Sam. We are very companionable. We have been friends in fact for a while, have friends in common, so the relationship is much more ‘out in the open’ than is usual for me up until then. We do things together, eat together, spend actual nights together. I don’t feel it will last, and I don’t think he does either, but for the moment we are okay.

            After a while it dawns on me that I am a bit distracted from Sam. He has a British friend called R, and the three of us become close, eating at least one meal, if not two or three, together every day. R is a composer. He is dark, tall and handsome, rather tortured, smokes too much, and is way – I think – out of my league. I do remember one instance of watching him walk by Sam and me in the campus diner, and knowing pretty starkly then that I was probably with the wrong guy. R however is seeing a beautiful – stunning – cellist, one who has visited his family even, and so of course I shut that thought down quick. His friendship, our friendship, feels too important to risk.

            In the event however Sam does us all a favour, though it doesn’t feel like that at the time: he sleeps with another woman. He has the good grace to tell me about it, and we break up. In hindsight, I know I was ready to. By this point too, R has broken up with the cellist, much to my surprise.

            It is December 1985, and I have just started therapy. I have let go, quickly, of a lot of baggage. I don’t know what’s next, but I watch it go, slide away, the useless stuff. I feel more alone, more vulnerable – but also stronger. Already, I know I am finding my way toward a life I want, instead of surviving in a life I don’t want.

            It can’t be more than a few days after Sam and I break up that I find I need to see R. I don’t know why. I don’t question it. I just need to see him. I miss him.

            We live about three streets apart – him on the broader Lorain Street, and me along a smaller, back road.

            I go out into the night. And it’s snowing, heavily. The ground and the roads are already covered. I start out with the intention of making it to his house – the first place to check – and it takes some time to work my way up the shallow incline toward Lorain Street. When I reach the intersection I look up. There are no cars out, and the snow has silenced everything. Across the road I see a figure, a dark tall one, without a hat on, in a long, dark, open coat. He starts to cross over to me, and I over to him. We meet in the middle of the street.

            ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ I say.

            ‘And I’ve been looking for you,’ he says. I see the white snowflakes gathering on his overgrown black hair. He reaches for my hands, his fingers so cold in their fingerless gloves, even through my own gloves. ‘Surely,’ he says, ‘this must be real.’

            We really are standing in the middle of the street, in the snow. It really does happen like this. Nearly thirty-eight years ago, and together ever since.

That first night, we find shelter in the Conservatory of Music, in a practice room with a piano. We stand there, and kiss. I know, almost immediately, that this is it. That together we can do this. I trust him.

            That first night, we don’t sleep together. This feels important. In fact, we don’t sleep together for weeks and weeks, not until February, when we are back from Christmas and January terms away. Once we do, we never spend a night apart, and by June, we have moved in together.

trying to stay in the saddle

[image: the Osmington White Horse]

It has been SO LONG since I’ve been here. As with everything, then the guilt of NOT doing something accumulates, and then there’s so much water under the bridge that… the task becomes impossible. Or feels it.

However. It is not like me to stop something or give up. There are lots of reasons — some of which I’ll post about here — why I keep repeating this to myself. Never give up.

First: the really fab news that I hinted about last time. Way back in March of this year, 30,000 words from my memoir about Child Sexual Abuse (Learning to Survive) won Highly Commended in the Bridport Memoir Awards. Soon after, I discovered that there were about 1,000 entries. Top 5 out of 1,000 entries. It has been such a joy, a real lift, to have my work validated and valued in such a competition. One of the HUGE blocks to getting stories of CSA out is the resistance of the ‘mainstream’ (whatever form that takes — whether media, arts, medicine) to hearing about these stories. Those of you who circulate in this world of survivors know all too well: the ‘mainstream’ is hugely more likely to draw back than to bear witness, or listen, or support. The ‘mainstream’, generally, turns away.

My prize in the Bridport felt like the beginning of something — at last! I have been struggling for two years to get a bit of purchase for Learning to Survive. My frustration has always been: I have published five books, one of them prize winning, and my work has been collected in various high profile national anthologies, published in newspapers etc. So WHY — why?! — is this book, a book I know is worthwhile and sound and well-written — staggering through almost universal rejection from literally dozens of potential outlets? The Bridport win gave me hope that the book may now be championed — despite the lack of precedent in the publishing world for stories such as mine (as OURS) — hope that someone may be willing now to take a risk.

Second, and alas, it’s clear now that the Bridport accolade has made little difference to the book’s future, at least in the UK. As a result of the Bridport however I have met some wonderful people, people cheering me on, people who — alongside me — are shocked that I’ve not been able to place the book. I’ve also been in touch with some of the judges/readers of the Bridport for advice from within ‘the industry’: from each, the writing is lauded (more than my writing has ever been lauded before, just for comparison), the subject acknowledged as important and vital, my handling of it ‘just right’…. but these effusive compliments are mitigated with ‘the subject is too dark to sell’, ‘maybe child sexual abuse has been done to death’ — etc. In other words: great writing, but the material itself is unpalatable. It’s scary. It’s ‘too much’ for readers. Not worth the risk for publishers. I want to scream what about memoirs about the Holocaust? What about memoirs about domestic violence? Murder? Grief? They exist, and they are ‘dark subjects’; they are horrifying and difficult. Yet somewhere along the line, someone has considered them important enough to be in circulation. Important enough to learn about, to witness. Not so Child Sexual Abuse, clearly.

I have indulged in a couple of threads on Twitter around these responses. Here, in short:

1) CSA affects at least 15% of the population, of ALL adults and children. THERE’S your readership publishers, not to speak of the millions of people who love, support, and care for survivors. It’s a huge audience, ready-made, an audience in dire need of stories which speak to their experiences. Which break the awful silence and shame, which raise social awareness. Which comfort and support, which tell them they are not alone, that there is a future for them and all of us.

2) Child Sexual Abuse has absolutely NOT been ‘done to death’. What we do hear a lot about are ‘serial’ pedophiles such as Savile, Maxwell, Epstein. What we do hear about are ‘monster narratives’ about ‘evil people’. We read about abuse that happens ‘over there’, that is NOT in our lives. We do not read about intra-familial CSA, or CSA perpetrated by someone the child knows. Which makes up 90% of all CSA. We do not read about abusive fathers, uncles, grandfathers, brothers, babysitters, boyfriends, carers. We do not read about the most common form of CSA, that which happens in our lives, right under our noses.

3) There is a clear moral imperative to publicise these stories. Given that there are millions of survivors in the UK alone, and thousands of millions of survivors around the world. Given that these victims and survivors are — wholesale, forcibly — drowning in silence. Given that most survivors of ‘everyday’ CSA believe that they are pretty much the only victims of this in the world. That they are alone in their trauma and loss and shame. Given all this, survivors surely deserve better. There is only one literary memoir published in the UK about CSA (by Clare Best), and only a very few in Europe and Australia. We deserve more. We deserve to be seen. We deserve to be included in the long list of wrongs which need righting in our world.

4) Finally: it’s insulting to label anyone’s suffering as ‘too dark’ for general consumption. Particularly if that suffering is widespread, or ultimately turned toward doing good. My book and writings, and the work of so many other survivors, exist with the explicit aims of relieving suffering and of prevention. Of reaching out, empowering, and bringing strength and hope. All of the abuse in my book is finished by 30,000 words in. The rest of the book — 35,000 words — is about survival, hope, and living.

***

I could go on. Fortunately, as you can see, my anger has returned. Anger turned inward is sadness and depression, and I admit that I have been battling these consequences over the last couple of months. I am silenced AGAIN. We are silenced AGAIN. It’s painful, re-traumatising, and heartbreaking.

I am holding on to the belief that things may be shifting. Slowly, granted, but shifting. There are hundreds of us doing work around CSA in the UK alone, and much of it makes forays into the mainstream. Recently, Channel 4 aired a documentary which told Emily’s story: her father was her abuser. Recently too, Nicole Caroli featured in the Metro newspaper — telling her story and raising awareness. (Nicole also runs an excellent blog, here.) Sophie Olson’s (The Flying Child’s) ‘Last Taboo’ Radio 4 programme, aired nearly two years ago, continues to break down barriers, as does her work with schools, midwives, social workers, etc (Sophie’s blog is here). The glorious and indefatigable Viv Gordon continues her moving performances and showcasing of fellow survivors, championing the necessity of their work. Elizabeth Shane publishes poetry and devotes her time to supporting and speaking up for survivors. Jane Chevous at Survivors Voices and Antonia Sobocki of LOUDfence (also at Survivors Voices) are frankly astonishing in their breadth and dedication to raising awareness and holding others to account in the world of CSA.

There are many more. We are forces to be reckoned with, and there are lots of us.

Many activist/survivors are old hands at this. They know the battles and are not giving up. I’m very new here. And the stark nature of these battles has hit hard. The reality that CSA is drenched in stigma and silence, at every turn, regardless of external validation and the accompanying shocking statistics around CSA — still, in the 21st century! — has hit hard. The fact that my book seems not to stand a chance in this country due to social attitudes toward something that has nothing to do with me — that was not my fault, that I did not choose, that I wish more than anything had never happened — has hit hard. Once again, I’ve had to face that none of this is my fault. Yet I still suffer the consequences.

Saying all this: I cannot give up. I won’t give up. I am able to speak when so many cannot. It really is that simple. I’m back on the horse, with my sights now turned to the US market. I welcome any tips, advice, leads. Something has to give.

the cost of immobility

On the advice of my consultant, I’ve been forced into ‘complete rest’ recently. Somehow my lower back started acting up, and six weeks later not only is it not recovered, but I keep ‘setting it off’. It’s a rollercoaster.

As a consequence of my indeterminate (thus far) back issue, I haven’t been to dance or do hydrotherapy in weeks. Complete rest for me is extremely difficult. I am used to just throwing myself into things, and my body coping. The advantage of being strong and bendy is that I’ve always been able to do virtually anything without any serious consequences. I always get injuries, yes, but they clear up more or less in a few weeks. Now I am finding that things simply aren’t healing; my chronic pain has escalated, and it seems that my early arthritis (common with hEDS) is impacting everything.

So. What of mobility?

I have mentioned before here my reliance on dance as a way of shifting trauma. Dance has always been the way that I manage to stay in touch with my body — not disassociate, be grounded, be meditative, etc.

Free movement in my environment has been crucial to my mental health for decades, and, probably more than anything else, preserves my wellbeing and my belief in the future.

I noticed when I had my hip replacement operations that within a couple of weeks I felt low. Everything seemed to stop. I felt paralysed, unable to help myself. Useless. But each time, I knew the end was in sight: slowly slowly I began to move again. I had goals. I did physio diligently. And in each case, I was walking well by six weeks post-op.

My current situation is different however. The end of my immobility is not in sight. The cause of this pain and reactivity is unknown. It’s not clear that I will dance again, though I will do everything in my power to get there. I have no exercises to do, no agency in this. Except to be patient.

Which is not my top personality trait, if I’m honest!

I suspect that immobility triggers many Child Sexual Abuse survivors. There are several aspects of this for me:

  • I froze while I was being abused .
  • I could not walk or run away from my father; I was stuck.
  • I could not push my father off of me. I could not move my arms. I was afraid he would do something ‘worse’.
  • I stayed still in order to ‘disappear’.
  • I felt in danger of imploding, the withheld fear and panic inside me almost overwhelming.

Helplessness — true helplessness, powerlessness — is extraordinarily grinding. Your body seizes up much like your mind does. You turn into a rock, and cannot reach out. You cannot do anything to help yourself. You simply cannot. You feel yourself slipping into invisibility, nearly losing yourself in the process.

Immobility, for me, equals being nothing. Not being able to dance, for me, risks dissociation. It can also bring the inner turmoil of CPTSD: bad dreams, flashbacks, the ramping up of despair.

I am completely aware of what immobility means for me. But my reactions are not something I can control. They are hard-wired.

I am much stronger now than I was when I was a child, of course. I have more to live for, a lot more hope. And I know that whatever happens, I can bear it. But lasting through, time and again, does come at a cost.

***

(Side note: I won’t be excerpting Learning to Survive for a little while. I’m all good though, and am so grateful for everyone’s companionship and belief.)

final going back (6)

This is really a kind of epilogue. There was another important thing that happened when I went to the US — specifically, to Texas.

Some of you may remember the little town between San Antonio and Beaumont, where my grandparents would meet my mother, and I — like the bundle of acceptance I was then — would be passed one way or the other, depending on my mother’s health: from my grandparents back to her; or, more often, from her to my grandparents. This town is called Luling.

When I was staying with my San Antonio relatives this time, my Beaumont Aunt Lois asked if we could meet just outside San Antonio, to avoid confusion and traffic. She was picking me up to take me to Houston airport, and from there I would fly home back to London.

She told me she was thinking about a little town, and I said ‘You’re not going to say Luling, are you?’. She was, and did. Chills ran up and down my spine, and she said along hers too.

Yes. Luling it was then. We were once again going to bring the two sides of family together, over 50 years later.

The image featured at the top of this post is the sprawling Bucee’s where we met. A long way from the tiny diner which appears in all of the background photos here on this site. And yet: it’s the place we where we met, once again, and where I passed, completely willingly, from one car to the other.

I couldn’t help myself. I was…ecstatic. Of the three relatives there with me, the San Antonio and the Beaumont sides — no one could remember if they’d ever met before. But they all shook hands, shared stories, under the blaring full Texas sun. We were all together. Something had healed for me, knitted as one. Finally.

And then I came home.

going back (5)

Three weeks ago today in San Antonio, Texas, my cousin Jamie (more about my love for him here), my cousin Linda, Jamie’s wife Patricia, and I scattered my mother’s ashes across the graves of her (and their) beloved grandparents’ graves.

I read the Hopkins’ poem God’s Grandeur , and anyone who wanted to say something, said something. There was no sugar coating of the difficult relationships we all had with her, but we all loved her.

It was wonderful to be with people who knew her, and who cared for her and for me, no matter what. My people.

The journey to Texas with my mother’s ashes was traumatic; I do not recommend it. I was completely unprepared for the separate examination and testing the box would need to undergo. On my own in an airport of rushing people, security folks handling ‘my mother’, I just stood there and sobbed and sobbed. The low point. But I had to get her to San Antonio. Which I did.

(After security, I found a place in the terminal to cry more, send a sad note to the family WhatsApp, and blow my nose. Within a couple of minutes I spoke with E in Boston, heard from M in Pittsburgh, and spoke with R in Cambridge. I am so grateful for my solid, loving family.)

I had not been to San Antonio in 34 years, since leaving for the UK. Yet there, especially after the scattering, sheer elation took me by surprise. I was so happy. I felt like having a party – dancing! Home at last. My home, which I had truly thought lost to me forever. It was so much more powerful and empowering than I could ever have imagined.

My mother would have been delighted, through and through. And would have utterly relished the cracking Tex Mex we had afterward for lunch. We toasted her with margaritas.

Goodbye Mom. Rest in peace now.