I picked up the book, "The Body Never Lies" by Alice Miller, again…and found a few places that I had highlighted. I am sure I wrote about these before, but somehow it seems applicable again…as I was thinking about the being hopeful that the adult children of abuse, will find a voice, begin speaking up, telling the truth about their parents, their childhood, and themselves.
In here she writes,
"A person once said, "It's true. Why do I think it would kill my parents if I showed them what I really felt for them? I have a right to feel what I feel. It's not a question of retaliation, but of honesty. Why is honesty upheld as an abstract concept in religious instruction at school but prohibited in the relationship with our parents?"
"Indeed, how wonderful it would be if we could talk honestly to our parents. What they ultimately make of the things we say to them is something we have no influence on. But it would be an opportunity for us, for our children, and not least for our body, which has after all shown us the way to the truth."
"The ability of the body is a source of never-ending wonder to me. It fights against lies with a tenacity and a shrewdness that are properly astounding. Moral and religious claims cannot deceive or confuse it. A little child is force-fed morality. He accepts nourishment willingly because he loves his parents, and suffers countless illnesses in his school years. As an adult he makes use of his superb intellect to fight against conventional morality, possibly becoming a philosopher or a writer in the process. But his true feelings about his family , which were masked by illness during his school days, have a stunning effect on him, as was the case with Nietzsche and Schiller. Finally he becomes a victim of his parents, sacrificing himself to their ideas of morality and religion, even though as an adult he saw so clearly through the lies of "society". Seeing through his own self-deception, realizing that he had let himself the sacrifice of morality, was more difficult for him than penning philosophical tracts or writing courageous dramas. But it is only the internal process taking place in the individual, not the thoughts divorced from our own bodies, that can bring about a productive change in our mentality."
"Those lucky enough to experience love and understanding in childhood will have no problems with the truth. They have been able to develop their abilities to the full, and the children will profit from that. I have no idea how large the percentage of such people actually do. I do know that beatings are still recommended as a method of parenting; that the United States, that self-styled model of democracy, still allows corporal punishment in schools in twenty-two states; and that, if anything, these states are becoming more vocal in their defense of this "right" to which all parents are entitled. It is absurd to believe that we can teach democracy with the help of physical force."
"My conclusion from this is that there are probably a lot of people living in the world right now who have been through this kind of upbringing All of them had their resistance to cruelty clubbed down at a very early stage; all of them have grown up in a state of what I can only call "inner insincerity." We can observe this wherever we look. If someone says, "I don't love my parents because they constantly humiliated me," she will immediately hear the same advice from all sides: She must change her attitude if she wants to become truly adult, she must not live with hatred bottled up inside herself if she wants to stay healthy; she can free herself of that hatred only if she forgives her parents; there is no such thing as ideal parents – all parents sometimes make mistakes, and this is something we have to put up with, and we can learn to do so once we are truly adult."
"The reason this advice sounds so sensible is that we have heard it all our lives and have believed it to be sound. But it is not. It rests on fallacious assumptions. It is not true that forgiving will free us from hatred. It merely helps cover it up and hence reinforce it (in our unconscious minds). It is not true that tolerance grows with age. On the contrary. Children will tolerate their parent's absurdities because they think them normal and have no way of defending themselves against them. Not until adult hood do we actively suffer from this lack of freedom and these constraints. But we feel this suffering in our relations with others, with our partners and our children. Infant fear of our parents stops us from recognizing the truth. It is not true that hatred makes us ill. Repressed, disassociated emotions can make us ill but not conscious feelings that we give expression to. As adults , we will hate only if we remain trapped in a situation in which we cannot give free expression to our feelings. It is this dependency that makes us start to hate. As soon as we break with that dependency (which as adults we can normally do, unless we are held prisoner in some totalitarian regime), as soon as we free ourselves from that slavery, then we will no longer hate. However, if hatred is there it is no good forbidding it, as all the religions do. We have to understand the reasons for it if we are to opt for the kind of behavior that will free people from the dependency that breeds hatred."
"Of course, people who have been severed from their true feelings since early childhood will be dependent upon institutions like the church and will let themselves be told what they are allowed to feel. In most cases it is very little indeed. But I cannot imagine that it will always be like this. Somewhere, sometime, there will be a rebellion, and the process of mutual stultification will be halted. It will be halted when individuals summon up the courage to overcome their understandable fears, to tell, feel and publish the truth and communicate with others on this basis."
"Once we realize the immense amount of energy children can summon up in order to survive cruelty and extreme sadism, things suddenly start looking more optimistic. Then it is easy to imagine that our world could be a much better one if those children (like Rimbaud, Schiller, Dostoevsky, and Nietzsche) could expend their almost limitless energies on other, more productive ends that merely fighting for their own survival." Alice Miller
When I looked back upon why I was able to tell the truth and to walk with it, it was because of the fact I had withstood years of being repressed and created this strength to stand opposed. But, this time I was opposing those who stood opposite of my feelings, instead of surviving living with people who didn't allow my feelings a voice.
I wondered, how the adult children, or children who have been abused in the FALC, would ever find a way out to speak their truth. It then came to me. I did. The very morals that were preached to me, to be truthful, to be honest, I used. I used them this time against the very factions that taught them to me; my parents and the church.
I am very hopeful, that running in the bodies of many suffering adults who have been unable to see the truth, due to being unable to see their parents clearly will.
And once they can, they will use the same energy it took to withstand abuse to walk away and oppose it.
I love this phrase, "Those lucky enough to experience love and understanding in childhood will have no problems with the truth." I am a walking billboard of this. I was not able to see the truth. The simple fact, that I had lived for 46 years with a pedophile for a father and not see it, shows that I did not experience love and understanding as a child.
Just this fact alone, sent me into the land of denial. Unable to see the truth.
Imagine, in order for you to be with the truth, you have to be loved and understood as a child.
What I believe, is that this alone is the sole reason for this abject failure to see the truth, and to beunable to be a witness to the volumes of abuse within the church; all of the people have not experienced being loved and understood as a child.
Detective Tom Rosemurgy asked me, "What could we have done to make you see the truth, prior to your father being exposed?" And I had no answer. I still don't but, I do have the reasons why I couldn't.
What I realize is that it isn't the message, but rather the person who is hearing it.
And I believe, that each of us will carry this burden of the untold story, until our lives and our bodies become unmanageable….and then the truth will be born unto us.
It wasn't that I was better than my siblings, I was more tired.
The energy it took to repress my unexpressed truths was too great. I couldn't hold it back anymore. I shook and rattled, and it exploded forth. Forty-Six years worth of emotions broke free.
I have eternal hope, that one day, child by child, similar experiences will happen. I also believe that there will be a mass exposure within the FALC, and that many children will become aware at once…for the numbers of abuse have increased exponentially since me.
And what I love, is that the church itself has bred, individuals who have the unconscious feeling of having to do what is right, not what is comfortable…and has grown them to be used to 'different' and to not fear being ostracized. All beautiful traits needed to set out on the journey away from abuse.
I had all the tools within me, having lived the life I lived. I was strong and I wasn't afraid to follow….but this time I followed me. My feelings and my truth.
I have great hope and belief, that once the flood gates open, there will be a mass exodus out.
I M Perfect lady 