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I was caught off guard by how many went to Dallas when my father passed on…from what I can gather, and it may be a false reading, but 9 siblings and my mother gathered at his death.

I know there were various reasons for making the pilgrimage to see his body…as many as there are of individual experiences each hold of him, but yet it still surprised me.  It broke the hope I had tucked neatly away…in a place called "For Now".

Many years ago, I put aside our vast differences as being temporary….that at some point we would find a spot to stand on.  I left them on a shelf called "For Now".

What they can't feel is how I feel as they gathered in a collective mourning about this man.

They can't know how in keeping the father close and near in their memories that it makes the distance between us grow.  

The more they speak of him in fatherly tones, the less I am believed.

The credibility of a victim gets weakened each time.

What I felt today or really late in the night was the crushing blow of the children gathering around the father…how until the end their loyalty was given.

It is their rights, it is their choices, it is what brought them peace and closure….and in doing so closed me out again.

I know it is not their intention, nor is it mine to continually be at odds, but they see a father and I see an abuser…and our actions are clearly saying so.

I am not here to take away one memory or caring sentiment they carry about him, but I am here to tell them how it feels as a child/adult who has suffered abuse by his hands.

Each time they call him dad, I am not believed…the abuse becomes the lie…and I a liar.  

And when will they hold him accountable for his actions?

When he is seen as an innocent dad, I am seen as one crazy cold hearted bitch…who rattles on and on about the affects of abuse.

It continues to shock and awe me…as it crushes all hope.  He will become an even bigger kinder man now that he is gone.  Wow.  And I, one who is screaming of his abuse…will get labeled crazy and insane.  Wow and Wow again. 

I woke in the night with coughs that turned into gags…it felt like my insides were revolting.  It was then, the impact of their gathering collided inside of me.  It was like the final separation…all hope was heaved out.

This is what drives the abused insane….is the normal treatment of the abusers….how he continuall is not treated as an abuser…and how each time they do, it is another slap of disbelief.

You truly cannot believe he is dad and an abuser….you only get to pick one.

Nor can you see me as a sister and a crazy one….you only can see one.

I am the crazy one and he they hold with kind memories.

Really.  He that was on trial for sexual abuse is held in kind memories.  And I, who did what again????  I who echoed the voice of the little girl who stood and told the world who he was…am crazy???

I blows my mind….I have a problem and he is a dad.

When I began writing, it was in a journal….silently.  I wrote to find out who I was, what I believed upon and who my choices served. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.  

At the time I was completely lost onto myself… and in writing the truth appears.  I began to know me…who I was and who I wanted to be.  I was able to excavate my past to re-direct my future…and in doing so, I have kept the volume on about abuse and its linger affects…when many would love for me to shut down the blog and let the abuse die in peace.

My intentions were to first let my children know me…and secondly, to let others know how it feels to right oneself after abuse.

In my mother's family, she had two sisters who we never knew, and yet they did not leave their story behind for us to read someday.  I wanted my reasons for being outside of the family to be known.  I wanted to leave my story behind.  

I wanted to put down how I felt and why.  How I saw myself from many vantage points, how my life, my truth, my history, and the family legacy, and all that affected who I am today…..and how each relationship carried a twisted up part, Me.

This blog has been about me and the long term affects of having been raised in abuse and a cult like religion and then trying to turn it all around.

My family wants the abuse to die with Ray Huhta.  They want it to be of the past. 

Abuse cannot be tied up and tossed away, it isn't that simple.  It isn't like a lamp in a room, you can toss out and be rid of it.  In fact, abuse doesn't live in one act, it doesn't live in one moment of anger, sexual desire, or hit. Abuse lives in the person's behaviors, habits, patterns and the way the see themselves and how they treat others.

Abuse in the Huhta family will not be dead because Ray is.  

It is alive and kicking in each of the people that he abused, that knew he abused and want to focus instead on his good. That is where abuse lives.  It isn't in one act.  It is in the way we deal with the act or not deal.

It is in the way the act makes us believe differently about the world and the people who 'love us' and we call family.  

Abuse cannot be put in a box and tossed away.  Abuse is in the little decisions we make, the small choices….whether we speak out or remain silent. Who we support and who we stand against…Abuse is in the DNA of who you are IF you were raised in a home of abuse.

Many would love for me to shut down this blog, to get back into line, to let the abuse go.  Like that would make a difference to abuse.  It won't. Abuse is traveling in each of our lives every day.  It is how we feel about ourselves.  How we interact in relationships. How we operate in our truth and integrity or how we live behind a facade.

If only Abuse in the Huhta's would die with Ray.  If magically all the girls whose lives he messed up, would magically turn to love peace and joy. If their self worth was restored. If their power magically turned on….

Instead all that died was the man who did damage to many little girls. LITTLE girls…who then grew up with this twisted piece inside of them. That is where abuse now lives.  It is inside of the girls he touched.  In the way they feel about themselves.

If only I could get people to understand that abuse isn't in Ray….once he touched the little girls, he changed their lives forever. They will never not be un-abused. That is where the abuse is.

These girls are now living their lives with this inside of them.  Something changed within them.  And if you were his daughter….its affects are deeper and if he raped you, deeper still.

I am but one little girl.

I have wrote and wrote and wrote….to right my world.  

Abuse didn't die…when Ray's body left this earth.

Abuse is alive and well…its impact is in the lives of the girls.  In how they see men, how they act in physical sexual relationships…how they manage intimacy and truth and their own voice and empowered actions.

OH MY God….if only abuse died with Ray.

A few days ago I talked about "Family No Matter What" and how this sentiment is what keeps families bound together; no matter what treatment goes on within the home.   That it is seen as respectable and loving to uphold the family AND NOT LOOK at WHAT happened.  

Keep your eyes focused on family, on sister, brother, Mom and Dad…

Don't look at who carries the title, but look only at the title and do your due dilegence to keep it holy.  Do NoT disgrace the title with what happened.  Instead, bless it away, forgive the sin, and wipe the label clean.  It is your job as a loyal family member.

I became disloyal to the family.  I did not wipe the abuse away.   

My greatest crime against the Huhta's is my lack of being a good family member.

I am seen as a worst criminal than my father, for this.

This is the ultimate sin of all…for blood is thicker than water, and that family is family…you have no right to tear it apart.

Me. 

Not my father, but me.

Why is my father not seen as the ultimate family wrecking machine?  Or my mother for allowing this wrecking to go on?

How did I become the one to stand back from and to disassociate from?

How did I become the main problem for the family in this?

Oh yeah, my disloyalty to family.  Really?  Really?  You want me to be loyal to Ray and to Doris for watching this train wreck happen again and again.  You want me to be loyal to a religion and it preacher who knew and blessed it away, again and again. Really?  I am the problem?  How?  By standing up and walking away from the wreckage a wreck myself and working for 7 years to get myself seeing straight and thinking clearly, after the twisted backwards course I was set upon.  I, Beth Ann am your problem?

One brother said I took the easy way out…that I just up and left the family due to its members being so damaged.  

Is there an easy way after abuse???

I am not sure there is.

What I want most of my family to know, is that no matter your choice, no matter if it matches mine or not, I know to the depth of my being, that each of you are choosing to do that which brings you the most peace inside.

Each choice you make is driven by your inner compass.  Each decision you make and each effort to stay clear from me is what brings you the most comfort inside. You are all using your free will to live the life you want.  It is not driven by the outside, but rather your inside.

My inside and your insides just do not match.

What brings you peace brings me disease.

What brings you comfort…is extremely uncomfortable for me.

Family means more to each of you…and your willingness to uphold it, is far from where my priorities lie.

My priorities have been and will always be to make choices in each moment that are about the consequences each will bring.  I am consciously creating now, where in the past I was blindly making choices based upon another's feelings.  Now, I totally get that each choice I make comes with a complete package of consequences.

It is my intentions to make choices that my children will be able to see were reflective of the truth and that I made the choices based upon what was right for me, not what the outside wanted or needed.

Going against family is actually harder than being abused.

I have been twisting my situation around and around in my head; the awkwardness of being estranged and having your parent die and how others are unsure of what this means to us.

I finally got it.

Death is a separation and usually an unwanted separation and hence we offer our sympathies.  But, when a person purposefully separates; desiring distance, especially from a parent or other family members, it is a forced death of sorts.

Now, we don't know what to do when someone kills a relationship on purpose…

The unnatural killing of family ties, is not something we are inclined to understand, for it goes against the grain of nature.  And once separated and the relationship is dead, and then the death of the body occurs, it is like being asked to grieve a second time….for an already dead person.

I am not certain if this makes sense to anyone other than those who have experienced estrangement and how it leaves us in this weird place….a re-death.

Not only is it uncomfortable for many to understand the estrangement and total death of a relationship, it is equally uncomfortable to bring up this old death again when the body dies….now what to say???

To me it is just another new awkward moment.

It is like the death is re-occurring, for it is happening for the first time for those who were not estranged…but, for me…it has already happened.

I killed our relationship due to his behaviors…he died way back when….It was not a physical death, but a death nonetheless.  I felt its grief, the pain, all…while no one then could feel it like me…unless they too were ending their relationship with him.

Mine wasn't just putting distance and not seeing him.  Mine was to completely turn my heart and mind, to dislodge the image of father, replacing it with an abuser.  My father died when the file was completely turned. I became a girl without a dad.

I did this to save my sanity, to stop the insane father image that wasn't there.  In order to have the truth and reality match, I had no choice.

While he died inside of me, he lived outside. He continued to live, but I didn't see him no more. 

Now, my insides match the outsides.

For me, it feels more peaceful not to have a ghost of my dead relationship still moving about the planet…and maybe even the teeny bits of hope of him changing now too have died. For once he is dead all hope dies too.

I now understand the unease and awkwardness….for it truly is unnatural to kill family relationships.  But, what most need to remind themselves it should be natural when an unnatural act has happened.

My father took the first unnatural step…and my mother followed, unnaturally as well. 

So, while it seems unnatural to move away…it is actually a very natural response to harm.  It is more unnatural to stand in harms way.

"The gift of the Habit of Forgiveness is that it reverses our tendency to allow the sins of the offender to eclipse the freedom and power of the wounded. In the end, Forgiveness is less about the offender than it is about healing and liberating those who have been hurt. Focusing with so much passion on the person who is in the wrong becomes an excuse to not move forward."  Ed Bacon, 8 Habits of Love- Open your heart, Open your Mind.

The death of my father has brought back front and center the vast differences between my siblings and I…shining a spotlight on my weird choices and the absence of obligations etc.  

My odd choices are reflective of my liberation and freedom from the party line.  I am no longer shackled to the hard held rules of family obligations.

Those obligations disintegrated…when my father laid down the father role and engaged in sexual activities with me.  I just wasn't aware of them until I was 46 years old. When I discovered the abuse, I did a complete 360, and I no longer felt obligated to act like a daughter.

This one choice has put me at complete odds with the family. 

I am no longer treating my parents as parents and I their daughter.

The change began with them, not with me.  I didn't start this dance, they did.  The moment my father abused and my mother looked away….the daughter relationship shattered.  

With a mind empty of memories, but a body in fear, I went along believing that something was wrong with me.  Only to find out at 46, that both of them betrayed the child love and trust, and that I wasn't born with fear and not love inside, it was due to my experiences with them.

It happened very quickly that I turned into myself and began to make choices based upon what was loving to me…after I knew who they were.  I was liberated from the abuse by the truth there was abuse.  There was abuse, not love.  There were lies that eroded the family that began with the parents. My body wasn't lying, they were.

 Forgiveness to me is "Accepting that the past cannot be any different." 

There is nothing, I as a daughter, can do to change what is.  

I didn't begin this mess, and I cannot change it…however, I can change how I live to lessen the impact abuse has upon my husband and children.

Had I not change and done a 360, I would not be where I am today.

I may be one of the minorities whose lives completely changed due to finding out abuse lived in our family home, and of that I am completely proud.

The journey to transform myself out of dysfunction is not an easy road…for I literally had to go against family members to change.

They will not encourage and clap as you make a choice that is the complete opposite of theirs.

But, the only way I can see abuse not dribbling unto the next generation is to do the opposite of what was done to you.

My mother looked away for reasons of her own.

I looked at the abuse done to me as well as my abusive behaviors to others…I looked at her denial and mine.  I looked and I looked and I chose actions that would lead me to a new exit.  

This wasn't done lightly and with no regard. This was the hardest thing I have ever done, but one of the most transformative for me and for my own family tree.

I have truly strived to not let the sins of the offenders, eclipse the freedom and power of me.  

I didn't know how I would act upon one of my parent's deaths… would I feel guilty for the years of estrangement, would regret push its way into my heart….what would I feel?  As an estranged member of my family, how would my family act towards me, when once again, I make choices that are not theirs?  

Oddly, each time I stand alone with what is true for me, I gain strength of knowing who I am.  I feel the power of being an individual and the separation from being tightly bound.

In the past ALL my choices were based upon the happiness, comfort, approval of others….now there is just me.

For, if you are not at peace inside, if your choices don't sit well inside of you….then nothing others can do will bring you peace.  Peace, Love and Joy are all inside jobs.

My total freedom to do what I feel is right for me, shows complete forgiveness…for I have the power to be free.  

The opposite of abuse… has to be freedom!

This is a scene I pass each day on my mail route.  Nature standing naked in all its glory.  In nature I find common ground…I learn that being truthfully me…makes me who I am.  Whether it matches what others want from me or not, it is all I can be.

I like a tree find that it is impossible to change my truth, my past, my history…all I can do is act today what will grow a new tomorrow…change the legacy.