I M Perfect lady

Tag: incest

  • Stories of Fiction.

    What they don’t tell you is that while you are finding out who you are, you will isolate your self from your old life; you will become a stranger there, while becoming your own best friend.

    My five sisters are gathering together this week, and not a whisper to invite me, I am too odd, and too weird, too nuts or insane, a myriad of labels, but a sister to be included I am not.

    There is a part of me that grieves for the loss of being included and my little girl self feels sooo misunderstood and so misclassified.

    It seems my truth seeking spun me into this evil creature that they don’t want no part of.

    The deeper I delved, the more I explored, the more distance I put between us all, my healing keeps pushing me further away.

    It is like I am set out to sea while they are on the beach having a party.

    I know intellectually, that my spirit and soul would have no peace with them, that I have lived too deep now to go back to be a surface dweller…yet I grieve.

    I grieve for what is, for what was.

    I feel being isolated for all the wrong reasons or so it seems.

    I didn’t sexually abuse them…my father did; yet I am out for talking about it.

    I didn’t neglect them like my mother did; yet I am out for pointing it out.

    It is odd for my little girl to reconcile to make a nice neat understandable folder to put them all in.

    The girls I used to take care of, no longer care for me.

    By doing what is right I am wronged.

    I get it and I don’t.

    It amazes me that they can’t see the bad in my father and then see only bad in me.

    My son, when he was a baby, always said when he did something I thought was wrong…”what did my do?”  With a face of innocence…he wondered.

    And that is what rings hollow through me, “What did my do?”  What hurts the most is that I did nothing wrong. 

    All I did was walk hand in hand with the wounded girls, the girls who were all hurt by him, I never left my line…I never wavered, never veered off course, although there are times like these I wobbled.

    I wobble, shed a few tears, and feel the separation and the unjustness of it all, but I forge ahead.

     

    I forge ahead with the truth and bear the consequences.

    They say, “what doesn’t break you makes you stronger.”

    I am being forged in grief it seems at times.

    How can my mind comprehend me being worse then they who hurt them, again, what did my do?

    It seems they have their story of me and a story of my father, both are stories of fiction…

     

     

  • A dream for me.

    Some days are filled with contrasts that keep you from mulling anything, you go from event to situation to more incoming information, past, present and future…

    This ride at times seems to be moving at super fast speeds, going so quick it is hard to process one thing before the next hits. That was yesterday.

    I had a mission to talk to the Detective to help get a ball rolling, but he will not play catch with me.  I sit, holding my ball…while life seems to be passing so quickly.  Another week has gone by and he appears too busy to return my call.

    To him I may be more work or I am not as important as what he has going on…however he knows not what I know.  I feel myself bumping into a silent wall of rebuff.

    The information grows like a weed out of control and I am losing my faith or trust that even when alerted he will be unable to pull or eradicate this weed that is poisoning the innocent…it seems that the garden is getting overrun while no one is looking.

    I have to have faith that it is all perfectly perfect, that it is going at the pace it should, even if not my speed.

    While I can’t gain his attention, I seem to forever bump into people who I feel are feeding the weed.  It seems so exasperating, like a poor cosmic joke, to see them everywhere and the Detective is nowhere to be found.

    Oh and the normalcy is worn like a costume.

    Letting all that go, I attended a speech given by the Author of the book, The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls.  She lived her first 17 years in abject poverty, and went on to become a journalist living on Park Avenue in New York City, while her parents remained homeless.

    She spoke to the freshman class at Michigan Tech, and a few of us from off the street, eager to hear her speak.

    Her rough life taught her many lessons you can’t learn on easy street, and in writing it forced her to be with the reality of her life.  She learned about her self and respected herself more for telling her truth, than when she was hiding it from people around her.

    What I found that was different between us, is that as a child she could not hide her ‘shameful’ life situation.  In her town everyone knew they were the poorest family, her clothes and body odor too obvious to hide, and so she wore her label everywhere and was treated appallingly in high school.

    Her very dysfunctional poor lifestyle was hard to not see. 

    And in my case, my outward appearance wasn’t too bad, poor but we did have running water and flushing toilets, although no shower until I was in middle school…just a sauna lit twice a week.  And there was a dirt-poor girl who lived less than a mile from us, who was poorer.  A two room shack more or less…

    Anyway, Jeanette could not hide what shamed her, and I didn’t know the shame that followed me where every I went, I was ‘HIS daughter’ A story was spoken when I left the room or before I arrived, unbeknownst to me.

    I have often wondered what my childhood would have been like had I known that my father was a pedophile, how would I have walked into places and out of them, knowing who I truly was?

    I know that I was always treated like the daughter of a pedophile, yet I was spared because I didn’t know.  I felt I was just a girl from a poor large apostolic family.  I didn’t know that underneath me was incest, abuse…

    I walked with confidence and not with mortifying shame.

    The mortifying shame came when I was 46.  And then I knew what the people of the church knew and yet not one approached me even then.  But, then they started to overtly treat me like a pariah.

    It seemed odd to me that once my truth was out they then began to treat me differently.  It still puzzles me…we all know the truth and now they keep me at arms length, they turned down isles to escape me…

    The only thing changed is I openly walked my truth…and they now did not know what to do or how to talk to me.

    Isn’t it interesting that it was easier to be with me when I was not walking my truth, than it was for them when I was?

    Just yesterday it came to me that it is much easier to be with people who are walking step by step with their truth, than to be with folks who want to tuck a huge part of their lives under a rug.  I can’t be with a half person.

    So, Jeanette and I are the same, we both had rough childhoods, the difference is she knew it and I did not.

    Her father carried a dream of one day building them a glass castle, and she believed in his dream.

    My father never had a dream for me.

     

     

  • Wearing a Tag, “Family”.

    My daughter waved her hand above her head in a crazy type way in explanation to who I am… Nuts.

    Yep, nuts…over zealous about abuse, that I will give up family for it, that I will sever relationships for it.  I am WAAAY out there… 

    Yep, that’s me.

    I felt she had me pegged completely; there was no argument there.

    While perhaps I would not categorize myself as insane, when it comes to dealing ‘rationally’ with abuse, I guess I am nuts.

    I will not tolerate it at all.  No matter from whom and especially when it comes to my kids.  I am overboard certifiably nuts.

    I tried to explain to her my viewpoint, but it is near impossible to explain, it is the old adage, you had to be there. 

    While I do believe we had a reasonable conversation, I felt she tried to come over to my side… it was impossible for her, and I am grateful.

    In order to see abuse like I see abuse, you would have to have been abused like me…she never tasted abuse like I have…her abuse was delivered to her by me.

    I told her the only abuse she has ever had came from me.

    I was irrational, unreasonable, and way more nuts when they were young compared to how I am today. 

    She said I am okay now, unless it comes to abuse, then I go nuts.  So, I have changed.

    In the past I was okay with abuse and went Nuts in the normal day-to-day living.  I love this.

    Do you get it?  I am seen as being nuts for going insane about abuse, by talking of it, warning others of it, writing my way free of it, seeing it when it appears, I am focused and relentless when it comes to abuse. 

    She said, you go way out there and am unreasonable about abuse, and I smiled and said, “yes that is me, I do do that!”

    I tried to explain to her that her grandmother was ‘reasonable’ with abuse. She didn’t want to lose her family so she was kind and ‘rational’ with abuse. 

    That I am okay being nuts when it comes to abuse. 

    I truly don’t mind the name calling and the finger pointing, the shunning and anger that is directed toward me as I staunchly remain unreasonable with abuse.

    I told her it matters not how they see me. What matters the most is that my children see a mother who will not sit down and be friendly with abuse.  I want them to see how to treat abuse by watching me.

    Abuse is not my friend.  

    I will lose relationships to step away from abuse.  I will not put ‘family’ above it.

    Meaning that just because my father was family, I should over look his abuse. Just because my mother is family, I should overlook the years she overlooked abuse.  Just because my brother is family, I should overlook his supporting abuse.

    To see family first …is what abuse is relying on.

    For if you see the family first, abuse slips by unnoticed.

    I am nuts about this, I refuse to let abuse slip by even wearing a tag “Family”.

     

  • Normally intolerant of Abuse

    Addiction is an uncontrollable compulsion to repeat a behavior regardless of its negative consequences. The condition of being abnormally dependent on something…being abnormally tolerant to and dependent on.

    My brother brought to my attention that addiction is to be abnormally tolerant.

    Abnormally tolerant regardless of its negative consequence…to me it is to be addicted to negative results.

    Imagine being addicted to negative outcomes!

    Being abnormally tolerant of negative results.

    Dr. Maya Angelou says, “Children’s talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.”

    What she calls our talent to endure, becomes our abnormal tolerance to negative consequences.

    We have a unique talent to tolerate bad behaviors or treatment to ourselves. I find this highly intriguing, that it isn’t the substance, but the abnormal tolerance to the substance that is our demise.

    Abnormal tolerance…to negative outcomes.

    What a cycle.

    When we have this abnormal tolerance we can withstand and endure what most normal folks couldn’t begin to fathom, and the rougher of a childhood, the stronger this endurance is the more negative treatment we can withstand.

    And mixed in the mix is love. In fact we endure for love.

    We are taught that parents love, that families love and we endure all treatment for the sake of love.

    What I know in my experience is that I tolerated a lot in the name of love.

    What is so striking as well, is that when I began separating myself from the bad behavior I couldn’t find the love.

    I guess what is the most tragic of all is you suffered, endured, tolerated, and withstood huge amounts of pain, in order to be loved, and in the end all that lay on the ground is abuse.

    The negative consequences to abnormally tolerating or being able to live under such dire circumstances is that we don’t know how to be normal. To rise up to the tolerant level, to know what is normal treatment, to thin out our thick skin, to make boundaries from a normal point of view.

    I was tough and I could endure and tolerate lots, but I had to find out how to become weak and vulnerable, to soften and feel the slightest insult and own it.

    I had to become aware of my softness inside and protect it, refusing to tolerate again for the sake of love.

    I had to become normally intolerant of abuse.

  • Living Alive

    The word comfortable is a word that will not always speak the truth, it will not say as much about the surrounding reality, but rather your state of being.

    How do I explain being comfortable in a dysfunctional home, to be surrounded by stress and pain and be at ease and pain free?

    As I dug around in my past, in my feelings and in my head, I discovered that the only way was to deny myself.

    I looked up the word denial, but this time I seen it from my point of view, from the self.

    Denial… A refusal to comply with or satisfy a request.

    I never denied the other person or request, but I denied myself.

    I was comfortable denying myself, not looking at myself and instead used myself to make others happy. I knew that girl.

    I was comfortable in my role and in knowing what she had to do, I looked at the other and what they needed and complied.

    I never looked at me as me, or me alone. I was a very comfortable not looking at me. I could only see me as what I was for other people, there was no me alone.

    In a dysfunctional, incestual home, in a place where you are hurt, it is best to not look at yourself, it is best to become absent of self.

    Imagine I was comfortable without a self in the midst of being surrounded by pain, stress, and anxiety. I had to deny my feelings in order to stay there, and I did.

    Being self less is denying any request of the self. I was shut down to hearing or feeling my self.

    I had no connection to me, the lines were severed, I was pain free, for I was so disconnected.

    Comfortably unattached.

    When I became attached to the truths of my life, then discomfort met me, and my comfortable detachment disappeared.

    My security blanket was to keep me separated from my life and the truth that lay beneath.

    Denial kept me comfortable.

    Isn’t it amazing that denial is comfortable? Denial of self allows you to stand among uncomfortable people and places… you simply don’t bring your feelings or knowing there, you leave your self to be there.

    As I sat there in wistfulness of missing the old me, the part I missed was their reception of me, how they received me, not how I wasn’t there.

    What I know now is that they don’t like it when I bring me, when I have requests and when I don’t comply, they only want the me that doesn’t have a me there.

    They want me to be without a self.

    A self less me, to leave my self behind, to come without her…

    I don’t leave home without her…now.

    The differences in the way I live now compared to the way I lived before is with me or without me.

    Before I wasn’t there, did not exist, was living a few feet behind my life, numb shut down unaware.

    The new me is alive and aware and right here, feeling and dealing in this now moment, no longer denying her inner requests.

    The striking differences between living a life with a self inside, to hear her voice, to make her choice, compared to living a life without her, is an ocean of difference, it is like living dead or living alive.

  • Standing Strong.

    “If you recognize the UNreal with any sincerity in your heart, you need not look for the real.” (Mooji)

    What a simple idea to recognize the unreal…and yet I was born onto parents who were unreal, so my real was unreal and there was no place to find real.

    My parents lived their lives hiding their real and so we lived hiding our real, in fact our religion had the perfect tool we could use to hide real, it was called forgiviness of sins.

    These sins then are no longer part of us, they became unreal and our real is minus all sins.

    The real you has no sins…you have repented and handed them over to Jesus, so you can remain whiter than snow and your sins have been washed away.

    Anything that was dark or off color could be washed away.

    I lived in this washed out world of unreality.

    It was washed so many times, you lost sight of what was real and what was unreal. In fact the real you had to keep forgiving to make it unreal.

    I am not sure you can follow along, but the main theme of my childhood religion was to keep forgiving all that wasn’t right, and in doing so made it right once again.

    In this fluid ever changing landscape nothing real ever stayed real long enough, I lived thoroughly in a moveable reel.

    Incredible the way this works for the deviant.

    In fact I was raised to believe so much in the magical power of forgivenss of sins that no reality was ever too great to forgive, to make right again.

    Most will concentrate on the feelings of forgiveness but not in the actual application of it.

    To apply forgiveness is to wash away an action you have done, it leaves you standing as if it never happened.

    Where does this sin go?
    How does it magically not be part of you anymore?
    Can you literally delete that part of yourself?

    My childhood religion concentrated highly on forgiveness and did have sins as well, but it was the application of applying forgiveness upon the unsightly deeds that created havoc in my world.

    For it allowed all kinds of behaviors that were harmful for a child.

    My incredulousness of this leaves me with no words.

    For I lived 46 years in unreality that they taught me to create.

    My mother’s strengths come from this religion and my father needed this magical wand to return him to being whiter than snow after raping little girls.

    It isn’t the reality of what I endured, but the unreality.

    How insane the ideology of this religion is…how it works incredibly well for the rapist and is extremely unaffective for those of us who have been raped.

    What did it do for me?

    Did it undo my rape or did it make me have to make whiter than snow a rapist, make a pedophile a father?

    There are two sides of all things, and when you see the application of a sin being erased from the sinner, it doesn’t show you how it feels as one who was sinned upon.

    As my father was heaven bound and cleaner than the white driven snow, I was left in hell, dirty and untreated.

    I was left with a father who hurts and who is forgiven by a multitude of Knowing adults.

    Knowing adults who can change a rapist back into a father with a few words, “Your sins are all forgiven in Jesus name and precious blood.”

    And he is once again set upon Heavens path.

    And where am I?

    What magical words can you say to me, to heal me, to make me whiter than snow? Where are your words for me?

    I am speaking for all the ones who have been sinned upon.
    Who are left with the affects of the sin, who go untreated.

    Untreated is to go without the truth being lived out.

    Untreated is to not make real that which is real.

    We are forced to live in unreality when you bless away that which is real.

    Imagine taking away that which is real from a child…

    Making them live in the make belief world.

    My whole childhood was based upon make belief things, creating a wonderful fantasy land.

    It has taken me six years so far to recognize the unreal and it falls away and all that I get left with is the real.

    What I know for sure is that real cannot be blessed away, it remains standings strong.

  • Save yourself.

    While thinking back upon my journey out of sexual abuse/incest, I wondered what was the one thing that made a difference, what one major item was my cure?

    Cancer has drug treatments and therapies and it seems the body has lots of help to eradicate the diseased cells and again, I wondered about how abuse is similar but completely different.

    It is like we the abused child are the cancerous cells, and we have to leave the tumor.

    There is no treatment for us; it is up to us to save ourselves.

    What other diseases are healed by the sick cell?

    It seem preposterous to know that we are the ones we are counting on and in order to be healed of incest, you must leave the family where it originated, your family of origin.

    So, in order to heal you must go against and away from your family and most often friends.

    We leave the ones who others use to help in times of sickness, they are no available to use, for it is from them that our healing lies.

    I just found this very odd that we the dysfunctional, the broken down and confused are the ones to lead the charge, the ones put in control of our wellness.

    And we have to go against family and friends to achieve this task, the ones who have used and abused us are now there to holler and insult as we make our way away.

    Heading into an unknown land hoping for a new start a new self, a place where we can undo the dysfunction and make us function.

    We need to function to handle our dysfunction.

    Incredible…this self healing healing stuff!

    Which is why the rate of success is so very small. I wish I had the numbers, but I don’t. In my family of 16, including me, two of us so far have managed to stay away from the tumor.

    Two of us are seen as outcasts…and we are, we had to cast ourselves out of the disease, no one but your self can save your self. It is as if you are on fire and you are the fireman.

    This just boggles my mind and I am in complete awe that one as upside down and twisted was able to get myself free.

    I do recall in the beginning how the pull was to go back, to make the tumor benign to make the family whole so that I could be with them….but it soon shown me I was all I could save, each cell is on its own.

    No one is coming to save you, you have to save yourself.

  • Annihilated in a Balloon!

    I could envision my self as a little girl and how she sits holding out her hands in shame again, for in them should be love and all she sees is fear.

     

    Fear and terror are in her hands.

     

    It feels like it is her responsibility to change that over to love, and no matter what she does or how hard she tries, what she tells her self, all that lay in her hands is fear.

     

    She is not good enough; she is unworthy, something is wrong with her, for she can’t get it right.

     

    Shame on you!

     

    I was totally confused and lost in the thoughts that fear and shame were tightly woven within me. 

     

    I was ashamed and in fear.

     

    When I pictured a young girl sitting there with fear in her hands and so shameful that she couldn’t change the feelings, it occurred to me, that ‘my little girl’ didn’t even have pictures in her head to know where the fear came from.

     

    She had feelings but no road map on how they got there.

     

    As thoughts came and went during the day yesterday, it came to me that my father changed my feelings I did not!

     

    A line in a song, “A little girl was waiting for her daddy one day…” came into my mind. 

     

    I was waiting for a daddy and who came was a man who hurt me. 

     

    He changed from being my daddy and so did my daddy feelings.

     

    In its place are bad man feelings and I can’t change them back.

     

    The tragedy is that I had love, trust and faith in my hands, and they quickly disappeared and terror took its place, a sleight of hand, a bad card trick, and I got left holding the terror card.

     

    I left the scene of the crime while the crime was taking place, but my body recorded the changes with feelings.

     

    Now as a little girl when she sees her ‘daddy’ and feels terror and she doesn’t understand why?

     

    Certainly something is so very wrong with her. 

    Shame on you!

     

    My whole body felt such utter relief to know that it wasn’t me who changed my feelings about my father, and it isn’t me that can change them back.

     

    It is up to him.

     

    My feelings will be stuck in fear unless and until he presents to me a man who acts like a dad.

     

    I am not responsible I didn’t do nothing wrong. 

     

    I was just a little girl who was waiting for her daddy that is all.  That is all…

     

    A little girl holding Love in her hands…that is all.

     

    There is no shame in that.

     

    I somehow felt I had to hide my fear; I was ashamed of my feelings.

     

    The near miss encounter with my mother, lunged me back into the feelings I had as a little girl, it brought me back to the feelings I had and still have today.  Nothing has changed within my body.  It is incredible that it registers the same.

     

    It is puzzling, how the feelings are similarly intense for her as with him.

     

    Somehow I felt shamed by her for my feelings I had for him.

     

    Disappointing her, her disproval reigned supreme as my number one thing I didn’t want to do. 

     

    Keeping her dream alive, “a longed for family” a father for her kids, I was guilty of not feeling the dream, yet I tried.

     

    Looking back at my life in this awkward review, I feel my life instead of see it; it was like I lived in a balloon that I carried.

     

    Up in the balloon I could pretend to feel what I didn’t feel.

     

    In the balloon, I lived annihilated from my true feelings.

     

    A life of pretend in a balloon, which never touched my body, for the string that held it away from me was called shame and fear.

     

    In order to get back to my body, I had to travel backwards and feel what I could bear to feel.

     

    That day in that dinner, without a balloon to protect me, I felt the electrical charge of fear wrapped around in a colorful ribbon of shame.

     

    With my big girl awareness and reality’s support, along with a friend named Ann, I felt what I needed to feel, the awkwardness of a child in fear sitting in shame.

     

    Shame is exposing your feelings of fear!

     

     IMG_3183 

    I had this quilt at the Gallery for sale and I took it back. For as I look at it, you can see  how she has to now live.  In the presence of her family she was made to live removed from her feelings….and if you see it from her view, she had to keep her real feelings away from her self, annihilated in a balloon! 

  • Being imperfect has set me free….

     

    “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”   

               Martin Luther King

     

    ‘…the silence of our friends’… it’s the silence that keeps gnawing at me.  I will get secret messages from family, but not in public, silence, why?

     

    It just dawned on me; it isn’t the silence that’s the problem it’s ME!

     

    It is Me?

     

    I am shocked and amazed that it is Me that keeps them silent, that I am the problem.

     

    I am the one that silences their voices, they don’t want to join theirs with Me.

     

    Me, it’s me…wow.

     

    In a past blog about silence from family, I discovered then that it was easier to be with my father, most actions and words were in support of him, and it is still the same today.

     

    Although I have a few secret members whispering to me, and I did ask them to join me publicly, and all declined.

     

    Declined in fear or in shame of being with me, being seen like me, being grouped with me???

     

    It did feel like I was being denied a friendship…a space remains between us and silence is the wedge that keeps us apart.

     

    At this point I want to acknowledge those of you who bravely stand with me, who are willing and able to raise your voices with mine, to link your names with mine, to publicly be with me as I speak of sexual abuse.

     

    Me a daughter of a pedophile, a victim of abuse, a confused at times, adult woman of incest; that is me!

     

    That is who I am. 

    I can’t change it.

    I am just being myself.

    I am publicly writing about how it is to be an openly abused woman.

     

    I understand your silence now and I honor it.

     

    I M perfect, and it’s impossible not to be.

     

    Being imperfect has set me free…

     

     

     

     

     

  • The Silent Aunt who disappeared….

    “He couldn’t not know what he knew; he couldn’t not see once he saw.”   Patti Digh

     

    It hit me today in yoga, that what I am witnessing in my great niece is Me.

     

    Me as a newborn baby girl arriving and going with the flow of the family I was born into.

     

    She appears on a stage of an already in motion drama, a play in progress, roles clearly defined, the scenes are set, the dialogue is memorized, and from there her role is carved.

     

    She begins with a supporting role, and will learn that in order to maintain favor, her lines will reflect those of the Main Characters, her parents and grandparents.

     

    It is the expectation of her elders to follow their roles, and someday take over top billing.

     

    I may be her future self and she is my beginning – we are linked with the thread of legacy.

     

    My mother’s sister who was estranged from her family has come into my thoughts yet again.  How nice it would have been to have her view of my mother’s family. 

     

    What made her leave the stage she was born upon?

     

    I feel that I am my Aunt, but a generation behind her.

    I have access to the Internet and have ways to communicate that she wasn’t able to.

     

    My mother is close to her brothers and has always been, while my Aunt chose to stay away, two totally different perspectives of one family.

     

    The last words my mother said to me was, “we have two different perspectives!”  Remarkably wise, she knew we didn’t match.

     

    My mother never spoke of the sister that ran away, never.  She had another one who also was estranged from the family but lived near the family; she, I was told was cold and bitter. My mother had very limited exchanges with this sister. 

     

    She also had a brother who committed suicide.

     

    My Uncle (my mother’s brother) molested my brother and sister, and another Uncle molested my mother when she was a young girl, yet she remains close to her family and holds them in high regard, visiting them regularly.

     

    There are two distinctly different reactions on the stage of abuse; we either keep the normal dialogue going or we get off the stage!

     

    If you stay on the stage, you continue with the same play and drama and accept new characters as they are born upon this stage.

     

    When you get off, you get off alone and you are segregated and an outcast, but the abuse stops.

     

    It stops only along your family branch, but the rest of the tree continues to flourish as long as the other branches go along with the original dialogue of abuse. 

     

    Roles continue unchecked, words flow the same, abuse lays in the wings waiting, forever near, cycles spiral again and again, repeating itself like a broken record.

     

    On my new stage I have to learn or maybe unlearn the first 40 years.

     

    I am no longer a newborn without a voice or a choice.

     

    I now am able to discern what I feel and what I know, what is healthy and what isn’t healthy and I have the right to act freely and use dialogue that goes against the original family play.

     

    It is with the greatest compassion that I look back upon my old stage and see my family still stuck in the roles they were born into.

     

    If I can be a voice that hollers from off the stage, a disgruntled watcher of their play, if my jeers can put a seed of doubt, a drop of fear, a whisper of truth, if I can lure but one player away, I feel my life’s journey will not be for naught.

     

    I will not be the silent Aunt who disappeared….