I M Perfect lady

Tag: telling

  • Same Opinion Still

    In my book club we are reading Byron Katie's book, "Loving What is". This the first book that told me it was okay to not only accept my reality but it was also okay to move in harmony with what is.

    She writes, "Alcohol is honest and true: It promises to get you drunk, and it does; it promises to make things worse, and it does.  It's always true to its word.  It's a great teacher of integrity.  It doesn't say, "Drink me."  It just sits there, true to itself, being what it is and waiting to do its job."

    She is the one who taught me that Pedophiles rape, fondle, and do sexual things to little children.  She taught me not to argue with that, but to fully accept it.

    In the first weeks of my niece saying that my father abused her, there was total confusion; our family was trying to fit this new definition into their old worlds.  

    It came to me really quickly that we all would have to pick just one of our now two choices; Either he was a Father or a Pedophile, but he couldn't be both.  

    That is exactly what happened, but it was a very slim minority that could see him as a pedophile and then take the steps needed to show that.  Most instead found it within them to keep the father and to glance but not stare at the pedophile ways.

    There is no one in our family who doesn't know he has pedophile ways, but there are some who believe they can keep watch on him, to see that he doesn't molest again.

    He is only doing what he has always done.  He has been the most authentic person in our family…as a pedophile he is doing perfectly his job…he always abuses little girls when give the opportunity.  He never fails.

    As we read and become more familiar with Pedophiles between Penn State and Sheldon Kennedy's story, we can see the timeline, the history and path of integrity these pedophiles have, they stay true to form, but we as the public or the bystanders waver and fail.

    We fail to see what their actions are screaming at us.

    We fail to hear the stories others tell us about them.

    And we fail to act like there is a pedophile in our midst.

    We want so desperately to instead keep our first image, be it true or false, we are the ones who fail reality….NOT reality.

    In reality, in the history of my father, starting with me…he abuses little girls.  My abuse started in the 1960's and he continued to stay true to course and my niece's abuse happened in 2004.  He never failed us.

    We failed him.  We failed to catch his signal…each time we didn't tell, didn't go to the authorities.  We failed to shut him down.  He is doing what pedophiles do.  Just as a murderer kills people, a pedophile sexually molests children.  When you fail to accept or acknowledge that It is you who is wrong not him.  He is showing you who he is…Believe him…as Maya Angelou says.

    My father is a pedophile and most have been acting deaf and blind, pretending not to know know know…

    For if you know know know it, then you will have to begin to change your whole life.  

    My whole life changed from being a daughter to being a victim of his pedophile ways.  If I ignored my abuse, I would not be living an authentic life.

    My authentic life is that I was sexually abused, raped by my father. 

    To ignore my abuse is to be inauthentic to me.

    Some may think that it is unkind to speak of this, to openly discuss what happened, that it taints the man who clothed and fed 14 children, but if I don't speak of it, it taints us all anyway.

    Somehow we believe that the words will wreck the family, tear up a relationship etc and that we can somehow manage to salvage a father daughter relationship.

    Really?  How?  He stopped being a father the moment he raped me and I stopped being a daughter and instead became a victim of incest, of a criminal sexual act.

    My mother even has written to me saying, "I failed you as a mother, but can we not meet then as friends…"

    Really, you just want to switch to a new role?  How?  

    Can we just re-label who we are and go on?

    Can we just slide in place labels that make us feel better so we don't have to be that which we are?

    How can my mother turn from mother to friend?  She will always be my mother.  A mother who knew and did nothing about her pedophile husband, except say she would be vigilant.

    Vigilant about what?  It seems she was the most vigilant about keeping a husband and her marriage. 

    Yesterday it came to me that I have been wanting so desperately for you all to accept reality of many pedophiles being pedophiles in the church, while you all are wanting so desperately wanting to keep 'good christians' there.

    I give up.  Just as I had to accept within my family, that many would not remove the label father, I get it now that you all refuse to change your images of who preaches from the pulpit. 

    You are allowed to keep that image…I am no longer going to tell you to drop it.  Hold it dear, hang on with vigilance to your church being the church of your dreams…It is not my job to change your minds.

    This whole exchange has brought me great clarity.  It wasn't that the Huhta family wasn't worth saving, it was that your mind was incapable of being changed.

    There was nothing a Huhta could do to make you all act any differently; Not the cutest among us or the most articulate or funny, not the blue eyed innocence…it wasn't us, it was always you.

    There literally isn't anything any of us can do about what you think…only you can.

    Inside each of you, you too get to pick….Is he a pedophile or is he just another minister?  You and you alone decide….and you and you alone will reap the consequences of your thoughts.

    How beautiful and kind the Universe is to deliver up to us bloggers, us victims of criminal sexual abuse by members of the FALC, to have another great example of Penn State, where we can see how authority has much to lose if the word got out, that there are members of this organization who are abusing children. 

    I see Don Daavettila as Joe Paterno.

    I see The FALC as Penn State.

    I see that the boys stories are being told….Carl, Jim and Josh.

    I see that the girls stories are being told, Me and Leah.

    I see and I see.

    And yet so many will not see. They want the 'game' of religion to go, they want the 'coaches' to remain someone to look up to.

    We are telling you what is going on and it is up to you to sit in the pews or not.  It is not up to us. We are free.

    Just as it was with my family, it would have been easier if I didn't care, if I didn't give a rats ass about what you all thought.  But, sadly it is your thoughts that keep allowing children to be abused.

    You have active pedophiles doing what active pedophles do, today, right now within your organization.  And there is nothing I can do to change your mind about it…you are the Penn State people who knew and did nothing.

    What I see is active blind and deafness where this subject is concerned…minds convinced against their will are of the same opinion still.  

     

     

  • Remain Unmoved.

     The gift that the scandal at Penn State is offering is it is encouraging others to stand in the long line of abused children, whether it happened recently or years and years ago.

    The adults who are standing today, are great examples to others that we can't sit down and silently pray that it will go away.  It won't.

    What I find so infuriating is that many will HEAR about abuse, but not believe it.  Which is the biggest problem victims have is being believed.  Imagine, we are not believed.

    What does 'believing' us mean?  What will show us you believe?  What actions are your changing to tell us that you are now 'believing' in the news?

    What I just get so floored by is that people listen, but they don't believe. They hear, but they continue on as if we had not spoken.

    Josh commented on my blog post, "Shattered Dreams" stating that not only did his Uncle abuse his father, he also abused him.  That means that Eric has gone on abusing now for many years.  What will that mean to you all who sit in the pews?  What will happen?  Will you contact the Chairperson of the Board of the First Apostolic Church and DEMAND he not preach?  Will you start to then question many things, or will you hear it and just pass it on as 'their story' their life, and go on unchanged?

    I believe there is active listening where it instills actions and then there is passive listening where it requires nothing of you.

    What I want to impress upon you, that passive listening is the greatest gift to Eric, it will allow him to freely abuse in the third generation.  Imagine that?

    Passive listening is what Joe Paterno did.  Passive listening is what those in Higher Positions did.  Passive listening is how so many boys were abused, while the coach horsed around in the showers.

    I don't know what it will take in your world for you to act upon knowledge, for you to stand up and get 'involved'.  

    What I see most is the courageous abused children, even those who are now adults stepping forth…. and speaking out. How many will be believed?  Just as in the Penn State case, you will draw a side, you will decide who to believe and why….I would be curious to hear the other side.

    Josh is telling you, do you believe him?  Do you dare not act?  For all who will passively read blogs and then go on with life unchanged, you are exactly what is needed for sexual crimes to be committed, again and again and again.  There is a term for you all, accessories to the crime.

    Those who know and remain unmoved.

  • What we endured.

    From Martha Beck's book, Leaving the Saints
    "All my life, I'd read and reread a thousand religious epigraphs to the effect that "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  I'd always been told this had to do with joining the true religion, learning the true description of the Holy Trinity, memorizing the true Commandments.  Now, with that gong like tone thrumming through me, it all seemed so much simpler.  The truth I needed to be free was simply the reality of my own life: This is what I feel.  This is what happened to me. To know these small truths was to know myself; to speak them was to connect with my real self, other human beings, and God."
    Martha was told by many people she was not allowed to tell her story of abuse, that the church's reputation was on the line, that her father needed to be held up as a pillar of its community, that many mormon spiritual lives depended upon her silence… except one woman came to her.
    "Martha…I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."  Her voice when through me like an arrow, through all the pain and confusion and fear to something at my very center. My body filled up with a kind of resonance, like one of the huge gongs I'd seen in Shinto shrines that make the air throb when they ring.  It shattered my reserve, and as usual, I started crying.  Rosemary just sat there, not a shred of tension or resistance in her presence.  "Was it your father?" she asked, quietly.  I covered my face with my hands to keep myself from falling apart, but it was like trying to protect a sand castle from high tide. "I didn't tell you!" I gasped, when I could speak.  "Where did you hear that?"  She shrugged and tapped her chest. I felt that sense of resonance again, crumbling all the barriers of my mind.
     "You can't tell anyone!" I whispered.  "And I can't tell anyone! Ever! I can't!"  
    "Martha, listen to me."  Rosemary's voice was no louder, but it had taken on a peculiar intensity.  I remember thinking that I should pay close attention. I was right. The next three words Rosemary Douglas spoke changed my life forever.  The moment she said them, I knew that this was the stable patch of earth in the landslide, the single great spiritual truth upon which I could build my life now that all other foundations had proven frail and uncertain. The words weren't God loves you, or Jesus is Lord, or Keep the faith.
    Rosemary put her hand on mine, looked right in my soggy eyes and said, "You are Free."
    We are not free until we can speak our story, to tell of our experiences…and sadly we wait for the permission of those who hurt us.  What a great gift this woman gave her, to say, "I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."
    At times this blog feels as if I don't have the right.  But I agree with Rosemary, we must talk about what we endured.

  • Normal Results.

    “What is your motive for Telling…” is a phrase that lends it self to much debate.  The simple fact that a child is then put in a position of feeling ‘bad’ for squealing stops many from coming forth.

     No one wants to be a squealer.

    Squealing is seen and incurred as to being weak or bad and that you should not say anything, IF you don’t have anything kind to say…

    It is seen as soiling someone’s reputation. 

    How is it that the squealer is the one who is in charge of that?  Surely it wasn’t the little girl’s fault that in Telling on Ray, he would then be made to ‘look bad’. 

    He was bad each moment he forcibly made a girl touch him.

    She was telling to stop an action, she wasn’t concerned how it looks or how it would fit into others lives.  She just wanted it to stop. 

    In order for things to stop, reputations will change color, past ideals of a person will take on a new tone, lives and relationships will hang in the balance, things will not go on as “Normal”.

    For now an abnormal behavior has entered in.

    Insanity ensues if you continue to act normal when abnormal walks and talks in your world and you don’t tell or pay attention to it, to see it like it is. 

    It seems preposterous that you would carry on life as usual with this oddity in your midst, that you would pretend to pretend to pretend that there is nothing amiss, that you would try harder to be normal instead of addressing the abnormal behavior.

    But take it from me, we do.

    In fact, in home this was not abnormal, but normal.  I come from a long line of sexual abuse…and the way they treated it was to do nothing, but carry on as usual.

    When the adults in my childhood life didn’t see abnormal, I then became abnormal.  I had to become abnormal to fit in.

    What I had thought was that only our home acted abnormal to normal abuse, but come to find out there is a sea of people willing to sweep abnormal under the rug to keep up with their normal lives, normal religions, normal families, normal marriages, normal relationships.

    It isn’t abuse that is the problem, but holding on to normal.

    Holding on to normal, all will discount, overlook, and under react in order to keep their own normal lives. 

    What is so incredulous to me is that they hang on to normal in their minds only.  For abnormal has now come to live with them and the longer they don’t see abnormal, the more abnormal becomes their family.

    I lived and learned that abnormal was the normal way to be.

    How grateful and blessed I am, that I was finally able to see that what I had stood for and championed was not normal.  What a gift to see my abnormalities.

    Most are not given this awareness.  I am speaking out and shouting out and pointing out what others are failing to see.

    Since I lived for 46 years believing I had a ‘normal’ family but that I was abnormal, I want to share my experience.  I am not a squealer, but a person who is telling to help stop abuse…for people to start seeing that what they think or want to believe is normal is so abnormal.

     Being raised in abnormal it is hard to know normal.

    Sometimes doing the complete opposite of what you were taught will bring in normal results. 

     

     

     

  • Yours to decide, always.

    I talked to the Detective today and it was very enlightening.

    He is willing to help us help the children by giving us information that will educate us of the process. We know what abuse is, but not all levels and kinds, but we we want to stop it, but we don't know how to stop it… who to report, how to report or what to report. What is applicable, what is not, what is too old etc. 

    His focus is the victims and wants all to know that no matter if you want to report anonymously or not, he welcomes your story. 

    He and I both feel that the beginning of the healing process is to speak out, no matter how long ago your abuse happened, it will break the bond of silence.  He needs your help to help the children.

    His job is to separate the abusers from the children and in order to do this he must have courageous victims willing to share their experiences.

    What I believe most victims feel is that they will be met with the same kinds of disbelief or non-action that they have met thus far.  However, talking to him showed me that they listen and not only listen but they believe in you.

    In just telling your story you will feel so much better. 

    Tom Rosemurgy is willing to take your calls, to answer your emails or receive your letters.

    What I want most is for you who have been abused to have access to someone who will hear you.

    trosemurgy@houghtonsheriff.com  Is his email address.

    Or you can write him at,

     403 Houghton Ave.  

    Houghton MI 49931

    You don’t’ have to leave your name, but please leave your story.  You have been carrying it too long; it is time to let it down, to hand it over to someone who can carry it for you.

    Your power is regained in your voice.

    I am here and will help anyone who has a story to tell.

    The truth needs to come forth, for while it is kept quiet there are children in danger.

    I know our voices will make a difference in the life of some child.

    I send you courage and strength…I cheer you on as you wrestle with the decision to speak now or remain silent, and the choice is yours to decide, always.

     

     

  • Returns to being good.

    What a multifaceted catch 22 it is when society is asking that the children of abuse be the ones to stop it. To be the ones to name their perpetrator, to come out of their cages of captivity and walk freely with courage seems insurmountable.

    What it fails to realize is the condition of the conditioned mind and how it has programmed the child or the adult child to bow down to authority, to keep silent and suffer in silence.

    We have been taught by experiences to go it alone and to keep to ourselves our selves, to not expose or share the feelings part of us, but instead walk around with a veneer finish that covers our truths.

    We have lived mostly as the veneer and have not allowed the real self to peep through and now in order to stop the abuse we have to completely reverse this.

    The veneer has to fade to the back and what comes forth is all we have tried to keep hidden. We have to now present to the world the very thing that terrorized us.

    Imagine? We are the ones who stop the monster, we whose power they took, now have to come forward fearlessly.

    And yet, as odd as this seems, as backwards and as upside down, the very step in sharing your wounds is the very thing you need to begin building your strength and courage, it will help define who you are from the base of truth.

    To speak your truth of who you are and what happened to you, who you fear and why, are truthful utterances of your journey in life, your biography and pathology, what has made you you. You then are able to see and feel that IT isn’t you that is bad, but them. You are not the problem, they are.

    And, by having a veneer, also shows the lack of support and caring you had. It literally shows how untreated you are.

    If, you had to ‘hide’ your abuse, it shows that you lived in an abusive home. For if you lived in a loving caring home, the abuse would have been treated, you would have been lovingly cared for and nurtured and the Bad Man/Woman would have been put away as so not to harm another.

    When the bad man/woman is not put away, we are left to feel bad and actually are told to put away our wounds.

    What an odd show and tell it now requires in order to stop more generations, we have to show who the monster is and then our wounded self returns to being good.

  • What you see and say.

    I am reading David Hawkins book “Reality, Spirituality and Modern Man” and here is something I found fascinating…

    “The mind automatically assumes that it is continuously aware of reality, and it is unaware that what it considers to be reality, is actually own presumptive inner processing function that has been termed ‘the experiencer’ (Hawkins, 2000-2006).”

    “Thus the data has already been automatically processed and edited via ego mechanisms within 1/10,000th of a second that have thereby added or subtracted value, meaning, and importance as well as emotional tone and shadings of memory and significance. What the ordinary mind presumes to be “truth” is actually a processed composite of thousands of variables of differing degrees with superimposed editing, selection, distortion, and emotionalized, preferential evaluation. This editing is done unconsciously in 1/10,000th of a second and is not eliminated or bypassed until one reaches Enlightenment (cal. 600 and above.)” David Hawkins

    What I am extremely intrigued by is that our minds are already programmed to see that which we see and it is near impossible to interject a new idea especially in an old image.

    Which explains why most folks will not change their minds about fathers/brothers/uncles etc that become abusive. Even if their bodies carry the emotions and fears, their minds will not allow them to change the words from father to pedophile, to change the truth.

    What I am asking is for folks who don’t have this ironclad confused mind leading the charge, for the ones who can see and can speak to do so.

    To speak up against this criminal behavior of child abuse, to step in front of the unseeing eyes and see the truth of what is going on and to alert someone.

    We somehow sit in the position that someone in the family would speak IF something were going on. I am here to tell you it is near impossible for the abused and confused to stop this from the inside.

    The rumor mill on the outside churns and spews forth lots of data, but rarely offers the details up to the Child Protective Services, we don’t want to ‘ruin’ a family.

    Let me tell you a family that is riddled with sexual abuse is diseased and needs to be rescued. It needs the light of day to shine in and to halt the actions of the abuser; it needs you to say something. You are not ruining a loving family, but stopping the abuse from going on to generations upon generations. An abusive family isn’t a loving one.

    You may not awaken all the folks within the family, but perhaps you can save one person, one child…

    What I know to the dept of my soul, if you on the outside treat the pedophile as normal, then we believe we are nuts.

    If you on the outside would reflect what we know, “that something is wrong” then we are set free…we are looking for another view, one that honors the fear and yuck factor we feel.

    When you continue on as if nothing is wrong, as if this man is okay, if you continue to perform ‘normal treatment’ of him, we are left in a sea of abuse.

    We are counting on your clear eyes and words to set us free…

    Some will be awakened and others will be incapable of finding the space before the mind takes over and eliminates your truth, but speak it anyway, for you never know if there is one there that can and will be saved by what you see and say.

  • Warn the Authorities.

    I had a multifaceted dream just before waking this morning, confusing about places, time lines and doings, but yet totally clear with overall theme.

    I was at a high school reunion that was taking place at my childhood home and I left early, just walked out. In my car as I was leaving I seen my old neighbor running through his house with little boys chasing him. The next time he passed in front of the big bay window, he is wearing underwear, boys still laughing and chasing him. He then heads for the upstairs, stops midway and I see his underwear have fallen and his butt is showing. He stops on the step and turns…it is like he wants me to see him…doesn’t move for a second or two and then ascends the stairs…little boys following.

    I even notice that the stairway has been moved, for in the old floor plan, I would not have seen him taking the game to the upstairs bedrooms, out of sight.

    In the dream I call my brother to tell him…and then the next thing I am in a grocery story and see another old neighbor boy who is now an older man with a gray haired ponytail, and he is carrying a little boy who wants to get down…he lets him go. He and the boy are fully dressed and appear normal.

    I am buying a drink for my son who is in the hospital for a surgery and have witnessed in the dream my husbands loving teasing ways with him.

    This underwear game man juxtaposes the normal or regular men to boy scenes. The cat in the matrix, that something isn’t right, showing me the differences…and how I didn’t run over and wrestle with the man who was in the midst of a pedophile game.

    Yesterday Oprah asks her audience after listening to the Freedom Riders, what do you know that is wrong and what are you doing about it?

    What do you know or sense or feel isn’t right and what are you doing about it…?

    Leads me to sit with my life and ask what do I know that is wrong and is there something I should be doing about it?

    It just occurred to me in the past few days, that I don’t recall others talking about pedophiles to me. Of me being aware of knowing about other families. I just have no memory of them warning me of creepy men…and then I had a flash of knowing, it was me they were talking about. I lived in the creepy home. I was in the subject of what others were talking about, they didn’t tell me, for I was already there.

    This was shocking to know. No one brought the discussion about pedophiles and creepy men up to me, for my father was a known one.

    I find it fascinating and sickening to know that many knew and only warned others to stay away.

    In order for this disease to stop spreading, the ‘early warning’ system has to be ended, we have to learn how to step in, speak up, tell the authorities…do something.

    Even if you have known for years, now is a good time to do something different.

    I was taught to not speak ill of others, to not point out their negative behaviors, ‘for we all have faults’…silence was my first response.

    And I know I am not alone, there are pews full of well-intentioned good people, silently sitting by warning others to stay away, but not wanting to use their voice in a ‘negative’ way, to use it to tell someone suspicions of a child being abused.

    All it takes is for someone to alert the authorities and they will ask the child.

    It takes someone from the outside in the land of normal to come in and rescue those who were born in captivity.

    We know no different, we need you to speak up on our behalf.

    I have heard a few stories in the past six years, but I too didn’t move on it, didn’t speak up, for I who they spoke of I didn’t know, didn’t know their children or who they had access too. But what I also didn’t do is tell the person who told me, to not warn me, but warn the authorities.

    “What do you know that is wrong in the world and what are you doing about it…” Oprah Winfrey

  • That Kind are not Family.

    I heard the Oprah show on the radio about the twin girls that were abused for years by their brothers and father, whose mother knew but did nothing.

    At the end of the show Oprah gives them a few words of wisdom, one about forgiveness and the other about not letting their spirits be killed by what their brothers and father did to them.

    She said her definition of forgiveness is,

    “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past would have been any different.”

    She told them to let go of the hope for a different kind of father.
    Let go of the hope for different kind of brothers.
    Let go of the hope for a different kind of mother.

    Letting go of the hope a Different Kind…you have to then accept the kind you have.

    In my case, I had to accept a raping kind of father and a mother who also knew, but did nothing.

    We did not get the loving kind or the supportive protective kind, we got the abusive kind.

    Secondly, Oprah said, “I want you to not let the spirit be killed by what your brother and father did, to not let the spirit die.

    The toughest part is really feeling that the hope is gone for a different kind of father/mother/siblings, but at that point when you lost all, you are then left with a part of yourself that is beyond all that, your spirit.

    It seemed to me, in the darkest moment of seeing the kind of family I had, I was then able to see a small seed that wasn’t going to be defined by what they did to me, it was a part of me that separated from them.

    I then set to work on redefining me and reworking the parts of me that were confused and mixed up due to abuse.

    I had to learn how to love, to trust and to find faith within myself.

    I had to reestablish what I felt were my boundaries since I was raised in a home without boundaries, in an unsafe place, where a father can rape a child and the mother remains married to him, forgiving his ‘sins’, Sins that hurt me.

    If these twins can find the strength to fully accept that the kind of parents and siblings they have, they can then begin to make choices that will not include abuse.

    If you don’t see the monsters you will continue to have ‘father/brother’ like relationships with a men who rape you.

    The greatest work that needs to happen is that you have to pick only one. A father OR a Monster, you can’t have both.

    And at that time you will also pick which one you will be.
    A daughter who allows this behavior or one who will save her spirit and walk away free.

    Also at the end of the show, Oprah said that 99% of abuse is from family members or someone we know, and we have to be willing to put fathers, brothers, uncles and friends in jail. And this is huge. This is key, this is very had for most to do, which is why mothers don’t see and sisters don’t tell etc, no one wants to put family in jail, families that rape and abuse children! Families of that kind are not family!

  • Hand and Hand…

    There seems to be two energies of silence, awareness and unawareness, peace and hostility, love and fear, solitude and loneliness…

    There is silence to shun and hurt to push out and away that isn’t inclusive but divided.

    Silence that is cold and uncaring, thoughtless and too busy, unaware and out of touch, forgotten…and good intentions piled high, never spoken.

    Silence of lazy relationships or untried or pushed, where silence is required, no speaking of the ills, just silence.

    The silence I was raised upon.

    Seeing, feeling, and knowing my mother’s silence in anger, dark still, raging, quiet, strong silence.

    Her silence against what was wrong.

    Silently staying.

    Silently waiting for change.

    Silently looking away. Silently.

    Silently hoping, wishing, praying.

    Silently walking hand in hand with pain, shame, guilt, abuse, neglect, betrayal, faithless, unworthiness, looking away from innocence and vulnerable child and self.

    The dark side of silence…where nothing changes, pain continues, victims born, old victims live, abuse blossoms.

    Silence isn’t peaceful in an abusive home.
    Silently we suffer.

    Breaking the silence I have found myself in a new kind of silence, the knowing silence.

    Knowing silence is peaceful, strong, empowering.

    I speak out about the abuse, but am silent with the abusers.

    Living the opposite.

    Where before my ‘peace’ was gotten from being silent, I needed to be silent in order to survive, to be in my home, my family.

    A false sense of peace and security living silently in abuse, blind and unknowing.
    Now my peace is to speak of my abuse, telling is my peace. Telling brings me power.

    Silence and abuse go hand and hand…