child abuse Archives

Culture Shock

September 4, 2023

I’ve spent my entire adult life, it seems
to me, in a state of profound culture
shock. I wish I were unique in this, but
I’m not. You may not be afflicted with my
misapprehensions, and I may not be
afflicted with yours, but none of this
starts “tabula rasa.” We all distort what
we see. We all have to struggle to see
what’s really going on.

Some of you are going to spend the whole
rest of your life in culture shock, and
what I’m saying today is that I think all
of you should.

– Joan Didion, 1975

ARRIVAL:

What would it be like to witness
inappropriate affections between
dad and daughter over the years,
over your lifetime, and then one
day listen as the now young
adult daughter, vulnerable,
confides in you, her mother,
her siblings, aunts, cousins, one by
one, that she remembers her father
molesting her at age 3? As if it
were news. News to her. A new
development?

Like waking up.

“Tierssa is waking up” an aunt,
otherwise estranged, had
whispered.

How would it feel to pair the
public weirdness that you
witnessed and ignored, with this
direct confrontation on your way
of life? Not that it’s your way of
life. But.

The people in the story closest to
Tierssa mostly relied on fear and
pride which presented as
denial. Coping by remaining in the
toxic soup. Paralyzed.

I saw a video of such
inappropriate affection between
dad and daughter from when Tierssa
was 11 years old.

Tierssa was in her thirties when
it surfaced, surreptitiously, at a
family vacation. She had no
recollection of the interaction
that unfolded in her and everyone else
in the room’s view: mom step-
dad, siblings, step-siblings, in-
laws, their children, her
children.

She remembered – the clothes she
was wearing; light turquoise
sweater with colorful yarn designs
in square textured patches. She
loved that sweater – but never
interacting like that with her
father, there, at that age. Not at
all.

Also in the video’s frame:
lighthearted horseplay between her
younger brothers.

A therapist commented to Tierssa:
“Watching that video among family
must have felt humiliating.”

UNCERTAINTY & DOUBT:

Instant heat pushed up gut to
cheeks, surprising her, in
protest. She felt validated, her
brain said. How dare this woman
assign her a feeling she didn’t
want? Now there was evidence.
Everyone could finally believe
her. Treat her better.

A moment later, that the video
surfaced a couple of years ago set
in.

Suddenly she remembered when her
mom accused her of forging her
signature on her student loans,
post-confrontation, pre video.

Then she thought of how she asked
her mother weeks after the
vacation for the home videos,
casually. Lots of them were of
Tierssa after all. Playing piano
at school talent shows and other
events. Tierssa had enjoyed
watching. Reliving those memories.
Seeing herself.

And then that one.

I don’t know where they are
anymore, her mother’s spaced out,
if not cheerful voice replied.

ADAPTATION:

This thread of thoughts gave
humiliation piercing powers that
Tierssa’s pride, fear and denial
could no longer withstand. She
would have resisted longer if she
could have. But, the shape of the
relationship, its edges, had come
into full view.

Some months later, she got word
her dad had died. Condolences,
then wisecracks and memes poured
through via an extended family
group chat, alienating Tierssa’s
sense of estrangement.

Tierssa was appointed the
responsible party, required to
interact with authorities to file
for the death certificate, etc. It
would have been her mom, but her
dad had fled the family, landing
in the Philippines after she
opened up.

She had a couple of fears:

1. 1. 1. 1. that he was not really dead and
      2. If he was or wasn’t dead, that
        signing things would perform an
        essential punishment of
        indebtedness or other unknown. For
        talking.

Though reluctant she submitted her
passport and signature. Then Covid
shut-downs happened. And exposure.
Everyone to everything. More
personally, to her unique
isolation. To her feelings of rage
and despair.

ACCEPTANCE & RECOVERY:

Tierssa took the opportunity to
remove herself from the group
chat, send all burial
contributions, meager as they
were, back to people. She stopped
communicating with everyone in her family.

Then she changed her name.

Kadie Kelly is an interdisciplinary artist born in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and living in Oakland, California since 2005. She has a small business, Superpower of the Song, and enjoys writing, composing music, and spending time outdoors with her two sons. Kadie holds both a bachelors and masters degree from Mills College in Public Policy. She is a published poet and was recently featured in Wild Roof Journal.

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Recently out in paperback…Have you read Thrust?

“Blistering and visionary . . . This is the author’s best yet.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

***

Statement on Black Lives Matter and support for social change

Abuse, Guest Posts, Relationships

Love Thy Neighbor

March 3, 2021

By Kelly Wallace

Biking around my Portland neighborhood, I saw a moving truck with a good looking guy front of a house. He was photographing a Bianchi bicycle in front of the fence.

“Nice bike,” I told him as I cycled by. He was tall, thin, and looked Italian with dark curly hair.

“Thanks. I’m trying to sell it on Craiglist,” he said. “I used to ride it to my job. But since I retired a year ago, I don’t need it anymore.”

“Where did you move here from?” I asked. Up close, I noticed silver mixed in with his black bangs and sexy eyes.

“I was living in Florida,” he told me.

“Well, welcome to the neighborhood,” I said. “It’s a beauty. Good luck selling it.” Cycling to my exercise class, I made a mental note to try and strike up another conversation. It was exciting to have a hot new guy so geographically desirable.

He was often out in his front yard. I stopped to chat whenever biking by. We’d chat about cycling and his luscious garden. He’d managed to retire at 40 by never going on vacations, buying everything second hand and cooking at home, he said. He spent hours planting vegetables. As a 38-year-old, brunette business consultant, with fifteen years of recovery from alcoholism under my belt, I’d purchased my own two-bedroom bungalow but felt lonely living alone. An agnostic, I didn’t want marriage or kids. The only relationship I’d been in post college was five years with someone who couldn’t commit. As a survivor of sexual abuse, emotional intimacy wasn’t easy for me.

One night I asked him if I could try some cherry tomatoes from his garden. After the tomato tasting, he offered to make me dinner. We stayed up late talking. Within weeks we were an item. On Halloween we rode in the pouring rain to haunted houses, posting pictures of each other sitting on bales of hay. We sautéed Thai green curry with shrimp in his kitchen, then played cribbage on my sofa with my brown tabby Billie. He drank a beer here and there while he cooked but it didn’t bother me. My craving for alcohol had long since disappeared.

When I was sick, he made shakshouka, a middle eastern poached egg dish. He was a great cook and offered me tips, like the importance of having a good cooking knife. He taught me how healthy food was nurturing – something I needed after struggling with drinking and starving my way through college, another byproduct of my childhood trauma.

It was so awesome with him just a few houses down, not even a car, cab or Uber away. I loved popping into his place for dinner, snuggling up to watch old episodes of “The Jersey Shore,” then going home to sleep in my own bed. It felt like the perfect distance, the trick to finding love at last.

In June, during a city wide bicycle festival we road our bikes in the Bowie vs. Prince annual ride. We dressed up in David Bowie outfits, rode through town with hundreds of others and danced in competitions featuring the two iconic musical performers. On a rare Portland snow day, when the entire city shut down, we walked around our precinct, holding hands. We went to the mountain and tried cross country skiing, gliding along groomed trails, posting goofy pictures of ourselves with a frozen lake in the background on Facebook.

I invited him to my family Thanksgiving. Roasting cauliflower and delicata squash in the morning at his house, he prepared dishes to take to my dad and stepmom’s house an hour way. We feasted on turkey, mashed potatoes, and my stepmom’s famous lime green Jello salad. My dad and stepmom rarely drank. After years of not talking to them, we’d reconciled in therapy. On one visit, my stepmom and Dad sang “Walkin’ After Midnight,” by Patsy Cline in my beau’s living room while he accompanied on guitar. I loved watching him play, a remnant of his former life as a high school band teacher, before I knew him.

I was traveling a lot, mostly by myself. I went to the Women’s March in Washington, then to Atlanta to visit my cousin, renting Airbnb’s. I admitted that the owner of an apartment in Kyoto had invited me to go out for a beer, but I’d turned him down. Though I’d declined his invite, my boyfriend thought I was hanging out with him. I reassured him I wasn’t for hours over Skype.

“He seems too possessive,” my pal Julie said one night. “He’s sounds narcissistic.” She had a masters in vocational rehabilitation and knew about personality disorders. After a fight, I told him what Julie had said.

“So Julie thinks I’m a narcissist? What did you say when she said that?” He asked while making parsnip puree at the hot stove.

“I told her I didn’t think it was true,” I said, but I had doubts, tucking away her observation.

A psychic once told me, “You are a loner in this lifetime.” At seven, I told my mom that I was being molested by my paternal grandpa. She believed me. My dad did not. At eight, I testified against my father’s father in a courtroom and his side of the family turned against me. They insisted I wasn’t telling the truth. He was found not guilty. I thought it was all my fault. I didn’t know sexual assault cases were incredibly difficult to prove in a court of law – the chances of conviction were less than 3%.

As an adult, I escaped to college 3000 miles away. Now, with my partner’s charismatic personality, he was a bridge to my paternal relatives, making me feel more protected and at ease around them. Besides, they had a four-month old border collie that he loved to play with and soon he got his own dog.

My boyfriend adopted a twelve-week old golden lab mix, Augie, and he watched YouTube videos to learn to teach him new tricks. At a special store that sold only organic pet toys, he bought the puppy a special synthetic tennis ball.

The puppy went everywhere with him. He bought a trailer for his bike to put him in and watched videos on how to get the canine to be comfortable in the carrier. We went out to dinner one night, biking with the Augie in the trailer as a test run and sat at a picnic table with us after we ate. “Take a picture of us,” he asked as he fed the dog the leftover pizza crusts. I uploaded it to Instagram. It seemed insanely cute.

Weeks later, I went to upstate New York for my college reunion. As soon as I landed, we argued over the phone. I didn’t tell my girlfriends what was happening. I thought I could follow what the relationship book I’d consulted said: keep the lines of communication open and try to make it work. My beau posted videos of himself training the pup. I was glad he had company while I was away.

On the last day, there was an event at a winery. Not knowing what to do with myself at the winery and surrounded by drinking, I followed my schoolmates, Melissa, Katie, and Tuesday, listening to their interchanges about their kids, and work life. All three were happily married. I broke down crying.

“What’s going on?” Katie put her arm around my shoulder.

“It’s not working out with my boyfriend,” I admitted. “We’ve been fighting all weekend.”

“Let’s go out the parking lot,” Melissa said. Tuesday followed behind.

“Your marriages are perfect and I feel like a failure in comparison,” I confessed. “But I feel stuck since he lives down the street from me and wants to be together.”

We stood in a circle like a college football huddle.

“We aren’t perfect,” Tuesday said.

“But if you’re not in love and happy, you don’t have to stay,” Melissa said.

“He has his puppy,” Melissa reassured. “He’ll meet someone else.”

I finally realized I could put a stop to it, just like as a child when I told my mom what happened. I broke up with him calmly over the phone.

Now, entering my twentieth year of sobriety, we still live on the the same block. I see him walking his dog every day but keep my distance. We had some good times together and I don’t regret loving him but I’m relieved it’s over. I’m more comfortable being single. The only downside of dating a neighbor three houses down is I have to keep seeing him long after I stopped seeing him. But when I try out a new vegetable recipe I think of him fondly and all that he taught me about cooking and nourishing myself.

Kelly Wallace recently completed work on The Book of Kelly, a memoir, about her experience as an adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse. She previously had words in On Loan From the Cosmos and The Manifest-Station.

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Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option

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Abuse, Guest Posts

Closet Shots

April 20, 2018

By Adele Zane

Your father just shoved you into his bedroom closet and slammed the door, entombing you. You tell yourself to get a grip, but your ears still pound and your hands still clench. You pant through your nose, purse your lips, squeeze your eyes shut, and grit your teeth. You do all of this so your head won’t explode like a watermelon rifled against a wall. So what, you tell yourself, this is nothing. Why not view it as a refreshing alternative to his usual forms of discipline? This one beats a harried chase through the house till he corners you in the dining room where you drop to the floor and curl up like a pill bug.

His fancy eel skin belt, the buckle flying, raining down on your back and thighs. In fact, when you think back through the fifteen long years of your life, as far as his punishments go, this shut-in-the-closet one is easy. It hasn’t involved belts, wooden spoons, or yanking of hair. So get ahold of yourself, calm down, and above all, do not cry. He hates that. He says it’s manipulative and that he’s way too smart to fall for what he calls crocodile tears. Whatever that means.

It’s Saturday afternoon and time for his nap. No one in your family will want to wake him once he falls asleep. Even as a toddler you knew not to go near him when he slept, but if you had to, to wake him for a phone call or because it was dinnertime, it was safest to stand at the foot of his bed, and say, Daddy, Daddy, several times with increasing loudness. If that didn’t work, then you would touch his big toe lightly, recoiling fast so he couldn’t clobber you when he came up from his dreams, arms swinging at imaginary assailants.

You realize you could be in here for hours. The door doesn’t have a lock; you could open it if you wanted to, but you won’t and neither will anyone else. Now that you’ve calmed down, you better find some way to entertain yourself. You slowly turn around and move your arms like you’re doing the wave at a football game until you find the pull chain to the overhead light. You wonder if turning it on is against the rules of his new made-up-on-the-spot punishment. You decide to chance it and pull the chain, real slow so it doesn’t make a clicking sound. The bare 40-watt bulb illuminates two identically tailored pinstripe suits, one brown and one navy, from Roos/Atkins, his favorite store, and lots of work pants and shirts from Penney’s and Sears.

On the floor are his polished black dress boots and his dusty work boots—the ones he whistles for you to come and remove from his feet when he gets home from work. You quell the urge to kick his stupid shoes and yank his dumb clothes from their hangers because you know your father can go from charming to ballistic in less than a second without discernible provocation. This would be too discernable an act of provocation. You could go through his pockets—maybe there’s something interesting in them—but he’d know you looked, for he’s all-knowing or so he tells you and you can’t take that risk even though you doubt he would really know. You dare yourself to look in his jacket pockets anyway. Nothing much—a silver lighter, a toothpick, and a couple of pennies.

What is interesting is what’s lined up against the wall to your left, almost as tall as you are. Careful not to touch, you use your index finger to count them. There are a total of nine zippered cases of soft beige suede, each holding either a rifle or a shotgun. You don’t know what makes a rifle a rifle or a shotgun a shotgun. Is there a difference? You’d never realized he had this many, but then again, you’ve never hung out in his closet either. To your right are shelves he built. On the shelves are boxes and boxes of bullets and a pair of sheathed hunting knives. He’s got enough firepower to kill every deer, duck, and quail in the state of California, and maybe Nevada too. At least that’s what it looks like. He’s even got handguns nestled in boxes. You read their labels: .44 Mag, .357 Mag, and something called a 1911. Why the heck does he need all these? To sneak up on an unsuspecting pheasant? You think it’s extreme overkill to own so many guns and smile to yourself at your wittiness.

You hear the thwack, thwack of a tennis ball being hit back and forth. Your father, now lounging on his bed atop a faux fur bedspread the unnatural color of a teddy bear, smug in the knowledge that his oldest daughter is confined ten feet away, has resumed watching the Wimbledon finals, a match between Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe. You hear him fire up a Camel no-filter. His chain smoking makes your family and your house smell like you all roll around in dirty ashtrays.

But back to the guns. He didn’t put you in here so you could peruse his gun collection, choose your favorite one.

For a moment you flirt with the fantasy of hurting yourself, but it seems too obvious a move given the situation. Too bad you didn’t pay more attention when he first showed you how to load his BB gun, then how to aim and shoot at the paper target he’d taped to a stepladder in the basement. A good starter gun he’d called it. You’d bawled and made it clear that unlike him, you weren’t interested in weapons or hunting or killing animals. Besides, your eyesight is so bad you didn’t even come close to hitting the target itself let alone the bullseye.

To kill time, you imagine the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle, if you successfully loaded a gun, and managed to fatally shoot yourself in the closet’s three-by-six-foot space. Poor Misunderstood Girl Shoots Self Dead in Father’s Closet. Now you’re feeling sorry for yourself. How about Trapped Teenage Girl Shoots Self Because of Idiot Dad and Stupid Family. Your attempts at amusing yourself wear thin, and you collapse down to sit cross-legged on the cherry red shag carpet to wait him out. You cover your face with your hands.

You’re lulled into sleepiness by the sound of the television audience’s polite applause and the announcer’s soothing voice as he loudly whispers Love, Fifteen. Your dad’s rooting for Connors. You think Connors is a hotheaded jerk and hope he loses to the black guy Ashe. If your father knew you were dozing during your punishment, it would anger him even more. You don’t want to do that because he can be inventive. Besides his trusty belt, he has a dog whip for special-occasion infractions. It stings like hell and leaves the nastiest welts, worse than the belt buckle. He’s careful to hit you above your knees so the marks aren’t visible below your skirts, but his thoughtfulness doesn’t keep you safe at school. It’s against the rules to take your gym clothes into a bathroom stall to change, but you do it anyway. You don’t have a choice, you have to; you know instinctively that if anyone were to see your body, it would be too difficult and embarrassing to explain.

You imagine standing in front of your dresser and contorting your body in the mirror so you can count the multicolored welts that adorn your butt and thighs, fingering them gently, monitoring them day to day as they change from angry red to mellow yellowish purple. Proof of his unfairness or your uselessness. You’ve dozed off but wake up fast when you hear your mother’s voice. Maybe she’s come to remind your father you’re still in the closet.

“Manuel. Wake up. Ashe won, but Wide World of Sports is about to start or maybe there’s some soccer on. Want me to get you some Sanka?”

You’re happy Connors lost. Then you hear the jingle of the keys that hang from your father’s belt. A sound that elicits fear in your family because it tells you he’s coming but doesn’t telegraph what mood he’ll be in when he gets to you. The closet door opens before you can jump up to pull the chain and turn off the light. You pray he doesn’t notice.

“Had enough?”

He looks down at you on the floor. You look up, squinting against the daytime brightness. You pull yourself to a standing position using the ammo shelves as leverage. Your legs don’t quite cooperate. You remember to drop your eyes to the carpet because looking directly at him is considered a challenge to his authority. Yes, I’ve had enough, you tell him, because that’s what he wants to hear.

“Good, I hope you learned your lesson,” he says.

“Can I get back to my algebra homework, Daddy, please?” you remembered to say please.

He flicks at a speck of cigarette ash on the ratty terrycloth robe he wears over his work pants.

“Say sorry to your brother then go make me some Sanka. Not too hot, and don’t fill it too full either.”

“Yeah, say you’re sorry.”

You raise your eyes at the sound of your seven-year-old brother’s voice. Across the bedroom, he stands next to your mother and little sister, his arms folded across his chest like an angry genie-child denying wishes. You grit your teeth and take a deep breath through your nose, careful to keep your face blank. He is the worst brother anyone could ever have in your opinion, but you don’t want to sit in a gun-filled closet for the rest of your life so you apologize to him.

“I don’t believe you,” he says, tapping his foot for emphasis.

“That’s enough Mark,” your mother says, “she’s been in the closet for hours.”

You blink your eyes slowly and force your mouth into what you hope passes as an apologetic smile and try again.

“Really Mark, I’m sorry,” you say, “sorry I yelled at you. I just got to study.”

Your brother looks at your father, then back at you and states, “I can come in your room anytime I want.”

You admonish yourself to stay calm. Yes, your father shut you in the closet because you yelled at your do-no-wrong brother, interrupting an important tennis match, as well as your homework; however, this closet punishment trip wasn’t so bad, you handled it.

“Sure, anytime you want, Mark.”

He smirks with triumph.

You remind yourself that in three years you’ll graduate high school, you smile for real at the thought and head to the kitchen to try to make your father the perfect cup of Sanka.

Singer and songwriter Adele Zane was born in Brazil, grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York with the fine artist Richard Rosenblatt and their rescued terrier, Wally. She has taken memoir writing classes at both FreeBird Writing Workshop and Gotham Writers Workshop.

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Guest Posts, Sexual Assault/Rape

Truth or Dare

April 23, 2017

CW: This essay discusses sexual abuse.

By Galla Peled

“Truth or dare?” Russell, our babysitter for the night, demanded. Russell was the oldest cousin. He was 17, and deemed responsible enough to babysit. Every Saturday night my parents dropped me off at my cousin’s split level home in suburban Detroit, while they went out for dinner and maybe a show with my aunt and uncle. Every Sunday morning they came to pick me up, and we would all have breakfast together before we went home. My mom made tomato sauce for my Aunt’s scrambled eggs and we kids took turns shaking cinnamon sugar out of a plastic bear dispenser onto our toast.

Shortly after the adults went out, we gathered on the brown shag carpet of the master bedroom and closed the door. Playing there with the door closed felt clandestine and was a little bit exciting. “Truth or dare?” Russell pressed his sister, Lizzie. She and I were both six, and Neil, Lizzie’s other brother was eight. Lizzie had lost a hand at Blackjack and the rules were that if you lost, you had to choose a truth or a dare. Since Russell was the oldest, he always got to deal and make up the rules. For some reason he almost always won; Neil, Lizzie, and I took turns losing. With each loss we removed an article of clothing. Once we were naked, when one of us lost a hand, we had to choose a truth or a dare. Our choice could be overruled by the dealer, so essentially we were always dared to fulfill his fantasy. It was a punishment for losing.

TRUTH: Childhood sexual abuse can be defined as any activity that engages a child in sexual activities that are developmentally inappropriate.

DARE: Lizzie was flat chested and hairless. The veins that stood out on her skin were as blue as her eyes, her six-year-old body a stretched-out version of a toddler. She instinctively used one arm to cover her nipples and the other to cover her private parts. She cowered next to the bed. “Dare!” Russell decided for her, and challenged her to walk atop his spread-eagled legs as he reclined back on his elbows. His penis stood in the nest between his legs, threatening all of us with its presence. We knew if she could not complete the dare to his satisfaction, she would have to perform another task until he was appeased. I watched, afraid for her, but stimulated at the same time. The woolen carpet scratched my own private parts and I liked how it felt. At least I still had my shirt on. Continue Reading…

courage, Guest Posts, healing, I Have Done Love

The Way Things Overlap.

June 3, 2014

The Way Things Overlap by Deb Stone.

January 10, 2000 was my daughter’s eleventh birthday. It was also my neighbor girl’s funeral. She was 23. That morning I decorated our home with balloons and streamers, wrapped gifts in bright paper and twisted ribbons. That afternoon I dressed in black and wore my hair in plain black clips. Joy and grief, sometimes they overlap.

At the funeral, Crystal’s brother Josh said that he and his sister had been so frightened when they were taken from their mother that she laid on the floor in the bedroom of her foster home and whispered through the heat vent so he could hear her voice. Some years later—I’m not sure how many—our neighbors adopted them. At Crystal’s funeral, her adoptive mother sang You Are My Sunshine. Where did she find the courage to sing? How did she have the heart to welcome a birthmother she had never met to a funeral where the daughter they shared lay in an open casket.

Hello and good-bye, sometimes they overlap.

I’ve been a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for twenty years. I coach and mentor new CASAs, and I teach some of the training courses that potential volunteers attend. As a trainer, I try to impart a sense of urgency on behalf of the child’s need for permanence in a timely manner, but also, the importance of family ties. Most new CASAs, whether they know it or not, come into training believing that they are going to help children who come from bad homes get adopted in good homes. I was no exception. As a new CASA volunteer, I wanted to right wrongs. To ensure children’s needs weren’t ignored in the service of parent’s rights. I had no college degree, no little letters behind my name like the rest of the professionals at the table, so I made it a point to know the case.

Diagnoses? I could rattle them off.

Dates of incarceration? Those too.

I knew how many fires the four-year-old set. I knew the words each sibling used to describe what Daddy had done: Penis. Pee-pee. Snake. If you gave me a soapbox, I’d mount it faster than a circus seal could balance a ball. I dug into the parent’s past, pressed social workers to do more, agitated attorneys who were protecting the parent’s rights. I was the voice of the child. Right?

Knowledge and ignorance, they overlap.

I have friends whose parents were vicious drunks, drug addicts, or hopelessly depressed and unresponsive parents. Friends whose fathers, brothers, or grandfathers put their fingers in private places. I have friends who were beat. Abandoned. They share their stories. Sometimes I ask, “Would you have been better off in foster care?”

They stare at me. Maybe they think so, but no one has said yes.

Most of these friends still send their mom a Mother’s Day card. Arrange for holidays with their historically abusive dad. They believe their family was worth having, and keeping, despite the abuse or neglect.

You don’t need twenty years experience to understand that 99 out of 100 foster children want to go home.

Separation and belonging, they overlap.

On my daughter’s eleventh birthday, I kissed the corpse of the neighbor girl who used to babysit my children. In the evening, our family sang Happy Birthday and shared in the wonder of being eleven. We talked about how you always think you’ll have another birthday, only someday when you never even know it, you’ll be having your last slice of cake.

My sons told us about how fun it was when Crystal babysat. They had water fights inside the house. They roasted marshmallows in the woodstove and caught the couch on fire—just a little—then rubbed dirt on the brown spot so I wouldn’t know. They played in-and-out-the-window tag, which explains why the screens on the windows sometimes seemed off kilter.

My birthday girl said her favorite thing about Crystal was how she never made you feel small. “Even though I was littlest,” she said,” She always let me drink from a big cup.”

Making people feel small is a specialty with child welfare systems. Nobody intends it, but when an agency sets out to prove that a parent can’t keep children safe, nobody highlights the parent’s best moments. They itemize what’s gone wrong. If the Court determines that the state has jurisdiction, the social workers set out to help the parents change while the children remain in foster care.

CASA trainees always struggle with the idea that vulnerable children may return to parents with marginal skills. We have an official term: minimum sufficient standards. What does it mean? Nobody can say. It’s a marshy area that falls below the community expectations for parenting, but above the line where children are unsafe. That gray area varies from case to case.

“The biggest worry I have,” said a trainee, “is how I’ll feel knowing the child I care about is going from a life where they have better opportunities to a minimally adequate home.”

I might have reminded her that research shows that children usually benefit from being in their family of origin. “It’s not about you,” I could have said. “Your feelings aren’t part of the equation.”

Instead, I said, “You know the videos on social media that illustrate someone overcoming insurmountable odds? Like the girl who broke her leg in the middle of a softball game and couldn’t run on her own two feet. The opposing team carried her around the bases. You know how that makes your heart catch in your throat? How it makes you believe in the potential good at the core of every human being?”

Imagine you have a friend whose partner left her. She’s been so depressed she can’t get out of bed. Sometimes she drinks too much. Her kids have learned to fend for themselves. On the day that someone knocks on the door for a welfare check, she’s still drunk from the night before. The children cling to their mom as the social worker tells her they are taking her children. Your friend stands on the porch and sobs as her children are buckled into a state car. She doesn’t know where they’re going. She doesn’t know when she’ll see them again.

Imagine CASAs interviewing your family and friends for all the things that have gone wrong in your life. Imagine having your worst parenting moment made public. Your worse fight. Your lowest point. The saddest, most shameful things you’ve never even told your best friend. Imagine standing in front of a judge while those things are being discussed. Imagine your family and friends in the courtroom listening to it all.

Shame and hopelessness, the way they overlap.

Imagine a phoenix rising out of that. Witness a parent suffering through withdrawal. Earmark the day that parent becomes employed. Congratulate the parent when she convinces a landlord to rent her an apartment. See a parent ride three city buses each way to visit her child for an hour. See a person rise up out of wreckage. It can make your heart catch in your throat. See them stand in front of the judge while you attest that things have changed for the better. Not perfect. Better.

Know that if this parent can change, anyone can. You. Me. Those places in us we hide in shame? We can stop hiding. We can forgive ourselves. We can move on. Maybe we won’t be great, but we’ll be better. Maybe not even good, but better. Believing in others is ultimately about believing in yourself.

Failure and redemption.

Worry and hope.

The ways our lives overlap.

Deb Stone’s writing has appeared in STIR Journal, The Oregonian, Portland Tribune, Portland Upside, and Clackamas Literary Review. Her essay “Mr. Potato Head’s Secret Life” was selected for Portland’s 2014 inaugural Listen to Your Mother show. She has essays in The Truth of Memoir: How to Write about Yourself and Others with Honesty, Emotion, and Integrity and Stepping Up: Stories of Blended Families. Deb has been a birth, foster, step, and adoptive parent to over thirty children, a Court Appointed Special Advocate for another two dozen abused and neglected kids in foster care, and provides training to child advocates, social workers, and parents. She is seeking representation for her memoir Mother Up. Follow Deb on Twitter @iwritedeb. She met Jen Pastiloff in Portland at The Writer’s Voice Workshop with Suzy Vitello and Lidia Yuknavitch.

Jennifer Pastiloff, the founder of The Manifest-Station, is a writer living on an airplane. Her work has been featured on The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, Jezebel, Salon, among others. Jen’s leading a long weekend retreat to Ojai, Calif over Labor Day in Ojai, Calif. She and bestselling author Emily Rapp will be leading another writing retreat to Vermont in October. Check out her site jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Next up: Los Angeles, Seattle, London, Atlanta, South Dakota, Dallas. She tweets/instagrams at @jenpastiloff.

And So It Is, Beating Fear with a Stick, Guest Posts, healing

All I Need to Know About Self Love I Learned from a Kindergartner.

March 26, 2014

All I Need to Know About Self Love I Learned from a Kindergartner. By Amy Roost.

Writing: It’s a numbers game. I send my editor a column knowing full well that most of the intended audience will never read it. And for those who do take the time, many won’t care and many more won’t like what I have to say.

And that’s fine because I don’t measure success by the number of people who read or like what I write. Rather I consider myself successful if what I share eases the way for just one reader.

And so it is with this hope that I share a story of abuse and recovery.

Between the ages of approximately 5 and 8, I was sexually abused by my brother nine years older than me. He told me he would kill me if I ever spoke a word of his transgressions to our parents. I believed him and followed orders until I was 16.

Our family was gathered for dinner. My brother waited in prey until the most opportune moment when he made a cruel remark about my ass being too big for my chair. It was not the first time he’d substituted verbal abuse for his previous physical abuse, but for whatever reason on this occasion I snapped and ran to my bedroom crying. My mother came to console me but it was no use. I was so hysterical that she wanted to take me to the hospital. I refused. I wailed. I screamed. And finally, I spilled the truth.

She was devastated, as any mother would be who learned that in the anguish and self-absorption of her divorce she had not protected her child. She did not question my story; she did, however, ask me to keep my story “our secret”.

It wasn’t until years later, when I was going through a depressive episode in graduate school, that my mother finally confronted my brother, insisting he apologize for his actions. I vividly remember taking his call: Standing in the kitchen of the brownstone where I lived in New York City staring out a window at the Chinese restaurant below, I heard his small voice utter the words “I’m sorry.”

I’d had dreamed of this moment for years and the satisfaction I’d derive from hurling expletives his way. Instead what I felt was tremendous relief from the heavy veil of secrecy having been lifted and hearing by abuser acknowledge the truth–a truth the veracity of which I ‘d begun to question myself, so long had it remained dormant.

Sexual abuse survivors — and there are millions of us, men and women alike — will recognize this statement. As well as the narrative I’d constructed around my childhood trauma that went something along the lines of: “If you’d kept away from him it never would have happened.” “It was your fault for not telling your parents.” “You liked the attention and let it continue to happen.” Such was the guilt and self-loathing that had become deeply etched in my psyche.

Through counseling and the love of a select few I trusted with my story, I healed in fits and starts until a day not long ago when my whole perspective shifted.

I was babysitting a neighbor’s 5-year-old daughter. We made animal shadows on the wall and she squealed with delight every time I used my best ventriloquist’s voice to make the shadows “talk.” We laughed so hard that tears ran down my cheeks. She looked up at me concerned and reached to wipe my tears away. “Don’t cry,” she said. “It’ll be OK.” And that’s when it hit me: the 5-year-old me could no more have caused what my brother had done than this innocent loving child next to me could cause harm to herself.

Writing: It’s a numbers game. Many of you will think this story TMI. But perhaps one person will recognize her experience in what I’ve shared and feel more connected, less lonely. It is for her that I write.

Amy Roost is executive director of Silver Age Yoga and a multi-dimensional freelancer.

: Click photo to connect with Amy.

Her multi-dimensional suchness, Amy Roost, is a freelance writer, book publicist, legal and medical researcher, and vacation rental manager. She and her husband are the authors of “Ritual and the Art of Relationship Maintenance” due to be published later this year in a collection entitled Ritual and Healing: Ordinary and Extraordinary Stories of Transformation (Motivational Press). Amy is also Executive Director of Silver Age Yoga Community Outreach (SAYCO) which offers geriatric yoga teacher certification, and provides yoga instruction to underserved seniors.

Click here to connect with Amy.

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Jennifer Pastiloff is a writer based in Los Angeles. She is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Jen will be leading a retreat to Ojai, Calif in May and again over Labor Day weekend. https://jenniferpastiloff.com/Yoga_Retreats_With_Jen_Pastiloff.htmlAll retreats are a combo of yoga/writing and for ALL levels. Read this post to understand what a Manifestation retreat is. Check out her site jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Jen and bestselling author Emily Rapp will be leading another writing retreat to Vermont in October. A lot. Next up are workshops in Dallas, Seattle then London!! Book here.