How It Got Started

For half a century I have been the keeper of everyone else's secrets.  My identity defined by others literally at birth.   A sealed legal document hiding my adoption details.  

Who was I?

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Keeping up appearances at church, school, baseball fields, neighborhood gatherings, family events while the walls of home vibrated with hostile hateful wars of marital and family discord.

Who could I tell? 

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Staying silent about late night visits to my bedroom, the locked bathroom doors, the objectification of my body becoming a woman.  The touching, the terror.  

Who was going to help me?

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I learned early how to live in shadows of shame and secrets.  I learned not to share my truth.  The chopped up pieces I did share were filtered for the sake of the listener.

What could they handle?

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As my children grew and experienced traumas of their own perpetrated by the very people whose secrets I was keeping, something became clear.

How would I explain this?

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My children along with trails of people I have met along the way, did not know me.

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I have been called secretive, confusing, creepy, and an imposter by people I considered friends.   Much of my life I have been unable to build long term relationships.  

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Hiding everyone else's secrets in a shadow of myself is no longer sustainable.  I can not carry their deeds, their shame, as my own.  I must live authentically.  I must embrace all that I am, regardless of how it makes others feel.

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I find it easier to talk with strangers about my experiences.  I believe it's a nothing to lose kind of freedom, and the feeling of being real in that brief moment is what I imagine living my truth would be like.  Every time this happens, regardless of what event I share, I am met with the same type of responses time after time. 

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"You should write a book, tell your story."

"You're story could help someone."

"You are a survivor."

"How are you not dead?"

"It is amazing that you didn't give up."

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These are quickly followed by a supportive statement, fearing they have offended me or uncovered questions I have not already asked myself.  But I don't take offense or feel they have uncovered anything I do not already know.  Then, slowly I wander back into the shadows, keeping everyone safe, staying digestible.   Minimizing my story always prevails and keeps me living small, dark, detached and privately enraged.   I have never gone back to my hometown to explain to friends, neighbors or extended family why I disappeared.  God knows what they were told.

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The work done on this site is an exercise in becoming comfortable with my truth.  Being accountable to my story.  Honoring who I am as a survivor.  Healing sucks.  It is not done in a succinct all in one time period.  It takes lifetimes within a lifetime.  There are years of distractions, years of ignoring, years of faking, years of destruction, years of doubting.  Until finally you hear her...she wants to know if you are ever going to step out of the shadows and shine. 

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I must have you know me, as I know me. I must have you love me, as I love me.

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