HONESTY MONTH: DAY 16: “It is not easy to keep silent when silence is a lie.” ― Victor Hugo
All my life, I have been the big mouth in my family. I would ask the embarrassing questions at all the wrong times. Once, when I was very little, I asked “Daddy, why did you throw your beer under the seat?” (He was being pulled over for something and the cop had just walked up to the door of the truck we were driving!)
I frequently spoke of the “Family Secrets” … (omg! There were SO many!); and could never understand why we had to keep so many things secret. I am not good at it. I have learned that I can only speak about MY stuff; but I do not keep secrets well any more than I did as a child.
I talk about things that embarrass or confuse others; because ‘we don’t talk about those things’. I do. I am not going to keep silent about any of it!
What I have learned here was how sick those secrets kept me and everyone else. I was ashamed of things that had not been my doing. Things that had happened to me and I did not know how to talk about them, because I was trained to “not tell” EVER!
So, I got here with things that still did not come out right away. And I have learned to talk about them, even though I have been told I was not telling the truth by some folks. Even though I could not “prove” the stories to them.
After all this time, I am getting to talk about it and have some form of closure. The closure comes in the form of being recognized as having gone through some shit that is not uncommon, but is devastating in the effects it has had on my life for over 40 years.
This was not a childhood thing, there was plenty of that, believe me! This is stuff that took place as a young adult in situations where I felt completely unable to fight back. If you wonder where my “spirit” comes from and my warrior way of walking through the world, they are gifts of this time and having survived it.
And even when I came forward to tell my story, for many years, I have been discounted and not taken seriously or believed. I have been told to be quiet and go away. But I continued to talk. And, one fine day, the Universe opened doors that I have been walking through for nearly 9 months now.
And the rewards of opening those doors and looking at the situation and feeling all the feelings and seeing all the patterns of my life have been many. I did not want to do this. I did NOT want to write about it today. It needed to come out here, though…and I am allowing that.
You guys who read this, whomever you are and wherever you are, get to know things about me I had no way to communicate. My voice is written on each page of this writing each and every day. It has given me a place to speak about my experiences and how the healing of them feels and what it looks like for me. Sometimes you respond and tell me it helped you. That is the goal, and the point of what we all do in this recovery dance.
For me, it is something that I do so I can make peace with the events of my life. So that I can heal, spiritually and emotionally from damage that ran my life, even long after the drugs and alcohol were gone.
I am a force to reckon with, as a healing person. It was never about the drugs and the booze, it was always about my broken-ness. About OUR broken-ness. It is epic, it is the culture we live in that denies how broken we all become; the families that deny our pain and our fear because they cannot tolerate their own; the social systems that cannot do what is ours to do.
The fact that we all have to come to the table, with whatever we have in us, and eat of the food that will nourish our souls; one bite at a time, one minute at a time; until we are filled. And that we have to love and accept ourselves and this way of life, more deeply every day, in order to get what we need to be filled. Not the way we were filled before…that is the shit we have to empty out in these inventories…let it go.
We always ask “why?” … but it does not matter. JUST DO IT. The work will take you, again and again, to the table where your meal is waiting. Just go there, do what is suggested and never stop doing it. Don’t let busy-ness get in your way…be fearless and thorough, from the very start…today is a great time to begin!
Dolphin Hug 