Carl 4, Mark 3 and myself 5
This picture was taken in a basement apartment in Greeley, Co.
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Mark 3, Donny 1, myself 5 and Carl 4.
This picture was taken on the front lawn of that same basement apartment in Greeley, Co.
AN HONOR BESTOWED
I've been asked to give my testimony as one of the guest speakers at the Sandhills Crisis Intervention Program's (SCIP) 25th Year Anniversary celebration. This years celebration will be held on Friday, November 5, 2010, here, in Ogallala, NE at the Platte River Inn Convention Center.
SCIP is a non-profit organization committed to eliminating violence in the lives of children, women and men through empowerment, education and social action. They provide services to victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.*1 They are the angels of the day and a safe harbor, when needed, at night. I am honored to have this opportunity to be a part of this celebration but frightened by the challenge, by the extreme uncomfortability of such an honor.
Needless to say, I am a bundle of nerves. A challenge? Uncomfortable? Why?
I will be speaking mostly to a hometown crowd. I have spent most of my life in or around this community and have a collection of sweet and sour memories that, until I give this testimony, have rested mostly in my heart.
It has taken me more than a week to write out what I would speak about. I prayed, I have rewrote more than a dozen times, and finally ... the following is what I will be sharing at this special celebration, the first Friday of November, 2010.
**********TESTIMONY OF TRUTHQUESTIONS TO PONDER
Do you think your experiences shape you and influence your walk in life?
Have you ever been so terrified that you just shut down and didn't move, couldn't move?
Or ran, as fast as you could, no turning to look back?
Or kept silent and died inside?
Depending on the answers you thought to these questions, you will either find hope in my sharing or be uncomfortable with my sharing. I don't mind, either way.
WHY SHARE?
I'm not a stranger to speaking in front of a group of people but this will be the first time I have ever shared as it relates to the domestic violence that nearly destroyed myself and my two older brothers. So why share now? Well, as a work in progress, I've learned that
to transform a broken soul I must move the brokenness from the dark cellar of secrets and bring it to the light of hope, as a survivor. A dark time can only haunt you if it is kept in the shadows. Each time I share I break the bindings of fear and breaking each binding gives me power to overcome the victim role I've played most of my life. Until I was about 7 years old I didn't know that what happened in my home wasn't also happening in your home. On my first sleepover, my friends mother tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. Whoa!! From then on I remember feeling so overwhelmingly alone. Until I started sharing. Each time I share, others have come forward, ... I realize, I AM NOT ALONE.
AND MY SHARING BEGINS WITH MY YOUNGER YEARS...
My parents were divorced when I was 3 years old. I was a young woman when Mom shared with me that my birth Dad was her way out of a dysfunctional, alcoholic home life and it took her three years to discover she had stumbled from one fire into another. It wasn't until years after I left home, that
I would learn about the cycle of domestic abuse and how, like a merry-go-round, it cycles through generations, creating a rippling effect that reaches out into every aspect of life.I was still 3 years old when Mom married my 1st step dad and moved my two brothers and me from Nebraska to Colorado where my third brother was born. Here, too, it would be many years later before I would understand what alcoholism was and what a dysfunctional alcoholic home was, but back then, with my first step dad, I learned to identify it by waiting for him to climb out of the truck he drove. If he stumbled, I would hide at home or remain very quiet if we were picking him up from a long haul. Stumbling or slurred speech could turn into a rage at the drop of a hat.
My earliest memory of abuse was at the age of 5. I didn't know it was abuse then, I just knew something happened that I never wanted to happen again, but it would.
I was just a mite, and I put on my Sunday dress, got on my little red trike and peddled myself all the way over to the Nazarene Church. I remember this as a warm place to me, a happy place. I had to peddle several blocks and I don't remember if I made it to that church or not. You see, this was not Sunday and my family reported me missing. I was picked up at the police station, after my family was informed I was found. I was taken home and escorted, by my first step dad, out to the garage behind the basement apartment we all lived in.
My little Sunday dress was taken off and he took off his belt and beat on me for what seemed like a long time. I don't remember the pain of that belt across my back, butt and legs, as much as the terror I felt. When he was done, he put my little dress back on and waited until I quit sobbing, while he smoked a cigarette. I was then escorted me back into the house and straight to bed. I'm sure this was to scare me into never riding off on my trike like that again. I didn't. AND, I would never seek God with such earnest innocence, again, until I was in my late 20's.
My brothers and I were an often audience to this man beating, back handing, and knocking Mom down. My brother Carl was always the one that tried to go to Mom's rescue, which would then turn this man's rage upon his little body. I would cringe and gather Mark and Donny into a crying huddle as Carl would become the new punching bag. By the time Carl, a year younger than me, was 8, he too would just cringe and join our crying huddle and we would put our hands over our ears so we couldn't hear.
Our only saving grace, in those early years, was the fact that this man was a truck driver and often on the road. I remember the calm and all the laughter that filled the home with mom, and four little tike's, when he was gone. I remember the stillness of fear and whispering alot when he was home.
When I was 6, we moved to a duplex in Greeley, Colorado, where the beatings were the worst. Our first Christmas in this home would be the 1st of many that would make holidays difficult for me, even to this day. We three older kids sneaked a peek at our Christmas presents under the tree that year. When our step dad discovered this, he let us open our presents and even let us play with them a bit. Just when we thought we weren't going to get in trouble, he took our new gifts from us and broke them one by one and threw them away. We were then sent to our rooms for the rest of that Christmas Day. No, we never peeked again.
Where was Mom when this man would be especially cruel? She worked in a blue jean factory and even when she was around, she feared him as much as she loved him. I do remember one night when he was drunk and had shoved her out the door and locked it, then placed each one of us kids in various places around the kitchen. He placed his own son, our baby brother, on top of the fridge. A very high perch for a 3 year old. He then brought this pistol up in front of him, loading one bullet in it, he spins the chamber and points it at my head and asks me if I think the bullet is in the chamber. If I don't answer, I get slapped. CLICK! He went around the kitchen to each of us, skipping our baby brother, before beginning the process all over again. We could hear Mom screaming at him through the door that if he hurt any of her babies, she would kill him. CLICK! I don't remember how many times he did this. The bullet was never fired in all those times he'd spun that chamber. This was the first memory that came to mind when, years later, I would be reflecting back for miracles amid this time of terror.
What part did the schools play in those early days? Shushhhhhhhh! They didn't say a word. Three little kids came often to their classroom with welts on their legs and arms. At home, we had to go downstairs, to the wash room, and strip while he wet that leather belt of his. The pattern from that belt would stay on our legs and backs for days.
The teachers said nothing, and our classmates were even less comforting. They would add insult to our injuries by making fun of us and playing cruel jokes on us. I would often hide in a junk room in the basement of the school to avoid their cruelty. Sometimes I'd skip school altogether and hang out at the tadpole pond. I turned inward and began to isolate myself from others, especially after I learned from that 1st sleepover that what happened in our home, DIDN'T happen in yours.
I was 7 years old when my first step dad raped me. I didn't even know I had been raped, and I wouldn't know it was rape until I was in my 50's. I was told it was a game and I could get 25 cents and it was our little secret. I was even eager to play this game, at first, because it seemed that he beat me less and, really, all I wanted was a Daddy to love me. He was even nicer to Mom. But when Mom nearly caught us playing the game, his actions to quickly hide what we were playing made me feel suddenly very scared. I knew something was wrong but didn't know what. So, when Grandma, who seemed to be the only one who hugged me all the time and made me feel so safe when ever she was around, came to visit one weekend, I told her, in front of Mom, about the game. I thought Grandma was going to kill my step dad. I'd never seen my Grandma that mad before. It took Mom a long time to calm her down and get her repacked and sent home, back to Nebraska, before my step dad got home.
That should have been the end of it, right? Well, yes, he was kicked out ... at least until he seemed to convince Mom that I was lying. After all, I had an imaginary friend named, Star, that I insisted was real. (Only Grandma would set a place for Star at the dinner table when we'd visit her in NE!) Star helped me not to hurt as bad. I could talk to her in my mind and not feel the pain of those wet belt beatings. I would learn later that this was a coping mechanism I used to survive.
I was sent to a psychiatrist for a couple of sessions and my step dad was moved back in and the beatings and rapes continued, only worse than ever before. He would remind us to keep our mouths shut because no one would care what he did and promised worse if we ever told our Grandma. I never told her but she requested our summers be spent with her. Those summers in Paxton, NE were our heaven during those earlier violent years. As we grew older, our step dad would find ways to keep us from stays with Grandma. The risk we would talk was greater the older we got.
The summer I turned 10, Mom ran away. She left us with him. We didn't know why, all we knew was, she was gone and we didn't know where. After three days of her missing, my brother Carl and I, broke out of our room, (we were grounded that whole summer to our room. We could come out to go to the bathroom but that was all.) As terrified as we were of our step dad, we still risked great harm to go find our Mom. We climbed out the bedroom window and began a door to door campaign of the little town we were living in by then, asking all who answered if they had seen our Mom. We were near done when our step dad drove up and leaned over and threw open the passenger door of his car and yelled at us to get in. He already had our youngest brother in the car and he drove all of us over to our Mom's youngest sister's home in Greeley, CO. That was the last time we ever saw him.
Mom? Well, she was sitting on the front porch of a rooming house a couple of states away by the time Carl and I were searching for her. It would be there on that porch a few weeks later that the woman, who ran the rooming house, would talk to Mom and what she said impacted Mom enough to go get her 4 kids and leave Colorado and go home to Nebraska. What was said to Mom... well, that is her story to tell. I can tell you that from my perspective, as a 10 year old girl, Mom was a different woman. Stronger, some how. She worked hard to raise 4 children by herself and by the time I was 13, this single mother bought her own home and moved us from Paxton to Ogallala into our 1st permanent home.
THE CYCLE CONTINUES BUT NOW BEGINS WITH US ...
What was life like now that the violence and the rapes were no longer a threat? The scars were never healed. We left the violence of a sick alcoholic man only to be bullied in school for our poverty and our inability to fit in. We had no idea what to do with the mess of emotions that left us socially handicapped.
Violent outbursts between Carl, Mark and myself, erupted shortly after we moved to Paxton, NE. These outbursts grew, as we grew, and by the time we moved into our new home in Ogallala we were dangerously violent in our outbursts. We became so rebellious, and out of control, that Carl and Mark were placed in a foster home and I became the drama queen of Ogallala High School. My disruptive behaviour, excessive tardiness and failing grades should have been a red flag that I was in trouble and needed help. Instead, I would be put on various suspensions until finally in my junior year I was quietly expelled for being pregnant. By that time Mom had married my 2nd step-father and together they kicked me out of my home.
EIGHTEEN AND A SINGLE MOTHER IN NORTH PLATTE, NE ...
On the streets, I took the fast track into self-destruction. Soon after my son was born, I moved in with a man that would nearly kill us both. After being raped by him, beaten during drunken rages and trying to break it off with him, only to have him threaten me with if he couldn't have me, then no one could and that he would put my son's body and mine somewhere where no one would find us ... I fled. I fled with my best friend to Kearney, NE. No safe houses back then, or programs like SCIP. But we had a key ingredient that is used in the present formula for helping victims today ... support and understanding.
My dear friend had just escaped her own violent relationship and she rescued me and took me somewhere safe. WE WERE EACH OTHERS SUPPORT SYSTEM. I believe she saved my life. Not long after she moved me to her home town, the man I had fled from killed a man in a drunken brawl and was sent to Prison. From him, I was safe.
SOME MEMORIES FROM KEARNEY, NE TO HASTINGS, NE ...
Safe would have been enough if I would have been an emotionally healed and healthy single mother. But like my mother before me, I was trying to live a life with dysfunctional tools. So it wasn't really a surprise to me anymore when my safe haven puked up another abusive relationship that would take me down the fast track of self destruction, landing me in the hospital in Hasting, NE, near dead. After 7 days in ICU, I was transferred to the Hasting Regional Center where I went through a 3 month intensive treatment program that saved my life. I was a different woman after treatment. Not healed or healthy yet, but stronger.
***For just a moment here, I'm going to digress a bit and tell you some of what my son was experiencing during the first few years of his life. I remember telling myself, many times, during those younger years that when I grew up I would never treat my kids the way I had been treated.
My son was not quite 3 months old and colicky, when I roughly dropped him in his crib. When I started going to the bars (during Nebraska's short stint of the drinking age being 18), I often left him sleeping in his crib for hours. He, too, was often witness to the abuse I would receive in unhealthy relationships I would get myself in. And finally by the time he was going through the normal terrible two's I was beating him for trivial things, just as I had been beaten for.
I remember a most violent incident just before I ended up in the hospital, where I kicked him and kicked him until he curled up into a ball and sobbed "goo goo, gaa gaa." Hearing that broke through my violent haze and I fell to the floor and swooped him up in my arms and rocked him back and forth as I sobbed how sorry I was.
I would swear, many times, not to hurt him again, only to hurt him again. When his bruises would show I would tell him if anyone asked about them, not to tell them Mommy hit him or they would come take him away. It wasn't a lie. But it wasn't a good truth either.
My son was nearly 4 years old, that night I overdosed. It is a miracle he, too, did not die. Not because I had hurt him, because that night he was so quiet and submissive, quickly doing anything I asked. He stayed off my radar. Just like I use to when I would hide from my 1st step dad. It was a miracle that I awoke after going completely out. I shouldn't have. But I did. I woke ... and wrote my name, my address, and that my son was home alone,
SEND HELP and the names of the narcotics I had overdosed on. I left the house and tried to walk to a main street. I didn't have a phone, no cell phones in those days, and I knew I couldn't drive. By the time I made it to a main street in Hastings, I was crawling and by the time I was taken to the hospital I was nearly dead, and it would be nearly three days before I could ask where my son was.
I would learn that the note I wrote, with all that important information, was like scribbling. I had wrote everything on top of each other and they never understood that my son was home, alone ... for nearly 3 days ... alone. He never left the house. He ate everything out of the fridge. Ketchup, mustard, ... anything he could open. He wore his night diaper for the whole time and suffered blisters and was a bit dehydrated but otherwise was in good condition when they found him. This was my most precious of those miracles that years later, I would cling to!
I LIVED. HE LIVED. THERE HAD TO BE A REASON.OFF TO LINCOLN, NE FOR TWO BROKEN SOULS ...When I was released from the Hastings Regional Center, I was told it would be to my best interest to go to a halfway house for women, St. Monica's, in Lincoln, NE, and learn the tools I would need to put my life back on a healthy track. My son was placed in temporary foster care, also in Lincoln.
It would be six months later before I felt strong enough not to trash my life with alcohol and drugs and armed with a new support group of friends and some new tools to change, my son and I were reunited and settled in a small apartment that St. Monica's helped me obtain. They also helped me get my GED while in the halfway house and to enroll and begin college at Southeast Community College.
Yes, I was changing and though I never returned to the streets, I found my rage was still unpredictable when, just a few months after our reunion, I back handed my son and blacked his eye. This time I told him to tell, whom ever asked about his black eye, that I had hit him. And, unlike in MY younger years, his kindergarten teacher asked and acted on the information given. Child Protective Service was on my door step that very afternoon and I told them I needed help to be a healthy Mom for my son.
CPS WAS MY PULL OFF THE MERRY-GO-ROUND. MOSTLY HEALTHY CHOICES WOULD MARK MY LIFE WALK FROM HERE ...
Child Protective Service scheduled me for counseling and my son and I entered a year long program that helped both of us. Both of us? I had hand me down tools for parenting and they were broke. My son had learned that to get tender, loving hugs and kisses, he first had to go thru my violence.
He wasn't as afraid of me as he was, desperate, for my love. In that year, my son and I would learn new, healthier, ways of getting each others attention. Together we learned wonderful ways to love each other. We were breaking a cycle of pain. I took the steps needed to get off the merry-go-round of pain and make
mostly healthy choices, instead of mostly destructive ones, to break the cycle of abuse.
I learned to ignore the negative, the triggers that could set off a rage incident, and focus on the positives. Recently, I was reminded that we
ALL HAVE A LIGHT AND A DARK SIDE. THE SIDE WE FOCUS ON IS WHO WE BECOME. I learned the biggest hurdle is forgiving myself and that anger is a very normal feeling. It was what I did with my anger that I needed to change!
I WISH I COULD TELL YOU ALL WAS WELL ... AND IT WAS ...
I wish I could tell you all was well after that.
I can tell you I left college to enter a training program at the Independence Center in Lincoln, NE, to learn to work with folks trying to trash their lives and families with alcohol and drugs, like I had. I would be hired at the end of this training program and worked in the field of Alcohol & Drug Addiction for several years. It was the only job I ever had that helped me grow, heal, and believe in myself again. It was a family centered environment and they enveloped my son and I in this caccoon of love which enabled us to continue to grow without violence between us.
I can tell you I met and married my 1st husband during this period and it would be a couple of years before that relationship yielded to some old unhealthy patterns.
I can tell you, I had a daughter that is ten years younger than my son. I can count on one hand the times I lost control and was inappropriate during her first 14 years of life. I never again raged to the point of breaking her spirit, as I had with my son. That doesn't mean I didn't make mistakes and I have some regrets. My kids and I have a special relationship and their forgiveness and love has encouraged me to try to give them a life where I wasn't having to ask for their forgiveness all the time. I needed to be more for them than what I had.
I can tell you that when my 1st husband began to exhibit that familiar abusive behaviour, I stumbled back into that comfortable victim role. I kept thinking I could 'fix' him. After all, I now had counseling certification under my belt and should be able to stop his attacks. When he went back to drinking, the violence drove me from the home.
He came home from the bar one night and raped me. I took my kids and I fled. I fled the violence, but also the fact that I almost killed him that night. Each time I went to get out of bed and get the carving knife to kill him ... he'd move and I'd fear him waking up and raping me again. But by 1st light that morning, I had a plan and killing him wasn't cool, so I took the kids and fled from the home.
Aide to Dependent Children had some emergency programs back then. I was granted a three month emergency fund that provided my kids and I money to rent a furnished apartment and food stamps for food. But because my husband and I owned our home and a buisness, three months was all they could help me with before we were homeless. Again, no safe houses then or programs like SCIP. St Monica's, was not a program that included the fractured families back then, so they were unable to help me again. So, ADC Emergency Funding was the best 'safe' plan I could cling to, back then.
After 4 months, and a month of that was a treatment program that both, my husband and I went through, we got back together and for another two years, things were comfortable ... until he went back to drinking. When he tried to rape me again ...
this time I fought back and fled half naked out of the house for help. He baracaded himself in the house with our daughter, who was three years old at the time. The house was surrounded with police and yet, when I told them he was no danger to our daughter, they departed. He surrendered our daughter to me a few hours later and the next day I moved across the state, back to my hometown, Ogallala. It would be a difficult divorce and one that would leave scars that took a long time to heal.
I wish I could tell you that these years back in my hometown have been free from violence and pain. Remember that rippling effect? I was changing but that didn't prevent me from ever experiencing or being influenced by violence around me. I can tell you I was determined to continue changing and respond in more healthier ways. I'm still making adjustments. When I look back, I don't recognize who I use to be and I'm not yet where I need to be.
I can tell you that my 1st husband went through some tough times after I left for the last time. He has quite a story to share. Since it is his to share, I WILL tell you this, he made a choice to get off the merry-go-round and come home to NE after years of hiding in AZ, in a hell of his own making. He repaired most of the bridges he'd broke, especially the ones with his daughter and he has made amends to my son for his part in John's brokenness. I wish there were more fellas like him; to have the courage to admit they are a mess and make that choice clean up the mess and to stop the violence.
And what of my son and daughter? Guess you need to ask them for their side of the story. From my perspective, they're great kids and amazingly balanced in spite of my trail of tears I drug them through. I've been very open with them, maybe too open. They are both very good parents, very laid back compared to me. I hope I've always given them the understanding that should they ever get stuck, that I'm there to help any way I can. I hope I have passed on survival skills and lots of unconditional love.
And what of my brothers Carl and Mark? I believe I don't have enough time to share thier story with you. Besides, here again, it is their's to share. It is full of similar self destructive paths that I took, but where I was veered off to break my self destructive cycles and break the chains of violence, they both did time in prison and have struggled with healing and asking for help. They have a remarkable story, none-the-less, full of hardships and loss, and blessings, shrouded in tears.
IN CLOSING ... PERFECTION IS NOT A REQUIREMENT TO REACH OUT AND HELP SOMEONE WHOSE BROKEN, IS IT? ...So, we are here tonight to celebrate and to remember why we need SCIP and to know we are not alone.
Secrets, our little secrets, are prisons from which we are broken. Today, I am a survivor. I am a work in progress. I stumble and I still get lost. I seek help when I get stuck. Asking for help is not a weakness but an act of courage.
I am so grateful for a program like SCIP. It's heartbeat is one of love. It is such a giving and supportive program with a staff of big hearted folks, that understand. Perhaps, not yet, a perfect program, with perfect people but, then,
perfection is not a requirement to reach out and help someone whose broken, is it? SCIP works because we all have been violated by violence. We all know some form of it's pain and brokenness. SCIP offers a hope, that in brokenness we become stronger. I know I am stronger because SCIP is here. ♥
I would like to close with this poem from
AN ANONYMOUS SURVIVOR;
After a while you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul.
And you learn that love doesn't mean learning
And presents aren't promises.
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open.
With the grace of a woman and not the grief of a child.
And you learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans.
And futures have a way of falling down mid-flight.
After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.
And you learn and learn...
With every goodbye you learn.
AN ANONYMOUS SURVIVOR *2
*1 SCIP ~ The
Sandhills
Crisis
Intervention
Program ~ Mission Statement exerpts.
*2 copied from the Breaking the Silence: A Handbook for Battered Women
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