Healing

Had to Heal Myself

It Was, It Has Been, a Long Road

In prior blog entries I told of how I'd had a traumatic childhood. It's part of me, I choose to let positives define me.

Although I am not a particularly religious person, the places in the bible where it speaks of the dire consequences of abusing a child. From life experience I can tell you it took me a long long time to recover. 
First,a  person must discover for themselves what was done that was wrong along with the way it affects their current life.
Next, it's important to sort out what the unhealthy statements were from the more constructive statements of those people who were in a position of trust. 
Then, it's important to sort out the nurturing parental actions from the destructive actions.

In my case, my father was an alcoholic with a 3rd grade education. He had never learned to read or write. He was morbidly unhappy with his life in general. That unhappiness exploded out of him when he was drunk then also when he was hung over. It exploded in the form of his thick leather belt beatings of myself & my siblings. Then there were his many nights of sitting at the kitchen table with a gun in his mouth threatening to pull the trigger, threatening for sometimes as long as 2 hours at a time. His attitude toward females in general was very negative, very perverse. Among many things he would tell me I should stand out on the street, hike my dress up and make some money to help the family......I was only 10 years old.

Mother had her own demons to deal with, figuratively. I believe she was a paranoid schizophrenic. She would quite often say she "saw things" like demons, men in dark cloaks, hiding outside her window. Sometimes she would be sitting by herself appearing to be talking to someone when there was no one there. When I would ask her who she was talking to, she would fly into a rage, telling me how evil I was, that I was born from evil, so, I WAS evil.

I had a brother and a sister who were older than me, then 2 brothers and a sister younger than me. I was always very curious, so, I looked into everything. This seemed to backfire on me as it made my parents very angry when I asked questions. Most often, I was the target of their anger. A leather belt, a switch from a tree, sometimes their fists.

It took quite a bit of time for me to recover from the damage of my childhood. I made a very poor choice when I married. There were so many choices, I could have married someone so much better than him. Someone who was more secure in himself, less selfish, more respectful toward women, a man with more integrity, more ambition. Well, ya do what you do, with the knowledge you have at the time. I could have chosen more wisely than I did. His selfishness, manipulative habits, dishonesty plus insecurity was more abuse to recover from.

Although I had gone through some intense counseling for a year at one point, it was like a bunny-hop dance. Two steps forward after a very good counseling session, one hop backward when he got home from work that evening and so on. Nothing I did was ever good enough or right, according to him. He would sabotage my efforts to decorate the house by waiting until I would be gone, running errands for a few hours, he would totally re-arrange the furniture, the pictures on the wall or sometimes he would take curtains down and conveniently "forget" where he put them. These tactics wore me down when he did these things over and over. I loved to sew clothing for our two sweet daughters. I wanted them to have the beautiful clothing that I never had, as a child. It was a loving effort to give to them without the hefty price tag. When I would finish making an outfit, my daughters would dance around in their new, home made clothing, showing off to their daddy. He would begin by telling me everything that was wrong with the clothing until I simply told him to "Kiss my ass. Shut up until you can do something better." That usually resulted in him freezing me out for 2 - 4 days at a time.

FFWD:
Having been divorced for several years, I have found so many things to be happy about. As silly as this may sound, every little thing to be happy about is also a healing balm to cushion my heart, my mind against the inevitable pains of life plus healing a bit more. Daily workouts give a feeling of strength of body plus strength of mind of spirit.
In the past 2 years, I have felt a sense of stabilization in my every day activities. Sleep comes to me easily, now,  I stay asleep for the entire 6 - 8 hours. An electric blanket plus a heated mattress pad help to provide comforting, blissful warmth as I wrap my arms around a body pillow while placing another at my back to feel a simulated embrace into deep, refreshing sleep. Workouts give my mind peace. Feeling my body return to the strong, flexibility of many years ago feels almost like a miracle although, in truth, it takes many hours of effort, sweat, perseverance!
Changing many of my eating habits, sleeping habits, changing my surroundings to reflect more simplicity. All of this has a healing effect upon me. It also brings a calmness to my life so that those things that would have disturbed my peace a few years ago, now, roll off of me leaving me calm, happy, sometimes a bit relieved.
Some things that make me happy?
Resistance Bands
Yoga
Pilates
Treating myself to eating 1 piece of cookie dough
New Music
Taking someone out for lunch
BBC Period Drama
Walking around a nearby lake
Sweating so hard there is no dry spot on my T Shirt
New muscle developments
One liner jokes
Holding cats & dogs at the animals shelter
Taking a trip to see friends
Donating un-needed "stuff" to where ever I can
The birdsong which I hear more of in Texas
Eating cilantro (it gives me deja-vu)
New shoes!

There's so much more, those are only a few things I can think of right now, there is definitely more!

Find something you love today, then go, enjoy it. Enjoy it fully, passionately. Be happy in simplicity.