Ten years ago today, I was the Keynote Speaker at Dial Help's Gala held at Michigan Tech. My Storyline quilts were also on display. I was going public in a fancy way.
I remember the feelings of shame/anxiety and angst that collided with strength, empowerment and courage. I felt fear and bravely went ahead anyway. I also was excited to show my quilts - my journey in fabric. The beautiful colors, expressions and healing they held.
A friend said, it was my coming out.
In a way, it was me introducing me to the world - the me free from the cloud of denial. Yet she was fairly new to herself - I can see now - 10 years later.
While I was in the healing process - and had uncovered and lay bare so much of my wound - I hadn't the time for re-growth. I was still pretty raw and yet I stood up and shared a part of the victim's journey.
The main idea was to be the voice I had longed for, and to speak about what is most often kept silent.
Having my quilts present with me, softened and made more palatable my words.
Speaking truthfully about the reality of having a pedophile for a father and a mother who knew and allowed it to continue for generations - and how it sets you up in reality - was my tone for the talk.
What is so hard for others to understand is how at 46 I suddenly knew what I didn't know before. How denial is just that denial.
When you are raised in a false landscape, you believe it to be your truth. You are not given both sides to debate with. It is very difficult for my mind to understand the depth and darkness of denial - let alone explain it. The sheer will of the mind is against you.
What I know to be true, is that there are many souls who live in the land of denial. They believe in its false truths as if they were true. They are lost among the false realities and are unaware.
Many people believe that denial is a thing you contemplate and then execute. When in fact it happens prior to thought.
Or more, there is no other choice available.
Until there is.
You don't know what you don't know, until you know.
My years of living in denial feel like a separate life - and I died in that one at 46.
This second life I am living is so drastically different, I am a new me.
The me I am today, even 10 years after the Gala is so much more at peace, in love and with joy - it is beyond what my imagination could imagine.
I know that when I began walking out of denial - the future was a ghost on the horizon of 'someday'.
I lived for this moment in time. I took one step at a time hoping I could change the legacy of my family.
I wasn't following a pathway that held a specific destination or place marked "healed" or "whole" or even happy. All I knew for sure, is that I couldn't repeat what I had lived through. I wasn't going to be my mother whose blindness and ability to live well in denial cost so many little ones their innocence.
I had to try and walk different. Live different and make choices that cost me my family of origin.
I had to.
I had to try.
I didn't once again know what I didn't know.
I was beginning a journey with a new self into a foreign land of truths and mental awareness.
And, I was taking my family with me - whether they knew it or not - we'd all experience the effects of my choices. It wasn't easy for them - or for any one of us. Being different isn't an easy role to live out. In dysfunctional families it often means estrangement.
We have to make the choices that separate us from the patterns and often that means ending relationships. Anyone who sided with the pedophile was automatically distanced from. There was no other way.
There isn't a spot in a relationship that will tolerate child abuse - and family love.
You simply cannot have both.
You get to pick one.
What I am most proud of is my ability to stay the course - losing so many along the way.
The relationship deaths were and are, real deaths.
We ceased to exist for each other.
The reason abuse continues on for generations is the inability to sever ties with family.
Those who can, are becoming more and more common. I do know others now who have left their families for the same reasons. Whereas ten years ago, I knew no one - only a few authors.
Looking backwards over the years, I know it was hard and I am not sure where I got my inner determination and grit to stick it out. To walk away from a large family - but I did.
I am hopeful as I watch the new generation of my family tree - move through life - they do now have both sides I didn't have. They have me speaking truthfully and acting out that truth, as I stay way from family functions - they are spared denial.
Even if, or maybe especially if the reality is harsh and brutal and abuse of children happens - I will speak of it. I will do and say and be the one to says out loud - what needs to be said.
The difference truth would have made to my childhood and the childhood of my sisters and our friends is quite shocking. So many are now lost to themselves, their own truths and self-love, self-empowerment and a life free of denial.
I think the biggest or greatest loss is the loss of self.
Denying our own truths, our hurts, our fears...and a clear mind.
A mind that can hold even the most shocking of truths.
Yet, often our denial begins with abuse and spares us the harsh reality we live in.
So, while we live in the harsh reality, our minds transpose a nicer overlay of loving kindness.
What I am most grateful for is being able to see - even if at first I saw too much - and that I had the ability to speak about what I saw and how it impacted my world. How freeing it was to be able to walk hand and hand with the truth. The more I shared and the more I wrote and posted, the more I defined me and began to build me.
Ten years and counting from the gala - 17 years and counting waking up from denial. I love who I am becoming.
If my legacy is to give other little girls the chance to know themselves and be themselves and live their truths - I live in peace.
