For My Birthday: Revisiting My Goal

On February fifteenth, I'll be seventy-three years old.  Not one of the birthdays that exists as a milestone of life.  No, the idea of turning seventy-three elicits a "ho, hum" from me and probably from a lot of other people!  Nevertheless, it's a birthday.  And on birthdays I try to remember to examine my life and see if I've made any progress in any aspect of life--but particularly in therapy, in working my toward an improvement in my mental health.

So how do I know if I've made progress?  What is my standard?  How do I mark my becoming, my growth?  In the story below, you will find my answer to these questions.  In addition, in this little story that I began writing about twenty years ago, you may find the answers to your own questions. 

And yes, I have made progress this year.  That's all I need for my birthday--to know I've made progress!  You can do the same!

To the men reading this:  You will have to translate the story into your own terms.  Sorry.  I wrote it to be used with women's groups, so it is, I'm afraid, gender-biased.

The Egg

Everyone has heard the story . . . of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table . .  from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still. . . Who knows what beautiful and  winged life . . . may unexpectedly come forth from amidst  society's most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy  its perfect summer life at last!  Thoreau, Walden, 221
 
  Normally, the little girl would not have bothered the egg.   She would not have taken it from its cozy nest between the roots of the tall fir tree, for she understood its possible importance to the creature that laid it.  However, there was something about this particular egg that fascinated her, something that caused her to pause as she took the short cut home through the woods.   Perhaps she was entranced by the egg's translucent blue shell.  She felt sure that she could view the mystery inside if only she could find the right light.  So she carefully lifted the egg, tucked it into her hanky, making sure that she tied the corners securely, and carried it home.
    Once home, she avoided her mother and her brothers by going up the back stairs to her room.  She didn't know why she needed to avoid her family, but she felt an urgency to keep the matter of her egg private--just between the egg and her.  She bundled the egg into a soft, fuzzy pair of winter socks, put the bundle into the box that had contained the softball she had gotten for Christmas, and stashed the box in a remote corner of her underwear drawer.  "Safe!" she sighed with relief.  Yes, safe, but she wasn't sure why that was such a relief or why she felt the need to keep the matter to herself.  She did not dwell on that thought, however, for she was a little girl, and she needed to get on with the business of her girlhood.
    Concerned for the first few weeks that the creature inside the egg might not hatch, that it might rot and make a mess in her dresser drawer, the girl checked the egg every day, and every day the egg seemed the same.  At the end of a month, the girl opened the flap of the box and loosened the egg's wrapping so that whatever came out could make a soft nest in her socks and panties, but no creature emerged.  Discouraged, the girl decided to keep the egg as a curiosity, and she seldom bothered to check on it after that.   One dull, rainy Saturday afternoon, however, about a year after she had found it, the girl idly removed the egg from its hiding place and examined it.  She thought that the egg had grown larger and the blue of its shell had become paler, but she wasn't sure.   Maybe she was just imagining things--her mother always said that she had a big imagination.
    As the months turned to years, the girl became involved in the process of growing into a young lady, and she forgot about the egg in her underwear drawer.  Well, sometimes when she grabbed for a pair of underpants or some socks, she touched the box and considered checking on the egg, but she never did get around to removing it from its wooly bundle in the softball box.
    The day came when the girl left home for college.  As she was packing her things, she remembered the egg.  She removed the box from her drawer and gently unwrapped the contents.  The egg had grown, its shell seemed thinner, and its color had faded to a delicate blue, the color of the forget-me-nots in her mother's garden.  When the girl held the egg in the sunlight coming through her bedroom window, she could almost see inside it.   She tenderly rewrapped the egg, tucked it into its box, and replaced it in its hiding place.  "Maybe, when I come home from school at the end of the year, I will be able to see into the egg clearly," she mused for a moment, and then she dashed downstairs to the car waiting to take her away.
    Years passed; the girl grew into a lovely young woman.  She seldom returned to her home, and when she did, it was not for long.  She always had so many things to do that she never did remember to check her egg.  She married and raised a family.  One day, middle-aged and alone in life, she returned to her childhood home to help her mother get the house ready for sale.  That night she slept in her old room, in her old bed.
    The woman awoke in the middle of the night to the touch of a moonbeam on her face.  As she sat up and looked around her room, she remembered that she had not checked on her egg since she had last tucked it away so many years ago.  Curious about the egg, doubting that it had survived the years, and yet hoping that it had, she slipped into her sandals and padded over to her old dresser.  When she opened her underwear drawer, she saw that there in its corner was the softball box, just where she had put it before she left for college.  The box felt very light as she removed it from its corner and opened the flap.  She gently pulled the soft bundle from the box and unwrapped the egg in the palm of her hand.
    As the egg lay in her hand, its shell shimmered where the moonbeam touched it.  The woman watched, amazed at its fragile, porcelain beauty.  She carried it to the window where the light was stronger and where she might better see into the egg.   As she raised it into the light, the egg glowed.  Startled, the woman dropped the egg and closed her eyes so she could not see it smash onto the floor.  She did not, however, hear the impact of the egg on the floor.  Instead, she felt a soft touch on her shoulder.  Wondering, she opened her eyes and found herself looking into the face of a lady with the kindest, gentlest blue eyes she had ever seen.
    "Why, who are you?" the woman asked.
    "I am the lady from inside your magic egg," replied the stranger, and as she spoke, a breeze coming through the window touched her silvery hair and her long, blue satin gown, making them shimmer.  "Don't be afraid of me.  I'm your friend.  I've been your friend for a long time."
    "But what do you mean?”  questioned the woman.  "I've never seen you before.  Where have you been?"
    "I've been inside that egg you so tenderly and carefully kept safe inside your drawer for so long," responded the lady.   "I've been waiting for the moment when I could make myself known to you."
    "Oh, but you are so beautiful," sighed the woman, "and your eyes are so very kind."
    "I am no more beautiful and no kinder than you, my dear," replied the lady gently.
    "How can you say that?  I'm so dumpy and fat that I can't stand myself," wailed the woman, and she turned her back to the lady in shame.
    The lady put her arm around the woman's shoulders and softly turned her so she was looking directly into the lady's eyes.  She cupped the woman's face between her hands, smiled, and said to her, "I want you to take the hand mirror from your dresser top over to the window where the light is strongest, gaze into it, and tell me what you see."
    The woman did what the lady had requested.  She shifted the mirror until she could see herself clearly and gazed at her image.
    "Now, what do you see?"
    "Well, I see myself, my ordinary, frumpy self," replied the woman.
    "Look into your eyes.  What do you see there?"
    The woman stared intently at her eyes in the mirror for a few seconds and exclaimed in amazement, "Why, I see you in my eyes! When I look at my eyes in the mirror, I see you!"
    "No," countered the lady, "when you gaze into your eyes, you see yourself, your true self.  I am that true self of yours, the self that you kept safely hidden away in the depths of your dresser drawer, the self that inhabited the magic egg you found so long ago.  I was inside that egg, waiting for the right time to reveal myself to you.  And now that you know I exist and you have seen my beauty and felt my gentleness and love, the rest of your life will be different."
    In awe the woman asked, "But why am I so lucky?  Don't other women have magic eggs, too?"
    "Oh, yes," answered the lady quietly.  "Each woman possesses a magic egg.  Not every woman's egg fares as well as yours, however.   Sometimes an egg is damaged so badly when its owner is just a little child that the lady who emerges--if, indeed, she ever does emerge--is stunted and incapable of fulfilling her promise.   Sometimes an egg is so badly neglected that its contents shrivel and die, and the whole egg disintegrates into dust.  But many eggs survive the years, and the ladies inside emerge at the times when their owners most need them."
    "I see," replied the woman.  "But will you always be here with me? Will I always be able to talk to you and to touch you?"
    "I must leave you soon, but I will return whenever you need and want me," answered the lady gently.
    Alarmed, the woman asked, "But how will I find you?"
    In response, the lady took the woman's hands in her own and tenderly led her to the full-length mirror on the bedroom door.   As she stood behind the woman, the lady touched the woman's shoulder and said, "You need only stand before a mirror and gaze into your eyes, just as you did earlier.  Whenever you do that, I will come to you.  Try it again."
    The woman did as the lady bade her and there, in the image of her eyes, was the beautiful, gentle lady of the egg.  Filled with joy, the woman turned to give the lady a big hug, but the lady was not there.  A few fragments of pale blue eggshell glittered in the moonlight where she had stood, but the lady was gone.  A brief moment of darkness, a fleeting shadow, passed across the woman's face; she turned back to her mirror and gazed into her eyes.  And there, just as she had promised, appeared that wonderful and beautiful lady.  Feeling suddenly sleepy and filled with peace, the woman returned to her bed and slept.
    When the woman awoke, her room was filled with sunshine.  She padded over to the little pile of eggshell on the floor and carefully placed the fragments into the velvet-lined drawer of her jewel box where they would be safe.  Again, she stood before her mirror and gazed into her eyes.  Again, true to her word, the lady gazed back at her, serenely and lovingly.
    As time passed, the lady's presence became permanently etched in the woman's awareness.  Her trips to the mirror became less frequent as she grew more and more secure in her knowledge that the grace, kindness, and beauty of the lady were part of her.   With each new day, the woman felt her own love and beauty touch the lives of those with whom she came into contact, just as her life had been touched by the lady of the egg.

Some Comments on “The Day I Stopped Dancing” . . .

If you have read “The Day I Stopped Dancing,” the essay I posted yesterday, you may have wondered why I wrote it.  More than that, you may have wondered why I posted it!  After all, the experience of being violently sexually abused at age four was so secret and so shame-ridden that I kept it to myself until I was in my early forties.  And the only reason I became aware of the abuse then was that the memory was forced upon me by a flashback.  As I stated months ago in my post titled “What Good Are Flashbacks?,” flashbacks can serve to make a person aware of the need to get help, but they can also be as horrible to experience as the original traumatic incident from which they stem.  That is certainly true of this particular flashback.  So, frankly, until this morning, I was not sure myself why I wrote and posted “The Day I Stopped Dancing.”  This morning, though, I understood.

It’s been thirty years since I had the flashback that brought this abuse memory to my mind, and it’s been almost seventy years since the abuse incident, and now I find myself getting angry—very angry!—at the thought of sexual predators who abuse kids and who are not subsequently prevented from re-offending.  I’m angry, too, at the people who refuse to believe that abuse can derail a child’s normal course through childhood and leave that child isolated, anxious, and unable to trust if he or she does not get competent help at the time of the abuse.
 
Before a child can get help, however, that child must tell somebody about the abuse.  How many children will do that?  I don’t know for certain, but I would guess that many, many children are like I was—too scared to tell anyone.  So they carry the shame and the guilt and the secrecy—the whole burden that really belongs on the back of the perpetrator—into adulthood.  And then one day the system breaks down, the child-grown-to-adulthood goes into crisis, and finally, if the person is lucky, he or she gets the help needed to come to terms with the abuse. 

In the meantime, a lot of life has gone by, and a lot of promising relationships may have been destroyed by toxic behaviors driven by the unresolved abuse issues festering deep in the victim’s psyche.  This is what happened to me, and I can name dozens of other people who have experienced what I have experienced as a result of being abused as children.
 
Given, then, that children often are too scared to report sexual abuse and other kinds of abuse, how do we know what actually happens in a child’s mind when he or she is traumatized by abuse?  I suspect that often an adult being treated for the effects of child abuse has difficulty describing in detail the effects upon him or her of abuse that happened decades previously.  Describing, for example, the dissociation I experienced immediately after the abuse incident has been as difficult for me as for anyone else, most likely, but ever since I experienced the flashback that led me to the memory, I have persisted in trying to put the experience into words.  I have thrashed about in my head for years, trying to find the right words, the exact words needed to describe the moment the fog came between me and the light.  I’ve remembered the feeling, that millisecond between brightness and dimness and the sense that the world outside my hiding place was not as it was before the fog came. 

But how to tell another person about the fog?  According to Robert Frost, the “the fog comes on little cat feet,” but that wasn’t how the fog came to me at age four!  The fog that came to me then was more like a knife, suddenly severing my former connection to the world on the other side of the fog.  As I peered through the fog, my life looked different.  Suddenly, people with whom I had felt comfortable and happy became aliens, people covered in shadow.  Would they, too, exact a payment from me as Mrs. Greenleaf had done?  And so my life shifted from sun to shadow--the fairies no longer danced around the fairy rings all night and threw sparkles at the buttercups in the morning dew, and, as my mother said, I grew heavy on my feet and no longer danced. 

I understand now that the whole purpose in writing my post yesterday was to show through the eyes of my child self at age four how sexual abuse affected me so many years ago.  Something in me died as a result of the abuse—at least I thought it had died.  Now, however, I’m not so sure.  Maybe it didn’t die; maybe that little girl is coming out of the fog.  Maybe once again she—and I—will watch the fairies dance, see the buttercups sparkle in the morning sun, and maybe we will even dance.  Now, that’s a thought! 

It can happen—with patience, perseverance, and hard work, your adult self can bring that little child from darkness back into the sunshine.  If this is something you need to do, please do it.  You deserve to do it!  If you do it for you, you do it for the universe—for everyone.  Namaste.  Blessings. 

The Day I Stopped Dancing

The following essay addresses the violent sexual abuse I experienced when I was about five years old.  In this narrative, I describe the life-changing dissociative experience following the abuse.  This sexual abuse, coupled with other abuses, some inflicted by my parents, worked to change me from an outgoing, friendly, trusting little girl to a withdrawn, anxious little girl who felt as if she stood isolated and alone in the world.  Now, at age 72, I am finally beginning to get to know that little girl and make peace with her.  Although I have done my best to describe the situation without being graphic, the contents of this essay may be disturbing to you if you have had a similar experience.  In such a case, you might want to skip this essay.

"You were such a bouncy little girl; you were always up dancing on your toes.  I even considered sending you for ballet lessons.  But when you were about four or five, you changed.  You became heavier on your feet, and you didn't dance anymore.  I never understood what happened to you." 
  
My mother said those words to me when I was in my twenties.  At the time, I did not understand what had happened to me, either. Feeling that the words were significant, however, I stored them in that area of my mind where I store information that I suspect will be important in the future.  Later, when I was in my early forties, I had a disturbing flashback that enabled me to attach a memory to my mother’s words.  Since the flashback and the initial memory, I have been able to piece together the story and understand why, so long ago, I stopped dancing.
   
  By the time I was four, my mother had begun the practice of turning me outdoors to play after breakfast.  Most of the people at home in my neighborhood during the day were middle aged or elderly women, so I suppose my mother thought I would be safe.  I would like to think she thought I was safe, at least.  After breakfast, I made my daily rounds, stopping first at the home of a neighbor who owned a little fox terrier named Brownie, and I took great delight in feeding Brownie his breakfast.  When I left Brownie's house, my next stop was at the home of the neighbor lady who sold cream.  She fed me cookies and let me talk until she lost patience and sent me on my way. My last stop was at the house of Mrs. Greenleaf, a widow whose grown son lived with her.

 Mrs. Greenleaf's house was right next to mine, and her kitchen window looked directly into my bedroom.  Because her house was so close, I visited her often.  I liked Mrs. Greenleaf, and I believed she liked me, for she let me sit on her lap and cuddle.  When I was four, I figured that anyone who let me sit on her lap and cuddle liked me.  Why would I not believe that?  After all, I had seen other little girls sitting on laps and cuddling, and in my young mind, people liked those little girls, so why would Mrs. Greenleaf let me cuddle with her if she didn’t like me?  The fact that my mother refused to let me sit with her and snuggle caused me to doubt that my mother liked me, and I would not have asked my father because I was afraid of him.  So I regarded Mrs. Greenleaf as a precious source of affection and spent a lot of time at her house.  I did not tell my mother about this aspect of my relationship with Mrs. Greenleaf; what I told my mother was that the neighbor fed me cookies and let me talk to her.  Since I was a very talkative little girl, I suspect my mother was relieved that she did not have to listen to me.

  Although I did not understand it at the time, Mrs. Greenleaf exacted a payment for allowing me to sit on her lap.  Each time I snuggled on her lap and put my arms around her, she put her hand inside my panties and fondled me.   Even at age four, I knew that something was happening to me that should not happen, but I didn't understand it.  I was confused because nobody else touched me in that place and in that way.  Because she let me sit on her lap, I thought she liked me.  Yet I didn't think that people who liked other people would put their hands where she did.

     I continued to visit the neighbor lady, hungry for the closeness and affection I did not have at home, hoping each time I could snuggle with her and she would not bother me with her hands.  But each time she did.  She never talked about what she was doing to me, and I never did, either.  I didn't talk to anyone about it.  I wanted to tell my mother, but I was afraid she would be angry with me and spank me.  I knew that what happened when I visited the neighbor was bad because my mother and the Sunday school teachers had taught me that good little girls never let anyone see their underpants.  No, that part of my anatomy was off limits for all purposes except the most necessary and basic, but Mrs. Greenleaf did not seem to understand that.  So I knew that what happened when I cuddled with her was bad, and I also knew I was bad because I visited her and let her touch me in that place.  It did not occur to me that Mrs. Greenleaf was bad.

   One day my visits to Mrs. Greenleaf came to an abrupt stop.  When I look back, now, I associate that day so long ago with Good Friday.  In the church I attend, the Episcopal Church, on Good Friday the cross on the altar is covered with a piece of purple or black gauzy fabric that allows me to see the shape of the cross  beneath but prevents me from seeing the cross itself.  Each time I attend the Good Friday service, I feel a sense of deep loss, as if the light in my spirit has been dimmed, and I also feel a sense of panic, as if I have been separated from part of myself.  On Good Friday in the Church, however, I know Easter will come in two days, and I know that what I have lost will be returned to me.

    That last day I visited Mrs. Greenleaf was a Good Friday in my heart because a veil descended upon my spirit and separated me from the light in my life.  After Mrs. Greenleaf and her son had grabbed me and had held me down on the pull-out ironing board in her kitchen and she had pulled my panties down enough so her son could see my nakedness, she turned on the hot water tap in the kitchen sink, pulled my corduroy overalls and underpants all the way off, and then the two held the exposed part of me under the scalding hot water.

 I remember screaming and struggling to get away from them.  I remember tugging at the straps of my overalls, trying frantically to make them stay up.  And I remember Mrs. Greenleaf’s words as I tried to get out the back door: “I have magical powers, and even when you can’t see me looking into your bedroom, I can still see you and watch everything you do.  I can tell by watching you if you are telling anyone about what I did to you, and if you tell, I’ll find you and kill you dead. And what will your parents do with a dead little girl?  They won’t want you at all, and they will put you in a box and bury you in the ground.  So you had better not tell anyone!”  And I didn’t tell!  Not until I was age forty and remembered the incident when I had a flashback.

     I was not badly damaged physically that day, but there was other damage.  I ran from Mrs. Greenleaf’s house and managed to sneak into my house and reach my bedroom without my mother knowing.  I remember that as I hid in the darkness beneath my bed, a fog enshrouded me and separated me from the rest of the world. The world beyond my hiding place was unchanged, but a veil of fog prevented me from seeing that.  In addition, I knew that I was bad and would never be a good girl again.  What I had lost that day would never be returned to me.  I experienced the Good Friday darkness and sorrow, but no Easter joy or hope of joy awaited me.
 
   Now, with my adult mind, I can look back to my childhood and trace the effects of that day in Mrs. Greenleaf’s kitchen.  The foggy veil that came between me and the joy, the dancing, and the light in my life has never completely dropped away, although after sixty-some years and after a lot of hard work in therapy I can say that at times the fog clears enough to allow me to glimpse the full light of Easter just long enough to know it exists.  I am patient.  I have a sense of my young life before the darkness and before the veil descended, and that sense sustains me and reminds me to stay on my path as I continue my journey toward healing.