My Survivor's Story Healing Moments

My Story ~ Healing Moments

"My Inner Child Comes Out of Exile"

During some of the most intense phases of my recovery from PTSD and childhood sexual abuse, nightmares have been commonplace. I awoke one night from a terrifying dream. At first, I felt overwhelmed by the nightmare and wanted to pull someone near to "make it all better." I was able to stay with the feelings, however, and an extraordinary thing happened. Instead of trancing out, rocking myself or crying myself back to sleep, I felt an opening.

I reached out for peace and found that it was right there for me. Although it was the dead of night, I no longer felt alone. I felt completely connected and became flooded with insights.

The process of breaking the bonds of dissociation has brought many such insights and openings. This night, I found myself awake, looking around at a vast landscape of new possibilities. It was a new world and a new me. I was in my body and I tingled with awareness of the opportunities available to me.

I began to realize just how much there was to learn about myself and the world around me. I was surprisingly unafraid. I sensed an energy that felt vulnerable, yet fully open and alive. It was not a freezing, debilitating anxiety, nor was it a shutting down.

My wounded inner child was no longer exiled--carefully battened down in her safe isolation. She, instead, began to share. She was sharing in hopes of comfort and healing. She was sharing with a strong sense of trust. She spoke to me. "Here. Look at this, " she said. "I think it is safe for me to show you this now."

My inner child seemed to trust my core wisdom to be able to reach in and feel everything at last. "Look," she said. "Touch this. Feel it." All of her essence began breaking out there for me to look at and feel. She said, "Here I am. This is me, with all my faults and foibles, bumps and pains, hopes, joys and sorrows."

I did not shut my eyes or turn away. I moved closer and heard her say, "Here are my tickle spots. These are my shy ways, naive ideas, innocent observations and street-wise lessons learned."

My inner child--who had been denied and abandoned for so long--turned out to be worldly and wise. "Here I am," she kept reminding me. "I am here, there, ahead and behind," she asserted. "I am joy and pain, light and dark, gain and loss, hate and love."

She did not apologize, but explained, "Everything I choose. Everything I choose to be, to do, to have and experience to get back to me. Everything I bless. Everything I celebrate for the opportunity, for the gift it gives to me, for the chance I have to be."

"Out of Despair--Choose Life!"

I have known despair. I have been suicidal. I remember an image I had of myself during moments of pure despair. My body is contracted and folded in. Face fallen, eyes downcast, the only place I can look is down. And right down there--right at the edge of the precipice where I've crumpled to my knees--is a big, black hole. It's a deep, bottomless pit of darkness. It is despair and it's swirling like a whirlpool, threatening to slop over the edge and suck me in.

During a night of sheer agony, just when I had formed this image of darkest despair in my mind, I heard a voice. It said, "Do not curse the darkness and bless only the light. And do not praise the light without also blessing the darkness."

It was a miracle. Out of the darkness, Life was calling me. It asked me, "Can you hear? This time, will you understand?"

Life is not "up" or "out there" somewhere. Life is not the lofty-held light I have so often struggled to reach, in order to escape my darkness.

I am reminded of two poems I thrashed out during such moments of despair, when I was reaching for the light that I thought would save me from my darkness.

Despair

There's no use trying everything is worthless

Life is just a heaping, stinking load of bullshit

And the only ones getting ahead

Are the ones who are flinging the shit around

I feel like I'm floating adrift

On a vast sea of waste

I have no oars, no mast or sail

I drift aimlessly with all hope lost

No chance of ever finding safe harbor, home

On rare occasion, I muster up enough courage

The strength to claw for solid ground

I fling myself at a branch, a rock

Only to slide helplessly back into the sticky mire

I give up, exhausted

I collapse back onto the rickety, tattered raft of my being

I dream of the day, some day

When I will be sucked down

Down and out

Through the filthy drain of the wretched cistern

That has been my life-long torture chamber.

Closed Doors & Windows

They say God never closes a door

Without opening a window

But my whole life's been spent

Both doors and windows

Slamming in my face

Seems I was born

In a huge, dark haunted house

Spend my days running

Up and down dark hallways

Back stairways and secret passages

I jump when a door slams behind me

But find courage to press on

I go toward the open window

Hope in its light

I scramble up

I think, "Thank God!

I've finally made it!"

But just when my fingers

Grasp tight the pane

The window crashes down

My fingers smashed

My hopes dashed

Why do I try?

There's no escaping

These vain attempts just seem insane.

Yet, here in the depths of my misery, Life was telling me that the light and the darkness are equally divine. "I am also the darkness," Life informed me. "I am the darkness that causes you to see the light."

Oh, how I did finally understand! Without both the light and the dark--the white and the black--we would not have the infinite variations of gray that make up the ALL--the in-between--that is life itself. Life is the ebb and flow of every shade of gray as it is compared and relates to every other. If not for the absolute of the light and the dark, the variety of gray in between would not have the space created in which to be.

So, don't condemn the darkness you perceive in another. And don't become boastful about the brightness you perceive within you. Do not label one good and the other evil--one pure white and the other filthy black. None of us is one without the other. We are every variation, combination and degree of "both and" which makes up the glorious whole that we all share.

Life nudged me (or maybe it gave me a little, needed slap). Life said, "Look!" I realized how long I had been squeezing my eyes shut, how long I had been keeping my head down.

Look up. Look around. Don't make the darkness your only focus. Don't look down at your feet, for fear of falling. Don't give darkness and despair the power to suck you in and become your only reality. Move! Dance and be free. Your feet don't need your eyes. It is your eyes that need your feet--to move, to run, to skip and to fly. Once your feet get unstuck and move--in any direction--your eyes can behold it all. Get up and move and you suddenly see all the options, the paths and the helpers along the way.

Your eyes now see the light...the dark, and the shimmering, shining colors of every description. Now, go. Step onto the path. Run out to meet your journey with arms open and eyes wide. Throw your head back and laugh...and dance!