Parenting, An Unexpected Trigger by Dawn Daum

This article is taken from the Huffingtonpost and adresses a topic not talked about enough ---parenting through triggers and creating a new legacy!

Dawn Daum  

Posted: 11/12/2014 12:03 pm EST Updated: 11/13/2014 11:59 am EST

People may ask, why open up old wounds by talking about abuse that happened to you in childhood? I'd say childhood abuse is a kill-shot, not a wound. It penetrates your soul, preventing your life from ever following the path it once did. So, why wouldn't we "open up the wound,",permitting ourselves to process and learn from the damage done? How else can one do that except to discuss, evaluate and re-evaluate the effects of the abuse as they play out in adulthood?

Telling the truth is what makes people aware. True awareness is comprehending that only 1-10% of child molestation cases are ever reported to the police and two-thirds to ninety percent of sexual abuse victims never tell anyone. This is a population of men and women who never received justice for what was done to them, and are left walking around with a secret festering inside of them. It's a poison that we'd be foolish not to believe seeps in to how we feel, how we think, how we act and how we parent.
                                              
Breastfeeding, bathing, diapering, experiencing genuine love, tender moments at bedtime, disciplining -- these are all new triggers I came up against as a new mom. The sadness and fury I felt when I searched and searched for books, articles, posts, anything that would help me feel less alone, didn't settle well with me. I had to get what I was feeling out of me.
I started to put my own fears, thoughts and reactions to all this on paper -- unfiltered. The result was a heavily-carved article about what it is like to raise a daughter as a survivor. The relief I felt and the response I received was a game-changer for me. It re-fueled the drive I once had to work on my own recovery and support others in theirs.

Joyelle Brandt, a fellow momma survivor, and I began working on building acommunity for parenting survivors. A connection that so many survivors are looking for, to defy the loneliness and shame. For the sake of ourselves, the generation we are raising and other survivors, we feel like we have to talk about what helps us move through the struggles we face.

Despite the joy I feel in creating new connections with people through my writing, I'm disheartened by a pattern I am starting to notice. Posts in which I share about being a survivor and advocate for others receive unprecedented hits for my blog. However, engagement and even likes are far and few in between. What does that say about the fear this topic evokes in survivors? I believe it says two things -- survivors learning that they are not alone in what they experience is something that is craved, yet associating oneself with even a "like," linking him or herself to the stigma of being damaged by abuse, is a very difficult thing to do.

I am a college-educated, resilient woman. I have an easygoing personality and I'm funny. I don't know what people picture when they think of someone who would dare admit that she was molested as a child, but I don't think it is me. Nor do I believe it is the face of the several female and male friends of mine who are also survivors living "normal" lives. I have no desire to sit and cry about what happened to me as a child; however, that doesn't mean I don't feel entitled to talk about what was done to me, and the effects that linger and intervene in my life because of it.
I am not an incapable parent because I admit that caring for my children, in the most basic of ways, can trigger me. I'm just a survivor that is sick to death of watching childhood abuse manifest as physical and mental symptoms, both in myself and those around me. I just want to give my kids a better life than I had. The only way I know how to do that is by telling the truth about what exactly fuels abusive cycles from the survivor's point of view.

If you are a parenting survivor, or want to learn more about what it is like for someone you care about that is, join our Facebook community. I hope you will consider contributing to our upcoming anthology, Trigger Points: An Abuse Survivors Experience of Parenting, as well. Everything you need to know about submitting a piece is on the Facebook page. I'm so incredibly passionate about this project. The next time a mother or father goes searching for support in stories that confirm he or she is not alone, I want them to find our stories, empowering them to tell their own.

The Refiners Fire

The Blessings of Remembering

Why it is important we remember?!

A different Perspective

Yesterday the Sacrament meeting talks in my ward were all focused on remembering.  Remembering the hand of God in our lives, remembering how much Heavenly Father has blessed us, remembering the growth we've experienced, and who we've become because of the Atonement.  

I couldn't help but think of this blog and my most recent struggles with it.  The last 8 months I've really struggled with writing or doing much of anything on it besides reading Jennifer's posts.  Life has been going really well for me lately.  There have defiantly been struggles and trials, don't get me wrong, but overall life has been good.  Why in the world would I want to write about part of my life that brings so much emotion and would have the potential to bring me down from the "high on life" feelings I've been having?

Thank goodness for repentance and change!  From the talks I listened to I better understand the importance of remembering, even the bad things.  My purpose for being part of this blog is to not only help myself and work through all of this with the support of others but it's also to help YOU and regretfully I haven't been doing that.  

I often tell myself how much I don't know, I stink at writing, and what am I thinking doing this?! I'm putting myself out there and fear if someone will connect the dots and figure out I am the author of such an emotional smorgasbord.  I have to say though, when I look back and remember things I've written in the past about childhood sexual abuse, it's empowering to me.  I can see in some of my post how far I've come.  Trust me, I know I have MUCH more to go but remembering where I was just a year ago to where I am now has given me hope for the future and energy and strength to keep working on healing and to not give up. 

As much as I don't like remembering the past, there are great blessing that can come of it.  Those blessings can be different for each person and memory.  Remembering some horrific experiences from my passed has allowed me to work on healing them.  When I didn't always remember the abuse that happened, which it's ok if you don't, it was hard for me to understand why I was feeling a certain way, how to work through a trigger and often times I would question my sanity and the choices I was making because I just didn't understand.  Allowing myself to remember the pain as it came opened the doors for me to work on the emotions associated to those memories and heal instead of trying to block it out or hide it away somewhere.

Today I'm grateful to remember that I can do hard things and that little by little each effort in working on healing really does make a difference. 

 

O Remember, Remember  President Henry B. Eyring

The Secret Keepers NOVEMBER 11, 2014 / KAREN @ MENDED MUSINGS

I am going to do Just what this brave women asked and I am reblogging her blog here.

"I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to ask you to share this post. Reblog it, share it on Facebook, tweet it. Someone out there needs to hear this message today. Even if you think you don’t know anyone who has been abused. Even if you don’t read the entire post.

About a month ago I was asked by Dawn at WTF words, thoughts, feelings to contribute an essay for an anthology that she and Joyelle are creating for parents who are survivors of childhood sexual and physical abuse  (learn more at   https://www.facebook.com/TriggerPointsAnthology).

I submitted my essay but I also want to shine a bigger spotlight on this project because I fear that they may not get many submissions. Not because it’s not a worthy cause or because there aren’t enough people out there to contribute but because survivors of abuse are secret keepers. We’ve had to be, either as a form of armor to protect ourselves or because we’ve been pressured not to tell.

But sometimes, we keep the secret because we’ve never truly acknowledged to ourselves the effect it has had on our lives.

It wasn’t until I was in my 30’s that I could call what had happened to me sexual abuse. I told myself that I wasn’t really molested. It was just my first kiss. After all, I wasn’t raped, just fondled. Sure, by a grown man when I was 11, but still. It was nothing like what some people go through. I wasn’t held captive or repeatedly raped. What happened to me couldn’t possibly be big enough to explain the years of night terrors, paralyzing anxiety, self-destructive behavior and general misery I suffered. There had to be something else wrong with me. For some reason, it was easier to believe I was inherently messed up and flawed.

I started blogging as part of a spiritual quest to figure out my life. As I explored truths and lies about myself I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about “my first kiss” and I decided to write out what had happened to me. I remember being nervous about having it on my computer. I’ve watched enough episodes of Dateline to know that nothing on a computer is really private. What would happen if it fell into the wrong hands? Then I asked myself, who are the wrong hands? Who am I trying to protect? What am I, decades later, still afraid of?

After I wrote it all out, I acknowledged for the first time that what happened to me was a big deal. It absolutely could explain the years of night terrors, paralyzing anxiety, self-destructive behavior and general misery I had suffered. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t considered it before.

I think a lot of people downplay what happened to them because they don’t want a life where their past is the constant focus. They don’t want to continually rehash what can’t be changed and dig up the dead. It seems to serve no purpose because what’s done is done. What makes it more complicated is that often our abusers are members of our family and if we tell our secrets, we have to tell theirs. I wrote a post a few months ago where I referred to one of my abusers as a family friend. That’s a lie. He was a member of my family. Even I, an avowed heart teller of truth, couldn’t bring myself to tell my family’s secrets.

But just because we downplay it doesn’t mean it has no power over us. Some people know exactly what the ramifications of their abuse are but others bury it so deep that it could be affecting them more than they realize. Maybe you’ve been working on making your life better for a long time and you’re not making the progress you’d like. Maybe you’ve been looking for answers in all the wrong places. Knowledge is power. If you understood how abuse can weave its way into your life in ways that you didn’t know were possible, you could make lasting progress and find some peace.

Do you have nightmares? Can you not stand to be touched in certain places on your body? Do you react defensively when you feel cornered, either emotionally or physically? Do you suffer from anxiety? Depression? Substance Abuse? Unexplained physical ailments? Are you always wondering what’s wrong with you or why you can’t be like everyone else? Have you had difficulty maintaining relationships? Do you keep making bad decision after bad decision? Do you feel broken, unlovable, despondent, numb?
The secret we’ve kept is filled with lies. Not just lies we were told but lies we believed about ourselves as a result of what happened to us. Those lies get so compounded that eventually, we stop questioning them. We just believe them. We believe we’re to blame, we believe we’re unclean, we believe we’re unworthy, we believe we’re broken, unlovable, shameful, untrustworthy. We believe that’s our true nature. And since we don’t want people to know what we really are, we hide, we lie and we numb and armor ourselves.
But here’s the thing – whether we want it to or not, what happened to us shaped us and if we don’t confront how we feel about ourselves as a result, it will continue to shape us. When we give the secret all the power, it owns us. It makes the decisions. It tells us how to feel about ourselves and it marks our place in the world. If we don’t understand the far reaching effects of abuse, we’re destined to keep making the same mistakes over and over.

If any of this feels true to you, I want you to try something. I want you to find a picture of yourself from the time period the abuse occurred and I want you study it. I want you to ask that younger self if he/she deserves answers. I want you to ask her if she wants more for you than what you’ve settled for."

                                         

                                                                   Me, age 11

I just know that there is someone out there like me who thought she was so small and unimportant that what happened to her wasn’t significant enough to honor as real, as devastating, as shattering. And I know that someone reading this might have an “aha” moment and the pieces of the puzzle will start to fit together. You’re not alone and you don’t have to be a secret keeper anymore.
Now, take the next step. Write about your experience for your eyes and no one else’s. Tell the child you were back then how you feel now. Then, reach out to people who can relate to what you’ve gone through. It may very well be the hardest thing you ever do but it’s the first step to reclaiming all parts of yourself and remembering that you’re already whole. You are, trust me. You just don’t remember.
I’ve included links at the bottom to resources for survivors and to bloggers who are walking the path to healing. I encourage people to leave links to helpful sites and to their own blogs in comments.
This message is not just for survivors of childhood sexual, physical and emotional abuse but for people who have been victimized as adults as well. Even if you haven’t been directly affected by abuse, someone you know might need to be reached by this so please share this post."

Victor Frankl's thoughts from Mans search for Meaning.

Some of you may be familiar with Victor Frankl and his book Man's search for Meaning. I have never read his book but have heard it quoted many times in my life. His main message is that despite our circumstances (he was in 4 different concentration camps) we can find meaning and purpose in our life.  There are circumstances in life that we do have control over and then there are some that we do not. I have copied down a few of his quotes below...

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” 
“There is nothing in this world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is meaning in one's life.” 

“Fear makes come true that which one is afraid of...” 

“As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps - concentration camps, that is - and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.” 

“Man is originally characterized by his "search for meaning" rather than his "search for himself." The more he forgets himself—giving himself to a cause or another person—the more human he is. And the more he is immersed and absorbed in something or someone other than himself the more he really becomeshimself.” 

“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”

“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.” 

If you were abused as a child-you had no control . Your abuser liked to make you feel that you had a part to play -but in reality you did not. What you do have control over now as an adult is how you make meaning of your life experiences. What you do with it -now. It will be different for everyone. Some will take those experiences and become fighters for justice. Others will be wonderful listeners to those who need someone who understands what they have gone through. What will you do ? How will you make meaning of what you have been through?