Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board
Voicelessness and Emotional Survival => Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board => Topic started by: Ami on March 05, 2008, 03:42:16 PM
-
Dear Tiffany,
I really can't "speak "after reading your story. You ,always ,sounded very centered,(in your precious posts which I remembered ) and it is amazing. I agree with your last few lines. Our only saving grace is God, in THIS life, and of course, the next, where there will be NO sorrow . Love to you,friend Ami
-
Hi Ami,
It's so nice to meet you. And my condolences for your very recent loss. I recall your posts as well, and can relate to your strength and faith. I know that my story strikes an emotional cord. It does so to me when I see it written. Part of my centeredness comes from dissociating from the "bad gunky" (from Lisey's Story, Stephen King-beautiful book). Over time, I "learned" how to squelch and squeeze my negative experiences into this small dark box called "the past" and try to make a serious attempt to move on. I did so, thanks to 30 years of denial. But now that I'm a mother (to Jordan, 7-hence the alias "Jordan's peeps", I, along with my husband, am her peeps) I have a great reason to live a healthier, happier life. It is so important to me to be a better mom than my own and to break the nasty cycle of abuse in our family. I'm not so positive how exactly to do it, but I trust the Inner Guide and am becoming more attuned to it's voice. It is the voice of the silenced child, who just wants to give and receive love. Thanks for reaching out to me, Ami.
Jordan's mom
-
I can sooooo relate. I found out about Nism around my daughter's 5th birthday. The floodgates of both information and emotion opened during her fifth year of life. For me, five was a tough year, I saw my parents involved in a wicked physical fight, they separated that year, I was molested that summer, and I remember enduring constant haranguing by my mother about how much I preferred my father to her and how I should do some of the nice things for her that I did for him sometime- a toughie for a five year old, I think.
But for my sweet Jordan, five was awesome. More like it should be. When you are five years old you are such a firecracker. You have such confidence and such humor and you are just so darn precious. That tiny little voice, those large doe-eyes! Five is supposed to be when you show the world a glimpse of what you will become. You're fearless, you think you're a little adult, you know you are special and loved and you are a shining star!! I believe that is why there are a preponderance of sexually molested individuals that experience their first abuses around the age of 5. Abusers, I believe, can sense the magic in five-year olds, the innocence, the open-ness and they want to tap into it somehow. They want to consume it. They want to recharge their own damaged selves with it. Sexual abuse is the result but I believe it's the only way some abusers feel they can capture the essence of true beauty. And five year old's unlike adults are more understanding and of course, naive to the ways of clumsy, misfit abusers. You are never more whole and complete than when you are five.
I think seeing Jordan's beauty and innocence at five made me understand why someone would want to consume the essence of a child, (one of my father's favorite things to say when he sees little children is, "I could just eat you up."). This made me fiercely protective of her and a little sad for myself to be a kid with no one to feel that way for me. Sure, lollie, I can totally relate to what you are saying. I've had great awakenings during my child's major milestones. I imagine there will be more, I'm already both looking forward to and dreading when she becomes 12. I'll have to balance the urge to be overly protective with need to allow her to blossom as an individual. Thanks for bringing that out lollie.
J
-
http://www.voicelessness.com/disc3//index.php?topic=7353.0 (Jordanspeeps Story)
Hi Tiffany,
What can I say...your story made me cry. It is beautifully and forcefully told.
I don't know if this scripture will speak to you, but it jumped off the page during my devotions a couple of days ago.
Psalm 131:2
2 Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul.
Like a weaned child with his mother;
Like a weaned child is my soul within me.[/i]
I was struck with the idea that a child at weaning time should have been instilled with quiet and calm, a legacy N's are not able to give their children.
tt
-
Hey TT,
Gorgeous scripture! How poetic!! I nursed my daughter for about 6 months and what a bonding it was. Her and I are deeply connected and even at squirrely age 7 she loves to rest calmly by the side of me (around the armpit area) and just lie there. She tells me she loves my smell and the warm and soft of my skin. I imagine the familiarity , albeit subconscious by now, calms her. I'm going to read the rest of that scripture later, tt. It's beautiful.
Ironically, I was born in 1974, the year Breastfeeding first became en vougue in the US. It was the hottest newest childcare topic of the time and many women, especially those in health care as my mother was, were attracted to the fact that it was touted to be "the best" for your baby. This, and only this, is the reason I believe my mother chose to breastfeed me, the only child of her four children, for about 2 weeks. I'm glad she did, though but I don't think it bonded her to me as much as it did me to her.
J
-
Hi Jordanspeep,
I was breastfed too because I was a country kid and if it was right for the cows, it must be right for me. Good logic, really. The irony is that it can bond the child to the parent even if it is done for selfish reasons, or is a mechanical, get it over and done inconvenience. Done in that fashion, I think there is no doubt that it sends the child to the next stage of development full of anxiety, fear and lack of trust.
Someone said that quiet is noise you don't mind.
I love the picture of you and your little girl snuggling.
tt
-
Hi Jordanspeeps,
Here is wishing you peace, prosperity and enlightenment as you step into your third NC phase. Thank you for sharing the current status. You write exquisitely. My best to you and yours.
tt
-
Hi Tiffany,
Here are a couple of other verses which may help, they've helped me;
Matthew 10: 35-37 and,
John 19: 26-27.
Take care.
mud
-
Dear Tiffany,
Likewise, Matthew 10:35-37 has been such a comfort to me,
and I would like to add another verse of comfort and understanding: Psalm 27:10
May God Bless you along your way; with much love, joy, peace and contentment.
Love,
Leah
-
Hello friends,
I’ve pondered on the verses Matthew several times before. I’ve actually received this verse while in deep meditation one day, last year when I needed a religious answer as to why God chose for me to suffer in this way. I’ve spent my entire life wondering why and how a mother could be flawed in such a way: with an inability to love, with a contrary spirit towards her own offspring. It just seems so unnatural and against the order of things. I feared I was being punished, certainly not special enough in God’s eyes to deserve a mother who would appreciate and support and unconditionally love me.
In time, however, I’ve come to realize that it is because I (and we) am SO special in His eyes that we are deserving of what God has blessed us with. And what I can be most grateful about is that from this turmoil and pain he has fashioned a way of escape. I have had the intelligence, the extra-familial support, the self-esteem, and the desire to negotiate an enjoyable life despite the circumstances.
C
-
Dear Tiffany,
Thank you for your openness. I'm still working my way through your story, but I had a question. You said you were raped when you were young, I ask this with great care and gentleness, but have you ever done any healing around the trauma of your abortion? No doubt the rape was traumatic enough, I was raped when I was 11, it was the loss of my innocence. My heart feels compassion for your pains and struggles.
In my early twenties I had two abortions. For years after I suffered from depression and anxiety. I too had an N mom. This past year I have been healing the wounds of the loss of my voice. As a child I was shamed into voicelessness through silent aggression, as an adult I victimized my own children into voicelessness by abortion. I had a lot of unconscious rage at the abuse I suffered as a child, as you say, invalidation and neglect which led to me invalidating the precious lives in me. The pain of abortion is a complicated grief, but a grief that when faced, as well as my wrong in my abortions, I was free, depression is not an issue for me so much these days as much as just healing the raw wound of the pain of victimization of my own childhood.
Glad that you are here, thank you again for your insights and openness.
Lise
-
Good day,
Tear tracks, I wanted to thank you for the compliment. I am considering doing some creative writing and that comment makes me beam!!!
And Gabben, yes, I’d have to say the sexual abuse and the subsequent fallout are high on the list of great losses I’ve suffered to NPD. They have wreaked a toll far deeper and wider than any eye could see. I spent a lot of my ‘tween and teenage years agonizing over the molestation that happened when I was five years at the hand of my teenaged cousins. I felt intense shame and unworthiness because I knew it was bad to “go with” your own family. I also felt as if there was some thing, be it hidden or obvious, about me that made me susceptible to sexual deviants. I remember trying to make myself “ugly” not washing my face, gaining a lot of weight, and choosing huge eyeglass frames and clothing to cover myself.
The rape at 12 by the crazy farm family, (orchestrated by a sociopath 18 year old and her impressionable, brainwashed 17 year old ga-lumph of a brother), was particularly emotionally damaging because of the overall trickery involved and the subsequent abortion. The abortion at age 12, did a number on my spirit. Once I recognized the heft of what had been done, around aged 17 or so, I was spiritually devastated. I went for about 2 years unable to pray or commune with God. My mother had refused to ever speak of it again. She and my father’s were pillars in the church community but I felt that I alone carried the weight of our evil deed. The abortion did the job of ratcheting up the shame-level already intensely felt following the two prior episodes of sexual manipulation.
Gabben, I can relate to the geometric pattern mentioned in the other thread about victim-hood with the third event of sexual abuse when I was 15. When I review it and analyze it for what it really is, I in fact, did have some thing about me that made me susceptible to sexual abuse/manipulation. It was in the way I over-responded to this 19 year-old man-boy when he turned a flirty word towards me on the bus ride home from high school. In my sheltered naïvetee, low self-esteem and self-deprecation, I trusted this tall, muscular Marine within moments of meeting him. I trusted that he would just walk me to his house quickly to check in on his ailing mother before walking me to my own home a block from the bus stop. I negotiated with him, during the physical assault, (I was being forcibly pinned), by telling him of my previous rape and the ensuing pregnancy, pleading that he not do this and devastate my family again. His decision was to rape me in ways that I could not get pregnant.
Around 20, I received the spiritual healing I needed. I went to God first for forgiveness and then a promise. The promise was to never again allow anything to ever come between Him and me. The comforting message in return was that in all instances everyone involved was doing the best the could do given the circumstances. From that I was able to forgive my perpetrators and myself. That has been the single most important factor in my healing from the abuse and the abortion. I carry with me many lessons of the unborn baby. If I’d given birth, the child would be 22 years old.
The depression and anxiety came upon me the hardest three years ago just before I found out about NPD. I was searching with all my might for answers about why I had become a shell of my former self, with agoraphobia and addictive behaviors and completely out of contact with my friends. I was sleeping and eating and rotting. I was making an attempt to pull myself up from the bootstraps emotionally when I passed some online depression test and found that a anxiety “for dummies” book applied to me. Okay I was depressed and anxious, Well, Why? I asked the ethos. And the word “narcissist” fell into my lap around Mother’s Day 2005 during a Today Show episode on “toxic relationships.” I’ve been in various stages of healing since.
Take care, sorry so long,
-
Dear Tiffany,
I hear the painof your story. I am so sorry. It is so hard to overcome abuse, not to blame ourselves. I am slowing winning the battle to find my authentic self.
I found God as a result of all the pain,and it was worth it, even though I wish I could have found Him ,in a softer way,for sure.
My heart goes out to you . I am hearing the profound feelings of sadness and pain you are expressing, my friend. Love Ami
((((((((((Tiffany)))))))))
-
I read your story last nite and I am deeply pained by it. I am so sorry.
You are one year younger than me, I cannot imagine having to endure those situations and still be "living" to tell about it. What are your ways to cope when you re-hash either by accident or by thinking about it with purpose? Does it interfere with your "normal" day to day. How do you move on with your relationships with this in the background?
I have a almost 4 year old and almost 18 month old, I know its hard to have "issues" and fear about raising them kwim.
I guess this is the brass ring we are all going for, I know it must be near impossible, or maybes its not. I have no idea.
I struggle with the idea that you are my age and endured so much misery.
I am not witty, nor a good writer, so let me just say what you had to go thru.. SUXS!
I am sure there are better words.
-
Dear littlejo,
I am not witty, nor a good writer, so let me just say what you had to go thru.. SUXS!
I am sure there are better words.
You know the idea is to communicate in a way that others understand. I understand all you said. In my mind that makes you a good writer. I always think of the baseball player, Yogi who said, It ain't over 'till it's over. Not exactly text book, but he got his point across.
tt
-
Hi Ami and littlejo,
I appreciate your condolences, however I no longer "live" in my past. I can recall it somewhat dispassionately now because a lot of healing has already taken place. I see a lot of lessons in my experiences and can't help but feel they will not be in vain. I do believe my life, as each of ours, has a great purpose and that our suffering/pain/hardships are for a reason: to teach us. Anytime, I hit a "snag" in life, I immediately begin looking for the lesson, so that I may move on to either the next lesson or to a much-deserved lull in the drama. That is my life, an undulating pattern of painful dramas coupled with beautiful periods or respite and rebuilding.
I do cry for the little girl and young woman that was me when I think about it, though. I think that its important to remember and to recognize what you've been through, but I do think it's more important to try to reconcile your hardships, to find a way to cope with your future in a more evolved manner. For me, writing helps a ton. As therapy, I have written the details of my life in journals, mostly to be my memory and to remind me of what I've already experienced. Living with a narcissist will ruin your memory, because they are so easily able to FORGET things that they've done to hurt you and often wake up a completely different person each day. I was unable to remember any details of my life from the ages of 17-30. I just couldn't recall things when people would take trips down memory lane. I would be suprised when my friends and family said things like "Remember the time so and so happened?" I would be appalled at the things that they said as though I wasn't even present when the event occurred. So, once I learned about narcissism all of my childhood memories came rushing back all at once. That was a scary time, the scariest. I was as close to considering suicide as I could ever be, so depressed and afraid. But these days, after educating myself and restoring my faith, I am a relatively well-functioning human being. Thanks for your sympathy. It goes a long way in helping validate what I've experienced.
Take care
J
-
(((((((((((Tiffany))))))))))))))) Warm Hugs to You, Ami